Autumn tidy up

This week we've had some lovely fine weather and I've been able to get out and do some gardening.  Not allotment work but garden work for a change. The allotment has taken up a lot of my time recently and much as I love being there it's been lovely to get away from it and back to the garden.

I pottered around in the sunshine with the cat and the birds for company, and wrapped up in a thick sweater and scarf with a mug of coffee nearby I was in my element. Fortunately the cat hasn't found out how to catch birds yet!

I find gardening in the autumn really satisfying work. Sweeping up leaves, clearing away debris, weeding. I love the autumn tidying up process.  I cut back any messy plant material, but leave seed heads for the wildlife to feed on during the winter. The astilbe and crocosmia seed heads are quite attractive throughout the winter and look good not just in the garden but also in flower arrangements. I'm not too hasty in cutting back as some foliage takes on some lovely colour through October. The hostas are looking good at the moment as they turn a lovely golden yellow. Soon they will flop and look really messy and that's when I cut them back.

This week I've cleared the raised beds at the top of the garden of vegetables which have finished, leaving the salad stuff which is still growing. I'm now planning what to do in those beds next year. I might use them for any veg we won't have room for at the allotment, or I might grow flowers and have a cutting border.  I will still grow salad crops, it's so easy to just pop down the garden to pick a few leaves just before a meal.

The sweet peas haven't done very well this year, so I cleared them away cutting off the ones still remaining.  I put them  in a jug on the garden table meaning to bring them in the house when I'd finished gardening, but they got left there. They still looked good viewed from the house windows.