Autumn Is Here!

Autumn, my favourite time of year, has arrived, time to make chutney, preserves and - er, alcohol. This year's Elderberry and Blackberry Wine is now fermenting. We had four pickers this year as opposed to seven last year, so we have 3 gallons of wine as opposed to last year's 5 gallons. We are thinking of picking some sloes and making Sloe Wine as well, though, which would be a new recipe for us.

Many of the vegetables are harvested now; our onions, red onions and shallots are drying or dried and hung up for use in the kitchen.

The potatoes and carrots are not quite ready yet, and we are still picking courgettes, tomatoes, sweet peppers, chillies and aubergines. We have put in leeks to overwinter (sown earlier in the year in pots) and they are swelling nicely, and we are planning to sow cabbages to overwinter for spring greens, and garlic for early next summer as well.

In the meantime we have turned our attention to the flower garden. A lot of the flower beds looked like this a few weeks ago, choked with grass and some kind of spreading ground cover.

We've dug everything up, cleared out all the grass roots and the runners and tubers of the weeds, and replanted lots and lots of spring bulbs that were dug up at the same time. We've also been planting some new plants and shrubs for next year, so now it looks more like this!

Our next big garden project is going to be building a greenhouse! It's very exciting, and we are doing research at the moment to choose our greenhouse.

In the meantime I'll finish with some photos from my recent stay in North Devon.

We walked along the coast and inland, and also visited the North Devon Bird of Prey Centre, where I took these photos of their birds.

I really love watching birds of prey hunting, they are such amazing creatures.