Foggy days. 

Looking west across Hitchin from Windmill Hill. 

Bright sun beginning to burn off the haze. 

The Chiltern Hills beyond receding into mist.

 

 We are well into 'the fall' but not much has fallen. Certain trees and shrubs have indeed shed their leaves, some are only just starting to wear their autumn colours, others are still shades of green. There was some leaf fall in September bought on by the drought, but then enough rain and sun to rejuvenate growth. 

 

Golden Ginkgo.

 Well, it must be late autumn because the leaves on the Virginia Creeper have turned fiery red and mostly fallen. Then again the sky is blue, it's mild, sunny and dry; more like the tail end of summer. The landscape is usually sopping wet at this point in the season even on a day without rain. But I'm seeing minimal dew and zero condensation. Today would be a good day to put your washing on the line.

 It has been said we will need seven months above average rainfall to replenish rivers, reservoirs and aquifers. If we have a dry winter after the drought and then another drought it will be (to quote an old folk song) "Hard times in old England, in England very hard times".

 I'm not complaining about a beautiful day to be out in the garden but I am a little uneasy...

Postscript It must be late autumn because it was pitch dark by six o'clock!

 

 A delivery from the Beth Chatto nursery, always known for propagating quality plants in conjunction with the renowned garden she developed. In doing so she became hugely influential both as a horticulturalist and as a garden designer. She wrote a number of books on various facets of her work and they are essential reading. 

 

 First storms of winter blew across the country the past couple of days (coinciding appropriately enough with the end British Summer Time). No dramas to report, just a spindly Silver Birch at the music school that blew over and snagged another tree. It was slender enough that I cut it with a bow saw and dragged the sections deeper into the trees to rot.

 

Still life.

 

 The last harvest of the Runner Beans is the dried out pods containing next year's seed.

 Ok, I'm cheating (a bit). I sowed Foxglove seed in trays to prick out into small pots for planting next spring. But I left it a bit late (end of August). Foxgloves are biennial which is a somewhat flexible term. If you sow them early enough they can flower the following year e.g. in 2026 for 2027. Then again they are apt to take two full years i.e. a 2026 sowing will bloom in 2028.

 So I bought a tray of plugs as seen above which are more advanced than my seedlings; hopefully some or all will flower next year. Plug plants are not as cheap as growing from seed but they still represent good value. These were a pound per plug plus a few pounds postage.

 

Autumn in South London.

 Bulbs- 480 of them, which I ordered for planting en masse at the music school. Bulbs are relatively inexpensive (unless it's something rare) so you get a lot for your money. These came to £94.99 including delivery, that's 20p each on average. I got Narcissus 'Tete-a-Tete', Crocus tommasinianus and Chionodoxa forbesii for spring and various Alliums for early summer: A. caeruleum, A. sphaeroephalon, A. hollandicum and A. moly.

 I recently bought a couple of bare root Stinking Iris (Iris foetidissima). They were good healthy clumps of thick rhizomes. Very suitable for dividing so two became nine. And the eight pounds I paid for the pair became less than a pound per pot! 

 

 Eternal life. Phacelia tanacetifolia grew on this area of the allotment and self-seeded. Under a tarpaulin under a wheel barrow a few of the seeds were exposed to light and water where the tarp was torn. That was enough for them to germinate. 

 

England's green and pleasant land is green again. 

 

Misty morning.

 

Shall I call this picture "Indian Summer" or "Autumn" ?

 

 As expected it was farewell to the venerable Mulberry tree at the music school. When it half fell over in a storm last month it was a foregone conclusion I'm afraid. [see entry dated 30th. August]

 Looking at the exposed stump the core had become quite rotten. Trees can survive with a mixture of living and dead wood to some extent but there are limits. Thick strands within the rotted wood show that mycelium have been at work. There is life within decay.

 Nonetheless hope springs eternal. I took a number of cuttings which I've potted up with the aim of propagating new life from old.

 

 After the drought and the heatwaves autumn has become a mini growing season: some rain, still sunny, and warm rather than baking. For example Musk Mallow flowers in early summer and wilted in the heat but has been coaxed back into flower here and there. 

 

Conservation grazing has become a familiar sight in nature reserves.

 

 What is this? A single flower that has just appeared in the kitchen garden, not something I planted. I can't recall ever having seen such a flower before. No doubt there are apps that will tell me but where's the fun in that?

 

 The weather is still warm enough for bees to forage and they seek out what flowers there are. Rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis) is generally described as spring flowering but a late - or early? - flush of flowers often appears in autumn and even through the winter.

 

 Ivy in flower- the last abundant source of pollen and nectar as summer turns to autumn.

 Autumn (and spring) is the time to transplant when most plants are semi-dormant. The key is to get as much of the root as possible. Globe Thistle grows well at the music school; I wanted to fill a gap in one of the borders so I separated this specimen from a cluster. 

 Autumn is the season of seeds, whether by self-seeding or seed collecting.

 Always a fleeting pleasure when sunlight catches Cyclamen hederifolium in a woodland setting. One of the few plants that flowers in a shady spot in late summer/early autumn. 

 

 A bit of weeding, except I noticed that the 'weeds' in a courtyard area at the music school were self-seeded Verbena bonariensis. So I teased them out from the cracks as carefully as I could to preserve the roots where possible. This yielded twenty or so young plants which I potted up - about a hundred pounds' worth at current prices- reusing old pots, compost made on site and rainwater from the water butt. Hyperlocal and sustainable!

 

 An annual task at the music school- cutting the Yew hedges (approx. 70m in various locations). Yew is tough and springy, not as amenable to topiary as a Privet hedge. Nonetheless can be shaped in the classic squarish section softened with rounded edges.

