Tidying up

We did a bit of a clear up this afternoon. It was lovely and sunny again, I even worked in a vest for a while, but the weatherman says it's really over now and winter is arriving tomorrow. It's been warm for so long that I can hardly believe it.

J did what was probably the last strim of the year, I planted the garlic and did a bit of digging. I also hauled out some useless brassicas that I'd put in without knowing what they were. They grew vast and stalky but stayed unidentified so we decided that they had to go. They'd been home to several million whitefly, who I evicted with great pleasure. They'll probably find my black kale now.

We went home (tired) with a bag of spinach, some pak choi, little gem lettuces and a handful of mint.

Happy gardening

Apple Day

On Sunday we went to Horfield community orchard's "apple day", which turned out to be a delightful community event with morris dancers, apple tasting and hands-on demonstrations of juice making - cue for lots of enthusiastic youngsters having a lovely time chomping apples amongst the trees. Shame ours are too old and cool to enjoy this sort of thing at the moment. In fact, Roo was 19 yesterday (he tells me that his birthday is on the real apple day) and is more into late nights and partying. However, I believe that the things that we do with our kids when they are little are the seeds that will grow and put down roots for later on in their lives, and I hope that one day they'll be taking their own kids to run about the orchards on apple day too.

Happy gardening

Change of photo

I've just had quite a different sort of haircut and really don't look much like the old photo anymore so I thought it was time for an update. I've been going blonder again too, mostly by design although it's much lighter than I intended because the sun has bleached my hair over the summer.

I'm planning to go to the allotment tomorrow morning. I'll be at work in the afternoon, but if there's another stunning blue and gold day tomorrow I can't think of a better way of spending the morning. It's been such a pleasure to be out doors this autumn, we've had one fabulous golden day after another. Just sitting on the bench with my face turned up to the sun and pottering around with a flask of tea is so lovely when its like this, that I'm spending as much time as I can doing just that.

I haven't mentioned vegetables, there'll have to be proper allotment talk next time, none of this rubbish about tea and haircuts.
Happy gardening