Colourful Leaves - Six on Saturday 10 October 2020

 Each season, and each week we join together on a Saturday through comments on the LEAD POST by Jon The Propagator.  Why not join us, whether just for a read or to post. There are amusing and inspirational musings on the garden, with the  opportunity of being able to comment, help, ask questions. Garden posts help me to record my plants, what I have been up to, and build up a store of photographs mapping the progress or even demise of life in the garden.

How is it that we just look to the colours of leaves from deciduous trees?  I had wanted the capture the last of the leaves on our Amelanchier trees, for by next weekend they will all surely be down. Early morning dew on the leaves are tell tale signs of cool nights.

(1) A nice slowly growing shrub, growing from a cutting I took, and brought down to our new garden.  It is growing nicely.  This is one that Mr S likes, and always likes to point out to me in other gardens, and waits for me to say "we have that one!"

Pittosporum tenuifolium 'Tom Thumb'

(2) Euphorbia x martinii 'Ascot Rainbow' two new plants having been propagated, the older mother plant has been dug up. Now in the hot dry front garden, they are growing away very nicely as below.

Euphorbia x martinii 'Ascot Rainbow'

(3) The front side bed has been cleared and replanted, and the only shrub left, albeit reshaped with plenty of room for underplanting is the Mahonia Aquifolium.  It defies the description of where to plant, as it is growing in the sunniest and hottest part, with a stone wall behind.  I have been regularly clearing the mulched area as weeds emerge, and I am waiting for the Spanish bluebells to emerge, so that I can remove the ones which may have been left.  This little shoot suckering up from the root is so glorious, that it has been given a little respite for now.

(4) After its summer scorching, the soil was far too dry to move it, and I felt it would be too shocked to be certain it would survive.  Instead it got a good watering, and prune.  I think that was probably the better option.  New leaf growth is covering the plant.

Pseudowintera colorata Red Leopard

(5) Looking as if edged by frost, this silver leaved shrub is a great colour contrast.

Phlomis fruticosa bourgaei 

(6) Catching the Amelanchier leaves are the golden domes of  Lonicera nitida 'Baggesen's Gold'.  More plants brought here as rooted cuttings, then have grown nicely and line the edge of the path/parking area.

And it was the last few leaves of the Amelanchier I went to capture.  I've been watching the trees turn and slowly loose their leaves.  When I wake up and peer through the bedroom window, they are the first things I see. The long tailed tits with their iconic twittering, are passing around the garden in flocks of around ten birds.  These little birds are one of my favourites in the garden, and we love to watch them checking out the shrubs and climbers.