A lucky lady.

Twenty two years ago today  my grandmother passed away.. I learned so much from my lovely grandparents and from them got my taste for freshly picked sweetcorn, from the plant to the plate within twenty minutes to ensure the sugars didn't turn to starch apparently. Not that they told me that, they just knew how to be self sufficient.
Many years later I discovered for myself how fruitful ('scuse the pun) it was to grow things. Today though I was sad; I still miss them both very much.
So how fortunate am I to have Luke? He put Michael Buble's "I just haven't met you yet" track on and we both got up from the computers to dance! Should anyone have passed our window, heard us laughing and seen us dancing they may well have decided we had enjoyed one drink too many. In fact Luke was just dancing my blues away. How lucky am I? Thank you, Luke.

Just me.

Sometimes all I want to do is sit and be.

This year the raspberries fruited.

A huge raspberry - or hundreds!

 Luke picking raspberries (the rhubarb is growing in the chimney pot to keep it's stems from colouring up too much)

 Big boys, aren't they?

A swinging time

 I've stripped and repainted the hammock frame ready for the winter. It's now a soft lavender to make it sit easily amongst the green of the lawn..

And here is real lavender, note the spider in the bottom right. I love Autumn when all you seem to see are the gossamer threads of spider's webs.

Late summer colour in the garden

 As the last days of summer slip away I can enjoy a few glimpses of colour in the border still.

Who lives where?

If you look through the tops of the sweetcorn you can see a black shape on the hen run. It's only Socks, the next door neighbour's cat basking on the top. Cat ona hot tin roof, if you will!

 Meanwhile the hens have decided to have a sit down on the grass infront of the run. In the foreground I have covered some late planted cabbages to warm them up and give them a fighting chance whilst keeping those blooming slugs off! The pak choi behind them are for the chicks so they keep off the main ones.

 Socks loves the fence, it's an easy route for her from the field behind to our back door.

But what is this I spy in Jack's garden? Only an errant chicken enjoying the sunshine - is the grass greener for Shakira?

No has-beans here.

 The Trail of Tears beans have been lovely again, even though most of ours were blanched (cooked very quickly in boiling water before being drained and refreshed under cold running water to stop them cooking any further) then frozen. Jack enjoyed a few more fresh than we did.

 Almost high enough to climb the beanstalk and meet the Giant.

My neat little veg patch, beans, sweetcorn, rocket, parsley, courgette, pak choi, carrots, ornamental cabbages, broccoli, onions, spinach, chives, rosemary and salad leaves and lots of dead slugs!

Photos!!

 Salad in a tray in the greenhouse. This can be grown very simply, even on a window sill in the house and will keep you in greens all winter long.

I'd always wanted to grow mushrooms - it seems my wish has been granted, funghi on my upturned root planter!

Shaking her tail feather.

Here are the photos of dear little Shakira going from a swan to an ugly duckling. She has been going through her most extreme moult to date. The hens, like snakes shedding their skins, have a yearly moult when they lose their old feathers and replace them ready for the cold weather. Whilst they are going through the moult they don't lay eggs, putting their energy into producing new feathers instead. They won't win any prizes for best looking hens until they have emerged as fully feathered beauty queens in a few weeks time. Here is Shakira's journey.........and it's not finished yet.

The girls three weeks ago, beautiful and colourful.

 Luke says this looks like we've had an exploding chicken in the house! This is the start of Shakira's moult, she lost this amount of feathers overnight, falling onto the droppings board and spilling over onto the wood shavings.

 Here she starts losing her tail feathers, eventually she had one single tail feather, standing somewhat proudly upright like a conquering flag - before it dropped off too.

 Either feathers fell off her as she moved or there were stubborn downy feathers refusing to budge. Like baby teeth they clung on long after they should have fallen out.Oh, the indignity.

 Oven ready. This photo (clicked on will enlarge it) makes me wince, she looks like she needs a barcode and price tag on her.

 And now we have the recovery! Tiny little sheaths sprout up, the quill of the feather which will eventually grow into a lush feather.

 Oh blimey, now it is Buck Bucky's turn! Exploding chicken number 2.

Squirrel nutkin.

I opened up the shed door yesterday, grabbed Luke's wellies to pull on and as is y habit I turned them upside down in case there were any long legged spiders nestling inide. What shoudl fall out but an acorn and it's obviously been planted there for when teh cold comes! What goes on in that shed when we aren't looking? That's the third acorn I've found squirrelled away in a week.

Night time typings.

