2026/40 - Winding Down towards Winter

Puck and I walk in the dark...every morning, every night. It is just in the afternoon that we can admire the turning leaves and many different toadstools and fungi. And in the garden almost everything is turning in for Winter as well.

My neighbour gifted me some of his Italian tomatoes. I chopped them up for salsa. With the prices in the shops being what they are (ridiculously high), I do not turn up my nose at some free sauce!

Whilst he was picking his last tomatoes and beans, I did my last mow...or did I? The grass is making up for those months it did not grow at all!

I mowed my path last week, and mowed it again this week.

And the council mowers were out in force as well. What always amazes me, is that they can mow on Tuesday, and then on Wednesday those toadstools are back! Oh...in case you are wondering...Puck is watching them drilling for yet more cables. Our entire town is resting on cables.

The Plane tree on the ravelin is not turning...yet.

 

I had planned to cloud-prune my Elaeagnus, but did not, as it is filled with flowers and smells divine! I am sure the last bees are grateful.

Making heatwave related changes

 So I took some bedding plants from the balcony to the garden instead. I have decided to go with the flow, you see, and that means downsizing on planters and choosing more heat resistant plants for the balcony. This summer was not only hard on Puck and me, but also terribly hard on my balcony plants. Even daily watering was not enough for a lot of them! I am on the 3rd floor, in full sun all day, so temperatures on the concrete of the balcony were up to 45 degrees C. 

That means taking out the plants that sort of survived, and putting them in full soil, hoping that they'll use the coming months to establish in the garden. And it also means I will switch to Mediterranean plants for 2027.

This Gaura is fine! It has passed the heatwave test with flying colours.

My beloved roses, both on the balcony and in the allotment garden, are fine too. They can stay!

But the wild flowers I have sown in the tin planter were a total disaster!  The only plants that survived were the white Aster, just about to flower, and the Rudbeckia in front.

The Caryopteris that is playing peek-a-boo from beneath the Lathyrus is fine too. But I suspect only because it was in shade from the Lathyrus all Summer.

Just to remind you what that planter looked like initially...all gone now! Not one of those plants survived the last three scorching summers.

And yet again it is 27°C ! Absolutely ridiculous! Mind you, the early mornings and evenings are fabulous. I took Puck to her favourite spot by the Maas last night, and the full moon was gorgeous. She enjoyed, I think...

My old doggie is walking very slowly...with very frequent stops to recover her strength. I bought her a dog cart years ago, but the silly old girl refuses to sit in it. Utter panic! Despite her stamina she is very stubborn! Right now (7 a.m.) she is still asleep, where normally she was raring to go at 6. Yesterday I had to wake her up at 8.30.

So... It is not just my garden that is winding down, I fear. Old dogs...You get a pup (or in my case a 'whatever age in between 2 and 4'), you love it for years and you know you'll have to say goodbye to it eventually. But it is very hard when you both actually get to that stage.

Right. Have a good week, wherever you are!

Renée Grashoff 

2026/39 - Allotment Maintenance - necessary work

 After months of schlepping water, water and more water, it is finally cool enough to trust the occasional rainshower to provide water for my allotment. I still water the plants in the greenhouse, obviously.

Kruisspin/ Cross spider

   And yes, it is Autumn. This   morning, whilst planning to   mow my grass, I almost   walked straight into this   cobweb. The spider was busy   repairing it, but fled to the   safety of the Buddleia it had   attached its web to.

   

   As long as spiders sit still, I   admire their beauty. As soon   as they start moving, it is   another story entirely... I was   once bitten by a big one and it really hurt, but only for a moment.

   But this one was well behaved.

In between the showers, I did some maintenance. High time too, the grass on my paths was so high that I was afraid my old fashioned hand mower would not be able to get through. But it did, just...

Here you are; it looks much better! That pink Gaura is still doing her best, very sweet. The Hedera on the right is full of flowers too, a real bee magnet.

My tiny orchard is to the right, and most of the apples are on the ground now...I noticed there were no wasps there...quite surprising, as last year there were plenty.

Koolwitje / Cabbage Butterfly Caterpillars

Plenty of these, though! Here they are on the leaves of my summer bulbs (duds! Only leaves and no flowers!). I don't mind them munching my leaves; it is better that they eat my duds, than that they devastate the cabbages of my neighbour.

My garden is filled with Asters/Michealmas Daisies, so cheerful. There are white ones as well, but they are still in bud.

And my Cotoneaster pyramid is suddenly orange. It usually stays that way until the birds get really hungry, and then they pick it clean. It used to be up against an old broad bean fence, which blew over in a gale. So now I have given it a pyramid of three apple branches, which it seems to like.

I cut off the lower branches of my silver Pine a few weeks ago, and it looks much better now that I was able to mow around my tiny Lavender and Erigeron island. I have not finished mowing though...the area next to the fence still has to be done. 

And then the next project is to prune the Elaeagnus again. I do this in Autumn, to keep up the raised canopy. The endeavour is to cloudprune it...so far the bare trunks are nice, but the cloudpruning still looks very amateur. Especially now the branches have grown out so much. Never mind, I'll keep at it.

