Hmmm. I have  had some odd flowerings but the reverse of what you two have experienced. Just about everything flowered early and seemed to exhaust themselves. Consequently the only flowers I have now are the Michelmas daisies. And a lone and defiant snapdragon. Even the crocosmia departed early

Now we have something of a panic because Dode and the Madam's cruise ship broke down in the Med. a couple of days ago, and the upshot is that because they can't continue, everyone's been sent home early, on whatever flights they can manage. D and tM have been flown from Nice to Glasgow, which is fine, except that they departed from Newcastle, which is where their car is, along with everybody else who flew from there. The travel firm is then intending to send them down to Gatwick by coach overnight so that they can catch a flight from there to Newcastle tomorrow morning . (!). Son-in-law has gone to Glasgow to pick them up, leaving me to try and finish off as best as possible before they return, which will be as it's getting dark, which will spoil the effct somewhat... And I just wonder whose job it will be to drive down to Newcastle and back so that the car can be picked up? I foresee a shortlist of one...

P.S. The greenhouse is the sole contribution that Dode made to the garden last year: cleaning it up and laying new flooring; it took almost as long as the whole garden to do, and was probably responsible for the start of my knee trouble last year, since he overestimated the amount of sand required by a factor of three, and furthermore bought it by the bag without buying a barrow in which to cart it: since the job of levelling the sand and placing the flags just so could only be performed by him, the materials all had to be lugged there by someone else, and in this case the 'one' is particularly apposite. And of course having lugged the overabundance of sand to the required location, I then had to take two thirds of it elsewhere - his carport as it happens, which is where it has remained until we added it to one of the eight or so barrowloads of cement that we've had to make up. The deckchairs are the Madam's contribution: she thought it would be very pleasant to use the green house as a bolt-hole, but seems never to have taken into consideration the fact that a team of native bearers armed with machetes would be required in order to beat a path to the retreat....

Ron, I am speechless. Surely there must have been a simpler solution

You can plants wallflowers as soon as they're available (Oct -Nov), and they will flower in about April. I'm wondering about autumn pansies - or violas in my case - myself. They are terrific at the moment. I've never managed to have them before because of snails and slugs, but copper tape round the pots is working so far.

There are indeed trains from Glasgow to Newcastle: either via the WCML (West Coast Main Line) or Ayr loop to Carlisle and across, or via Edinburgh and the ECML. However, in these days of shorter trains and tickets booked in advance, there'd have been no chance of putting many passengers on an existing train. Added to which (pretty cleverly considering that Sunday was Great North Run day) the line from Edinburgh was closed all weekend for essential engineering, so Friday night's trains were even busier than usual.  Even so, Glasgow to Newcastle by coach is easy: straight down the motorway to Carlisle, then across.

 The Madam has hinted that they were offered the possibility of a minibus, but that Dode threw a Dundee wobbly, and, for one reason or another, the offer wasn't taken up. As I may have mentioned before, he's calmed down a deal in his later years, but there are still times when the old terror resurfaces....

Mary, do I remember correctly that pansies last through the frost? I seem to think that they do at this time... with the autumn flowering ones...

A

I don't know, A, because this is the first year I've managed to have any. I should think they will unless it's a very hard winter - at least I should think the plants will, but I'm hoping they'll keep flowering as well!