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Garden Diary – Halloween spiders & goodbye Tomatoes
It’s funny how Halloween coincides with spider procreation. I wonder when spiders and webs became a sign of Halloween? Anyway my garden spiders are very obliging at making themselves visible at this time of year. It’s felt decidedly cooler this week as we pass into November – I’m sorry but how on earth is it November already, what happened to summer, did I blink and miss it? Despite the cold at least we’ve had very little rain – hurray for that! Some plants though have positively loved all the rain, including the ferns that have never grown so big and bushy. The cool weather has also brought some lovely colourful…
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Garden Diary – Say goodbye to the lighter nights!
This is the week that really feels like Autumn is tipping towards winter, as the clocks fall back and we say goodbye to the lighter nights! Despite this we’ve had some gloriously sunny days with fabulous blue skies showing off the still dominating pink flowers in the garden, especially the extra late cosmos dazzler which was backlit on a few occasions. The pink shrub salvia is still covered, the dark pink dahlias are still sending up small blooms and a few Nerine bulbs have finally opened up like pink fireworks. I really thought they must have rotted as they were so late. The sun and skies have also been setting…
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Garden Diary – Pink for Girls? Not for this little girl!
When I was a little girl everyone still thought, ‘pink was for girls’. Well not this little girl! Without really thinking about it I just always proclaimed that I hated pink and that blue was my favourite colour. It’s funny how often I was asked what my favourite colour was as a child, I don’t know if people still ask children things like that nowadays. Of course I only said blue because it was supposed to be for boys, but over the years blue is an absolute favourite of mine. In the garden I started off with mainly white flowers – which is why I’ve got a whole section of…
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Garden Diary – Another bizarre weather week
Well, yet another bizarre weather week, starting with the most beautiful day on Monday, so nice that I sat with my elderly mother by a village duck pond. You almost needed sun-cream! This of course was followed shortly by, yet more rain. I’ve scarcely seen the pond so full of water. And when I opened a new bag of compost, that had stood outside for weeks, it was saturated. By Thursday it was rather chilly, but gloriously clear again, so clear in fact that most of the country were treated to an extraordinary view of the Northern lights (photo provided by my nephew), except for me! I was blissfully unaware…
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Garden Diary – A Week of Highs and Lows
It’s been a week of highs and lows both for me and the garden. Those of you that have been following my garden journey over the last few years will know that “I hate autumn” at the best of times so this year was never going to be good. I started the week on such a high, nine weeks after falling and fracturing my back I was finally ready for physiotherapy. He was very pleased with my progress and made me feel like I should ‘go to the top of the class’. This gave me the green light to, get back to work, which always makes you feel normal again.…
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Garden Diary – Rain, rain go away, we must be due a sunny day?
Well, and then they wonder why us Brit’s talk about the weather all of the time! I think we’d all like the rain to go away for at least a while now. It really does feel like it’s rained on and off all year. Luckily here, we are in no danger from flooding being on top of an ice-age sand and gravel deposit. All that cursing when we first moved in and we initially tried to dig the garden with a spade, then a fork, finally settling on a pick! Now feels like a worthwhile sacrifice for the excellent drainage. I have dashed out in between the showers to pick…
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Garden Diary – Started in the pink, ended with thunder bolts!
What a week of contrasts! After last Sundays big downpour we actually had a good week with plenty of sunshine, but Saturday was the loudest thunder I’ve heard in a very long time. And some poor soul not far from here had their house set on fire by a thunder bolt! I’m pleased to say no one was hurt but the poor lady escaped just with the clothes she was wearing! It’s hard to imagine loosing all of your possessions. I’ve always said that after saving the ‘acting head-gardener’ and the cats, it’s my photographs that I’d want to save. I feel most other things are replaceable. Before the storm…
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Garden Diary – Two new Cat Faces in the garden!
I learned something new about mis-shaped tomatoes this week. The larger ones quite often have slightly strange bottoms but one of them had the strangest bottom I’ve ever seen! I posted it on my three social media platforms and just one person came up with the answer. The name for this strange contortion is ‘Catfaced’, which takes me nicely into a new feline friend I made this week. I was minding my own business watering the greenhouse when in strolled a new young cat, with a rather interesting cat face! Back in the greenhouse one of the new varieties I’ve grown this year ‘Indigo Rose’, finally had a single ripe…
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Garden Diary – Finger Licking Raspberries hands, wave goodbye to the Rhubarb
The finger licking raspberries obviously realise that September has dawned and as ‘Autunm fruiting’ raspberries it is their time to shine. They do get confused every year and start fruiting in mid summer, but only a few at a time and they are pretty small. But they have now gone into overdrive producing huge berries that need picking everyday. The acting head garden has been busy with his new found talent for baking, moving on from blueberry cake to rhubarb cake and now raspberry cake. I’ll be putting weight on! He’s made the last rhubarb cake of the year as it was time to stop picking and let the plants…
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Garden Diary – Tomato bonanza, there’s even enough for soup!
It’s the peak of the tomato season and those of you that have followed the gardens progress will know my dream before moving here was to grow enough tomatoes to make soup. Well this years tomato bonanza is certainly providing enough for soup, sauce, salad and anything else we can think of that uses tomatoes. The raspberries are starting to ramp up and we’ve had another first of the season with the first ripe pear. My hand was dripping with pear juice as I peeled it ready to share. I think the acting head gardener has eared the right to share the first one! It was a pretty good weather…
