Autumn

My 7 year old granddaughter recently asked me what my favourite season was. I had to really think hard about it and everyone else said it would be summer, of course. Well yes I do love summer, when we get a decent one and that brief return visit last week was lovely while it lasted. However I love all the seasons for what they bring in terms of weather, colour and activities, but I'm always ready to move on at the end of each season to new things.

I do especially love autumn. I think of it as a cosy season, a time to snuggle up in a warm sweater, drink hot chocolate, go for walks in the woods,  start a new knitting or craft project, cook warming casseroles and do lots of baking. I love it for the rich colours of the late flowers, the changing colours in the trees. Perhaps I like it  because my birthday is towards the end of October.

So now that autumn is well and truly here I shall be doing such things as :

• collecting, conkers, acorns, leaves and twigs with the grandchildren and making a nature display in the porch
• thinking about things to knit and sew for  forthcoming Christmas fairs
• making blackberry, raspberry or sloe gin, something I've never done before and want to try out
• using up our glut of baking apples to make mincemeat, apple butter, pies, crumbles
• sweeping up the leaves in the garden and putting them in the leaf bin to compost
• doing lots of clearing up and cutting back in the garden and allotment
• planting up some containers with things like cyclamen and evergreens for autumn and winter interest
• planting hyacinth bulbs to force for Christmas displays
• baking the Christmas cake
• cleaning and tidying out the shed

There are rather a lot of things to do, I'll let you know how I get on with them.

September in the garden

As we come to the end of September I look at the garden and feel pleased that it's still looking good. I've been able to sit back and enjoy the garden during August and September, or just potter around doing a bit of deadheading.

Up until a few years ago the garden always started to look quite tired and drab from late July.  So in the last few years I've  started to think more about planting for late summer colour. I've now got rudbekias, heleniums, michaelmas daisies, sedums.  This year I've also  grown dahlias for the first time in ages and I'm quite pleased with them. There are quite a few grasses too which give interest most of the year round and at this time of year take over the show as the earlier flowers die back.  I feel that I'm starting to get it right.

This month we've had such extreme weather changes from heavy rain at the start of the month and then going quite cold, to seeing summer return in all her glory.  I find it quite odd to be sitting in the garden soaking up the warmth of the sun, a very hot sun, and yet around me the leaves are beginning to take on their autumn tints. I noticed the other morning that the drive is full of fallen leaves, and I need to start sweeping them up to put in the leaf bin.
 
Tomorrow is the start of October, the weather will change again, flowers will die, but I look forward to the colours and changes to the garden it will bring.

Scary moments at the allotment

We were pleased with our work at the allotment on Sunday. We weeded, cleared the sweet peas away, and harvested. We picked beetroot but there is still plenty more left in the ground for other days. We've cleared most of the cabbages now, throwing the worst of the slug damaged ones away or taking them home for the rabbit. We also picked some purple sprouting broccoli which has appeared, very early. They are not usually ready for picking until March. The climbing french beans haven't done all that well, but there were a few to pick.  We also tipped a couple of the potato bags onto one of the cleared areas and found a good number of potatoes still in there. We're now thinking about what we can put in for the winter. Onions, garlic spring cabbage perhaps. The leeks are growing nicely, there is red cabbage, kale, brussels sprouts and the PSB.  We also have celery, celeriac, and one little squash which we thought was butternut but does not look like it.

What we weren't pleased about was the mice jumping about in the cabbage bed as my daughter was weeding there.  Even worse than that was the rat I came face to face with  as I lifted the piece of old carpet covering the compost heap! I don't know who was the most surprised, me or the rat. The rat shot off through the fence leaving me in a rather fragile state. I think it will take me a while to recover from that experience.

We consoled ourselves later by doing a bit of foraging down the lane. We enjoyed collecting elderberries, a few rose hips, blackberries and brambles.  I think there may have been sloes in the hedges too, but as I wasn't sure, we decided not to pick those. I will check those out and maybe go back another day if I'm certain they were sloes.  We left for home with great plans to make elderberry cordial, rose hip syrup and blackberry gin. Unfortunately the handful of blackberries was only enough to make  an apple and blackberry crumble, but it was very good.

Surprises

I love it when the garden surprises you.  You know when that plant you thought you'd killed off suddenly starts to sprout again. Like the bay tree I've  had growing quite well in a big pot for a few years, but which suffered badly in the cold of last winter. I cut it back as they said to do on Gardener's World, but still nothing happened until last week when I was thinking of throwing it out, but noticed 2 new leaves had appeared.  Or like last Sunday when I found all those potatoes in a bag I thought I'd emptied. Then there are the plants I've bought from plant sales, just to support a worthy cause and which I've not been able to identify, but which turn out to be real gems.


