Hairy Wind

Morning all,

What a dramatic week on the world weather front. What with Irma still bashing its way across the Caribbean and into the US and the monsoon flooding further east causing large scale destruction and chaos it’s on the personal scale that it impacts most with people’s homes and livelihoods shattered. When we get smaller scale issues piling up here it feels like the world is against you, it is so difficult to really imagine the enormous life changing upheaval such devastating disasters must have on the individuals affected. I’m counting my blessings that with all the challenges that seem to accumulate at this end we are all still willing and able to travel in a positive direction.
The modern world of instant news and communication creates for me a bit of a conflict of interest. Concern for those affected is of course there, but the fascination of being able to watch the Irma story unfold from a distance, more or less as it happens, strikes me as being akin to watching the F1 races in anticipation of there being a crash. You wouldn’t want to admit it but the spectacle of such devastating power has a real draw to it. The US is next on the hit list for Irma and the scale of exodus from Florida must be astonishingly difficult to cope with. Virtually a whole state on the move which involves millions of people is just mind blowing. On one hand, for the individuals involved I hope that it blows itself out pretty quickly and they can all return to normal in a few days, but on the other is this the sort of lesson Donald needs to see to consider if there might be something in this global warming thing. I know one event doesn’t prove anything but as a demonstration of how a change in the weather can affect change big lumps of the world perhaps we should be making a more conscious effort to do better. On a more personal note I would like to say that it’s not all down to Donald and the like, we can all do our bit.
Ok, rant over. Our swallows have left, after the usual two broods, although not as many young ones raised this year, I suspect the erratic summer weather didn’t help. There are still the odd one or two passing over the nursery and the house martins are still here so I’m still clinging onto the idea that summer is not quite yet over.

Availability highlights
The compact and free flower Anthemis Charme are now in bud. They flower for ages.Fresh batches of the ever popular Achillea coming on nicely with new flowers shoots appearing on several colours. There are a few nice short Nepeta Six Hills in bud at the moment. The dinky little Junior Walker has shoot back after a trim to make nice bushy plants with another flower flush showing. The short Campanula carpatica is in bud again after an earlier trim.
Lots of the Asters are busting a gut to get into flower, The mildew free Ashvi, Asmo, and Asram, now have well developed bud and the odd open flower. Lady in Blue, Jenny and Starlight have loads of bud developing.
We have a fantastic crop of Ajuga in range of leaf colours just bursting to get into the garden. Fresh batches of Euphorbia are looking nice in a range of foliage colours. Bright variegated leaves of the short tufted grass Carex Evergold are looking very neat and smart.

Wooden box returns
We are having a scoot around collecting up any wooden boxes you may have ready for collection over the next few weeks so we can get them clean, dried and repaired ready for next spring. So please do drop us a line if you would like us to pop in and collect those up. We’ve already collected lots but there are more to come I hope.
Thanks.
Have a good week from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries.