Harvest festival

My tomatoes are excelling themselves. I don't think I've ever had such a good crop - of anything.

A fuchsia from the past

My mum died in April 2015, more than three years ago, but I always think of her when I see these fuchsias. 

I took a cutting from the fuchsias outside her front door after she'd died but I wasn't hopeful they'd come to anything. They meant a lot to my mum in her very old age. They were given to her by her kind cleaner, Ruth. My mum always liked to tell me that Ruth had said she had so many fuchsias in her garden that she could have as many cuttings as she liked.

Well, I took some cuttings and brought them back to London and planted them in a pot. To start with, they behaved just like cut flowers, soon wilting and leaving a few apparently dead twigs. I think this is them below, in March 2016. 

I never got round to throwing them out. One day I spotted some minute green buds appearing lower down the stems. 

There was no turning back. They thrived, I repotted them, and they've been growing happily outside our front door ever since.