Well this is my latest surprise.  It's an Arum which a neighbour gave me about 3 years ago. It has interesting leaves from spring to summer, dark green and glossy with pale markings. For the last 2 years it has not done much but die back each summer. This summer it surprised me by flowering, which I thought was a very nice thing to do. I didn't know it would produce these berries too in the autumn. I planted it under a shrub because my neighbour said it grows in the shade. Nestling under the leaves of the shrub it brought a stunning splash of autumn colour.  It was a bit of a 'wow' surprise which greeted me over the garden gate. I like these sort of surprises.

Digging for treasure

Most of the potatoes we grow (1st and 2nd earlies) are grown in containers, either the special potato growing bags or just old compost bags. They are placed in any space available. We have them in the garden and at the allotment, lined up military style alongside the hedge or fence. They start off all neat and standing to attention, then as they start to grow and the bags are topped up with more and more compost, they start to sag and the foliage is all over the place. We're always glad when we can cut the foliage back and start to look for potatoes.

This year I've grown Foremost and Maris Peer earlies.  I also planted some Pink Fir apple potatoes in the ground. These are a main crop and  I read somewhere that if you only have space for one variety of main crop then you should grow these. They have a delicious nutty flavour.

I love harvesting potatoes,  it's like digging for treasure. You never know how many you're going to find in there. It was especially good yesterday because I thought I'd emptied all the bags of potatoes some weeks ago. I delved down into the bag just to see if there were any odd ones still in there, and found a treasure trove. I collected 3lbs altogether.

So many apples

We have a Bramley apple tree in our garden, which must be quite old as we've lived here for 27 years and it was here when we moved in. Despite its age it still produces lots of apples each year. And each year I struggle to use up all those apples.  They do at least  provide lots of food for the birds throughout the winter. As the apples fall to the ground, I collect any good ones and the rest are left for the birds.  The birds love rotting apples. The good apples left on the tree my husband picks.  We usually end up with several baskets of apples. Some are given away to friends, family  and neighbours, the rest we keep and I try to store them as best as I can.

I'm now at the stage of finding different ways of cooking these apples.
Sometimes I do baked apples. I core them and fill the centres with sultanas, raisins, currants and some syrup or honey. Yesterday I made an Apple Cake using a recipe from Greenside Up. This was easy to make and tasted yummy. I would recommend you try it.

Apple cake

I also made a Spiced Apple and Raisin Crumble based on a Delia Smith recipe but I adapted it slightly.  I put this in the freezer.

 Spiced apple and raisin crumble

Preheat the oven to gas mark 4 350F (180C)

1lb/11/2lb (450 gr)  Bramley apples, peeled and sliced
1oz (25g)soft brown sugar
 1/4  teaspoon cloves
1 level teaspoon ground cinnamon
3 oz (75g)  raisins
2 tablespoon water

Place the apples, raisins, sugar and spices in a dish, sprinkle with the water.

For the crumble topping:

6oz  (175 g)plain flour
3oz  (75g )butter
3oz ( 75g) soft brown sugar

Place the flour in a mixing bowl, add the butter and rub into the flour lightly, using your fingertips.  When it looks crumbly, add the sugar.
Sprinkle the crumble mixture all over the fruit in the dish.
Place the crumble dish in the centre of the oven and bake for about 40 mins or until the apples are cooked and the top is slightly brown.

Does anyone else have any good ways of using up apples?

Holiday memories

It's a month since we returned from our holiday in Cornwall and  the weather has changed dramatically in that time. The memories also soon fade, so I thought that before it all becomes locked away in the dim and distant past I would post some of my snaps on my blog. This is also to please those who keep asking to see some of the photos.  If you don't like other people's holiday snaps, then look the other way now.

It's years since we last went to Cornwall, and there were lots of places we wanted to revisit.
We stayed in a cottage at a place called Porthallow, which is on the Lizard peninsula. It's a little cove with a shingle beach, a cluster of cottages, one pub and a craft shop. We  loved the quietness of the place.

 It had a pub called The Five Pilchards, where we went a few times for a drink or a meal, but mostly in the evening we used to sit on the beach and watch the boats out at sea.

We did lots of walking along the southwest coastal footpath. There were some stunning views and lots of wildlife--butterflies, masses of flowers bordering the paths, seagulls of course and we even bumped into some Shetland ponies along one walk which the National Trust had put there to keep the grass grazed.

We went to Marazion and walked across the causeway to St. Michael's Mount. You can only walk across at certain times of the day depending on the tides. Other times you can go across by boat.

 Penzance was a place we wanted to visit again.  We even saw a pirate ship in the harbour.

The  Lizard  is Britain's most southerly point

This is Church cove at the Lizard

Lizard point

Porthleven is one of our favourite places to visit. It has a harbour, a long beach,  lots of interesting little shops and a weekly craft market.

We visited a few gardens, of course, that's a must for us.  Bonython was lovely, you can read about it here http://margaretspatch.blogspot.com/2011/08/bonython-estate-gardens.html   The best garden was probably Trebah, which would need another blog post to tell you about. We spent all day there.

It was a great holiday and I'm sure we will return to Cornwall again sometime.