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.

Sea, Sand and Castles

I spent last week on holiday in Northumberland. I couldn't believe how many castles there are! We were staying in Bamburgh, so started with a trip to Bamburgh Castle:

The castle looks out over the lovely Northumbrian coast, and is in excellent repair. I was fascinated by the life story of Lord Armstrong, whose family still owns the castle.

The next outing was to the Farne Islands, which lie just off the coast and are managed by the National Trust. We took a boat trip around the islands where we saw the lighthouse

and basking seals,

and then landed on Inner Farne where we could walk around and see the thousands of nesting birds - cormorants,

kittiwakes

and best of all, puffins!

These windows are in St Cuthbert's Chapel on Inner Farne.

Our third trip was inland to Hadrian's Wall, which I had never visited. We went to Housesteads Fort, where you could see the ruins of one of the great forts along the wall,

and then walked along a section of the wall which adjoins the fort. I am now determined to return to the Wall and walk a substantial section of it next year.

On the road back from the Wall we passed Alnwick Castle, which we did not have time to visit this year. And on the road past a big stately home we stopped to look at these amazing dragons heads in stone:

Aren't they fab!

On the last day we drove to Craster, just along the coast from us, and walked out to Dunstanburgh Castle, which was destroyed by artillery bombardment during the Wars of the Roses.

It is perched on a cliff edge and right by a golf course.

We walked out to the castle and then back along the sea shore.

What a lovely, relaxing holiday in one of the most beautiful spots in the British Isles!

Hampton Court

No this isn't my garden! Not this year anyway...

Yesterday afternoon Braveheart and I went for the first time to the Hampton Court Flower Show. It was baking hot with relatively little shade, and we drank two full bottles of water in the three and a half hours we were there. We were both covered in Factor 30 suncream so no burns, I'm pleased to report!

Most of our time in our garden this year has been spent on the vegetable garden, and all I have done for the flower beds is see what comes up, weed and water them and plant a few new plants. So I was hoping to get inspiration for ways we could develop our flower garden, and I was not disappointed.

We spent most of our time looking at the Show Gardens, and some time in the Rose tent, the Heritage Plants tent and the Flower tent. I had thought I would buy lots of plants, but in the end I decided that I had so many ideas, after looking at the show gardens, that I hadn't thought through for our garden that it wasn't the right time to buy. I was also afraid that with the current weather it would be difficult to get new plants established so I decided to wait till cooler, wetter conditions return.

We took 160 odd photos though, to capture planting schemes, colours and plants we liked, so here is a selection.

Jam Today

After a few weeks of collecting strawberries and trying to eat them all on my muesli of a morning, we had a huge glut, and I made 5lb of jam. We have also made strawberry pavlova and I still have some left to eat on my muesli, although they are nearly all finished now.

That doesn't matter though because.....

the raspberries are ripening! I'm still eating those on my muesli and I don't know if I'll get jam out of them, but it would be pretty cool if I did.

We've also been harvesting plenty of courgettes and sugar snap peas, which are delicious.

We also have some beautiful flowers - potatoes and runner beans:

The herb and salad beds are flourishing and we have salad leaves and wild rocket, coriander, parsley and chives.

Last weekend we picked 8.5 pints of elderflowers and we now have 5 gallons of elderflower, lemon and raisin wine fermenting in a big plastic bin. It's not very photogenic though!

I've even found the time to knit, and I've started a new project, a cardigan in DROPS Safran (a 100% fingering weight cotton). It seems perfect for the current weather, cool and fresh. It has a body in wave pattern (feather and fan) with a top and sleeves in garter stitch.