It has been a week in which reports of the C-bomb have been liberally sprinkled across the news, although the “C” that has affected us most in the Midlife Garden has been C for Ciarán as wind and rain have come on stronger than a Dominic Cummings WhatsApp message.  With flooded roads and schools sending kids home early we expected the weather to create the kind of damage not seen since a Downing Street Lockdown Party; but nature has proved to be a lot more resilient than any SPAD or tousle-haired PM.  The garden survived.  To quote Bill Murray in Ghostbusters “the flowers are still standing” and even the greenhouse survived intact albeit with some exceptions. 

First it must be pointed out that the greenhouse is not strictly whole, as the last time I mended it, I ran out of the right sized panes so there is a permanent half pane open on one side.  But maybe, just maybe, this is what has saved it from further breakage?  I am no scientist so will leave it to others to work out about relative pressures, wind speeds and tensile strengths.  But somehow all the panes survived Ciarán’s efforts. 

Secondly, not all the flowers remain standing.  We lost a delphinium in the storm, but since this was a delphinium that had already flowered in May, we are quite smug about it even having another bloom to be battered in a November storm.  This is because, for once, I managed to follow the GW advice to cut back the delphinium as soon as it had flowered in June or July, thus encouraging it to flower again in the autumn.  Ta dah!

The Delph is not the only flower in the garden that has had a second coming.  One of the apple trees, after a frankly poor crop this year, seems to be trying to make up for lost time, but like a school child asking to hand in their homework late, it is not going to get marked now.  It’s too late for apples.  Likewise, the viburnum mariesii has produce one or two late flowers, while its leaves turn a deep shade of red before dropping.   

So, although the garden is generally either overgrown, dead, or, in the case of the raised beds, cleared and prepped for the spring, there is still some colour in there as we head into winter.