The garden in October

As mentioned in my newsletter recently, the garden is coming to the end of the 'pretty season', so I thought I'd celebrate with some photos. These were all taken quite recently, so you can see that it kept its beauty right up until the start of October.

All credit to Martyne, who put in all the work. I did a few bits of support activity, but the vision was entirely hers. And yes, that's the Martyne all my books are dedicated to.

First up we have this interestingly coloured dahlia. Most of the ones we saw were red, but this one decided to go variegated and add a little spice.

For reference, this is what they normally looked like.

And also in the 'one of these blooms is not like the others' camp was this rudbeckia - growing from the same cluster as the ones around it, you can see it's extremely different in colour. It might be a stray seed of a different variety, or a genetic hiccup, or some evironmental factor that made it so distinct, but whatever the cause it's quite the looker.

Their centres look like liquorice allsorts to me.

And the stars of the show are the cup-and-saucer vines. Planted way back in February, they took until the very last week of September to flower! And they're stunning. Sadly the flowers only last a few days, but we have a conveyor belt of them pushing new ones out as the old ones drop away.

And the last of the veg. We've had courgettes, pattypans, Uchiki Kuri, or red onion squash, caped gooseberries and a lot more - but the most prolific have been the tomatoes.

And since the weather is turning, we've been holding off as long as possible in hopes of getting even more. With the temperatures dropping, we've made the decision to bring in the ones on the cusp of ripening, since we're confident they'll finish the process indoors. (The ripe ones above were picked in a similar state, so we know it works).

That's only half of them...