THE END OF SUMMER


Bulbous plants such as Hesperantha Baurii and Laperousia Laxa decided they had missed the summer, and produced a second flush of flowers while retaining the seed pods from the first, which failed miserably to open without the sunshine they desire.

White flowered Cyclamen popped up in every nook and cranny in the scree beds with only a faint scattering of pink flowers here and there. The white flowered plants must be more tolerant of strong sunshine than the pink, most of which have just poked their heads above the ground, and set there quite snugly, refusing to open. But then some of those white flowered plants were pink last year. Cyclamen never fail to confuse me. Just when I think I have got to grips with them, they go and change tactics, like refusing to grow for a year or changing there leaf colour or pattern, or in the case of the white flowers, changing to pink. If anyone out there has mastered the vagaries of this plant would you please let me know?

Seed pods that were fat and green suddenly turned brown and started to pop open, scattering their precious contents all over the scree beds, from which it is impossible to recover. I had to hurry to the potting shed and write dozens of labels, and collect my supply of little boxes, in an effort to save some of the seed. I use the small white plastic boxes that are used to hold flavoring in the centre of a certain yogurt product. The labels are those used in the supermarket price guns, which easily peel off and stick to the boxes.

Lewesias that had produced a myriad of flowering stems and which were adorned with seed heads and ready to settle down for the winter, suddenly got a new lease of life, shedding their old flower stocks and producing new rosettes of flowers, which opened in a matter of days.

Diascias in the hanging baskets that had only produced lots of luscious growth all summer, finally spread a mantle of beautiful pink flowers over the dark green foliage. These plants are not tolerant of drought, which kills them very quickly in spite of coming from South Africa, and need lots of sunshine to give of their best. This is a lesson that I learned the hard way when I first started to grow these plants. One look at the label

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