2026/36 - Crispy Leaves

 September, so the delta summer is officially (meteorologically) over. It feels over! When I walk Puck in the early morning, the air is scented with turning leaves and new brackish water, for it has finally started raining. And beneath the summer oaks along my street, toadstools have sprouted overnight.

My grape is slowly changing colour as well. It has done very well, the grapes were sweet.

My kiwi should take notice and see it as an example...it has hated the drought, has not grown an inch after April and has lost 3/4 of its leaves; they were burnt to a crisp.

But to my huge surprise, the upshot of an apple in my tiny orchard has totally ignored the summer heat, and grew very tall indeed! Longer than 3m branches, no less! It has sown itself at a very unsuitable spot, right at the corner of my greenhouse, so I cut the branches every year. Last year I used them to build a fence, this year I have stacked them in my new dead hedge. I am happy I built this, it works very well to keep the tall wild grass at the right side of the fence. As I was working there, a water vole ran at great speed out of the grass near the compost heaps, ran over my shoe and threw itself into the frog pond - I heard the splash. They are quite rare these days, so it is very welcome to make Hunky Dory its home.

I also cut the lowest branches off my silver pine. This 'dwarf' (ha! If that is a dwarf, I am a giant!) has grown so wide that it is pushing my Achilleas to tilt at a crazy angle they don't like to be tilted at. So I gave them some room.

I used the cut offs to roof my gazebo, using some of the apple branches to fix them in place. 

I know it is only a temporary solution, that roof will deteriorate, but I don't mind that, as the supply of cut offs is endless.

I can now sit in dappled shade at least, totally necessary, as even the 21°C sun is still too hot to my liking.

I also cut down some of the many teasles, that have been emptied of seeds by now.

Look what I found in the hot bed: a large grasshopper. Very well camouflaged, I really had to look before I found it.

There were quite a few cabbage butterflies around as well, but none of the more exotic ones.

The Asters / Michaelmas daisies are starting to bloom now, but they have suffered from the heat, like many of my flowers.

Such a shame, normally this time of year my garden is very colourful...

All the neighbour's figs are either eaten by the birds, or shrivelled on the trees and the blackberries the same. I don't have blackberries, but I do grow yellow raspberries, and they have produced a second crop! Very nice they tasted, too!

 

The above shrub has self-seeded, great!

Right, I'll leave you with a photo of my old Puck at one of her favourite spots on the river. She is very happy that that heat has left the country! Hottest and driest summer on record... we had bans on riverbarges as the water level simply was too low. Puck couldn't care less, she just likes staring at the waterfowl.

Do visit my website at Renée Grashoff Schrijft and have a lovely week, wherever you are!

Renée Grashoff 

2026/31 - July is a strange month

 On the one hand my town is bursting to the seams with tourists, on the other most people I know have left for other places. It makes for a strange couple of weeks. Still, visiting my garden is a recurring routine, (aren't they all 😂) and thankfully I still have water to give to my veg, despite the weeks without rain.

I've used my garden as an inspiration for my latest painting, for the upcoming exhibition in September. I wish I could say this cockerel is mine, but alas. I'd love to get me some chickens, but I will be sensible and will not. The responsibility for my senior dog is quite enough for now.

Yesterday she saw the resident beaver again, and this time realised it is quite a large animal. Eventhough the beaver immediately fled into the water of the sloot, Puck thought it very scary. All the way home she kept looking over her shoulder to make sure it didn't follow her home!

My wildflower meadow underneath the apple trees is attracting the insects, such as they are. The overcast skies of this last week has meant that I hardly see any. 

But the apples, plums and figs around my garden are doing well. It is always a race who will get the ripe figs, the birds or me. The birds always win...Unfortunately they just take one beak full and leave the rest...The plums are rock hard still.

But my friend has a plum tree which has a massive crop this year, and they are ripe, so she brought me a couple of kilos. I washed and pitted them, and then froze them.

But I had my own harvest...massive cucumbers, and the first three bland tomatoes.

I cannot eat that much cucumber, so I preserve the leftover in apple vinegar. It keeps for months.

Random pic: yesterday I had lunch on one of Rotterdam's roofs: Ted's, it is called. If ever you find yourself in the town of my birth, do search this out! It is an allotment on a roof, with a restaurant, very cool!

Okay, I'll leave you with some photos I took very early this morning, along the Brielse Maas.

Do visit my website at Renée Grashoff Schrijft , translator button provided, and have a lovely week, wherever you are.

Renée Grashoff 

2026/26 - My Frustrating Frog Pond

 A garden should have water, and especially a garden presenting itself as a naturalistic one, allotment or not. So one of the first things I did when I took over a potato field 4 years ago was to dig a frog pond.

The very first beginning

   The digging was hard, as I had broken my upper arm not long before, and I found lots of forgotten rotten potatoes.

