Welcome Tua Pek Kong, the Mitcheldean Garden 2018
Bye, Bye, BB – BB, Bye, Bye

This page is part of a series of garden blogs from 2018. Click here for the index.

On Yuehong's first visit to the UK, she asked one of our friends when the dry season was in England. Memorably the reply came that occasionally we had a dry day, after which we coined the phrase 'Susie Day' to describe those typical Forest of Dean days when the sun never puts in an appearance and a steady drizzle falls from a leaden sky. Barely a week before, on a gloriously sunny October day with stunning autumn colours, Yuehong had wondered if an early departure for Penang had been a good idea. Never mind at least when it rains there, you don't stand and shiver unless you've been caught out in the jungle halfway up a hill. An awful lot of 'hidden gardening' has been carried out in the last month. Gone are all the hanging baskets and annuals and for the time being the garden doesn't look very different in places from the way we first saw it nearly 9 years ago..

We've tried over-wintering the 'portable' fuchsias in the greenhouse and it doesn't work for us, so hardy or tender, they've been put in the vegetable patch. The hardy ones will survive and depending on the severity of the winter an unpredictable number of the tender ones too. It's a price we have to pay for being absentee gardeners. There are many apparently bare beds, each has been gently dug and manured before being planted with hyacinths and tulips.

It certainly doesn't look too beautiful at the moment, especially with the surplus wood 'on offer'. Compared to just about everyone else in the street who believes in cutting their 'lawns', I leave our grass quite long. Now I have eliminated almost all the large weeds, it's a lot healthier and it attracts no extra moss. Note the absence of our 'Blue Baby' (BB)...

As seems to happen every year, the fuchsias started late and will finish late.

Even the bare beds look better on a sunny day.

It's not been a great summer for the annuals and hanging baskets, basically it was too hot and too dry. However, we made a special effort for the beds in front of the bungalow, tap water couldn't be used directly with the azaleas in there too, it first had to be 'conditioned' for a week and then applied by hand. The pictures show red salvia, snapdragons and home grown asters in early September. Of course, the weather conditions kept down the usual bugs and fungal infections. An exception was this bug, it's an elephant hawk moth caterpillar, the 'eye' is actually its back end. The RHS page says it rarely causes extensive damage and should just be relocated, but this one and its mate virtually defoliated one of Yuehong's fuchsias which guaranteed its early demise despite the natural recommended solution being to relocate them to rosebay willow herb.

Life has been tough for the roses this year. The 'Beast from the East' in March set back their growth and then just as they were starting to bloom well, it got too hot and dry. This was about as good as it got on the patio at the end of June. There was little to photograph in July and August, sometimes it seemed we spent a couple of hours every day watering and when we went away for a weekend all the pots, tubs and hanging baskets had to be moved into the shade temporarily, for those down by the road that meant being parked in the garage.

Right in the middle of the autumn tidy up, Yuehong grabbed an opportunity to go to Italy with some friends for the best part of 2 weeks. Of course, I maintained standards with our usual breakfast spread. Afterwards, I set about recovering access to the garage which had gradually been filling with junk over the last 8 years. We didn't quite need a skip, we paid the council to take away an unwanted wardrobe and I made a couple of trips to the council tip. By the time I finished it looked very good, indeed fit for our 'little princess'.

The garage has traditionally had a key role to play in our gardening, in the summer it is host to hyacinth and tulip bulbs and in the winter it's the turn of the dahlia tubers and begonia corms. This winter, for the first time it has to house BB. The far end is also used as a compost store for Yuehong, the tubers and corms are wrapped in paper and stored on top. Sometimes we keep excess horse manure here too, but this time it all got buried where it belongs. It's not a good idea to just drive one of today's cars into the garage and leave it for more than 4 months. The battery will need its charge maintained and before we go, we'll leave the petrol tank full and the tyres over-inflated. Finally we'll leave two windows slightly open and the car in gear with the handbrake off to avoid having it seize on. Needless to say, I didn't work that out myself, it all makes perfectly good sense, but only in hindsight after a good web search.

This is roughly how it will be arranged during our absence, actually I had expected to have to relocate the bicycles etc but there is going to be just enough room for them in there.

Of course, should we have bought a car in Penang, we would simply have locked it up in the condo car park and left it, just as we do for the flat itself. Instead, we have gone down the route of hiring one. As for our local hero Tua Pek Kong, he'll be snug and warm in the bungalow.

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