INDULGING IN AUTUMN

A week ago I returned from a 20-day marketing trip to Kwazulu-Natal during which I covered over 4400km. The first thing I did on arrival was take a quick dusk walk around the garden, and followed up with regular walks thereafter. As I write this at the end of what has been a busy first week home, I can claim: autumn is at its peak! Minutes after I arrived last Saturday, friends from Bloemfontein, lovers of the garden over many years, arrived for their first ever autumn visit. Do you think they enjoyed it?

These first photos were taken at one of my favourite autumn spots. The red maple is our darkest red Japanese maple – I suspect it is ‘Bloodgood’ although very few of our Japanese maples came to us bearing names. In fact this morning I discovered that the graftings propagated from it by my friends Laurie and Erie from Sandford Heights Nursery at the top of Magoebaskloof are sold as ‘Jack’s Red’!

So here it is again: a weeping flowering cherry and beyond it ‘Jack’s Red’, then a swamp cypress just beginning to turn and ‘Jack’s Red Plane’ – a plane I found in a KZN nursery in April some 20 years ago bearing red instead of yellow autumn leaves.

I have after a week at home yet to take any systematic autumn shots – and thus I present to you now a selection of photos in which Japanese maples unashamedly predominate…

It’s been a good year for mushrooms – I’ve never before seen a fairies’ apartment block! (Colour-coded, of course…)

Here is the view from the bridge, looking across to one of our best autumn views.The House that Jack Built is a little to the right when seen from here.

We are back at the trees in the first shots now, looking at the stream as it flows beneath them; a branch from Jack’s Red (I’m liking using that name ) and leaves from the weeping cherry. And then a self-portrait taken meters downstream.

A close-up of you-know-what…

We are due to move on now to the maples at the Beech Borders, the most overwhelming of all our autumn sights – but I think I’ll first have to sort through that pile of pics…

 

THOUGHTS OF AUTUMNS PAST

I am, for the next two weeks, away from home. Autumn is developing by the day there. The sudden cold which descended on the country two days ago can only help promote a beautiful autumn at Sequoia Gardens. And so, as I wonder what is happening back home, I raid my Sequoia Gardens facebook page at www.facebook.com/sequoiastay for pictures that remind me of past autumns…

 

APRIL EQUALS AUTUMN

This is the view that greets me in this new month. Everywhere leaves are subtly changing colour – becoming paler, or darker, yellower or redder in preparation for fall.  Autumn on Sequoia Gardens has begun!

PS: below is another shot, taken with my cell phone on 2 April – a rare (but becoming more common now) sunny morning; often  we start with cloud in summer.

 

IS THAT AUTUMN ON THE AIR?

It was only on Sunday afternoon that I got to taking the dogs on a long exploratory walk. The mission: to determine what advances autumn had made during the month I was away. Already, on waking on Friday morning, I was surprised at how cool it was; especially after braving 36 degrees of heat in Cape Town only days before.

I maintain that the first subtle signs of changes in leaf colour happen by mid Feb, by mid March autumn gets going and mid April to mid May it is at its peak. So I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised that the above sights greeted me on 17 March: a birch in full autumn glory!

It was not the only example of Look at Me Now! Here a dogwood struts its stuff as only a dogwood can. I think it is Cornus sanguinea, but I’ve always had my doubts about these small shrubby trees which I grew from seed I imported nearly 20 years ago. As it has never flowered for me, identification is difficult.

The beautiful little pagoda-like buds identify Cornus florida, as do the bright colour of early leaves against the still fresh green of others.

Quieter, but lovely, are two trees we bought together as Acer rubra; I have no reason to doubt this, except that they lack the autumn drama and staying power they are known for in other parts of the world. In addition the one tends to yellow rather than red autumn colour. They are planted meters apart.

Oh (and I won’t say this too often) – one can see we’ve had a harsh summer with several hail storms and plenty of wind. Or is it just that the battered leaves are the first to give up on life?

