Garden at the beginning of August - October 2016

August

I got really behind with my garden at the beginning of the month photos this year. Once LO was mobile it was hard to get outside with a camera and take pics, and then get them transferred onto my computer and edited for a blog post. So, this is a quick round up of some of the pictures I took.

One of LO's Christening presents - beautiful flowers, it's a stock called 'Joy' from RHS Wisley.

Beautiful flowers

The OH watering the garden during a dry spell. With some assistance from LO who liked moving the hosepipe.

September
Beginning to look a little Autumnal, and the colours are fading a little bit.

Apples ripening on the standard tree. We did well for apples this year, although they came out quite small - didn't have enough rain at the right time.

Ripening apples on the espalier tree. This is a different variety which ripens later.

The Japanese anenome in all its glory.

One of the fuchsias

The sedums just coming into flower.

Some of the Pyracantha berries.

October
The Japanese anenome border beginning to look very autumnal!

Garden at the beginning of February

I've had a busy weekend and no time to blog, and this week looks a bit mad too, so I thought I'd just do a quick update of the garden at the beginning of the month (well, 5th Feb, still not much daylight when I get home from work).

Not much has changed since last month. The OH painted the fence with wood preservative, and that's pretty much it.

Fairtrade yarn & other nice things

I bought some yarn. I'd seen someone else's copy of the March 2011 Yarn Forward mag at knitting group and liked some of the patterns, so the OH went and got me a copy. Then I bought the yarn for one of them on Saturday! It's Manos del Uruguay Maxima and is lovely and squooshy.

See, I spent half of Saturday at Christian Aid HQ in London on a "Making London Diocese a Fairtrade Diocese" morning. Very interesting and most entertaining, particularly the bit where they tried to do Ready Steady Cook and bananas were flying everywhere. Now Christian Aid HQ is on Lower Marsh, just behind Waterloo station, so almost immediately opposite...

Iknit! And as I'd spent the morning doing Fairtrade whatsits it seemed appropriate to buy some Fairtrade yarn. The Maxima is intended to be knitted into a present, so it still fits with my current intentions to only buy yarn when I know what I'm going to do with it.

Back at home the amaryllis is growing a cm a day!

I received an exciting parcel from Nicsknots, all beautifully packaged up.


It was my Phoenix Cards order. I started getting these from Nic last year sometime, the cards are really nice, made to high environmental standards and are also considerably cheaper than cards in the shops! I'd reached the point when I resented buying the extortionate prices for shop cards, had a go at making my own but didn't enjoy it or have time for it, then found out about these ones, which solved all those problems. I considered switching to email cards only, but I think it's more fun getting a "real" card through the post, plus a lot of my relatives aren't on email. I've only pictured a few of mine below, but you get the idea. I think my favourites are the notecards - you get a pack of 10 postcards with envelopes. The best ones are the sheep ones, which I think a few readers will probably recognise as I've sent them this one. The only hiccup I've had so far is remembering where I've put the cards when I want to send one.

Knitting-wise I haven't made much progress, it was a bit of a busy week, with meetings on 3 evenings so I wasn't at home a great deal! I got the body of the baby cardigan finished and started one of the sleeves, switching to DPNs. I'm loving this pattern so far, it just seems to flow along very smoothly and there's going to be so little sewing up to do! :-)

Reading-wise I collected Any human heart from the library but have only read two pages whilst waiting at the hairdressers. It hasn't made me want to read any further. But I have been reading the History of Christianity: the first three thousand years by Diarmuid MacCulloch. It's very readable (apart from being so stonkingly heavy it crushes your chest if you read it in bed). I've just been picking chapters out to read, rather than starting at the beginning as it's over 1000 pages long, so I've been jumping in at the bits of history that I know least about already.

Christmas

Once again time went hurtling past and I haven't blogged for nearly 2 months! Oops. It has been a busy 2 months though (funny that I thought at the start of the year that once we'd rebuilt the house, moved into it and got married I'd suddenly have loads of spare time!).

But I had a long weekend in Wales, visiting my brother's family, who  moved there last year. It was incredibly beautiful - with plenty of gorgeous sky and views to admire, the kind of thing you don't get within the M25! 

We visited the Centre for Alternative Technology at Machynlleth, somewhere I'd always wanted to go, and which isn't far from where they live. It was very inspiring, with lots of interactive displays of things like solar panels and composting toilets, as well as lovely local food in the café. And, visiting in the first weekend of November, we had the whole place almost to ourselves! Definitely somewhere to return to.

 Oh dear, you can tell I'm a tourist when I find even parking notices in English and Welsh exciting!

