September

Hello! Here I am again after a frantic few days back at work. It has been mad, but good to be back, seeing familiar faces and meeting new ones, staff and students alike. Despite the 'back to school' gloom that descends in the last few days of the summer holidays, it's nice to be back in a familiar routine and to be looking forward to the start of a new season. I haven't shown you my calendar for a few months, have I? Here's my September page, with its images of harvest time and fruitfulness.

I love September. I may have mentioned this last year... harvest time, golden light, abundant fruit, misty mornings, cooler days, darker nights. What's not to love? There's a lovely smoky smell in the air in the evenings now. It's the unmistakable smell of autumn, and it brings with a wonderful sense of anticipation. The garden has entered a mellow phase. The wild growth has slowed and the colours are rich and vibrant. I've been picking and freezing our blackberries for a couple of weeks now and have plans for them, along with a second flush of raspberries which have appeared.

The apples are starting to ripen and have begun to fall from the tree. I must start to collect them - I plans for them too.

The calendulas are flowering away in the brightest shades of orange, and I love them for it.

A week and a half ago P and I went for a walk along the river Avon as it flows west out of Bath. It was a hot afternoon beginning with sunshine and ending with rain showers, but we noticed how the landscape was easing gently into harvest time, late summer starting to give way to early autumn.

The river was very graceful, flowing past leafy parkland.

Flowers were sprinkled along the banks, visited by many bees and insects.

Shiny red hawthorn berries reflected the sunlight.

There were teasel seed heads.

And many elegant, shivery grasses and rushes.

We walked past a field of sweetcorn, or maize.

And past some rather hot cows resting in the shade of trees.

We finished where we started, near a beautiful waterside pub, and were glad of a rest on such a warm day.

Sitting at an outside table (with an umbrella) in the rain and enjoying its coolness, we ordered cold drinks. Lime and soda for me. In my backpack was a little harvest of my own, gathered from the tracks we'd walked along, a taste of early autumn.

( I intend to catch up with what you've all been up to over the weekend, as I've barely dipped into blogland this week - see you soon x)

Passion

If you were expecting this post to be a bit racy, fear not - its subject is the rather gorgeous passiflora, or passion flower. Our passion flower has been thriving this year since some trees which were overshadowing it were cut back. It's a climber which originally comes from South America and looks incredibly exotic in British gardens. This variety is the most winter-hardy one, but there are other beautiful varieties which are better grown in greenhouses. Think I bought this one in a supermarket a few years ago.

I marvel at the complexities of the flower, so completely different to anything else growing in our garden. Just look at the centre with its amazing structures. It gets its name from the Passion of Christ and a great deal of religious symbolism has been attached to the numbers and arrangement of  petals, sepals, stigmas and anthers. In it's natural habitat the flowers are pollinated by large bees, hummingbirds and wasps.

I love all of those thin blue, white and purple filaments radiating out from the centre. They really are very striking.

Another interesting feature of the passion flower is its tendrils which reach out as it climbs and wrap themselves around whatever's available to hold it in place. You can see one down at the bottom of the picture in the centre.

In close up it's an incredible little spring, ready to uncoil and wind itself around another plant, like the honeysuckle that it's growing with.

In a warm summer the passion flower produces these egg-shaped fruits which will turn orange when they are ripe.

Mine haven't produced these fruits for a couple of years, but this summer they have, as you can see. Apparently, although they are not the same variety as the ones you can buy in the supermarket, they are still edible but not very tasty. Think I'll just admire them instead.

Even on a drab, grey, wet summer's day (like today) these exotic plants bring a taste of the tropics into the garden, and I love them for that.

Borage

Borage is one of my favourite herbs, and yet it's much underrated, in my opinion. Every year I grow it from seed in pots in my back yard, and in the garden, and love the intense blue of its flowers.

 When they first open they are pink, and then progress through violet to blue.

In Medieval paintings the blue colour inspired the colour of the Virgin's robes, and the flowers were woven into tapestries, as well as decorating manuscripts and embroideries. There are some beautiful ones in this book which is full of gorgeous medieval illustrations.

Looking at the back of the flowers is fascinating. The five petals make a star, hence borage's other name of starflower, and they droop on their hairy stems. Butterflies and bees love the flowers, and are frequent visitors.

The buds are incredibly hairy too. Borage is often used as a companion plant with crops such as strawberries and tomatoes as a natural pest control.

It is classed as a herb and can be eaten in salads or cooked as a green vegetable. I can't imagine eating those hairy, bristly leaves raw but apparently they taste of cucumber.