   But I adore a good pond, so I dug on, and kept my vision as a motivator: a tranquil pond with a waterlily, dragonflies and happy frogs.

   I put in a liner, filled the pond from my water butt, bought a waterlily and some aerators, and waited for the frogs to arrive.

   Three years, according to Charlie Dimmock, Queen of Water Features, before a pond is really established.

It took a couple of months, full of anticipation, would the frogs arrive? Nope, but a ferocious SW gale did, and blew the greenhouse of my neighbour to smithereens, depositing her shards of glass all over my garden and into my pond. It sprung a leak. From then on, my dream of a lovely, natural frog pond turned into endlessly putting enough water in it for my waterlily to survive.

The effort paid off, not in frogs, who never deemed the pond worthy, but in toads and salamanders. So I kept it up, the filling it up. Until last year, when the summer was so hot, that I gave up. My 1000 l. water butt was empty, and I needed the other butt to water my plants. I decided to let nature take over...no more pond.

But. But. But. Over the months I really started to miss that icky bit of water to stare into! So I thought right. I'll give it one more go!

By the end of April it was no more than an overgrown, grassy, weedy dip in the soil! It took hours and hours to get that grass out.

Hours! 

Empty! And...oh, my giddy aunt! After a rainstorm, there was water. Sure, it went down again, but to me this was a sign of hope. I immediately went and told Waterlily, who was hanging on for her dear life in a temporary bucket.

As I have a never used dog pool (Puck took one look at it and told me I could  go sit in it myself, which I have done a couple of times), I decided to put that in the middle, so that Waterlily has a proper 50 cm water depth, without (hopefully!) leaks.

And here it is. I plan to get some marginal plants for camouflage, so that it looks a little less...hm...weird?

But look at Waterlily! Utterly happy again, and so am I.

My neighbouring 'pond' was very tranquil this morning, after a massive thunderstorm in the night. Puck stood beside me, trembling, if she wasn't pacing the room for hours, trembling. Thunderstorms scare her. So this morning, at 5.30, I gave her the opportunity to choose her own walkies, to cheer her up, and she wanted to go to the ferry to look at the waterfowl.

And yes I know she's a dog, and I humanise her, but she's been my faithful companion since Feb.2019 and now she's really getting old...So I indulge her. Even when she's prevented me from sleeping for practically three quarters of the night. I don't know her age, she could be as old as twelve. She'll be my last rescued dog, as I am getting old too.

Right. Look up my website at Renée Grashoff Schrijft when you feel like it, spread the word about this blog to dog lovers and plant geeks, and have a lovely week, wherever you are.

Renée Grashoff 

2026/21 - 10 Reasons to Embrace the New Climate

 Seriously, Renée?

Yes...My stoic self tells me I cannot change the climate single-handedly, so I may as well resign myself to it. It's very simple to moan, and I could find a 100 reasons to. But instead I will attempt to find postivity, and share this with you lovely folk.

1.

The tall grasses along the river walk, on the other side of what you can see in this photo, are over a month early in their tallness. That means Puck can walk on the path through the tall grass which has been mowed especially for that purpose, without being spotted by other dogs. In the very early mornings (that photo I took at 06.15 a.m) there is no need to hide though, right then my reactive rescued doggie and I have the entire riverbank to ourselves. Which is the exact reason we get up that early!

2.

The vegetation underneath my favourite Willow is a month early as well. Which is good for the insects, which in turn is great for the birds, who are nesting earlier too. I have been enjoying the 'cuc-koo!' of the cuckoo for a fortnight already, and spotted the first swallows that have returned. The crows in the roost down the road have fledglings already, and keep a beady eye on Puck, who ignores them.

3.

In Mildenburgbos wood in Oostvoorne, the Wild Garlic is prolific, and scents the air. I would love to get some to make pesto, but a. it is forbidden to pick and b. there are masses of dogs being walked there...garlic pesto à la pee...no thanks. The new climate means we enjoy balmy weather much earlier in the season, mid-May feels like the end of June.

4.

There is absolutely no need to force my Rhubarb, as I grow much more than I can eat, and this is very early as well. I give loads away to the immigrants in the Taalcafé (Dutch language café) I volunteer at twice a week, to teach them Dutch. It always makes me laugh when they sniff at the stalks suspiciously. This is edible? But I provide my recipe, and so far they all love it.

5.

My Roses are, so far, taking the lack of rain in the Spring (3rd year running with hardly any rain in what should be very wet months!) in their stride. This one is already in flower, and the other three are full of buds. I adore my Roses, so I watch them like an eagle for signs of stress, and water them.

6.

Okay...I am struggling a bit now... Can I find four more reasons to be happy about the lack of rain? Or about nature being confused? Can nature be confused?

These are the Lilacs next to the ruin of Oostvoorne Castle, and they smell delicious. Lilacs are unassuming when not in flower, a bit boring really. But when they do so...hardly anything beats them for scent. Rain makes them look bedraggled. (I told you, struggling)

7.

