Outside, the rain is hitting the windows in great sheets driven by the strong gusty wind. Today – Friday - it is coming from the south. Earlier in the week the wind was driving in from the north, straight across the sea, carrying a lot of rain to this part of Aberdeenshire. Living right on the coast, we are in the front line. The sea is once again a boiling froth crashing over the rocks and reefs nearby. Who would want to be a fisherman! And yet yesterday afternoon, in between the shifting weather patterns, the sea was almost flat calm with a beautiful blue sky overhead and people were out walking bare-foot on the near-by Banff beach. On such moments the wild weather is easily forgotten and it feels like this could easily be the best place to live in the world!

It was with these optimistic thoughts in my mind that I took the opportunity for a closer look at my 3 small garden patches to see how the plants were surviving and to see what was still in flower. Also, I am thinking about planting some bulbs for early colour next year, so wanted to identify the areas where they could go. I have in mind a drift of English bluebells in the gravel garden as well as daffs and tulips and perhaps some blue Chionodoxa too. I would also like to plant some anemones, but space is tight and next year one of the areas will become a small vegetable patch (with some flowers such as marigolds, Cosmos and more Echinacea).

The garden areas had been left to their own devices for a few weeks and being halfway through Autumn, in this part of northern Scotland, I was keen to see how our SeeHow illustrations reflected reality here. The first thing that struck me were the bright colours of the roses. We inherited all of our roses from the previous property owner so I don’t know their names. All I can say is there are still many blooms on all of the plants and many buds still waiting to open. I remember once reading about roses blooming in winter in near-by Findhorn. I will keep deadheading mine and we will see if there could be any truth to this story in the months ahead! As I have written before, the wind is the enemy here, but roses are strong tough plants and seem to be able to cope.

In the gravel garden, over the summer we planted a range of perennials and many are still in flower and looking strong and reasonably healthy. Verbena bonariensis, marigolds, Rudbeckia, Echinacea (white and purple), various Achillea and white cosmos in one bed.

Small gravel garden slowly filled - sedum in flower

Veronica and lavender are all still in flower in the adjacent bed amongst some roses and all of the flowers are still attracting bees and other insects.

One unexpected flower is the Nerine bowdenii. I have a soft-spot for nerines as this was the first flower I was introduced to when studying horticulture. The mysterious clump of dark green leaves growing out of an old white-glazed kitchen sink has now produced a number of flowering spikes. According to the RHS, the flowering stems should appear before the leaves, but our leaves appeared well-ahead of the flowering stems. About half of the stems are in full flower - and what a beautiful flower it is, adding a touch of South African exotica to our north of Scotland border. We do not have Nerines in SeeHow – definitely one for the next edition!

The above Text and all Photographs are copyright of Wincenty (Wicek) Sosna. Please contact SeeHow for permission to reproduce in any way, in part or as the complete text.

Late September

The Vine is the Friend of the Bad Architect

Mostly Green