The holly tree

We have a holly tree in our garden, which I am keeping a close eye on at the moment.  It's more of a big bush than a tree. I don't know how old it is but  it was well established when we moved here 27 years ago.  It's become quite a character in the family's eyes. It sits there outside, a few feet from the dining room window. Over the years it's been cut back from time to time when it's got so big it's obscured our view of the garden.  One year we decided to cut out the lower branches, which made it look more like a tree than a bush and we discovered we had a whole new area of garden to work on underneath.  So I under planted it with euphorbias, vinca and ferns. The neighbour's cat hides amongst the undergrowth and Dave the hamster is buried there.

There has never been very many  berries until a few years ago when it suddenly decided to produce them in abundance every year. I've heard it said that it's a sign of a bad winter if there are lots of berries on the holly bushes. Well the last 3 winters have been  pretty bad here in Lancashire and probably everywhere else in the country.  That seems to have coincided with the holly berry production.

It's not just our family who love our holly tree.  It's also loved by the birds.  There is always lots of activity around the tree.  Birds fly in and out and inside there seems to be always lots of rustling and  twittering. It also provides food for them. No doubt there are lots of insects in there, but also there are the berries, the birds love the berries. This year there seems to be more berries than usual.

That is why I am watching the bush very carefully.  Every day I look at the holly and admire the clusters of berries which I have watched gradually turn from pale green to orange and now  to red.  They are beautiful and I keep thinking how wonderful it would be at Christmas to cut some of those branches and bring them in the house to arrange in a big jug or vase.  I dream of seasonal evergreen arrangements, a wreath on the front door, a table decoration maybe.  But I know it's going to be a race between me and the birds.  Who will get to the berries first? Probably the birds will.  By mid December the branches could be stripped of those juicy berries.

But I live in hope and as soon as December arrives I shall be out there with my secateurs. I will leave some berried branches for the birds. I wonder if they would leave any for me.

Blackberry gin

We've been doing a bit of blackberry picking recently, but never finding enough to do much with them.  A handful went nicely with some apples to make a crumble  However one day last weekend  we went out for the day and found a lovely lane which was oozing with blackberries. I was well prepared with poly bags, so we got picking and came home with a decent sized bag of them.

Inspired by Debbie at Carrots and Kids, I've been longing to make blackberry gin or vodka since I read her blog about this time last year on sloe gin and blackberry vodka. It seemed so easy to make and would hopefully be ready for Christmas. Debbie does a lovely blog, it's well worth visiting for ideas on all sorts of things to do with gardening and the home and family.

As well as Debbie's recipe I also found recipes in my own cookery books and on the Internet. It seems like you can make fruit gin or vodka and they're much the same. I found a recipe for raspberry gin which could be adapted to make blackberry gin. The ingredients are basically blackberries or raspberries, granulated sugar and gin. The quantities  all varied slightly from 300 to 600 grams of fruit, 200 to 300 grams of sugar and 70cl to 1.5 litres of gin.  I even found one recipe which just said fill the jar to one third with fruit, top up to about halfway with sugar, then fill up with the gin or vodka.  I was a bit confused at first, but in the end I decided it wouldn't matter what quantities I used and did my own thing.

I used a 1.5 litre  sterilised Kilner jar  and once I'd put all the ingredients in I kept shaking it up until all the sugar was dissolved. I then put the jar in a cool dark place and I will continue to give it a shake every day for the next couple of weeks, after that I will shake it every week or so as the recipe  says. When it's ready for drinking I will strain it into bottles and according to some sources you can use the fruit to make jam afterwards.

I enjoyed doing this so much I'm going to make  more  with some raspberries I have in  the freezer picked from the garden. Hopefully it will all be ready for drinking by Christmas, if not, well maybe the Christmas of 2012!  Can I really wait that long !

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.