So the thing is .....

 

The weather has calmed down at last and while the sun shines it is lovely and the Cosmos is still flowering ....

I have sown sweetpeas in here and sprinkled seeds from the Cosmos .

I will soon wrap the whole wigwam with frost fleece   .

    ......Dahlias and the African Daisy .....

                ...Roses ....

Osteospermums positivly basking in the sunshine ☀️ 

Echiums are looking great ......

               ......and there are more Echium seedlings popping up in the lawn .

I will be lifting these and planting them in other places around the garden .

                .......Impatiens tinctoria ....are loving the sunshine too  .

                        Lots of buds still to come .

   By the way , this is not the awful invasive Himalayan Balsam / Impatiens glandulifera , that fires it's seeds like bullets out of a gatling gun ! 😱

🕊️ Mine is the very lovely and very well behaved Impatiens tinctoria / Dyers busy lizzie  .🤍

It grows as a clump and has beautiful white flowers fushed with crimson .

🦋 The bees and butterflies love it ! 🐝

I have never yet tried dyeing cloth with it . The dye is extracted from its tubers , which are rather like Dahlia tubers and it is used in Ethiopia by women who dye their hands and feet with it rather like Henna for ceremonies like weddings etc .

Depending on how it is extracted and mordanted the dye can be either black or an intense red . I like the sound of " an intense red " ; one day I'll have a bit of an experiment with it ! ........cloth .... not my hands and feet ! 

So all these things are doing fine and will only die down after we get frost . This is fine and it's just what these plants do .

However ...

I am worried about my Beauty of Bath Apple tree which really shouldn't be flowering now .

These will almost certainly seccumb to the cold as we go forward into November .

 And then what will happen ?    Will they flower again in the Spring ? Or maybe not produce any fruit at all next year . Such a shame because this is a lovely sweet eating apple . 

  The nights are becoming much colder now , tonight will be down to 5 degrees C .

I will be keeping an eye on the temperatures and get ready with my cloches to put over the Agaves and sacks to throw over the crown of my Tree Ferns . 

Poor old Tree Fern . It was beaten up something awful by Storm Goretti . I did manage to get all of the Ivy off it and it should start to look better next Spring when it puts up some nice new crosiers /fiddleheads . 

                  Little Monkey Puzzle tree is happy whatever the weather .

                                     Peace and Love 🕊️🤍

                                                      Debbie 💐 x