Advent has begun

With all its chocolate goodness and a full activity calendar.

Half term hopes

The weekend has passed in a flash, it is the weekend at the start of half term. My son has plans for his week, I suspect he wants to mooch in the park without me or flop in front of a wallpaper of cartoon network. He has a distinct lack of years to be a pre-teen but he is forging a moody sort of Independence already. For once I am off work and accompanying him for the week in its entirety. Although there is a day he will be doing football.

I have plans for my leave and some good activities up my sleeve. I'm expecting quality time.

He will have to join in to some extent. At the end of this week I want to have something to show for it, a cleaner more sorted house, some art work/photography completed, the allotment a little bit more spruced up and some good memories of fun. Hope to catch up with some old friends too, if not in person.

Might even carve a pumpkin in preparation for Halloween.

We are booked to do some Cambridge festival of ideas events. So hopefully when I review the week there will be lots to tell.

Snatched time

I really shouldn't be doing things this way but as ever the limited time of a weekend is significantly squeezed. It is not as if I want it to be this way I have to be and that is that. I'm lucky as I will shoe horn in some things I want to do over the next couple of weeks but that will rob me of gardening time I am sure. This weekend I visited the allotment and that was great but tinged with a little dissatisfaction. Taking a four year old so that John would get space to fix a light switch and put up a curtain rail was less appealing. You know you are not going to get much done before you started. Ho Hum.

Each week I think I might go down there after the school pick up one evening it is a bit of a pipe dream I fear.

At the allotment I realise that I have definitely grown the smallest squashes in the world. Then turban one was a reasonable size and that was the only one that made the grade. It's shape and strong colours are fantastic I can feel a little photography and even drawing coming on, if I get time. Oops I'm pushing the theme here.

Still I cleared the tomato plants and the recent warmth has rushed the fruit from green to red, so I had loads more tomatoes than I had banked upon. I have turned them into passata this evening. So this weeks menu might be tomato soup, meatballs with spag the rest can go in the freezer.

I did buy my little helper some chocolate on the way home, not for his help of course, but for his upbeat and positive attitude about going to the allotment. He was also amazed to see what happened to the tomatoes.

Sorry about the pics only the mobile to hand today.

Endings or beginings

A visit to the allotment today and the impending start of the school year gives me that feeling that the growing is over and it is time to start again and to look forward again to changes in the season. It is that time of year of slightly mellow regrets and thoughts of not letting it happen again next year, but I will. It is as inevitable as autumn following summer that I will repeat the similar planting blunders as before but there may be some lucky breaks as well.

Today, I harvested some tomatoes and beetroot and seed saved at the same time. I collected from the sweet peas and swiftly took a seed pod from someone elses Hollyhocks, it was Celia that put that thought in my head and I want those for the garden. Despite seed collecting I also did some some sowing today some japanese spinach which according to the packet you can grow all year round, I'm not sure what it will be like. I have also bought my over wintering onions today.

When I looked around the plot today I realised that I have a lot to do just to tread water. In my head though I am brewing a little dream of upgrading the storage box to a proper shed. Then wouldn't a little greenhouse be just nice too. Dream away.

Auricula

I think that I might be about to develop a new little obsession. I knew it was coming as the 'seeds' of it were sown in the spring when I visited Bridge end gardens in Saffron Walden and my eyes fell on this terracotta display. The sun was too bright to get any good photos, but I wanted to try again on another day as they were such little bright pots of joy. Then that idea got lost in the waves of life's busy bustle.


I felt it rekindle when I visited the Fitzwilliam Museum a few weeks back and I saw a small exhibition of flower drawings 'Redoute and his pupils'. The one that really sung out at me was a much larger than life picture of Auricula in an earthenware pot by Pancrace Bessa. I would like to photograph those I thought again.

This weekend we went away camping and stayed at Sandringham amongst the trees. We walked with the boys around the country park but did not venture into the really royal bits of the gardens and look at the house. I don't think the boys would tolerate it after the walk we had made they do. However I couldn't resist sticking my nose in the plant shop. Huh. I thought this looks like a lot of stuff that you can get in a garden centre. Then I noticed the boring looking green thing that was very specifically named by variety and I knew I was looking at a Auricula. I knew that I could only buy and transport one so I made a choice and it is now at home with me. It is 'Piers Telford orange and brown'.


If I don't kill it I am going to photograph it when it flowers next year. I might need to check out some care instructions to help with this. If they are fun and not too difficult to grow then I am likely to add to my modest collection of one.

short sweetcorn

Every year we grow sweetcorn. We have never managed the success of our first year. They are not even a foot tall and they are already flowering at the top. It is probably because they have been too dry see those crispy leaves above. The weeds are lapping at their roots, I planted squash to spread beneath the sweetcorn and suppress the weeds but their growth hasn't been too vigorous either. Never mind there is always next year. Its that phase of the gardening year now the regretful one if only I could have got down their and watered more often......dream.

Huw's flowers

Of my two boys Huw the youngest seems to have the most interest in helping in the garden. He always asks to help with the watering and he asks to go to the allotment, I'm not daft I know that the interest will wane. He came home from nursery a couple of months ago clutching a packet of seeds he had been given. we planted them and they grew he is now happy because they have started to flower in lots of orangey and peachy colours. You have got to love nasturtiums for their simple, effective and reliable performance.