 It is sometimes said that it is illegal to cut a hedge in the UK between 1st. March and 31st. August. Not so but it is a criminal offence to disturb nesting birds during that period; a hedge is very likely contain a nest or two.

 There is no contradiction between the law and good horticultural practice. Early autumn is the ideal time to trim a hedge: growth is becoming dormant and fresh cuts will not be exposed to frost.

 

Sedums are stalwarts of herbaceous borders in late summer/early autumn.

 So, farewell the Mulberry Tree. When I arrived at the music school this morning I noticed it was half standing/half fallen leaning on one of its limbs. Presumably a consequence of the great storm on Thursday. I plucked some delicious berries from it only a few weeks ago.

 Mulberries grow to be ancient trees, this one was probably planted by William Ransom himself in the nineteenth century. He was a great planter of trees around his country house which is now the music school. NB that's the modernist extension in the background.

 In a wild garden this tree could keep on living for a few years yet albeit on the skew. In a car park adjacent to a slip road I imagine the decision will be to fell it. Fortunately there is another one nearby, also a relic of Ransom. 

 

 Here comes the rain again. An unusual sight travelling into London on Thursday morning: the landscape in misty precipitation. The rains returned with a vengeance, in Hitchin at least. Nothing to speak of in London but when I returned that evening I admired a particularly dramatic cloudscape and sunset as the train approached Hitchin. 

 As I walked from the station I noted a good deal of surface water on the streets and a fine layer of silt everywhere. Must have rained heavily I thought. In fact there had been an astonishing deluge in the middle of the afternoon lasting about thirty minutes- flash flooding all over town and the River Hiz burst its banks in several places. (not to mention my father's kitchen floor becoming a puddle when the outside drain overflowed)

 A friend described sitting in her garden; it began to rain so she went inside. Then torrents came down with a roll of thunder that didn't stop, just kept rolling for the duration of the deluge. She said she had never heard that before.

 Looking at the aftermath my sense is that rain fell with a greater intensity than any other rainstorm in Hitchin in my lifetime. And this after the hottest, driest summer since records began... 

Getting that change in the weather, last days of summer elegiac feeling.

 

 Enjoying some mellow sunshine at the music school. A more usual temperature for late August after the heatwaves (though still no rain to speak of).

 Benslow was originally a country house commissioned by the botanical pharmacist William Ransom in 1859, later the home of the Seebohm family. Bequeathed to the Rural Music Schools Assoication by Esther Seebohm in 1952. 

 My father was a very active board member in the 70s/80s/90s, indeed one of a group of supporters who prevented the property being sold to developers in the 1970s. My old friend Jif became the gardener there in the late 90s and did amazing work developing the garden as it exists now. 

 

 Even marshy habitats are dry. I have always known this shallow natural pond on Oughtonhead Common to be full (as seen above in March). But not now...

 What a difference: on June 12th. I cut the long grass in this meadow at the music school. I remember thinking I would need to cut it again in a few weeks. Two months later that hasn't been necessary...

 

 

A cool, cloudy day! The lawns at the music school are straw coloured like everywhere. 

 It's incredible- this summer southern England has been hotter and drier than any other period since records began. Perhaps it was as hot and dry as this sometime in the Middle Ages or a thousand years ago but in the past few lifetimes no. 

 

 Tonal eclipse of the sun - as seen at Knocking Hoe - projected through a kitchen colander onto a sheet of white card. I didn't want to buy a pair of special glasses (or go blind) so this simple variation on a pinhole camera did the job. In fact we frequently get brief glimpses of sun without going blind (not to mention admiring sunrises and sunsets). Nonetheless looking straight at the sun high in the sky for seconds or longer is clearly a no-no.

 My old buddy Gordon suggested we take a trip out to the Hoe. Good call- the primal humps of the Hoe speak to my inner pagan. We picked a spot looking over the patchwork fields of Bedfordshire. The landscape was golden brown, sky blue, electric heat.

 As the eclipse began to happen an eerie twilight spread across the land, the air became cool, the rays of the sun ceased to burn the skin. A different twilight to sunset, the shadows didn't lengthen as when the sun goes down.

 I have to report we didn't see the sun go dark with a bright corona. Throughout it seemed to remain a luminous circle despite the dimming of the ambient light. That is intriguing because every news report shows the image of a dark sun. Perhaps it's fake news like those stories we landed on the moon and the earth is round...  (just kidding)

 Then again it was a partial eclipse when seen from England; possibly sufficient rays were illuminating the haze that the sun still looked full? Anyway the merest of squints, the colander and the lens of the camera saw a shining sun. Maybe it would have looked different through those special glasses?

 Actually my particular purpose for this quest was to experience the change of light and atmosphere here on planet Earth and the effect was indeed uncanny. 

 

 Three drought/heatwave summers in the past five years bears out the contention that the Mediterranean climate will move northwards to the south of England. The epithet 'hardy' is traditionally applied to plants that can survive freezing temperatures as low as minus ten or twenty. Such winters were part of my childhood but rarely a consideration since then. Drought hardy becomes equally important these days 

 Certainly I will only be planting species noted for their drought tolerance be they native or naturalised. That doesn't mean we need to be growing cactuses in the Home Counties (yet?!) but there's no point assuming we can rely on summer rain or even have enough water to avoid hosepipe bans. Nonetheless they will need to be plants that can cope with cold and damp because that will still happen.  

 The parched grasslands of southern England are largely bereft of wildflowers in flower. For the most part they flowered early and faded early. So it is in the damper locales we get some greenery and a splash of vivd colour. Case in point Great Willowherb (Epilobium hirsutum) is plant of marshy margins, ditches and riversides. 

This is England: blue sky, green trees, straw-coloured grass.

 

 England's green and pleasant land has turned brown.