Boston ivy is romping all over the brick walls in my garden, making a lovely green backdrop while the viburnum opulus takes centre stage. At last after months of blah there are quite a lot of things worth photographing out the window.
The first rose off the mark is the extravagantly perfumed rugosa roseraie de l’hay, although in fairness the mutabilis rose on the other side of the path never really stopped flowering.
The little cercis canadensis ‘forest pansy’ tree has been blazing pinkly for a few weeks.
It is pushing heart-shaped leaves out the ends of its branches now and looking more like this:
Backing up for a wider view of things:
The burnt orange of the new cercis leaves is echoed across the garden by the emerging leaves on the cotinus ‘velvet cloak’. The first hot pokers are in flower – these are kniphofia ‘ice queen’ – and bringing wattle birds to our garden. In the foreground the fresh new green and white leaf blades of miscanthus variegatus sparkle.
I have edited the geum ‘tangerine’ flowers from this picture because their brilliant orange is uncomfortably jarring beside the soft pink cercis blossoms.
As much as I love these little beauties they just don’t work in my October colour scheme. The solution is to pick the flowers daily. Luckily they are very fetching in a jam jar.