I gotta tell you, I was hardly in the old garden at all through August, for one reason or another. Mostly it was the weather, but it’s also because I didn’t have much going on in the garden itself. Now things are getting exciting again. It’s coming on time to rip things out, shake things up, move things around, plant bulbs, and whatnot.

We had Fens Fest last weekend. There’s food and music, a “white elephant table” and a raffle, and awards are given for the best gardens in various categories, and recognition is given for those who’ve pitched in. I was locked out again this year. My fellow gardener, Steve, who got not one, but TWO awards this year, kept calling me the Rene Zellweger of the Fens, likening my being snubbed by the FGS for two years running to Rene’s treatment at the hands of the Academy in 2003.

Well, I have decided to budget a couple hundred bucks for bulbs to blow them all away next Spring, and then, guess what? I’m not even gonna show up at next year’s Fens Fest to collect my bevy of awards. See how they like getting snubbed.

Anyway, the weather’s cooled off in the last couple days–it’s been gorgeous–and I’ve started making notes and sketches about what’s going where, and am limbering up for moving day.

I’ll order my tulips soon. Some of these flowers are so beautiful they just blow my mind:

The varieties here are all from Breck’s online catalog, and are, from least to most fabulous (although all are fabulous): angelique, chinatown, orange princess, and queen of the congo.

You can see I kind of like these frilly peony-looking tulips. But this is only a garden thing, I can assure you. I am not one of these blokey-looking blokes who you go home with and he all the sudden turns into a Laura Ashley queen. No, what you see is what you get with me. I just like these tulips, is all. That’s as far as it goes. There is nothing frilly about me otherwise.

Categories: garden snapshots