This is one of Nancy Nightingale’s purchases.  I like to call it the brain plant.  That is because I have no idea of the true name.  I am not sure that I want to know.

However the more I look at its bizarre folds of scarlet, and in spite of myself, I am beginning to find it strangely attractive.  It is intriguing.  And a little bit scary.

This is Nancy Nightingale’s garden.  After a whole month of total neglect.  Yes four full weeks of being ignored.

Our very own NN has been abroad on a secret mission and her home in the meantime been home to wannabe surfers and possibly hipsters.  Not a gardener in sight.

When I visited yesterday I was expecting carnage, instead I was met with voluptuous, marginally anarchic, beauty.  The cosmos and dahlias, asters and sunflowers, agapanthus and canna, gladioli and lavatera, were tangled together in a deep pile carpet of pure joy.

After a dead-head-athon, the purple beans and plum tomatoes were harvested and a few of the most obvious weeds tugged.

All is ready for her return.