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Garden Diary – Planning, Weather & Christmas Choirs
It’s a time for looking back at photos of how the garden looked this year, and deciding what worked well and what needs improvement. The photographs are an invaluable tool to remind you of how things looked. I was particularly pleased with the dwarf tulips I grew for the first time. And as I grew them in pots I’m quite hopeful that they’ll come again. There were many pictures of my purple rhododendron which is already covered in buds. And lots of the Pink ranunculus which have shot up lots of foliage, I have no idea whether they are supposed to have done that at this time of year. I…
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Garden Diary – Say hello, & sadly wave goodbye
As Monday dawned last week and we said hello to December, we didn’t realise that by the end of the week we’d be saying goodbye one of our elderly cats. The week and month started with bright frosty days, which most of us prefer to the dark wet days that were soon to follow. The mass of berries on the pyracantha froze solid and the regular visiting blackbirds and robin had to wait for them to defrost! Making the most of the break in the rain, the gardeners mate and I had a big weed blitz in the raised beds. The asparagus bed had the biggest make over, as we’d…
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Garden Diary – Where did November go? Flu, frost & newts
I thought as we’ve slipped gently into December – where has the whole year gone too!! – I’d better get you all caught up with November! Unfortunately, I picked up a flu type virus which I’ve been finding it difficult to shake off, so despite resuming life’s essential chores my blog had taken a back step. Fortunately though, I have managed to continue posting on social media for the majority of the time, so we do have a diary. I was pleased with the gardening jobs I got done in those exceedingly mild, first few days of the month. As I picked the last few tomatoes, it was actually too warm…
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Garden Diary – Making Pesto & discovering Beardtongues
Erysimum ‘bowles mauve’, also known as a perennial wallflower, is such a fabulous plant to have in your garden, it just keeps flowering all year around! It is classed as a perennial but it’s more like a small shrub in appearance and the fact that it doesn’t die off in winter adds to this. Eventually, after a few years they go to look really spindly and get too big. This is the time to take cuttings, if not before. It is a really easy plant to take cuttings from, just choose a new shoot with no flower buds yet formed. Pop it into some gritty compost, or just pop it…
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Garden Diary – A rejigged hosta bed & an extra hour in mine!
I’m so pleased with the hosta bed after having to dig most of it out in the spring – well at least the gardeners mate had to dig it for me. I started by getting a few plants out as it had all got a bit congested, but I had no idea that Lily-of-the-valley was so invasive! The gardeners mate said, he thought the roots were heading for Australia! Anyway I’d only had green in the bed before but as it’s on the patio I fancied bringing a bit of colour in. Geranium ‘Patricia’ had not been doing too well in her position in the border so I thought I’d…
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Garden Diary – Grey days cheered up with Apple turnover
What a lot of grey days we had last week. It makes it so much harder to get up in the morning, but luckily the thought of breakfast usually does the trick! We still have plenty of cake made from garden produce, sliced and frozen to make it easy to get out. But this week a new treat, suggested to me by an acquaintance. An apple turnover. It’s been an amazing year for apples, as I’m sure quite a few of you know. Even if you don’t grow your own, everybody seems to be offering you a bag of apples. I’ve even seen a few boxes outside people’s houses, with…
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Garden Diary – An excellent week, bulb planting & Adam Frost!
On Monday last week I started planting my spring bulbs. I was planning to do some jobs in the house but then the sun came out and was so warm that I just couldn’t resist getting outside. It really is one of my favourite jobs, and it fortunately comes at a time of year that I find quite depressing. It just feels like such an optimistic task, trusting that spring will come again and I’ll be here to enjoy it! Could the week get any better? Yes. Tuesday night was super exciting, as we went to see Adam Frost in Chester. I like lots of the well known gardeners and…
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Garden Diary – It’s time to get those spring bulbs planted!
As we move into October, it is definitely bulb planting season! It’s so easy to forget, but you know you’ll be sorry next spring if you do! I actually put it on my phone calendar with an alert to remind me, which is something I do more and more these days. Time just goes so quickly and before you know it, all the nice bulbs are sold out and quite honestly it’s too cold to be out there sorting all your pots out. So I’m pleased to say that I’ve bought all of my spring bulbs for next year, well, unless I get tempted on the entrance to a shop.…
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Garden Diary – Hurray, I can’t smell the cucumber cake!
Well, thank goodness for the gorgeous weather last week. Not much gardening got done but there was plenty of sitting around relaxing, which is frankly unheard of in this house. Unfortunately I found myself with a dose of Covid which started the previous weekend, but fortunately the worst of it passed relatively quickly, just leaving me lethargic. Lethargic enough to sit around! Normally when I sit with a coffee in the garden, I’ve hardly finished it before I’ve jumped up to do some job or another, intending to sit back down, but of course I never do. One job just leads on to another… I’d much rather be fit and…
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Raspberry Seed Biscuit Cakes
I’ve called them biscuit cakes because they’re a hybrid between the two. A crunchy biscuity outside, with a soft cake-like inside. But whatever their name the gardeners mate and I have decided they are the best biscuits we’ve ever tasted! We grow our own autumn fruiting raspberries, the variety is called ‘Polka’ and they are very productive. In fact once they start fruiting, we can hardly keep up with the picking, eating and preserving of them. These biscuits came about because we hate wasting food, especially when we’ve gone to the trouble of growing it! I was making a raspberry cheesecake, so I’d briefly stewed up a pan of raspberries…