I’m darned if I know what these lovely leaves belong to – a viburnum? It is one of a mix of seed-raised plants in what I call my hedgerow. Bit of thinking and research needed here…

We are back a little beyond where the very first photo was taken. One of my most interesting trees grows here, and soon I will again try cuttings for my friend Jo… It is a plane tree, but instead of turning yellow its leaves turn red. I found it amongst hundreds of other quite normal planes at a wholesale nursery at about this time of year. Last summer it took a bit of a knock when a huge old pine fell and caught some of its branches, but it has thrived this past summer…

It is one of the first trees to show definite colour change in mid Feb; here it is in mid March and it has staying power till mid May – longer than any other tree!

There are other pics from this walk, and subsequent ones. More summery, less autumnal. But this pic from the end of the walk, warm light reflected after sunset from a bank of clouds to the south-east, is a good place to end off for now.

 

RIP the Red Plane’s autumn display…

On a wintery walk, some leaves catch my eye. I look up. The red plane (read more about it here) is bare. Well it is 21 June after all, mid-winter’s day… And I’ve always said that its season lasts from mid-Feb to mid-June. So I’m not complaining!

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As temperatures drop colours still sparkle…

Besides… It was warmer here by far than in the UK at the time…
(An experiment with a blackberry post)

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More of the end of May–and a dedication

I am in Johannesburg, (or rather: I was when I compiled this on Saturday and Sunday) attending a trade expo and, much to my surprise, there is no free wi-fi to be had. So these last two posts, compiled in quiet times – of which there are too many –  will have to wait till I am home for posting…

To get back into the spirit of things: some fingered end-of-autumn leaves!

The thick five fingered leaf of a plane tree is unmistakeable; it is more solid than any maple or liquidambar with which it might be confused. Usually they turn a rather pale yellow before browning and falling, but the reds in this leaf already indicate something unusual…

It is from my ‘red plane’! I found the tree in a rural wholesale nursery one autumn in the early nineties, sporting red leaves amongst a sea of yellow. I nonchalantly loaded it onto my trolley and looked for more. I think I selected four, but none were as red as this one. Only one of its brethren I can now identify for certain, and it has never proved itself unusual, but this tree… It shows the first signs of colour in mid-February. It is predominantly red, but there are strong yellow and even orange markings as well. And it drops its last leaves in mid-June. That is four months of autumn colour!

Here a selection of leaves lie on the grass below it…

Whilst I photograph the plane, Taubie plods off into the water under the nearby  weeping flowering cherry. Only on studying the photo now do I realise how the graft has developed into an  unsightly swelling as so often happens… to hide, or to o ignore? What does this pic achieve? Perhaps to show how lovely our days can be, even as winter approaches.

And here she is again in this season of fallen leaves…

This photo continues that theme.

As does this one, showing the bench under the beech at the top of the Beech Borders. Beyond,  the bright buttery yellow of Acer davidii, one of the snake-bark maples, lies strewn across the slope.

Another view from a few meters on; Taubie snuffling among the azaleas and shrub roses of the Beech Borders, with berberis and the bare stems of the Japanese maples along the stream from the spring; I wrote about them a few posts back.

Lest she gets jealous, here again is Mateczka, in the arboretum with birches, an oak-leaved hydrangea and a particularly neat holly.

Since in our meanderings we’ve ended up back in the arboretum, here is another view. but let us get back to the water!

The view across Freddie’s Dam is always interesting, and always changing. By the way, clicking on photos will enlarge them!

This photo is the opposite view of the one above it, taken from under the yellow snake-bark maple in the centre of the above photo.

This time we are looking across the Makou Dam and the comments in my previous post about the shrubs in the Upper Rosemary Border come to mind.

 

Viburnum x bodnantiensis is a tall scruffy shrub at the best of times, lacking the grace and beauty of many viburnums. Like several relations it makes up for this with relatively inconspicuous but nicely scented flowers in winter. However it is a touch too cold for them here, and so a perfect cluster is hard to find. And quite frankly the scent does not appeal greatly to me. I guess I keep it for its snob value: it is quite rare and the link with the magnificent gardens at Bodnant in Wales is irresistible…

A plant that does give me a lot of joy I planted as Cotoneaster horizontalis. Especially now as it is covered in berries and autumn leaves it is a delight…

But the sheer height to which it has grown makes me wonder if this really is the plant I have…

I really enjoy this rather muddled view. The last blooms on Graham Stuart Thomas (which in South Africa is a ‘climber’ – most of Austin’s roses grow very leggy in our climate) stand out against a hazel. In the background the wisteria yellows on the pergola and a Japanese maple shows some colour. Watching over it all is the sentinel of Melaleuca ‘Johannesburg Gold’ which is always this warm yellow colour – the best yellow-leaved tree of all in our climate.

