Monday 27 October 2008

making hay


Although summer was a wash out, it seems that autumn has so far been of use to the avid gardener. With clear blue skies and just enough sun to warm your face, or make you strip off in the garden if you are having a good Monty dig and most definitely not tickling the soil*
*Toby Buckland
Last week I planted lots of over wintering garlic thermodyne which I bought from the nursery, this will be my first attempt, I hope they are worth the wait! Roll on June!
I also planted out the camassia bulbs that I bought a few months back.



The usual suspects
. Here are my squashes hopefully ripening. I did have 8 until I made soup last week which was good, though I've found the lack of sun affected the sweetness , but still good for casseroles and the like.



Today was another perfect day for gardening and I intended to make use of it. Now that I have picked all the squashes I was able to have a tidy up and build a new raised bed out of old fence posts. Again this is great for the garden and the birds, as they get an easy feed, but they also root out all the beasties including slugs eggs! Yuck!!



Apples apples everywhere! Don't you love something for nothing especially the edible kind! I'm on the second bag of apples from the tree in my parents garden and was wondering what else to do with them, when I remembered my Dad keeps making an apple cake. So I had a look through my books and found one in Delias cook book. I simplified it and made something akin to bread pudding with spiced apple!


At last I found some small pie dishes for, wait for it...pies. Charity of course!


Another charity buy was this wonderfully gorgeous Sarah Raven £2.50 bargain, I didn't even have to look inside to know I had to have it. I'm really chuffed as well as they are selling it new for £18 on ebay. I already have a lot of the plants so I think this is really going to help me arrange my garden in a bolder way!! Now I want it to be spring!


I've managed to plant some pansies for either side of the bay window, I'm hoping they survive!



apologies: it seems that in my last post I made a fopar. Instead of ne hao it should have been ni hao (don't rely on the internet) which is funny because I was talking to my husband about silly translations and then I go and make one. Lets hope I wasn't rude!!

7 comments:

Sal said...

Nice to see you've been keeping busy! You were lucky to find that lovely book..a bargain!!;-)

Lisa said...

I love pansies. Such lovely cheerful colours to see us through the colder months.
x

JuliaB said...

oooh you lucky devil with that Sarah Raven book. I am going to plant garlic soon, and perhaps some onions too. It has been great weatherwise, but .. last time i planted garlic (last year) it didn't stop blimmin raining straight after, and all the garlic rotted. humph. fingers crossed!! x

Country Bliss said...

Yummy apple cake and lovely pansies. I've just bought Sarah Ravens Complete Christmas, unfortunately not in a charity shop!
Yvonne x

Mary Poppins said...

Lovely and inspiring blog Clare, your apple cake looks yummy, we have been having refurbishments here and have had no cooker for 4 months, one is coming on friday and boy am i going to bake :)

thank you for your comment and my thoughts are with you too, it is never easy and we must be gentle on ourselves

Look forward to coming back

Mary X

Country Cottage Chic said...

I like your new pie dishes! This nasty cold snap has killed my squash plants - they were still producing fruit but they didn't like the frost at all. Can you believe that my tomatoes are STILL ripening in the polytunnel?

Louise said...

Talking about your great book find, my best find to date is The Complete Gardener by Monty Don, I only paid a couple of pounds for that too. I am probably in the minority but I miss Monty Don on Gardeners World. I really like getting out into the garden on cold sunny days in the winter. It really isn't cold if you wrap up, or if you are busy digging! x