The Canal in Autumn

This year's autumn colours were amazing - I don't remember ever having seen anything like it in this area. I imagine it was something to do with the weather - just the right amount of rain at the right time, just the right temperatures.... something like that.


But it was so beautiful, that one day we walked down the canal just to take some photos...

Most of the trees here turn yellow or brown - there are very few reds ...

Just a few ornamental maples that have been planted, and then this hydrangea that was peeking through the undergrowth...


The Virginia Creeper looked as if it knew it should be red, but was trying desperately to blend in with its surroundings..

And with yellows and browns like these around, who could blame it?

These aren't leaves, but seeds, sycamore type. Thousands and thousands of them.


We walked for a couple of hours...


And by the time we got back, it was almost dark.

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November Again

It's November, already. I'm not sure where the autumn has gone. I've been very busy with work - hence the scarcity of posts recently - including a great two days in Lund, in southern Sweden. I was hoping to meet up with Gittan, but it was such a flying visit that we couldn't match our schedules. Never mind, I loved Lund and hope to be back - I knew it was my sort of place when the first thing I saw on coming out of the station was a sign pointing to the botanical gardens.

There hasn't been much time for the balcony either, but some work has gone on. All the houseplants came back indoors a couple of weeks ago, just before the heating came on. They could have stayed out longer, as it was still relatively warm, but then when I finally did bring them in, there would have been a sudden huge increase in temperature. As it is, they all seem to have settled in well.

A few new plants have gone in - pansies, cyclamen and some new chrysanthemums ...

... and I've got some bulbs in too. Most of them are leftovers from last year and I'm not expecting them to do much. Must get some more.

I've also sown some sweet peas, despite the fact that I know the climate here is wrong for them and they never reach maturity. But each year I manage to convince myself that if I get them started in the autumn, they'll be in flower before the heat and humidity kick in and finish them off. We'll see. Anyway, the seeds were leftover from last year's futile attempt, so I thought I might as well stick them in and try again.

Apart from that, it's mainly been a case of clearing up the stuff from the summer, which is slowly dying off. And collecting the seeds for next year. My Four O'Clocks (Mirabilis Jalapa) were disappointing this year - the first year they've ever let me down. Usually they thrive. But I've saved what seeds there were...

Up to now the autumn has been mainly mild and sunny. But this weekend temperatures have dropped to 10-12°C during the day and it's not going to be long now before we hit the gardener's dreaded average daily temperature of 7°C. The temperature where growth stops and the least hardy specimens start to suffer. Oh well, the summer couldn't last forever I suppose. 175 days to spring, and counting...

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Autumn has arrived...

Autumn has arrived on the balcony ...

We had a stupendous September. Warm and sunny, but without the oppressive heat and humidity of summer. In terms of weather, it was the nicest month I remember for a long time. But now it's October, and there are clear signs that the summer has gone for good ..

The flowers of the annuals are just a memory. Their containers are already stripped and bare, waiting for the winter bulbs to go in ..

On the Four O'Clocks, seeds have replaced the flowers, and are ready to be collected.

The peppers are ripening fast ...

And the winter flowering pansies have gone in. They may not look much now, but they'll provide the odd flower right through the dark months, and then in spring will suddenly explode again into a riot of colour. Definitely a flower no balcony should be without...

But much sooner than that, the chrysanthemums will be in flower. They're full of buds ...

Bye bye summer. Time to get the winter woollies out again.

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Don't throw those chrysanthemums away - well, not yet anyway...

Chrysanthemums have to be THE plant of the late autumn. Just when everything else is dying off, they burst into flower and - depending on what type you've got and how they've been treated - will treat you to a mass of small blooms or wow you with a smaller number of much larger ones. Not to mention a range of colours from reddy brown through yellow to creamy white - and even pink and purple, colours which are less common here. And all the different petal shapes ...

Where does the name come from? In 1753 Karl Linnaeus, the Swedish botanist who first started to classify plants and animals logically, combined the Greek word chrysos, meaning gold, with anthemon, meaning flower. And despite attempts by recent taxonomists to change the plant's classification, the name has stuck.

In Italy the shops start to fill up with chrysanths in early October. Forget lilies, here chrysanthemums are the flower of the dead - the plant you take to the graves of your loved ones on November 1st. Buy them at the beginning of the month and they're cheap. By Hallowe'en the price has quadrupled.

