Autumn assaulting the senses

Tall lemon-yellow sunflowers reach for the sun

My self-indulgent morning routine is to check the email, catch up on the blogs I follow, spend a little time in quiet reflection, and take a leisurely stroll in the garden in my dressingown. Only then is it time for the business of the day. A couple of times a week this is punctuated by a breakfast shared with Suzanna - this morning it was apple pancakes with butter and gooseberry jam: no wonder I am overweight!

Out in the garden, Autumn assaults the senses in these golden October days, brought by a stationary anticyclone centred over Ireland. The Autumn colours startle the eyes: wine-red Cornus sibirica, Euonymus and Prunus 'Kojo-no-mai', the orange berries of Cotoneaster, and the yellows and russets of the hedgerow ash and the trees of Kilteelagh.

Wine-red Cornus sibirica

Spindle (Euonymus sp.) in the Drive Border

Kilteelagh trees from the front gate

We have had no significant frosts yet, and the tender autumn flowers sparkle in the sunshine: bright hoors of Dahlias, pink and white Nicotiana, and sky blue Salvia uliginosa - the latter reputed to be tender, but it has survived the last two winters outdoors here.

Bright hoors of Dahlias

Salvia uliginosa

Scuffing fallen leaves in the Lime Alley reminds me of childhood. A leaf falls vertically in the still air and I catch it for luck. From the corner of my eye I catch a flicker of white as a Cole Tit races to the sunflowers. The first heads have ripened - I do not cut them down until all have been stripped, and I hope to get some volunteers next year, as I did this.

As I pass the soft-fruit bed I spot a few late Autumn raspberries. Too few for a dish for two with cream, I say guiltily to myself, so I might as well eat them! They are very ripe, almost black in colour, but oh, the flavour! Sweet and acid at the same time, delicious. But the pips stick in the gaps of my teeth and red juice stains my fingers.

A strange rhythmic noise claims my attention. I look up to see a skein of geese, two dozen or so, flying in a classic 'V' south east, honking as they go. Where have they come from, and where are they going to? Perhaps they are Greenland White-fronted geese (Anser albifrons flavirostris), an exciting thought. Ten thousand of them, one third of the world's total, fly each autumn from far-away Greenland to spend the winter on the Wexford Slobs. But I'm not up to identifying them in flight.

From my study window, I see two Magpies chasing each other, one with something red in its beak. I go out to investigate and find a dead rat, half eaten, in the Labyrinth bed. Magpies are scavengers, doing the job of cleaning up which Nature has designed them for. But I can't imagine that they killed the rat, but perhaps a visiting cat did. Should I put out bait for the rats and risk poisoning the Magpies?

I've been trimming the hedge of Eleageanus ebbingeii at the back of the drive border, a big job. I want to keep it at about 7 foot, and like it to have a flat top to show off the shrubs and trees behind It is now in full bloom with rather insignificant white flowers, but their scent is magnificent. Close up it is almost overpowering and has been making me sneeze. It is a good hedging plant with grey-green laurel-like leaves, but can make several feet in a season. I had thought it thornless, but discovered to my cost that some plants have a few sharp little prickles, which drew blood painfully.

So I have been assaulted in my garden by all five senses!

First Fruits

The Summer is racing past me - it's the last day of June already, and I haven't blogged the garden since the last day of May. O mea culpa, mea maxima culpa! So what has June brought us?

We have been tasting the first fruits of the harvest.

We ate the first of our own new potatoes two nights ago, a fine variety called Charlotte, and they are very good. From now on we should be able to eat our own potatoes until the end of autumn at least: first the Charlotte, then an old early variety we brought back from France called Belle de Fontanay, and finally the main-crop Pink Fir Apple, knobbly but with an incomparable flavour. I can't wait.

We've also been able to pig out on raspberries for the first time, which is my favourite fruit - much better than strawberries to my taste. I foolishly neglected the soft fruit bed since I planted it six years ago, and allowed goat willow seedlings to grow up, saying to myself that the raspberries and red and black currants wouldn't mind, because they are woodland plants in nature. But this year the willows reached a good 12 feet and I have learned my lesson: without human intervention this garden would revert to Shannon-side willow scrub in less than ten years. I cut the willows down to the ground, and the fruit has instantly responded, though we won't get decent black currants till they fruit on the new wood next year, and I shall be constantly pulling the shoots from the willow stumps for years to come. The birds got the red currants, so I suppose I have to consider installing a fruit cage.

We've been doing well on globe artichokes too, really just an excuse to eat butter of course. I've had enough to give away. They are a mixture of green and purple grown from seed by Suzanna, so they are all more or less spiny and need to be trimmed with a scissors before eating. I must try to scrounge a root or two of the proper old variety without spines that my father used to grow when I was a child. The recent gales have been strong enough to blow some of the plants over despite their stout stems, so perhaps I shall try to pickle some of the small heads as the Italians do.

But the finest fruit of the season is my new Grandson Jonah!

Last weekend Suzanna and I flew to London to meet him for the first time. He is a little dote! At two months he is already half again as heavy as his birth weight; he constantly tracks the world around him with his lovely blue eyes; he is starting to enjoy making noises and playing games; and he is a very happy little chap, which is a great tribute to my daughter Ellie and her husband-to-be Darren, who are clearly wonderful parents. God bless all three of them! We also went with Ellie to show him off to some of my oldest and dearest friends from Cambridge, with whom I shared a flat in Ladbroke Grove all but 40 years ago. What warm welcomes we had, what wonderful teas, and what a pleasure to see my old friends holding the baby of the baby they had held when we all were young, what seems so short a time ago!

I offer this prayer of thanksgiving, adapted from the Prayerbook:

God my loving Father
maker of all that is living,
I praise you for the wonder and joy of creation.
I thank you for the life of Jonah,
for his and Ellie's safe delivery,
and for the privilege of being a grandparent.
Accept my thanks and praise
through Jesus Christ my Lord. Amen.

When we got back from London, though, I contemplated murder. The hare had returned with leverets while I was away. They had eaten all the young French bean plants, and they were just starting in on the peas. My neighbour Geof has the same problem and is almost in tears about it. I searched the web for advice. The New Zealand Ministry of Agriculture says that night shooting is the only effective control, but I don't have the heart for that. Other sites say fencing with chicken wire is the only defence. A company in England markets a spray caller Grazers, but their Irish agent has not responded to emails - I shall try to order some on the web. Every time I see a hare in the garden - several times a day - I run out shouting and waving my hands in an attempt to frighten it into a more sharing disposition. Meanwhile ever practical Suzanna has been to the hardware merchant and built chicken-wire fences around her raised beds and salad pots.

The rest of the graden is looking very well, particularly the rambling roses. 'Neige d'Avril' is frothing over the patio arch, alongside 'Goldfinch'. The extraordinary petals of 'Veilchenblau' fade from an intial purple to violet grey beside shocking pink 'American Pillar'. Pink 'Belvedere', named for the great house near Mullingar in West Meath where it originated, is just starting by the gate, where it always attracts admiring comments from passers-by. I think I have finally identified the lovely repeat-flowering noisette I got from my mother as 'Champney's Pink Cluster', bred in America in 1811, though it might be it's child 'Blush Noisette', introduced in France in 1817.