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Two sides of the autumnal coin here at Longmeadow.

and it has the bonus of the roots being attractive to rats. Everybody wins.

When I began the Writing Garden this year I said that I was trying to channel Cow Parsley for as much of the year as possible. That channel is open and flowing well at the moment. It is the first time I have made a white garden, recoiling at the cliche of it. But I now see why people do it. The soul is salved.

Night/white garden

The roses this year are particularly happy and this Rosa Moysii - 20 years old and 15ft high x about 20ft has never been better. I love the spangling of the flowers - nothing brash or luxurious about them - almost spattered onto the stems. Of course they famously precurse the incredible bottle-shaped hips but that is a bonus. The flowers, that only last 10 days or so, are reason enough to grow it.

The two opposite shades of the June Jewel Garden: Iris chrysographes sleekly black  and the oaten heads of Stipa gigantea catching the evening light.

We have too few climbing roses here - very few suitable walls - so this is treasured. But I am trying to rectify this by planting a number to grow into trees. But first grow your tree - it has taken until recently for the trees I planted 10,15 and 20 years ago to grow big enough to be planted into.

This hosta was being overwhelmed by its neighbours so I dug it up last night and bunged it into this pot. I gave it a really good soak but it seems perfectly happy in its new home. The point of the story? That you can move almost anything at any time of year if you are quick, have a decent rootball and water it really well. I do so all the time.

Green is a colour too...

And  the spin off from such a cold spring is that there are still tulips and it is almost June. That is a gleaming silver lining.

The answer to both is a resounding No. Like the apple blossom, they are wierdly and wonderfully late and, I think, work really well under the blossom. It is modest as yet but they will spread and there shoudl eventually be a white spangled carpet under the emerging blossom in years to come.

It is not something that that is likely to feature in GW but it gives me much pleasure.

Drove to London and back in almost constant driving rain but before I left garden was bright with dawn sun. It will return.

Now the leaves are filling out and spreading across the trees and hedges around the pond once the the evening light drops below a certain level it only just breaks through the screening foliage.

I don't mind at all that I was sold a wrong 'un. It is a magnificent tree - grown on its own roots so much more vigorous than a conventional desert pear and after just fifteen years a good 30 ft tall. It is always the first of the orchard trees to bear blossom - although like all of them, a good fortnight  or more late this year - and the owls sit in it in autumn and hoot loudly when I go and shut up the chickens.

The ragged, seared beauty of parrot tulips has a kind of appalling fascination: teetering on the edge of being terribly wrong.

and  - at last - the tulips are beginning to flower too. Phew!