M is for mums

 No, not mothers:- chrysanthemums.  Gardeners often call them mums.   And I forgot to get some this year!

They are one of those plants which give a wonderful autumn burst of colour, along with sedums, Michaelmas daisies, dahlias and rudbeckias.  Summer doesn’t have it all her own way.  These flowers are the garden’s final burst of colour before winter takes over.

Many gardeners grow wonderful specimens to enter the local horticultural shows but mums aren’t necessarily demanding.   They simply get on with flowering while the rest of the garden is collapsing around them.

As the years go by, I find myself increasingly sympathetic to plants that bloom a little later in life. There is something rather appealing about having your best moment when everyone else has gone indoors.

Chrysanthemums come in all sorts of colours — yellow, bronze, red, pink, white and rather alarming shades that seem to have been invented by someone with a fluorescent paint box. They are wonderfully cheerful.

When the evenings are drawing in and summer already feels like something that happened somewhere else, mums provide a little reminder that there is still plenty of life and colour left in the year.