Dear Readers, once something that you’ve worked hard for (such as a 60th Wedding Anniversary Party) is over, it’s easy to feel a bit purposeless and downhearted. As I dragged myself through my daily routine this week, I found myself wondering  ‘what did I do with my life before I was organising flowers and negotiating about cakes?’ And more to the point, how do I reconnect with my life again? As usual, my answer is to step outside and see what’s going on in the garden. I feel as if I haven’t really ‘seen’ it for weeks. My first thought is ‘wow, what a lot of spiders’ webs there are’.

My second reaction is that the garden is a mess, even worse than it usually is at this time of year. The reeds in the pond are sagging, but are not yet far enough gone to be cut back. The jasmine definitely needs some work. Getting the whitebeam and the hawthorn trimmed last year was a great idea but, as the tree surgeon warned me, it just means that they grow back thicker. But then I stopped seeing what was wrong, and started to be drawn in.

I have a climbing hydrangea in the dark side-return of my house, and I have been amazed with how it can cling on to anything. One long stem has nearly reached next-door’s gutter, and I foresee much standing on stepladders to dissuade it. However, the way it produces roots from its stem fascinates me – it’s easy to forget that plants are mobile, because they move on such a slow timescale, but I’m sure that a timelapse of this plant would see it reaching out with its ‘fingers’, looking for a holdfast and growing towards the sun.

The hydrangea was full of flowers this year, and even after they’ve died I love the way that they hold spiders’ webs and raindrops. Every so often the right plant ends up in the right place, and this is definitely one of them.

Further along the fence, the bittersweet is full of berries,their colour changing from green to deepest scarlet. They look just like little tomatoes. I was going to root the plant out, until I saw how much the carder bumblebees loved the flowers.

The wooden steps down to the pond are slippery and so it takes care to negotiate them, but slowing down is no bad thing – I hear the plops of the frogs leaping into the pond, and see their little heads popping back up amongst the water lily pads. This area got really overgrown with great willowherb this year, and I made the decision to grub it up and replace it with some meadowsweet and some smaller loosestrife. We’ll see how it goes. The pendulous sedge has gotten a bit out of hand as well, so I might try to trim it back – it provides great cover for the little frogs, but it’s such a thug. Still, I am delighted to have my first ever bulrushes. It’s the little things that keep me going, to be sure.

My Himalayan Honeysuckle is doing very well this year, too – it is covered in flowers, which will be useful for the bees on a warm autumn day. The Rozanne geraniums are still in full flower, in spite of their shady, inauspicious position. I really don’t mind plants self-seeding in the woody area, because it’s so difficult to find anything that’s happy there. And my Rosa rugosa has a single rosehip.

Last year’s marigolds have multiplied! I buy plants from Sarah Raven whenever I can afford it, and have been extremely happy with the quality.

The end of the garden is in need of some strict discipline too, but not yet. I love the way that the vine has formed a red waterfall over the bamboo. I shall tackle it once the leaves have dropped off, because it’s so vigorous that it’s taken over one of our chairs.

This has been a great year for the crab apple too, and the self-seeded cherry laurel is being allowed to remain because the flowers are so popular with pollinators.

I have another hydrangea here too, and the long panicles are full of pollen in the late summer.

And so, although I need to do some work in the garden, it’s still full of wonders. I top up the bird feeders and within seconds, the blue tits have arrived, along with a very fine coal tit.

The pace of life is speeding up in the garden, and in the street – when I came home the other day every television aerial had a group of wheezy starlings on it. Hard times could be ahead, depending on the severity of the winter, and all of nature knows it. And for me, just half an hour outside has put me back where I like to be – in touch with what’s going on in a world that’s so much bigger than just me.

Plus, now Mum and Dad fancy going on a cruise. I foresee my project manager hat being dusted off very soon!