The sunny, unseasonably hot weather, has made visiting the coast a lot of fun. This early in the season it is not overrun (yet) by tourists. It was extremely windy at the Brouwersdam (hence the bad hair), and this restaurant used to stand on the beach...Due to seawater levels rising, it is now permanently in the sea, and that beach is history. Need I remind you my country is situated approx. 4m. below that sea level? Oops, this is not exactly a positive...delete.

8.

Found one! Reason #8 to be positive, is that we can grow Grapes outside of greenhouses. We used to wax lyrical about vineyards across the border in France and Germany, well, we have our own these days. So there. Okay, we lack the gradient, and proper soil (to name a not unimportant detail), and our delta tends to get very muggy in Summer, but the vines do grow. I have my own, and am very proud of it. Any grapes? Nope, not so far.

9. 

I am stumped, I must admit. Cannot think of a reason to be positive about all those storms, one after the other, that we are experiencing, but most without a drop of rain for my gasping garden. So I just post a pretty picture of the Bluebells in Mildenburgbos. Gorgeous, isn't it?

10.

My rescued girl from Curaçao. She's having a good sniff, other dogs use that spot to swim. She does not swim. She does not do most doggie things, like play, jump around like a happy maniac, or chase sticks or balls. My Puck was chained up, beaten, starved and permanently pregnant, before she was rescued and flown over to me. Her joys are simple: eat, sleep, get belly rubs and feel safe. Climate change means nothing to her. She enjoys her walks best when no other dogs are around, in her mind her species is a threat. We have a lot in common, my dog and I, that's why we get along so well.

Do look me up for more stories about my country at Renée Grashoff Schrijft

Or when you are looking to adopt a dog, and give it a good life, here is the link to Curaçao Animal Rights Foundation CARF

Have a good week, wherever you are!

Renée Grashoff 

2026/18 - Naturalistic gardening

After 4 years of blogging about the same two gardens, there is a tendency to repeat myself. The foundation of the gardens stays the same, obviously, as in both I cannot change it. A balcony stays a balcony, and on an allotment you are bound to rules.

 But still, I do try to renew and rewild.

On the balcony, I have changed around the climbers in two of the planters, from cucumbers and tomatoes to roses and Achillea. I have decided to keep the veg to the allotment.

I've told you the frog pond is a failed project, right? So I have given up refilling it weekly, and now let it get naturally soggy by occasional rainshowers. It means the plants in there will change as well...I will miss my Waterlily, but I hope the Papyrus will stay. I have removed the two gutters I used to direct the waterflow from my water butt to the pond. At least I will not stumble across them anymore... always a good idea not to break my neck.

This is no more...

I'll see how it evolves now, and wish my salamander good luck!

 I promised you a better photo of the orange Broom, and here it is. A lovely colour, I think!

Its white sister has grown into quite a large bush.

One of the strong, healthy plants that provide colour alongside the Broom and Tulips, is the Centaurea. I started with just a single plant, and by now it has spread all through the garden. Bumblebees love it, and so do I. 

Another 'spreader' is the Euphorbia. Again, it started with just one plant, and by now it is slowly marching away from the Artichoke patch (and who can blame it?) towards the dead hedge. My Rosemary is in flower, but my neighbour has a Rosemary bush that makes my pretty one look like a dwarf!

How about this one then! The photo does not do it justice, it is as large as a Toyota Aygo.

The last of my Narcissi to offset the new Tulips I planted in November. The yellow flowers are two cabbages I left in that border last Autumn, to give some nectar to the bees this Spring. There is a mass of Aquilegia in this border as well, that's new too, originating from the plants near the greenhouse door.

Some more Tulips, Apeldoorns Elite.

The Bergenia is doing its best to stick its head above the grass that is trying to take over this border.

This Tulip is called Miranda.

And this one should be Apeldoorns Elite, but frankly I think they put the wrong bulb in the sack, as A&E is orange with yellow edges...

Now, off-topic, look what Puck and I walked into...The entire harbour was filled with these small fish, approx 3" long, and leisurely swimming around in circles. I was amazed. So many fish, it must have been thousands! My fish knowledge does not reach far enough to be able to tell you the name, sorry.

You'd think the seagulls that are always hanging around the harbour would have a party, a rave, but funnily enough there was not a gull in sight.

I'll leave you with a photo of Brielse Meer, just before sunrise. We stumbled across four hares who were chasing eachother, and who were so into eachother that they only spotted Puck right at the last minute. They raced off, but one got so confused it ran in the wrong direction and crashed into Puck. My dog (always on leash because of the nesting waterfowl and the beavers) was so flabbergasted she just stood and stared. Well, she'll have something to dream about today!

Puck and I wish you a good week, wherever you are!

Renée Grashoff