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 

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