Those daily rainshowers have had another effect: my plants in the trellis planter on the balcony have suddenly decided to give it one last effort! I have watered them daily during those five (5!!!) heatwaves, and thus kept them alive, but flower? They stopped completely. Just look at them now though.

It reminds me of how nature is very resilient. And that is hopeful. We people make such a mess of things! At least the earth will survive us, I think.

Beneath the Oaks in my street, there is an abundance of toadstools, huge ones, I have never seen them get this large. My son says they are edible, but due to the also huge number of dogs in my neighbourhood, I will not try.

Right. From Puck and me both, I wish you a great week, wherever you are!

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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 

2026/33 - Heatstress ? Absolutely! Me too...

 In a normal year, I would notice my balcony plants getting a bit tired of it all by the end of September. The same goes for Hunky Dory, a gentle decline, a winding down towards full-blown autumn.

 This year however, both have plants already simply giving up!

That grass is brown (although the roots should be alive...I hope!), the flowers are all spent, the ornamental grasses are yellow. The plants in the shade of the Pinus are barely hanging on.

The only plant still going strong in this part of my garden is the Wild Carrot. It must be because I give it peptalks. Even the 'weed' Aegopodium podagraria is looking distinctly unhappy.

The only part of the garden that seems to be hanging on, sort of, is the pink bed.

This Chinese Lantern should be blooming in mid-September at the earliest. Oh well, no use keeping on about it, 2026 has been the hottest, most frustrating gardening year of my life.

My balcony roses are doing okay, as they get mollycoddled by me, I should admit. Daily watering, daily deadheading, daily talking to's.

The Erigeron likes it dry, so that is doing fine, as is the English grass. But that  Physocarpus opul. Diablo at the right, is struggling! We've had a terrible mistral-like wind for days (hot, force 5) which has dried it out despite my watering, and it has lost half of its leaves.

That Streptocarpus has tripled in size, but has almost stopped flowering. I have to bring it indoors in October for the winter, it is a houseplant really, but where on earth will I put it? It is huge. That is the thing with putting houseplants outside for a summer holiday...they like it so much that they grow like mad.

The Last Cucumber. They have all been fat and short. But thankfully they taste okay, unlike the Tomatoes - I have plenty of them, but they are only suitable for sauce, and then need loads of herbs to give them some taste.

Actually, this grass along the lake bank does not look so bad! Not lush, but not the brown stuff where I necessarily have my Puck do a quick wee either. We just got in from such a wee, 35°C would you believe, and my poor old dog was suffering. But she is used to go around 14.00, so go she must! I take her in the shade of the Summer Oaks around the corner, but so do all the other dog walkers, so it has turned into Poo Avenue.

She would feel better if she swam to cool off, but she is not a swimmer. Actually, there is blue-green algae in the lake, and people and dogs are warned not to swim in it, as the algae not only turn you green and make you smell like a three days dead fish, but they can actually make you very ill.

So she suffers in silence, and I give her the occasional ice cube, and turn the fan on for her.

Right. From a sweltering Dutch Delta I'll say bye bye. Hopefully the rain that they keep promising us, but so far never arrived, will come this weekend. Wish us luck?

Have a good week, wherever you are.

Renée Grashoff 

2026/27 - After the thunderstorm

 In this country, it either swelters or freezes, it seems. After two much too cold June weeks, we fell into a heatwave overnight, which ended after two days with a massive thunderstorm, but gathered steam within a day and then turned into the most sweltering week in the history of our country! In my tiny flat the night time temperature reached 29,5°C, so I spent three days in the dark, with everything closed, to try and keep out the 38° heat.

By 9 p.m. it was 31°C still, and the sky turned black. I made sure my largest plants were safe, and waited for what was to come with my dog Puck. Puck is terrified of thunderstorms.

Now this I had never seen before: a band of cloud moving from left to right, but another band moving straight up. Anyway, at 21.30 the first lightning appeared, and my old rescued doggie turned into a shivering, teeth shattering, sorry wreck.

She did not sleep. So I did not sleep either, since she paced the floor endlessly. At 5.30 a.m. we went out, to enjoy the peace and quiet, and it was as if that storm had never been.

I cycled to Hunky Dory at 06.30, to see if my greenhouse was okay, and if my plants were still upright.

And to my relief all was well. Absolutely sopping wet, but well.

My Hydrangeas are always happy with a good soak.

The first Hemerocallis in flower. At the top of this page is the other one.

The Hollyhocks, which self seed all over the place.

My Malaysian friend Li Ping with some Hollyhocks elsewhere in Brielle.

The Houttuynia, which I had planted in the raised bed, but who escaped and now is doing very well all around it.

The Fennel reaching for the stars. After I planted one three years ago, it has self-seeded all over the garden. I pull out the ones who are in awkward positions (right on the path, for example), but leave quite a few, as I adore the scent and save the seeds for cooking.

The Monarda is enjoying itself in the heat.

My attempt to keep out that scorching sun. It did not work!

Puck was not impressed.

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Have a good week, wherever you are!

Renée Grashoff