Summer time ….

….. and despite the largely cool, cloudy and damp weather the garden is singing to me.

Hinomaki red gooseberries

We have eaten the offerings of the berry and currant bushes.

whitecurrants

The tree fruits are ripening on their as yet slender boughs.

apple Sunset ripening

 

the first and so far the only, very lovely, mirabelle ripening

 

damson Abergwyngregyn bearing its first fruits and surrounded by marjoram, oca, tree onions and more

 

Jerusalem artichokes and mashua are rocketing skywards and oca is fast expanding outwards and upwards.

oca thriving in deep, fertile soil

When the sun comes out bees, butterflies and an assortment of other flying insects are attending closely to the thousands of blossoms on the cardoons, mint, catnip, marjoram, budleia and hyssop.

cardoon flower plus bee

 

Swiss mint (I think) – the flowers are super attractive to honey bees and another species I cannot identify yet. They flew away when I took out the camera.

 

red admiral and peacock butterflies were swarming around these alliums

 

 

skirret in flower

 

tree onions ripening beside marjoram, elder bush and fennel behind

The birds (blackbirds I think, but I wasn’t here to see) ate the aronia (chokeberry) berries.

aronia (chokeberry)

 

Californian poppy attracts a particular fly to its gorgeous flowers

In contrast to all this wildlife activity I am doing very little – nothing in fact – just enjoying it all.  By this time of year I am always let go completely.  The plants in the polycultures are growing together so closely that there is a general surge of growth and loveliness which I just want to spend time gazing at.

looking down the garden from fourth polyculture bed in front

 

second polyculture bed, currently dominated by nasturtium, alliums and fennel with berries and roots behind

 

first polyculture bed

 

‘triangle bed’

I want to look at the flowers …

views across two valleys to the hills beyond

… and the views.  After all, winter is only round the corner.

29th November 2016