Not only has it been a little ‘parky’ this past couple of days, it’s also had something to do with plants. First, for anyone not familiar with Victoria Wood and the word ‘parky’, it’s an informal British word for cold, usually associated with the north of England. I woke up shivering yesterday morning and had to hunt out a coat to wear because I didn’t want to return to the bedroom and wake Himself. Later, we set up the heaters and hung the curtain across the sitting room balcony doors where the shutters have been closed since we had a west wind on Saturday. On Sunday, according to Windfinder.com, the wind was up to force seven and from the northwest, and when I checked the thermometer in the courtyard, it read ten degrees, whereas a couple of days ago, it was eighteen. The weather is due to calm and become warmer again, leading to rain from Wednesday through to next Monday, off and on. Again, according to Windfinder.
I’m now at the point of sounding like a weather channel, so let’s talk about plants.
It started on Friday evening when we went to Scena for a pizza, and very nice it was too. I was sitting facing the bar when I noticed someone was looking back. On closer examination later, I discovered the vase was designed to look like a face, so I wasn’t being paranoid.
That put me in mind of doing a plant update, so I took some shots of the things we have in the courtyard. Neil’s been gradually cutting back the vine, but there’s still a little more to do when the weather allows, and some of the other plants have also had a trim. On the whole, they survived the excess heat of July and August reasonably well, and are now adjusting to the winter cold. Ain’t we all? We have a hibiscus that gives me cause for concern. It suddenly did rather well this year, too well in fact, and had loads of flowers. So many flowers that it became rather Victorian, popped out a stream of ‘children’ but most didn’t survive infancy, and the flowers died as they began to bloom. It probably needs a bigger pot, but it isn’t getting one, so it will have to do what poorer families did in Victorian times and survive the best it can in its cramped surroundings.
The others are battling on ‘Heavy Plant Crossing’ is still flowering. It’s called that because it’s in a heavy pot and as it grows, it crosses the laundry wall. ‘Jenny’ (a present from a friend called Jenny) suffered in the heat this year and had to be cut back. It’s now coming back on a smaller scale but needs to be moved somewhere more sheltered. The chilli family, currently feeling the chill, did well in some branches, but some of the plants were overwatered, so the leaves turned yellow. Neil cut them back, and they are growing like mad again already. The Anniversary plant has had a strange career so far. Now, it looks like it did when I bought it in September, but between times, it lost all its leaves just after moving in, and I thought it was a goner. I think it was just changing clothes to suit its new environment.
People don’t like too much reality on a Monday morning, so I’ll not bleat on about the other plants. I can save that for another day, but here are the objects in question, so you can look at them and join us in our suddenly-ten-degrees courtyard which, after the weekend’s winds, needs a good tidying.
