Not to come over all melancholic or bitter, but one of the garden disappointments of the year are the snapdragons. Snapdragons should still be in riot at this time of year and as the days get shorter and colder, it takes ever-increasing amounts of gaudiness to stay cheerful. I don’t believe in quietly passing through the autumn to the dead of winter.
Unfortunately, appalling weather and inexperience meant that the snapdragons were almost a no-show this year. I tried sowing a batch from seed in early spring and they took ages to come up and were just miserable, the second sowing was just the same. I realised far too late in the season that it was going to take a desperate dash to the local garden centre if we were to have any snapdragons flowering in the garden at all. The only colours available when we got there were mellow yellow and pastel pink; not what I was hoping for. We had to buy them anyway and they went in the ground. Cue the most miserable and wettest summer for a long time and the best we got was a sprinkling here and there.
There wasn’t really much more than this. It’s such a shame. I guess you win some, you lose some. We do have other small flowering plants that are dotted around, which should keep going until the frosts arrive but I was hoping that the snapdragons would take us out in a blaze of colour and glory. Though that’s not the case this year, there’s always the next.
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