Meanwhile, our two new apple trees were delivered from the Royal Horticultural Society gardens at Wisley and I got them planted just in time before the weather went really snowy.
 One is a half-standard Red Windsor, on an MM106 rootstock, which should fruit in September. MM106 doesn't grow too tall, as our garden isn't very big so a massive mega whopping apple tree wasn't really an option.

 The other is on another MM106 root stock, but this one is an espalier Red Falstaff, which should fruit in October. It's gone in the raised bed against the back wall.

 We had some friends over to stay for the weekend - it's so nice to finally have a house that's big enough to have people to stay. On the Saturday we went to the Royal Landscape at Savill Gardens for the day, which I'd never visited at this time of year (despite virtually living next door whilst I was at university!). Like Wisley and CAT it's well worth a visit, but the café is massively over-priced so probably better taking a picnic if you go when the weather's warmer!

 They had a squash display in one of the glasshouses, I just hope someone was going to eat them once the display was taken down!

 I attempted to grow some potatoes for Christmas lunch, but this is all that came up! About enough for two of us for two meals...

 And I'd just dug the potatoes out of the ground and got the apple trees planted and the snow started! We had some right at the end of November, which caused some problems getting to work, then a gap, then more snow in the run-up to Christmas. The second time I was very busy at home having 'flu so I didn't venture out for the first few days, and by that time South West trains were running a snow timetable so it wasn't a problem getting to work.

 We've been attempting to feed the birds but keep getting inundated with pigeons - one of which does a humming bird impression hanging off the bird feeder to get the seed! We eventually took the tray off the bottom so it didn't have that to hang onto and it seems to have stopped them for the time being.

I can recommend not having 'flu just before Christmas. I'd just got all the Christmas cards sent, then came down with it the next day and retreated off to bed for five days before staggering off to work for 2.5 days before finishing for Christmas! Fortunately we didn't have to travel anywhere this year as Mum came to us for Christmas.
It's our first "married Christmas" and our first living in the new house, so we had our first tree to put up and decorate. I was still pretty wiped out at that stage as we put it up just before Christmas, so I was hanging a couple of baubles and going to have a sit down to recover. It took ages!

And we managed to do turkey and all the trimmings. This is a plateful aimed at either Mum or the OH. I got a turkey breast from Copas Turkeys, having gone to some lengths to try and find an ethical one. Although Riverford, our veg box company, does do meat, they only did whole turkeys, not just turkey breast, and there's no way we'd have got through a whole turkey! The Copas turkey came with lots of instructions aimed at the totally novice turkey cooker (i.e. me) and seemed to work well, as well as coming from a farm only 15 miles from here!

And my Christmas dinner - all the vegetables and baked bean roast from the Lincoln Cathedral cook book!

That's all for now. I want to do a post about knitting stuff sometime soon, and I'm not back at work until 4th January, so hopefully will have some time this time!

Happy Christmas to those who celebrate it, and here's to more blogging in 2011...

Off to Norfolk for a holiday

We got back a week ago from a week's holiday in Norfolk, but the complete insanity of the return to normal life has stopped me posting until now. Norfolk proved to be an inspired choice of location. We took an apartment about 3 minutes walk from Norwich Cathedral (we hadn’t realised it would be quite so close when we booked it!), right outside the Erpingham Gate to the Cathedral Close.

We spent some time exploring the cathedral, which felt rather tall and narrow compared to a lot of the cathedrals I’ve visited. Still very beautiful though, and with some new facilities built on the side that manage not to look obtrusive – a visitor centre and hostry, plus an education room (where I’d been to a conference a few months ago) and a refectory next to the library. Anyone else think a refectory next to the library is a GREAT idea?!

It was a monastic foundation and has impressive cloisters, including a labyrinth.

As well as a font that used to be used for making chocolate at a local factory. I kind of wish I hadn’t been baptised already so I could be baptised in it.

Apart from the cathedral Norwich itself is stuffed full of medieval churches, some redundant, some still functioning as churches but most of them operating Fair Trade cafés at incredibly reasonable prices. Must have been living in the South-East for too long as I’d forgotten it was possible to buy a cup of tea for less than £1!

This one is St Andrew’s Hall, which is now used for all kinds of concerts, productions, table top sales and other stuff, as well as having a café in the crypt.

And St Julian’s, which has the Julian Centre next door, all about Julian of Norwich who wrote Revelations of Divine Love in the 14^th century.

I also liked the winding medieval streets and alleyways, some of them with amusing names.

