Veg Plotting

This year has seen a bumper apple harvest, possibly the biggest in decades, so like many of you I've had my work cut out keeping up with the crates of apples piling into my kitchen. NAH has been most happy for me to convert a fair portion of the spoils into the pictured jars of his favourite apple jelly. As you can see all kinds of jars have been pressed into service. My apple jelly is a little different to the usual kind. Neither NAH or I are particularly big on jellies or chutneys accompanying our meat, fish or cheese*, which is the traditional way of eating them. Also when I chose my apple trees, I went for the dessert varieties as that's what we like to eat. So my apple jelly is used like jam: on bread and often accompanying peanut butter. All the recipes I have are for a savoury jelly, often flavoured with herbs such as mint or rosemary. They usually call for cooking or crab apples and so need quite a lot of sugar to sweeten them and to counteract the recipe's vinegar....

At the weekend I returned to the Holburne Museum in Bath, the place where I'd previously walked in the footsteps of Jane Austen . I'd gone with friends to view Mark Edwards' landscape photography exhibition (recommended). As usual our visit ended in the cafe, where it was warm enough to sit outside for a couple of hours in the museum's garden. As soon as we'd sat down, I was back on my feet again, pointing out the above scene. The way the late afternoon light was playing on the tree was a picture in itself. I was so excited, I exclaimed rather loudly. So everyone turned round to look. Then a rather wonderful thing happened. Instead of everyone hunkering down at their tables staring into their coffee, they all smiled and started talking to their neighbours. People started pointing out other little vignettes over Bath they could see. They actually started interacting with each other and the garden . It was absolutely magical. NB for the past couple of...

Mmm, this blog is four years old today. How time flies... ...I'm still winging it ;) Thanks for all your lurking, comments and bloggity blog fun :) It might not look like it, but I've recently been making quite a few changes to the blog under the bonnet to celebrate today's blogging milestone: I've widened the template slightly so the posting area is bigger and I can present larger photos There's slightly less stuff on the sidebars, so what's there has greater visibility I'm starting to make use of the increased number (up to 20 now) of Pages available in Blogger. I've put my list of Popular Posts in there and it made sense to have a page dedicated to Chippenham , seeing it's a central subject on my blog There's an introduction to my blog's layout (another new page) for anyone new to them I'm also revamping the static content (i.e. Pages) in the light of what I've learnt at BlogCamp and the Writing for the Web course The only ...

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being. Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing. Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 - 1822) Silver birch, ash, elder, field maple and hawthorn all dancing at the side of my garden, a week or so ago. It did get much windier a few hours later, but I prefer this blue sky combination. If the embedded YouTube video isn't working, you can view it here .

See the footnotes for the question I now have about variegated plants - your help with the answer is appreciated... Another sign the nights are drawing in is the garden lectures start up again. For Threadspider and I this means a monthly trip to Bath until May to hear whoever's been tempted over by Derry Watkins . As usual it's a cracking programme and first up a couple of weeks ago was Bob Brown, the renowned nurseryman of Cotswold Garden Flowers . His subject was Propagating Your Plants and he apologised for short changing us as his talk is usually combined with a practical session at his nursery. Sign me up immediately! It was a most entertaining talk, shot through with a dry sense of humour and questions barked out at the audience. He gave us so much information that I'm going to divide this post into two. First up are some of Bob's observations on perennials... There's a number of reasons why propagation by seed for perennials isn't usuall...

Tonight the clocks go back, so we get an extra hour to play with - hurrah! It's also meant I've been getting ready for GMT* in my garden this week by taking advantage of the remaining light and relatively sunny weather. OK, we'll draw a veil over Thursday's miserable day ;) As you can see, there's plenty to be done. The fallen leaves have been gathered up and used for mulching the garden. The shredder's been pressed into service to make further mulch from various prunings. Although the fat lady hasn't quite sung yet , this year's thick dahlia duvet is firmly in place. I've had some further clearing up to do on the lower patio as last weekend's high winds brought down lots of branches from the overhanging silver birch. It wasn't anything too severe, it's just their super long thinness means they're always ripe for a little weather pruning. These got added to the mulch pile too :) Also, the ivy from the neighbouring public l...

Two weeks ago I had the privilege of enjoying Karen and Shedman's hospitality ... ...how lovely to find fresh flowers from the garden in my bedroom in this dotted blue vase :) And how fantastic it was to have time to watch the early morning sunlight gradually creep through and light up the garden. I marvelled at how quickly the willow has recovered from its major haircut last year and how much the garden has changed and matured since I first visited it 3 years ago. It's also the first time I've visited in the autumn. As you can see there is still plenty of interest. Later on it was even nicer to sit outside in the sunshine... In a T-shirt... In October... IN Wales! When I showed NAH this photo he said Ooooh I'd like to go there . NB He has never expressed a wish to visit a garden ever. Karen is gradually gathering all her Schizostylis into one spot. Mine seem to have disappeared from my garden :( Karen caught me taking this picture of her grass. Oh ...

Part of our USA road trip this summer included a visit to the Mount St Helens National Volcanic Monument . Here's a view of what remains of the volcano today. You can see the Toutle River valley is still full of volcanic ash, even though it's many years since the volcano finished its eruption. NAH took this picture, so you can see how different things were in 1980 and the drama of the first few moments of the eruption the mountain is famed for. I'd recommend a visit to the 4 visitor centres there, especially the talks given by the park rangers. It's not often you get to mess around with plasticine to see how plate tectonics and the various types of faults work! Nor is it every day that you get to have lunch outside with a volcano ;) I'd spotted on the map there's something called a Sediment Retention Structure built by the US Army Corps of Engineers. It turned out to be this dam-like structure built across part of the Toutle River. When the volcano e...

Start a vintage sales area at your garden centre Acquire some wire salmon fish traps for said area Display them prominently so the blogger with the camera is intrigued by the marriage of two of her interests: fisheries research and gardening Wait for her to notice that the suggested re-use isn't quite as desired Et Voila ! The price was quite eye watering too.

Autumn's a busy time in the garden, so I have a selection of garden tools permanently trugged up and ready to go for easy carriage to wherever I need them. Most of the contents are the tools Fiskars gave me to test earlier in the year . Having given them a pretty tough time over the past few months, it's time I brought you the results. Secateurs and loppers I'm really impressed with the secateurs . These are the bypass type and have a rotating handle and comfortable grip. I found the handle's rotation a bit strange at first, but once I'd got used to it, I found it much easier on my hand and elbow, particularly when cutting thicker (up to 20cm) branches. The secateurs are geared too, hence their ability to cut thicker wood than usual. I've had Fiskars secateurs before, but their lack of replacement parts previously meant I was very pleased to win some Felcos a couple of years back. I see the blade can be replaced now, which is a step in the right dire...