Veg Plotting

Regular readers know my fondness for Dahlia 'Moonfire', but not that it's been absent from my garden for the past couple of years. I'd managed to successfully overwinter it in the ground for over 20 years, but that's always a risk which eventually found me out. Oh, how I've missed her. How could I resist those firecracker blooms when they winked at me from the plant stall at Chippenham's market last week? Not I - a small exchange of cash ensued and I bore her triumphantly home. I was so pleased with my purchase I even stopped on the way to take the above photo in the Donkey Field! I've always known this dahlia as 'Moonfire', so I was surprised to see her called 'Sunshine' in some of the plant catalogues earlier this year. It turns out that this was the name given by the original breeders in the Netherlands in 1993, but a stray seedling made its way to the UK before commercial release, where it was named 'Moonfire' by Chris Sander...

I'm just back from an amazing train trip across Europe to Lake Garda in Italy. The alpine scenery along the way was breathtaking and it was great to have a ground level view of the mountains instead of the more familiar overhead one. NAH and I managed several refreshing swims in the Lake bobbing amongst the ducks, plus trips to Verona and Venice as well as ferry trips around the lake, which is huge. So huge, even a trip on the pictured cable car up Mount Baldo (the tallest mountain on the lake at 1760 metres) wasn't enough to take it all in. My heads still there, but I'll be back soon with more garden related stuff!