Once the passion has faded

We are told that there is cold weather on the way, and we have had a couple of frosts already, but today and yesterday the sun was shining, and I had a chance to potter about in the garden before the Arctic winds arrive.

I trimmed back the Virginia creeper on the front of the house from rooftop level to 6’ from the ground, and tided leaves and rubbish from the front garden.

I hacked the jasmine in the back garden back a bit, but need to do a more thorough job, as it is choking the bent plum tree. I gave the newly planted lawn it’s first cut (it’s so small, I did it with scissors!), swept up leaves and took all the bird feeders down for a major clean.

The purple passionflower has only just stopped flowering. The frosts finally got to it, or perhaps my pinching out the main stems to bush it up a bit next year finally brought it up short. Three shrivelled spent flower heads are all that remain of it’s bountiful display. I am very impressed by its earlier efforts, so I will forgive it.

Not quite so the Strawberry plants in Bunlett’s pot. All through the summer, the harvest was meagre, just the occasional shrivelled specimen, more seed than flesh made it in to the harvest bowl. I had not got round to grubbing them out of the pot, and now I find the damn things are fruiting. Even more strange, there are two really big strawberries, just starting to blush pink. I honestly don’t know what to do with them. It is too early to pick them, but surely the coming frosts will damage the fruit beyond edibility. What gives with these plants?