I get quite excited by autumn (principally because it means Christmas is coming, but also because colours start getting juicy). Here's a simple autumn table that you can make in ten minutes and will be quite happy for weeks as long a you give it the odd night out(side).
Dinosaurs, birds and gourds are optional of course, but I find them necessary to keep The Babety occupied at mealtimes - anyway, I feel vindicated in my use of plastic animals because the ever-chic Miss Pickering does it too (but better).
You need:
1 long tray - I use a black plastic one that I got with a window-box
1 small pot of very beautiful small ivy
3 pots of cyclamen
1 small bag of sphagnum moss
5 small terracotta pots - make sure they can hold the cyclamen without any plastic pot showing
A small amount of multi-purpose compost
Make sure everything is watered well before starting
Method:
First, put the tray on your table and line up your five pots along it. Now divide the ivy into two by carefully teasing it apart. Re-plant each piece in a terracotta pot with some dampened multi-purpose compost. Plonk them second and fourth in your terracotta army and then simply drop the cyclamen plants into the three empty spaces...(you could bother to plant them up, but I don't because, well, laziness, and the fact that I might wake up one day and want white instead of pink....it happens).
Now tear off bits of sphagnum moss and arrange them around the base of the pots so no tray is showing, and finally, arrange your ivy tendrils artfully around the pots.
That's it...you're done. Water as and when needed, and in-situ (hence the tray)...just stuff your finger in the compost and see if it's dry or not. The whole thing would, as I said, benefit from the odd 'night out'...not on the town, but in your garden, or in an un-heated room to keep the cylcamen perky for longer. But honestly, as long as you dead-head them when the flowers are over, and you don't live in a sauna, they should be just fine.
This bit of loveliness will last brilliantly well into Christmas, when you will, I'm sure, want holly and stuff.
