A shaft of sunlight

After such a wet day yesterday we have water pouring out of places I've never seen before in all my 22 years here! Paths are flooded, ponds overflowing and water is seeping out of banks in many unlikely places.

Today has been better and we've had some sunshine. This afternoon I caught the last of the sun before it disappeared down below the trees, which it does so early these days, and Blipped the last colours of Parrotia persica, the Persian Ironwood. This shrub is native to an area from northern Iran to the Caucasus. In the wild these shrubs make normal trees, and probably all the stock in cultivation has been propagated from a weeping form. There is an upright cultivar called 'Vanessa' which I have and keep meaning to plant out!

On the left, behind the seat, is a huge native fern, Dryopteris affinis subsp. cambrensis, estimated by experts to be possibly 1,000 years old!

The ferns at bottom left are Polystichum x dycei, a beautiful and hardy hybrid with the happy habit of producing plantlets at the end of the fronds. These fronds arch down to the ground where the plantlets take root and grow with abandon. I was given a small plant a few years ago and now have great areas of it! Real freebies!