Winter has arrived. Time to be indoors with rich spicy scents, ginger flavoured treats and a touch of candlelight. Do I see Christmas round the corner?

Featured hand painted silk scarf is Portia Mandarin.

Winter has arrived. Time to be indoors with rich spicy scents, ginger flavoured treats and a touch of candlelight. Do I see Christmas round the corner?
Featured hand painted silk scarf is Portia Mandarin.
Breathing in a warm, relaxed summer evening despite being a romantic cliché, is hopefully available to everyone. A city version is pavement café tables, customers spilling out from the pub and a spot of evening window shopping.
(A brief aside, Flask Walk has often inspired those with a visual sensibility especially when decked out for a celebration – see http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/ginner-flask-walk-hampstead-on-coronation-day-n05276)
A summer evening home version is a garden terrace perfumed with lilies.
Showy, but still beautifully scented.
Lilium regale
Meanwhile, back in the city, the sun has gone down on Hampstead Heath. Hey, let’s see if we can synchronize our mobile phones? How long are the summer holidays??
This summer has been good for roses. Good displays as long as the roses are healthy bushes with established root runs. Within the UK East Anglia is a low rainfall region added to that I garden on a very light, sandy soil and, as you may know, not ideal for most roses.
But I do love roses and as they really prefer heavier, rich soil I have to feed them well. I always mulch them generously using most of my garden compost to feed their greedy needs and retain moisture.
The white wisteria covering the pergola has now finished flowering, but continues to provide some welcome green shade. However, down the other end of the pergola the pink rambler rose, Debutante, has broken into a glamorous profusion of pink blooms.
Other roses flowering at the moment are the fully double pink Rosa Karlsruhe, the striped Rosa Ferdinand Pichard, the single white species rose Rosa fedtschenkoana and the single white rambler Rosa Francis E Lester . I grow both the white ramblers through mixed hedging to provide hips for the birds in the autumn.
In the evening the garden is awash with delicate perfumes as you pass under the various climbing and rambling roses. A gentle, uplifting pleasure.
Oh dear, during Saturday night we had unseasonal high winds here in East Anglia and both rose bushes were beaten up and the next morning I found them knocked to the ground in a thorny mess.