Different ways of looking at things...

The picture here is of a very common plant, grown for it's flowers..but it's not in flower. It's a flowering currant, ribes but I took a picture of the yellowing leaves in the low December sun. Even in this month a combination of a plant and the winter light can produce something special. I've been hard pressed over the past few weeks to get pictures of flowers, we're in a gap between the autumn and the early spring. The garden needs a few winter flowering plants and I hope to get some in next year, something you can only see after living with a new garden for a while...

Windowsill Orchids

Now that the weather has turned cold, I'm focusing on indoor tasks. To the left is Phal. equestris "Sorea Firewings" that I bought bare rooted at a plant sale from Sorea Nursery (they had come over from the States to the UK). If it looks a little odd, it is. It's a peloric form. That means an irregular shaped flower that has mutated to a form more regular. Normally I don't like that much but I love the colour and with flowers about 1 1/4 inches on a 4 inch stem it's a very neat plant. I have a small collection of orchids on various windowsills that I'm still trying to get over the shock of their move a year ago, but there are now signs that some at least are settling in. More orchids at http://markgriffiths.org/orchidindex.html

Turn of the season...

A big change in the weather here. Gone are the (unusually) warm days and nights. There has now been a frost for several nights and some frost has lingered through the day also. The picture is of one of our "species" roses, still in flower. After several days the flowers still look good. The fuschia's look as if they have been boiled however! At last I've added the start of the cottage garden section, one year after arriving here. The new pages are at http://markgriffiths.org/inspiringplants/world_gardens/cottagegardenindex.html Enjoy! Mark

Rainy Sunday afternoon...

Well only just started raining. The morning and early afternoon was wonderful, sunny and warm. I thought I had cut the grass for the last time a few weeks ago, but the warm weather has meant it needed to be done again today. Hopefully, this really is the last time. While mowing you see all those other little jobs that need doing too!

One of the best plants right now are the fuschias that seem to be peaking now and growing strongly. With luck they will flower until the frosts, then the flowers and leaves will all drop. They are particularly welcome as they are right by the kitchen door and there is another a few yards further on. They bring a lovely exotic touch..all I need now is a hummingbird to complete the picture!

Web updates

I've now created a new page for Cyclamen africanum based on pictures of the flowers taken in September and leaves taken this month. The page is at http://markgriffiths.org/inspiringplants/cyclamen/cyclamen_africanum.html

I've also added a number of US nurseries for Cyclamen for those US visitors looking for suppliers, they can be found under "Links".

Cyclamen are very much to mind at the moment, the season progresses with Cyclamen cyprium out now and Cyclamen elegans and Cyclamen persicum budding up nicely. Also the seed from the Cyclamen Society http://www.cyclamen.org/indexCS.html has arrived this week so there are 30 packets of seed to soak and plant.

Website updates

At last I've got some pages up using the new camera to it's full advantage. So today I've loaded two new Cyclamen pages, http://markgriffiths.org/inspiringplants/cyclamen/cyclamen_mirabile.html covers the Cyclamen mirabile a species in flower now with pink marbled leaves. Cyclamen cilicium, a closely related but easy garden plant is at http://markgriffiths.org/inspiringplants/cyclamen/cyclamen_cilicium.html
On the latter page there is also a view of the newly planted small cyclamen bed.

Sunny Sunday afternoon....

Just finished tidying up in the garden, preparing for winter, never a particularly happy activity but you do get to see how much things have grown.And..are still growing. The rains means that the roses are back in bloom and the fushias are flowering again and growing rapidly. I’ve had to cut back the fushias today just so we can get out the back door and back gate. It also probably explains why they stopped growing and flowering in the summer, they were simply too dry..so a mental note to water them next summer and be ready with the hedge trimmer!

On the constructive side (although I do like to see the tidying up as constructive too) I’ve just created a cyclamen bed. There is an odd corner, about two and a half feet square. Walls on two sides, a fence on the other. The bed is raised by retaining wall on the fourth side. Previous occupants, one climbing rose and a Clematis “The president”. Also a veronica, a silene and aubrietia. The soil seems to be clay and sand. The result of the lack of light is that the “alpines” are very straggly. So they are out (into pots for possibly planting elsewhere in spring), compost added with a number of cyclamen. I’m trying a few C.purpurascens, some selected C.coum, a C.repandum ssp repandum (I have very few) and one C.graecum seedling as an experiment. Interestingly amongst the C.cilicium, there is a pure white one. These are quite common now but I’m not sure how it got there. I have a recollection of having a pot of C.cilicium album seedlings that were all pink, maybe this was from that batch? Strangely I don’t think I have any other C.cilicium album, I lost my adult plants in pots. I was thinking about this earlier, and remembered that from four dried “C.hederifolium” corms bought dry in the mid 80s I had got two C.cilicium and two C.mirabile. The C.mirabile are still with me, the C.cilicium are long gone. Perhaps they don’t like pots or simply not so long lived?

I’ve taken pictures and am about to produce new webpages for C.africanum (I’m waiting for the leaves to photograph), C.cilicium and C.mirabile. I’ll do a blog post when they are ready.

On the subject of pictures, something odd happened the other day. I decided to use google images as a way to finding interesting cyclamen sites. So I put in the names of a few species. The one image caught my eye. It was one of my pictures. It had a company’s logo stamped on it. Then I found another..then another. I’ve complained and had an abject apology. I’ve had a few people ask for images in the past, mainly journalists and we always sort something out. I probably would even allow commercial companies to use them for a small fee to help with my hosting costs. But for a company to take the images to use them for their catalogues and even stamp their logo on it is just plain….naughty.

A new venture for Inspiring Plants!

Hello, this is a new element for Inspiring Plants, a hobbyist plant site from the UK. It's mainly so I can update what's new on the website, but I'll probably also use it as a kind of plant diary. Hope people will find it useful!