The name borage is said to come from the French word for hairy, borrache, or the Welsh word for courage, borrach, and it was put into drinks which the Crusaders drank before they departed. It was also known as the 'herb of gladness' because it was used as a herbal remedy to cure melancholy and depression.

In his famous Herbal of 1597 John Gerard says that 'the leaves and floures of Borrage put into wine make men and women glad and merry,driving away all sadnesse, dulnesse, and melancholy'. How lovely that we now use the flowers to decorate summer drinks like Pimms. 

I am gladdened just by having borage in my garden every year, and plan to enjoy its heavenly colour for years to come.

Midsummer

Tomorrow is the longest day of the year, or Summer Solstice, when the hours of daylight are at their longest and those of darkness at their shortest. Around this time comes Midsummer's Eve (followed by Midsummer's Day). Different cultures celebrate it on different days, some on the day before the Solstice, and others a couple of days later on the 23rd June. In northern European countries, such as Sweden, it is celebrated on the third Friday in June with bonfires, singing and feasting.

Midsummer's Eve was traditionally a magical time when the human world and the fairy world meet. Our ancestors built fires to celebrate the longest day and to bless their livestock and the forthcoming harvest. It was also held to be the best time for people to divine their future love, by making potions and performing rites using herbs and flowers which are at their peak at this time of year.

Many writers have been inspired by Midsummer's Eve. In 'I Capture the Castle' by Dodie Smith seventeen-year-old Cassandra celebrates her 'rites' by gathering flowers and lighting a bonfire:

'wild flowers - I can't remember if that is traditional or if Rose and I made it up: mallow, campion and bluebells for the garland to hang round our necks, foxgloves to carry, and we always wore wild roses in our hair ... There wasn't a breath of wind as I climbed the mound. The sun was down - usually I begin the rites by watching it sink ...the sky beyond Belmotte Tower was a watery yellow with one streak of green across it - vivid green, most magically beautiful ...I watched until the yellow faded, too - then turned towards the moon still low over the wheat field. The blue all around her had deepened so much that she no longer looked pale, but like masses of luminous snow'

In Shakespeare's comedy, 'A Midsummer Night's Dream', a group of lovers and actors are lost in the forest on Midsummer's night. The fairies who live in the forest control and mislead the humans until the morning when order is restored. It has a magical, ethereal quality and the language evokes the beauty of summer flowers:

'I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,

Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,

Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,

With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine:

There sleeps Titania sometime of the night,

Lull'd in these flowers with dances and delight;

And there the snake throws her enamell'd skin,

Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in'

Years ago just before we got married my husband and I went to the Regent's Park Open Air Theatre in London to watch a production of this play. It was a magical experience, and the audience sat entranced as night fell and lanterns and fairy lights lit the stage.

The novelist and poet Thomas Hardy also captured that magic in his poem 

'On A Midsummer Eve':

I idly cut a parsley stalk,

And blew therein towards the moon;

I had not thought what ghosts would walk

With shivering footsteps to my tune.

I went and knelt, and scooped my hand

As if to drink, into the brook,

And a faint figure seemed to stand

Above me, with the bygone look.

I lipped rough rhymes of chance, not choice,

I thought not what my words might be;

There came into my ear a voice

That turned a tenderer verse for me.

My own Midsummer traditions are modest (no dancing or lighting bonfires for me!). I always have in the house flowers from the garden and a scented candle . I love Yankee Candles and my favourite is this one, Midsummer's Night, which has a heady and summery perfume.

 Whether you mark the occasion or not, it's undeniably a very special time of year x

Peonies

How gorgeous the peonies are now! I love the sheer generosity of them as a flower. 

All winter they are nothing more than a tiny clump of  scruffy-looking leaves at ground level, and then in the spring they come to life and start to grow, sending up striking reddish leaves from the earth.

Then buds form, round and tightly packed with petals, like a Brussels sprout.

Slowly they begin to open, and show a glimpse of their deep pink petals.

Then they open, and all of those petals start to unfurl.

Just when you think they're fully open, they reveal a contrasting centre of bright egg-yellow stamens.

I've planted a few peonies in our garden, including this unusual one. The label described it as red, and it turned out white with red streaks. 

In the back garden I've planted a red and a pale pink one. They won't bloom until next year, so that'll be something I'll look forward to. In the meantime I bought a bunch of pale pink, frilly ones for the window-sill.

They're gorgeously feminine, and in the Language of Flowers they symbolise shame or bashfulness because nymphs were said to live in their petals. They are also considered to be one of China's national emblems, and feature frequently in oriental art.

I dry their petals and mix them with rose petals and lavender flowers to make pot-pourri and scented bags, a reminder of summer all year long x