Just when I thought the garden was nearing the end of its summer days, the purple-podded peas have got a new lease of life and have started blooming and producing again. I am so glad I didn’t pull out the peas when I thought that was the last I would see of them this year.

I didn’t plant many achocha this year but they share the climbing frame with the peas and you can just see their scanty appearance in the corner.

A lovely poppy appeared growing with the onions, what odd companions, but the poppy doesn’t seem to mind, it’s one of the healthiest I’ve seen this year.

The pink Hylotelephium spectabile, I know it as Ice plant, a sedum which I took a cutting from a neighbour’s plant in the last house I was in, that was about 14 years’ ago – and it’s just about to come into flower now. I have no idea what the variety of my ill-gotten gain is. The black grass (ophiopogon planiscapus Nigrescen), just in front of it, was very badly damaged with the frost and it seems to have revived a bit. However, there are only a couple of purple spires of flowers peeping out from its leaves.

Like the purple-podded peas, there is another flush of Sarah Raven’s (harlequin) sweet peas blooming when I thought they were on their way out.

The begonia by the shed door has come to life.

Of course galtonia, crocosmia (lucifer) and several other flowers are still blooming, but surprisingly enough, beside them is a little, pink, ornamental strawberry, which has decided to flower again.

The Busy Lizzies which were sad-looking, little plug plants, I bought from an online supplier at a bargain price, and which looked a bit woebegone most of the summer, were packed in a trough out of the way because they showed little sign of surviving.

The verbascum and polemonium have also started to bloom again, and in the distance the aquatic mint has started to flower.

Although during late summer and into autumn, you expect to see the summer plants retire from flowering so it’s nice that they are rallying round for another encore of display.