Being the flower of the dead, it's not a flower that most people have on their balconies here. But I wouldn't be without mine. Especially my little yellow ones. I've had them for years and they go on and on and on ... If you've bought a pot of chrysanths for your balcony this year, don't even think of throwing them away after they've stopped flowering.

They do need a bit of care though. First of all, cut of the dead flower heads as soon as - well, as soon as they're dead. If you're in a fairly cold zone, they'll need covering. We have a Hardiness Zone 8 type climate - the temperature may drop well below freezing in January. Mine get moved back towards the walls of the house and covered in fleece. And don't overwater during the winter.

By March you'll notice that new shoots are starting to come up from near the base of the old plant. These are what you want for next autumn's blooms. Take them off the plant when they're about 2.5 ins long, remove the bottom two leaves and cut vertically across the stem just below the leaf joint. Dip the end in hormone rooting powder and pop them into some potting mix in a propagator to root. Keep them in a warm place.


Well, that's what the books say. But quite honestly I find it works just as well without the hormone rooting powder and with ordinary potting soil. And I don't usually bother with a propagator - quite often I'll put them straight into the pots where I want them to grow. But then, it can be quite warm here in March. But anyway, they're one of the easiest plants to root from cuttings that I know. You may lose a few this way (so take more than you expect to need), but most will be quite happy.

And then you can throw the old plant away. You could try keeping it, but the results aren't usually as good as the first year.

Once the cuttings have rooted, keep in mind that chrysanths like soil which is rich in organic matter and neither very acid nor very alkaline. You'll also need to decide whether or not to "stop" them in April. "Stopping" means pinching out the growing shoot of the plant to encourage it to put out side shoots. If you stop, you'll end up with a myriad of small flowers, If you don't, you'll get a tall stem and one, much larger flower. As you can see from the photos, I stop ...


I have a sneaking affection for these little yellow ones. Yes, I've tried others and I'm the first to admit that these aren't half as elegant as many of the larger ones . I've got some large white ones in bud which I hope will flower soon, and a couple of years ago I had some nice red-brown ones. But nothing does quite so well as these do. They don't seem to mind the heat we have all summer, they shrug off pest attacks, and don't complain at all when they're left to the hideous over-watering that my plant-sitters inflict on them when I'm away. I don't care if the neighbours do think I'm weird - my chrysanths are here to stay.

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Roll on November ...

This was the week that the temperature dropped 10°C overnight. Last Sunday I went to the garden centre wearing only a T-shirt (well, no - I had trousers on too, but you know what I mean...) Today I'm sitting at home with the heating on and I've still had to put on a long sleeved jumper (that's a sweater for anyone who lives west of County Kerry).

It started with two days of heavy winds. Wind is unusual in Milan, but very welcome - it blows away the pall of smog that usually envelops the city. And last week, the Foehn was blowing.

Now, I'm sure I've posted about the Foehn before - but I can't for the life of me find the post. Was it one I started and then deleted? Who knows. But apologies if you've read this before.

The Foehn is a wind which occurs around a mountain range. It has different names in different countries - the Helm wind in the UK, the Chinook in the US and Canada, the Bergwind in South Africa - and many, many more. Don't ask me to explain the details - it's something about the "different adiabatic lapse rates of moist and dry air." Yeah, well - perhaps that's why I deleted the post ...

It's a strong, gusty wind which in Milan usually brings down branches from trees and often the trees themselves. But it's a warm wind - when the Foehn blows the temperature usually rises.

So it was even more of a shock to wake up at five the next morning, freezing to death. The temperature had plummeted overnight, and the single blanket that we'd been using just wasn't enough any more.

The rest of the week has been a constant rush to catch up. Winter clothes have come out of the cupboards, plants have come in from the balcony (yes, don't worry - I'll get back to the plants in a minute), and on trips to the supermarket I'm no longer stocking up with salad but with beans, lentils, and other stuff for good hearty soups and casseroles.

The plants on the balcony don't like it any more than we do. The photos above are from ten days ago - the plumbago was still in full bloom, the sunflower was developing a good crop of seed heads and the petunias and marigolds were appreciating the cooler weather and looking better than they had in August. Now they're looking considerably shell shocked.

This is the sunflower today. I'll spare you the others - this is a family blog.

And ever the optimist in the garden, in the last few weeks, with temperatures around 20°C - that's 68°F - I was still doing some late sowing. Now with temperatures around 10°C/50°F, I suspect I was wasting my time.

