Happy September! I am not a good timekeeper but we did have 10 days break which means I am extra behind on everything but I’m back with my August diary for creating a cottage garden. I always feel it’s the sleepy month (the one where the rest of Europe gets it right and takes the whole month off!), warm, sunny, long grass waving and crickets chirping. We did seem to have all weather extremes except the heatwave this year?
The biggest change and final piece of the growing space puzzle, the greenhouse floor – is now down in the Rhino Greenhouse at last! We bought six large beautiful Dijon tumbled outdoor limestone tiles from Mandarin Stone and filled the edges with stones for watering pots on. We really wanted to be able to kick off our garden clogs and walk around in here barefoot in the warmer months and these are so silky soft underfoot, plus I figured the pale colour would reflect more light as the days get shorter too (I am trying not to think about the muddy paws later in the season).
Greenhouse life besides the floor – Wallis has abandoned her basket under the curtains and is now basking on the warm soil in the window, where I pulled out some calendulas that had gone over. The black cherry tomatoes are fruiting like mad despite the blight which I have been thus far able to thwart by cutting off the bad leaves. The second sowing of brassica seedlings has managed to stay hidden from the cabbage white butterflies, slugs and snails, the basil is still going strong and we now have somewhere beautiful to sit.
Outside the cottage garden has completely run away from us, the beets are huge, the sweetpeas towering, sunflowers are making seeds. Due to planting lots of mixed varieties of seeds we are a little on the orange side as I did not know which colour blooms would germinate. The coreopsis has billowed in clouds of acid yellow despite the winds ripping off stems left, right and centre and the cosmos is also flowering too. As I mentioned – my colour scheme is not quite as planned or hoped but I do love all plants and will switch things up next year, aiming for a more pastel palette by opting for single colour varieties of flowers.
The fox is still determined to dig up all of the pathways, uproot the blueberry bushes and burrow under the dahlias. So I think we will need to put hoggin paths in next year to try and deter the digging or at least keep it at the bottom of the garden. They seem to have a real taste for the earthworms this year – has anyone else had this problem?!
Destruction and wild weather aside we have had bowls of beautiful salads, edible flowers, roasted courgettes and no end in sight yet for tomatoes, my absolute favourite summer eating. I am looking forward to unpacking my cardigans for September seed collecting and maybe dining out here in the greenhouse in the evenings now it is cooler and hopefully less windy. Now I am off to collect windfallen apples and water the containers. Wishing you a wonderful month ahead x
