Dixter Diary - Day 22

Today was another overcast day with drizzle and rain.  Above is a Euphorbia mellifera leaf with morning rain beading up.  Beautiful! The sun did appear briefly but regardless, lots of work was accomplished throughout the garden.  After morning tidying, I worked on processing some dahlias for winter storage, weeded down at the farm and spent quite a bit of time with work out in the meadows.  When the meadows are cut, the cuttings are raked, collected and composted or re-distributed to other areas to improve the species variability and in essence, to improve the younger meadows...  

Hard to believe my time is almost done here.  I'll finish this Thursday at Great Dixter then on to London for three days of gardens before a return home early next week.  I sure miss the wife, two daughters and all our animals at home but this experience continues to be educational and inspiring!

nasturtium (Tropaeolum sp.) continuing to climb this spirea

despite the weed-like status teasel gets in many portions of the U.S., the architecture is amazing (above and below) - note the dried leaves are absent and picked off...

cosmos (Cosmos bipinnatus) still going strong (above) and grape (Vitis sp.) leaves are starting to get tinged with fall color (below)

Graham (above) was doing "donuts" on this newer meadow (cut and cleared yesterday) to get it ready for the "strewings" from one of the prime meadows (see further below)

Above and below are Rich cutting down one of the meadows today.  For Americans, if you know Willie MacDougal (the groundskeeper on the Simpsons), Rich's Scottish accent is just as strong.  He's a neat guy with a great sense of humor and will wear shorts and a t-shirt as long as it's over 50 degrees F...

Above and below are the "strewing crew" of (left to right) Graham, Yuko, Makoto, Jana and Sam

Thies (above) followed Rich along and combed the cuttings in to rows for loading

the gardens are just as beautiful on a rainy day!

We later had a treat and visited the garden of Great Dixter Trustee Kemal Mehdi who lived just down the road.  Above is Mr. Mehdi who gave us a brief tour before it poured this afternoon.  He had wonderful borders and a neat house with a very ornate thatch roof (wish I had photographed it!). These photographs are used with his permission.  Beautiful little field trip for sure!