But every season has its advantages and as one set of plants dies, another always takes over. Look at that photo of the sunflower again. See the chrysanths behind it? And see how many buds? Roll on November ...

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Hints of Autumn

Summer doesn't want to die this year. I came over to England with a case full of warm clothes, but I've not needed them. It's been warm and sunny. Not too hot - but warm enough to be out in a t-shirt. Perfect gardening weather

But we've reached the autumn equinox and from now on we're heading for winter, whatever the current temperatures are telling us. This is the time of the "transumanza" - when, in Italy, the flocks of sheep and cattle would traditionally be brought back from their summer pastures in the mountains to lower and milder climes. We may be lucky and ease in gently - tradition has it that the weather between the 21st and 23rd of September sets the pattern for the rest of the autumn - but it's time to get ready.

Even while we were at the sea earlier in the month, the clues were there. It still seemed like summer weather, but even when we arrived, the Virginia Creeper was telling a different story. And by the time we left, just over a week later, there was no way of pretending not to notice.

The squirrels in my garden know. They don't play any longer - all day they're back and forth, burying nuts. The warm weather hasn't fooled them. Hard times are coming.

The plants know too. Their blooms have given way to seed pods and berries.

And the trees know. It's already time to get the rake out.

Winter's on the way.

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Virginia Creeper

Autumn has now definitely arrived, although temperatures are still very high for the time of year and you can still go out without a coat. But the trees are starting to change colour, and the Virginia Creeper (Parthenocissus quinquefolia) is glorious at the moment.

I love Virginia Creeper. My grandparents used it in their garden to hide the area where they kept the dustbin, and here in Milan it's very common on balconies. People grow it up wires and trellises at the front of the balcony, to shield the house from both the summer sun and the eyes of the neighbours in the buiding opposite. I don't have any, because it would take too much space away from the other things, but I enjoy watching my neighbours' vines turning to brilliant vermilion every winter. Our caretaker, who has to sweep the fallen leaves off the path every morning, may well have a different opinion.


On a balcony it's relatively easy to keep under control, but in a garden it can run riot if you don't cut it back. It can grow to 50 feet, and once established is almost impossible to get rid of, as it spreads from rhizomes. It's quite happy anywhere in zones 3-10 too, so don't bother hoping the weather will do the job for you. If you plant it, you've got to be willing to love it.

On the canal which runs close to us, it's started growing wild. The local authorities always used to keep the canal banks tidied, but in the past few years they've been left to their own devices. And nature has just taken over. The Robinias are leaning drunkenly into the water, with Virginia Creeper wound insidiously around trunks and branches, then drooping downwards so that it almost obscures the tree completely.


Will it eventually kill off the trees if it's not kept under control? The web seems divided, with some sources saying that it will deprive the trees of light and kill them that way, and others saying no, they'll co-exist quite happily.


While I was browsing though, and trying to find out, I came across this bit of information on the meaning of the name at about.com :

Parthenocissus is a backward translation (and a rather lame one, frankly) from the English, with a healthy dose of poetic license. Partheno- means "virgin" (as in "Virginia") and cissus translates as "ivy."

If you weren't already convinced that Latin names are crazy, that should just about do it I reckon.

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Weird weather we've been having...

As I said in my last post, marigolds blooming in December is a sure sign that the weather must be mild, though it's hard to be sure as I can't find a complete list of temperatures for this month so that I can compare them with official averages. It's not been all warm weather though - there was one day when it plunged about ten degrees overnight - just the sort of drop that plants don't like. And we also had three days of torrential rain - not unusual for Milan in November. It never drizzles here. We go for months without a drop, and then when it does come it just pours and pours, so that roads flood, cellars flood and occasionally so does the underground, causing chaos everywhere.

But the strangest event this month was towards the middle of the month when the foehn suddenly hit. The foehn is a warm wind that comes across the mountains - warm because as the air drops down the side of the mountain, the increasing atmospheric pressure heats it up. It produces gusts of wind than can get quite strong. this time it got up to around 90km per hour in some places, and was about 80 when it hit Milan.