The 900 year old Norwich Castle keep has been turned into an art gallery, Norfolk museum and natural history museum. Inside the keep itself there’s various exhibits, mainly aimed at children (but they were quite fun for adults too, I made sure I'd checked all of them out)

We had a day out to the seaside at Cromer and Sheringham. We weren’t too impressed with Cromer, but Sheringham, which I used to visit quite often for my previous job, was just as good as I remembered.

As well as the beach we went up to Sheringham Park  for a walk with some beautiful views across the parkland to the coast.

Before finishing off with a walk around Sheringham itself, another cup of Fair Trade tea (it seems to be ubiquitous round there, wish it was like that back in Staines) at the Funky Mackerel café on the promenade and then fish and chips in the evening.

Back in Norwich we enjoyed some evening walks along the River Wensum, which curves its way through the city, including around the cathedral close.

The whole city has been set up with information boards everywhere about the many historic sites. It is also largely pedestrianised in the centre, which makes it very easy and pleasant to walk around. Although we brought the car on holiday it would be very easy to come here by public transport (all the places we visited were served by both buses and trains, and sometimes steam trains too) and the centre of Norwich itself is compact and easy to visit on foot. In fact much easier than it would be by car, Oxo spent most of the week parked at our holiday apartment!

On the last day we walked to the Catholic Cathedral for a visit, which is just outside the inner ring road (but that’s only a 15 minute walk from the shops in the centre!)

There has been some knitting activity too. I pretty much failed at my Iron Knitter knitting (I am meant to be steaming away on  a pair of socks, but everyone else seems to be much much further on than I am). We also found the time to visit two yarn shops... but I’ll save that for my next post!

I bought the OH a dalek which then tried to ex-ter-min-ate my knitting...

Knitting and baking, a bit of reading and some TV

I finally finished Thermal last month, but haven't blogged about it yet. This was my long term project intended to keep me going through house-building-work, moving house and wedding preparations, and it certainly did the trick!

The yarn is unknown 4ply probably wool that I bought way back on Skip North. There's still loads left, so I could have made it longer - I didn't dare when I started off as I thought I might run out as I had no idea of the yardage! I'm really pleased with how it's turned out (ignore dreadful photo of me above with the usual wonky shoulders) and think it will be a useful top.

I have started a couple of new projects. I had this overwhelming urge to get knitting and felt all inspired - which I hadn't felt for ages, probably as a result of just having one project on the go for so long! This yarn was given to us as part of a wedding present, it's Five Moons Selene in the "it's a jungle" colourway and it's gorgeous and soft as it's a merino and bamboo mixture.

And I've got a bit of a thing about cables going at the moment (my other project is the cabled jumper for a nephew) so I chose Tabitha's Owen sock pattern. The cables are big enough to show up well with a variegated yarn, as you can see below. And I love the way the pooling gets broken up by the cables. It's been a while since I did toe-up socks but I wanted to get the most out of this gorgeous yarn so it seemed sensible! It's also a great pattern for in front of the TV or on a train as there is one round where you have to be careful for the cable, but the rest is very easy to remember.

Otherwise I've been busy gardening, baking and reading. I've made a couple of cakes for colleagues' birthdays, the Victoria sponge nearly didn't last much longer after the OH spotted it through the hatch between the kitchen and the living room!

Reading-wise I read Edith Wharton's The house of mirth for reading group in July, which proved to be an interesting choice, especially immediately after getting married! After spending most of the book being puzzled about what it's got to do with mirth (it's not exactly, erm, mirthful), and not doing something sensible like looking it up on Librarything, I discovered that everyone else at reading group had a different edition, and that edition included an helpful introduction which included an explanation of the title! It comes from the Bible - Ecclesiastes 7: 4 - "The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth." That makes a whole lot more sense! The book follows Lily, who is basically on the shelf at the age of 29 and becoming increasingly desperate to assure her place in society by getting married to some suitable man. Whereas she was once at the centre of society she is now heading to its outer edges. She does love a man, but he isn't really in the right class so not an option. The society revolves around the social niceties and not putting a foot wrong. Lily slowly sinks further and further. At times I got very frustrated with her - why didn't she just get a job and support herself? - kept creeping into my mind. But it does become clear that she was never brought up with any idea of having to do that and has no skills or talents other than being an ornament. It is hard to identify with her as she is SO far removed from the world we're in now, but it's only 100 or so years ago (first published in 1905)! It also made me very glad that I do live now, especially with the life parallels, having just got married!

And, as there isn't anything at all on TV worth watching at the moment (other than the rather good Rev, which I've really enjoyed), we've been working our way through some DVDs of Rome, which I managed to miss when it was broadcast on TV. What exactly was I doing between 2005 and 2007 to miss it?!