Seeds

Friday 2^nd August 2013

One of the best aspects of this time of year, as we approach the curve of the year and glimpse autumn, is that the flowers we enjoyed in June and July continue to reward our gardening labours by yielding seeds and berries. This last few weeks, aside from having undertaken a huge batch of free-lance writing projects, which lasted from 1 May to 13 July, I have been gardening.  My garden and I are at peace.  Though I toil for hours and often see little reward or evidence other than the sacks of waste to schlep to the tip, I do feel I have arrived at a much happier place with it.  This has partly been achieved by growing far fewer vegetables that I usually attempt.  It is partly a result of more regular, less exhausting efforts.  And it is partly the result of anticipating work that needs to be done, and doing it early. But one thing I won’t do early is cut off the seed heads of the prettiest bearers.  My garden, large and semi-wild, is all gardened pesticide-free.  I want to encourage the birds to eat the snails, the frogs to eat the slugs, the hedgehogs to eat the – um, whatever they might find that they like to snack on, and for none of these creatures to die because I used pellets or sprays.  And along with this goes the leaving of seed heads. In this way, I get to enjoy their grace and quirks, thus extending the life-season of the flowers that preceded the seed heads; the birds get to eat the seeds and berries; and I get literally hundreds of free plants. I can easily propagate from these seeds and have grown agapanthus, acanthus, aquilegia, allium, foxgloves, lavender, hollyhocks and angels’ fishing rods from saved seeds.  Sometimes I collect and sow in pots – but this is faffy.  Usually I just scatter ripe seed on fresh soil and see what I get.  I then transplant the winners and hoe up the rest.  This cuts out a whole stage of gardening labour, see notes above.  Win-win. Yesterday was the 1st of  August 2013.  It was hot and still and perfect.  I gardened literally all day, thus breaking one of my own rules, see notes above.  But it was good gardening. Like with running when now and again, you hit a ‘golden’ run and feel you could run forever.  This is usually transitory and lasts from mile 3 to mile 6 and then it’s gone.  I thought, yesterday, I could garden forever.  I was almost right. Once I had literally ground to an exhausted halt, I took these pictures of seeds and berries, which I think are just as lovely as flowers.  I hope you like them.  I look at them and I can sense the next season, can’t you?  I can’t feel autumn yet, or smell it, but rather like being in a bedroom by the sea, with the curtains closed, you sense the light from the ocean…that feeling. Hint:  irritatingly and I have no idea why or how to make it revert, the new version of the software for this blog has reduced the scale of images. You can click on them to see far more detail but then you will need to hit the ‘back’ arrow button on your computer to remain on the blog.  Sigh.