So I can't sleep........ for an hour now I have been trying to sleep with no success so I've succumbed to the perils of blogging. What it means is I'll be wide awake for even longer but with a full time job there's not a  lot of time to do all I want to do (in fact, there's not enough time for that) so my day off is spent cleaning or gardening ad let's be frank ere, it's mainly gardening to the shame of my living room floor (I've been meaning to clean it for almost two weeks!) Still, the spider who came in from the cold, along with the wood for the wood burner, isn't complaining; he gets the run of the place - emerging usually at the end of the day to scuttle across the floor in plain view of us. He's not quite a house pet or big enough to be one but we have shamefully named him Grenville. Now when you have your own pet spider surely that is a wake up call to get the vacuum out, isn't it?
Then again I did wash, peg out and iron four lots of washing yesterday - you have to make hay whilst the sun shines and I love getting fresh bed linen sorted. In fact Jack from next door popped out to tell me I could use his rotary drier if I needed to and I did. What a fab neighbour and what a lovely set up; a gap in the border means we hop across to one another's gardens. Him to give us updates on what he is doing and us to watch him produce golden bowls in his wood turning 'shed' (which is in fact a brick built building at the end of his garden). Even the cat, Socks, uses the gap to hop through although she is slinky enough to fit in most places along our shrub edged boundary.
So this week, despite the radio discussion that said it's too early to be an Indian Summer (we have to wait till October to use that accolade apparently) the temperatures have meant that instead of using the wood I brought in (along with Grenville) for the wood burner I should be lighting up the barbecue. It's been deliciously hot, even more welcome as we head into the colder months and snow is already being mentioned by the weather reporters.Yesterday I spent the day in a tee shirt and cut offs and very nice it was too. In fact I started off with socks and wellington boots but very soon the boots were replaced by sandals and soon after that the socks were thrown off as they were so warm. By the end of a very grubby day in the garden I had to wash my feet in the sink because even with my gardening shoes off I was still traipsing mud through the house.
My plan for the precious day off was to pop along to the garden centre and buy something for the veg garden I wasn't sure what but wondered if there was anything I could get to plug a small patch of nothingness I have. Well, as I type that it sounds phony, who am I kidding (certainly not you)? I don't have enough room for what I already have. Anyway, that plan was scarpered because Luke took the car to work so I was stuck at home (the garden centre is close enough to walk to  but knowing me I would buy heavy plants and then have to lug them home and it was much to warm to do that). So plan B was to sort out the black and white border because that had been made in a hurry last Spring when we first moved in and I was literally desperate for some interest in the garden. I had dug up great slabs of cement but had never conditioned the soil before planting it up such was my hurry. I've meant to rectify that for a year but now I didn't have a car I couldn't buy sharp sand and soil improver so I had to make do with what I had here; a quarter bag of sand and some fish, blood and bone granules to sprinkle into the earth. Again, not ideal but when did I ever let good sense stop me from doing something? So I opened up the hen house, fed them last night's left over rice (which they LOVE!) and started my clear out plan.

Now this is a cheat photo because  that is the border that I have already cleared and replanted on the other side of the garden but until I get Luke to sort out my photos we are stuck with no photos and just my writing so I thought a little light visual relief was called for.

Anyway, I've wanted to plant up my bulbs for a  month now and it's actually the ideal time to be doing it. I had planted up a few of my favourite giant alliums last month, worried that I was doing it too early but wanting to get them into the ground before it got too cold (for me) in the garden.  This time, instead of digging a hole only to find I'd just sliced into a healthy looking bulb from last year (and I've done this countless times much to my dismay) I decided that "everything must go" like a closing down sale.
So the sensible thing would be, if I need to take things out of the ground on a sunny day that I pot them up and put them in the shade. Ah, but I'm not sensible! That is my poor back just wants me to do what I have to do and then give it a rest so I short cut things like potting up and moving heavy plants and instead they all got lifted and unceremoniously dumped on the lawn in light shade.

Once I'd removed what I could (some plants were either too well established or too heavy to lift out on my own) I dug over the ground, removing what detritus I found which ended up being a large bag of stones and broken bits of concrete before lightening up the soil by shaking over the sand and adding some of the blood and bone  mix. After that I raked over the surface to provide a more even patch before putting everything back again - much like a spring clean when all the furniture is moved to ensure a proper clean up before being dragged back to where it was before.

This time, whilst realising I still had too much to go into this bit of ground, I planted up slightly differently to how it had been before, putting the enormous hollyhocks along the fence and then using the spaces between the shrubs to plant up the tulips, alliums and hyacinths. Lastly, my famous hose trick (which actually only involves turning it on and directing it over the newly planted bed) to give them all a good bedding in and I was done....., now t was just a matter of those four loads of washing to be ironed.

I wouldn't mind but here I am, ten past five in the morning, finding time to type it all up. I must get a part time job instead! Oh, to be able to dream...... or to sleep coem to that.

What a treat it will be..,

..., when we have the photos of our moulting hens. Poor old Shakira can't shake a tail feather as she no longer has any. I missed taking a photo of her lonely single feather and now have a tonne of photos on the camera of her little porcupine like patches of skin with the quills rapidly growing. Now Buck Bucky has started to moult but in a completely different way and she has bare patches in random places. I'm making sure they both have good food to keep their strength up whilst they change their outfits.  They still get told off if I find them chancing onto the veg patch though. Some places are still out of bounds - just a shame they don't know it.

A huge noise alerted me to about forty geese flying over the neighbouring field and though I had the wrong lens on the camera I have a row of dots in a grey sky to upload.
We've been staying in and working on the computers all weekend so finally this afternoon, to stop me going google-eyed I nipped along to the local garden centre and bought some red onion sets for over wintering onions. I planted 45 of them (5 were too tiny and mouldy looking) around the edge of the plot, 1 inch (2.5cms) deep and five inches apart. Let's hope the birds don't tweak them out.

I also started to plant the spring bulbs but the ground was too wet to unplug the soil from my bulb planter so I have decided to wait till the soil has dried out as this week is meant to be much warmer and drier. I've just looked out to see a mass of tumbling feathers as Buck Bucky shakes herself. Shakira, with no tail feathers and a fluffy mass of down around her nether regions makes her look like she is wearing Victorian knickerbockers. Oh the shame! Having shooed them from the delectable carrot tops and waved Buck Bucky off the pak choic leaves which means she is the secret snacker of those young leaves they are now surreptitiously going for the lower raspberries. What chancers. It's ridiculous how much we love those hens!