However this ubiquitous yellow conifer is not to be dismissed…

I end this post with the garden that has haunted me for how long? Fourteen months! The Garden Celebrating an Imperfect Universe. In this imperfect universe very little has happened here this past summer. Children arrive and hop from stump to stump, proving my basic assumption right. The water spout wets it rocks at the end  of the Alfred’s Arches axis. Wild flowers (and weeds) have softened the setting. This last summer brought many changes in my life, but all were more demanding than I’d anticipated and I spent less time – and money -  in the garden than ever. I can only hope that the coming year will bring the opportunity to spend time here…

PS: This morning I showed all these photos to my father, with whom I am staying during the expo. When he saw the date of the photos – 29 May 2012 – he told me that I took them 60 years to the day after he declared his love to my mother and they started going steady. As the love of trees – and the planting of them – very much started with my dad, I dedicate this post to him. And that makes this a perfect opportunity to share a photo he took of our valley one midwinter in the early 50s. It contains some wonderful details and some tantalising uncertainties.

 

To orientate you: the building to the left of centre is the stone barn. The tall gum trees to the left of it are those to the right of the big house today. I suspect the top of the big gum in the arboretum is showing above the curve of the grassy hill near the left of the photo. Only about half the current area was planted to pine, seed potatoes were the main crop, and pigs were kept in the old sties near where the house now is. The old main house, over to the right of the picture, is on the part of the farm that now belongs to my cousin.

My father’s vision and energy have changed the farm dramatically, especially over the last 30 years. The arboretum in particular will be his lasting monument. And remember that the tall gum was claimed by my mother as hers on their honeymoon. But if any spot on Sequoia is truly his, it is the avenue of sequoias that lead up to his dream house where I now live. So it seems appropriate to end this post with a photo sent to me by a couple who celebrated their wedding on Sequoia in April, of them setting off on life together from under this avenue…

 

50 photos; and here endeth May

I use the Biblical language with care – the beauty of May has been an almost religious experience. And on one walk during these last days I took 177 photos, which I whittled down to 50 to choose from for the next two posts. And of them I guess 40 will make it onto the blog. Comments will be brief, or I will never get done…

I will start with a selection in which the gables of the big house are noticeable – note that here you can see both in the reflection, but only one through the foliage.

Here is a similar angle but from up in the arboretum. Look at the mauve azaleas with profuse autumn flowers that are a wonderful addition  to the autumn reds and yellows.

More autumn detail, more mauve – and if you look on the very edge in the middle of the right-hand side of the frame you can just see the left side of a gable through the foliage!

Another panorama, with a young beech in the centre – beeches are highly treasured rarities in South Africa, and I’ll never forget an Austrian friend describing the germinating beeches being like fleas on a dog’s back as the snows melted!

Save the best for last – this photo gives a pretty clear indication of the state of things; despite there being flowers out, and plenty of autumn colour around still, the frosts have knocked the cannas and the lawns. The Upper Rosemary Border always looks good at this time, as autumn highlights the various shrubs growing there. More of that anon.

The mauve azaleas – lightly scented and almost completely deciduous – are worthy of a close-up… and then some!

‘Evergreen’ azaleas aren’t usually noted for their autumn colour, but many loose some leaves or have leaves which take on rich tones in the cold. They add immeasurably to the beauty of late autumn.

The paler the flower, the yellower the leaf; the darker, the redder…

Many trees and shrubs have lost most leaves, but those that cling on often turn richer shades than earlier stars, which faded before the cold became more intense.

There is more sunlight reaching the remaining leaves too – here the five-fingered Liquidambar styraciflua.  And since counting fingers has become a bit of a pre-occupation, below is Croft Cottage against the three-fingered Liquidambar formosana, a late bloomer that with luck will glow into July, and a detail of the tree below that.

Well OK, not really a detail, but hopefully you can see the three-fingered leaves. And the fact that these trees along Park Lane, the motor road up the arboretum, are only just turning. And Mateczka who, having covered kilometres dashing away on the walk, is now parked off in the sun waiting for me to get a move-on!

