Back in the prehistoric times before the internet, sending flowers to somebody in another place usually happened through Interflora – organised by telephone (land line, of course) or in person. The Interflora group ran extensive advertising and their slogan was ‘say it with flowers’. I have been thinking about that all week in various contexts – letting the flowers tell the story.

When daylight saving ends here in the southern latitudes, we have to accept that autumn has arrived and this always happens around Easter. The rockery has its second coming and oh my, but it is pretty at this time of year.

In early spring, the highly detailed rockery is dominated by the yellow of dwarf narcissi and every lachenalia we can grow here, across the range of colours. In autumn, it is mostly pink and white with masses of Cyclamen hederafolium and the Nerine sarniensis hybrids we can grow well.

Can one ever have too many of the species cyclamen? I think not. They are seen here with the lilac blue of the autumn crocus from the C. serotinus group, maybe salzmanii. Our rockery is immediately in front of the house so we walk past it often every day and really it is very, very pretty at this time.

The Wild North Garden has largely become our gardener Zach’s domain and he is continuing to add suitable plants that are surplus to the more tightly managed garden areas. He was so pleased with how the Japanese anemones he planted last year have settled in that he is adding more this year.

The dahlias have also settled in well to this controlled wilderness. I am pretty sure this is Dr Keith Hammet’s Dahlia ‘Conundrum’ which certainly increases well and flowers for a very long time.

The Wild North Garden may be Zach’s special area but the summer gardens are mine and I love the Court Garden in early autumn as the tall helianthus come into flower and the sun drops lower in the sky to shine through the flower spikes of the tall grass, Miscanthus ‘Morning Light’.

Personally, I would have called it ‘Evening Light’ or maybe ‘Late Afternoon Light’ but that has to do with location and the direction of our lowering sun.

I captioned the top pastel pink, blue and white confection as ‘the free-form version’. This more explicit floral version of a flag would have worked better had Japanese anemones also come in pale blue as well as white and pale pink but we make do with what we have. It reminds me of the floral confections the very late Queen Mother used to wear. Some of you may remember her many appearances where it looked like she was wearing pretty hydrangeas on her head. I went looking for images but they were all copyrighted so if you are curious, google ‘Queen Mother’s petal hats’ to behold the visions.

Sometimes in life, we need to stand up to be counted and I will stand up and be counted in support of the extremely marginalised group this flag stands for as they face an onslaught from people who want to erase them from history, from the present and from the future.