It had been fine when I went to work in the morning - but when I came out at lunchtime I had to fight my way through it to get home to my son, who was home from school sick that day. The wind had blown away all the smog, so there was a bright blue sky, warm sunshine and in the background you could see the Alps - something which only happens when it's windy enough to clear the pollution. The strongest of the winds happened just after I got home. The trees in the garden had just reached the peak of their autumn colours, so of course the leaves were ready to come off, and there was what would have been a wonderful photo of trees bent double and the air full of a stream of leaves blowing from left to right across the garden. Needless to say, the batteries in my camera were dead.


When I next went out on the balcony it was ankle deep in leaves, and I'm still finding them tucked behind the occasional pot.


Will the warm weather go on? The forecasts say no and that we're not going to have a mild winter again like last year. We'll see. The temperature has dropped, but it was still nine degrees out there this morning. If we do get normal temperatures, I should need to cover everything with fleece in about ten days. last year I didn't really need to at all, and although I did cover things as a precaution while I was away for Christmas, the fleece came off pretty soon afterwards. This year who knows. We shall see.

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A Walk in the Park

I had two appointments this morning, by chance both on opposite sides of one of Milan's big central parks. The first one finished earlier than I expected, and I found myself with forty five minutes to kill. It was a glorious day - about fifteen degrees, bright sunshine and a clear blue sky, and instead of jumping on the tram as I'd planned, I decided to walk through the park.



I knew the trees were going to be stupendous even before I got inside, and I wasn't disappointed. Of course, I didn't have my camera with me, but I rushed around picking up leaves (good job I didn't have to open my briefcase when I got to my next client) for the scanner. Yes, I know I'd promised myself I wasn't going to spend any more time playing with the scanner when I should be working, but it was stronger than I was.




The yellow leaves are gingko - the tree I talked about in the last post. But I'm not sure about the others. Trees are not my strong point- I can manage the most common British ones but that's about all. The pointy one is perhaps some sort of maple? And the green and yellow ones are lime? But I give up on the red ones. They're about five inches long, and the ones that hadn't yet turned red were a bright orange colour. For some reason it didn't come out well on the scanner, so I excluded them from the pictures.

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Autumn

Autumn is full swing here now, although up to now temperatures have still been fairly mild - it's about 10° today, and that's more or less the lowest daytime temperature we've had. But it's been quite windy some days and the leaves are falling fast - I've been collecting them for scanner photos.

I wished I'd had my camera yesterday as I went down a road lined with gingko trees. Gingkos are used quite a lot in Milan as roadside trees and in the autumn are just a mass of yellow leaves. I was on the bus unfortunately, so couldn't steal one for the scanner. I'll have to find time to go back ...

For those of you who asked, I've still not been able to make the Chrysanthemum photo from a couple of posts ago clickable. I don't know why. These ones aren't either, so it must be something to do with them coming from the scanner and not the camera.

I'm still swamped with work and have hardly put my nose out on the balcony this week. I must find the time this weekend as there are bulbs still to be planted and things need moving into their winter positions. I suspect that when the temperature does drop it will do so with a vengeance.

The change in the birds that are around is a sure sign of winter coming. The starlings that a couple of weeks ago were massed in hundreds of thousands over the city are now long gone, and this morning I saw a robin in the garden. The one we had last year (the same, or this one's Dad?) had clearly established the horse chestnut tree outside my bedroom window as the centre of his territory. All through the winter I was woken up at 2 am by his singing. I'd wake up and lie snug in bed listening to this beautiful liquid song. I hope he comes back this year ...

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Indian Summer

I said last week that the temperature had dropped and called the post The Beginning of Winter. This week we've had record temperatures for the time of year. It's been up to about 25°C some days, and this morning I was back out on the balcony in a T-shirt. A few things gave up when the temperature fell last week, and I spent most of the morning clearing them out, but everything that didn't is continuing to flower happily. And as you can see from the photo, the bees are continuing to visit. At the back of the house there's a medlar tree which is now in flower, and this morning it was covered in swarms of bees and the odd butterfly. Most of the butterflies seem to have succumbed to the cold though - I haven't seen any of the little brown ones which were so common up to a few weeks ago.

All very nice, but as I gardened this morning I was wondering what havoc it was liable to play with the environment in general. Turned on the TV to watch the BBC World news over lunch, and found a feature on how climate change in the world as a whole is threatening to turn large areas of Africa to desert. And checking on their schedule for the rest of the day, there's a programme this evening on the melting of the Arctic permafrost and the catastrophe that it's liable to cause because of greenhouse gases being released. A depressing end for an otherwise lovely, sunny Sunday morning...

The medlar tree flowers between November and February

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