Continuing the fingered theme, the Japanese maple (Acer palmatum) has seven – sometimes five – fingers; here is the tree on the edge of the lawn, which has an unusually uniform rich red colour.

Our three-fingered maple, by choice and sheer force of s/weedlings, is the Chinese maple or Acer buergeranum. Dare I say that its autumn colour can be even more impressive than the Japanese maple’s, although it never achieves the same grace of form. Below an avenue of Chinese maples cross the official entrance into the garden where Flora’s Path passes  by the end of the Rosemary Terrace.

Rose heps – and the final roses – also add autumn colour to this last bit of the Upper Rosemary Border which forms part of the New Old Rose Garden. Below, hiding behind the greenery in the shade of the Chinese maples is a Japanese Maple of great beauty, tucked into much too small a space…

In fact, I think it is worthy of a close-up:

Let us step back now for a change of theme, to the furthest end of the Rosemary Terrace. No photo I’ve ever taken makes its name so abundantly clear as this one.

Have I mentioned? Mateczka does dash-dash-roll and Taubie, the old girl with the gammy leg, does plod? But loves the walk even more than do the other dogs!  What appears to be solid rosemary on the left is in fact interspersed with a  wide variety of shrubs, annuals and herbaceous perennials. (Go back to the photo of the house from the arboretum.)

Here, seen across some rosemary, is flax, oak-leaved hydrangea, berberis and abelia, with the Chinese maples in the background. Below is the marigold which featured in my previous post – now thoroughly snuffed, but still architectural.

And to end Part 1, a photo from the beginning of the walk – the upper side of the Upper Rosemary Border near the steps.

 

AN EARLY WALK TO WELCOME WINTER

It was almost involuntary… The next thing I knew I was outside in bracing but not bitter cold, camera in hand, on the first day of proper frost. However my guess is (I never checked) that the minimum at 1m above ground where we measure temps, was above freezing. And the sun was noticeably warm when you stood in it, and there was no wind to speak of.

My favourite Berberis against the juniper was looking spectacular, although the Prunus which forms part of the composition was already bare.

A fine mist drifted over the water as the sun hit the cold air. Several swamp cypresses around the Makou Dam are looking lovely, and the Chinese maples (Acer buergerianum) which germinate everywhere from the avenue of big trees in Flora’s Path are more noticeable now than at any other time of the year – and the inclination to weed them out is zero!

They are, after all, only beaten by the Japanese maples for their autumn show.. The trilobal leaf belongs to the Chinese maple – the Japanese version has five or seven fingers. I love the gable and the brick pillars at the bottom of the steps which one almost doesn’t see in this photo.

Here again it is the Chinese maples that provide the rich colour. I was actually photographing the mauve Tree dahlias on the right, but by the time I had processed the pic into oblivion, I decided to really make it arty and give it a dry brush filter. So turn to the next pic to see the Tree Dahlias (Dahlia imperialis) which have only just survived the first frosts – having only started to bloom earlier in May, for they take all summer to grow their remarkable bamboo-like stems.

Back to the Makou Dam for the next two shots – again of Swamp Cypresses (Taxodium distichum), a deciduous conifer which turns from fresh green to cinnamon. They each march to their own drum, and so some are just starting, whilst in the background of the lower pic there is a tree in full splendour and to the right of it two trees that are now almost skeletal.

Canna ‘Phaeson’ is frosted, but after only a few nights of lightish frost there is still remarkable colour in the plants.

And the sun was catching them too beautifully!

Other plants too were looking splendid, but these are snapshots – having gone out impulsively I left both my tripod and my warm jacket behind!

