The horticultural show

We have a horticultural show in our town every year. You know the sort of thing, people exhibit things in a variety of classes, like fruit, veg and flowers. I'm ashamed to say that although we have lived in the town for 29 years we have never visited this show before.  My daughter decided that this was the year to go.  She wanted to enter some of our allotment vegetables, but we weren't sure what sort of standards were expected.  So we looked at the list of classes to enter and decided to just enter our chutneys this year and see what might be expected in the veg and fruit stuff so we can prepare ourselves for next year.  Mine was apple and cranberry and hers was beetroot.  I did wonder if my chutney was a bit old as I'd made it last November, but it was still tasting good, in fact I thought it had improved with keeping.  I had one jar left.

We arrived early in the morning to leave our chutneys before the judging took place.  There were two other chutneys there, we wondered if any more would arrive.  We went back in the afternoon after the judging to see how we had done. Sadly neither of our chutneys got placed, but we didn't mind, we wandered round looking at the other exhibits.  There were cakes and biscuits, we thought we could do that next year. I think my shortbread is worthy enough to be entered.  There were a lot of handicrafts on display, but we thought we would have liked to see more fruit and vegetable classes.

We admired this wonderful cabbage and onions.

There were some important people there too.

Now we know how it all works we'll be well prepared for next year's show.

Mellow

I tend to wake up quite early in the morning these days, my aching joints won't allow me to lie in bed for long. I have to get up and start moving about. I enjoy these light early mornings when I sit at the dining room window with a cup of tea and look out at the garden.

There's a lovely mellow look to the borders now which is especially so early in the morning. For a while during August  the borders seemed to lack colour--it's that gap when the early summer flowers have faded and the late summer ones haven't yet come into flower. But looking around the garden now I can see that colour seems to have come back to the garden. It's a lovely  mix  of dark pinks, yellow, bronze which combined with the faded seed heads of the earlier flowers gives the garden that autumnal look.

There's a clump of pink/lilac phlox in the top border with a white one behind called 'David'. The scent is lovely and does remind me of summer.  I rarely remember the names of plants but my son-in-law and my brother are both called David.  Last year I gave these plants a 'Chelsea chop' in May and they didn't do at all well, so I didn't bother this year and I'm pleased with the results. The sedums are in flower too now, adding to the pink theme.

In another border the rudbekias and heleniums are looking good but I think the star of the garden at the moment is the lovely bright yellow grass--Hakonechloa Aureola (I had to look that up, that's a name I definitely can't remember).

Building work in the den

Back from our holiday and the allotment was in need of some work.  We took the grandchildren, so of course I didn't get any allotment work done.  Instead we built a den and a bug house, well it was good fun.
We started the woodland den a few weeks ago and the children have some great plans for it.  The 9 year old had sorted herself out early on with her own little space.

But the seven year old needed some help so we gathered together some long twiggy branches and built a tepee under his climbing tree which Granddad has made easier to climb by fixing some wooden blocks onto the trunk.

Next we put the finishing touches to the bug hotel which we started a few weeks ago, it may need some refurbishment from time to time.

My new chalk marker pen proved a great success with the children and after selecting a few pieces of slate from our store of many things we had found on the plot, they set to work making some signs. There was the 'welcome to our den' , the health and safety notice, 'beware of the tree you cud fall out', and the invitation for insects to stay awhile in the newly built 'bug hotel, the place to bee'