The frost was melting on the ground-spiders’ webs as the sun hit them, but once again I took only snapshots…

This photo of one of the frosted zinnias I mentioned in my previous post is of slightly more than snapshot quality though…

And I rather enjoy this last gasp of a pineapple sage and the subtle colours of one of my favourite autumn-coloured annuals, a form of marigold which one year ages ago completely dominated the garden as the young trees showed us a glimpse of what they would do in future autumns…

‘Elegant decay’ might best describe these gorgeous antique velvet colours, but their subtlety was less – well, subtle – only a few days month ago…

I finish off with a pic from yesterday, showing that the autumn splendour is not yet over – behind the Japanese maple is the row of Chinese maples referred to earlier, which seed so freely. To their right is Liquidamber formosanum, our first specimen and a tree which will retain its leaves in a near green state right through to very late winter. Beyond the steps some of those weedy maples give colour (hoorah), with the swamp cypresses beyond them. The rounded tree with yellow leaves across the valley in the arboretum is a chestnut and the spiky trees beyond are a close relative of the swamp cypress that go by the very impressive names of Dawn redwood or Metasequoia glyptostroboides! In the foreground the aloes start their display, and we hold our breaths for at any moment this display can be cruelly curtailed by a heavy frost…

 

A visit to the Fairest Cape – and a frosty welcome back home

OK, fine. This is a gardening blog with a ‘come stay in my cottages’ slant. The fact that I’ve just spent several days in one of the world’s most beautiful cities, staying in an apartment overlooking that city’s icon, really is not important. So forgive me if it keeps creeping in to my conversation. The above panorama I took leaning out of the sliding doors soon after waking on my first morning there, in order to get the full 180 degrees in-your-face of Table Mountain…

On a visit to a beautiful tea-garden in the Jonkershoek Valley above Stellenbosch I took this photograph… but to what extent was it the similarities with home that inspired me? Although this opposite view is very different to anything OUR mountain can offer!

We went up Table Mountain on a perfect day. I deliberately avoided taking too many pics. And the one I choose to share with you I took back down in the road, right next to where our car was parked. It is one of the many beautiful proteas that grow on Table Mountain.

We returned home after dark on Thursday. And woke to a surprise. I had forgotten that our neighbour’s gum plantation was being cut down… We had dreaded the day, but our row of big gums now breaks the sheer expanse of the devastation beyond. This was the surprise as I opened the front door on Friday morning…

I mark the end of autumn on 15 May. Anything after that is a bonus. And so it should not surprise me that the composition is suddenly wintery on the morning of 18 May… But winter has its flowers too and the early aloes usually get to flower before the frosts get too heavy.

The Japanese Maple on the edge of the lawn was originally chosen for its rich colour which lasts well beyond most others. As it has grown it has not disappointed, and it ensures that autumn lingers.

The bare ground to the right is the top end of the Mothers’ Garden, which has lain fallow all summer. Come spring we need to at least plant the hedges…

This morning there was a light frost. And as I set off on this afternoon’s walk I suddenly realised: that frost had been the first. The striped zinnias (about which I posted here) which yesterday were still flowering bravely were now browned. And from there on I kept seeing more signs of frost damage. Then whilst photographing the damage to the canna below there was a crash and a huge branch broke out of the biggest gum across the Makou Dam and fell to the ground. I have only known such things to happen on hot, still afternoons following on either heavy rain or great swings in temperature. When I got there I saw it was – before shattering – over 8m (yards) long and as thick as my thigh at its thick end. I was pleased to not have started my walk 10 minutes earlier…

Strange how I set off to photograph the end of autumn, but kept feeling I was capturing the beginning of winter… Here is the view from the Makou Dam’s wall.

On Thursday whilst we were on our way back from Cape Town the local garden club paid a visit. I’ve received many compliments, but I do hope they experienced something slightly more like autumn! This is the view this afternoon from the bridge across Freddie’s Dam.

As I walked I regretted not being here for the end of autumn, and thought of the Fairest Cape where I had been instead. The cable-way climbs from the station in this picture, taken from our window, to the pimple up on the top of the mountain. The elevation there is just over 1000m – and the see at its closest point can not be much more than 1000m away!

I thought of the trawler which in a bizarre accident was stranded last week at Clifton, one of the world’s most exclusive stretches of beach, and the words of one of the men involved in successfully towing it back to sea yesterday without any environmental mishaps… “that is the most beautiful empty space I have ever seen!” (Watch the video as the ship comes free here.)

I stood at the Cottage Garden at The house that Jack Built and I thought of the flight home across our vast and rugged country; of endless mountain ranges and valleys; of empty plains where there was hardly a homestead to be seen in the semi-desert; of rivers and huge circular patterns of irrigated lands, and of not reading one paragraph between take-off and landing as I stared out the window … and then I turned to my own piece of  paradise, and was pleased to be home.