Garden at the beginning of December 2014

Last one of the year! It's about 8°C today, so not ridiculously cold for the time of year. The leaves are off most of the trees, apart from the two apple trees actually in the garden, which have just begun to drop leaves. The garden is also probably looking a bit lighter as the neighbour's walnut tree was removed last month (it had died and had honey fungus).

Pretty leaf colours on the Hydrangea Twist n' Shout

The cyclamen I planted up in containers last month are just starting to flower.

The colours of the remains of the Spiraea flowers are really pretty (although they're prettier when the sun is shining on them!).

The Cotoneaster we bought last year has really pretty leaves now, and some red berries, although I think some have already been eaten by the birds!

The Alstroemeria is still flowering (it's tucked up in the cold frame for the winter).

And the Convolvulus has started flowering again!

Think that's all for now! Happy December gardening everyone. I think we've nearly done for the year, we had a big clear up over the weekend, and I got the soft fruit and rhubarb mulched.

Decisions made!

Thank you for the comments on my last post, I got a few decisions made!

I decided that I did like the Everyone Outta the Pool socks in that yarn, so kept going and finished the first one. I did use the suggested heel from Sensational Knitted Socks, which I definitely like (still cannot fathom why I didn't like it back in 2007), although I want to find the instructions for the heel I did back then, as I liked that one too! ;-) I've done more of the heel stitch on the sole too because of where I wear out socks. I like the way the slip stitches in the pattern have broken up the bands of colour - it's more obvious the closer you look. The yarn colours are also more rainbowy in good light, and not just the pink/yellow/blue it appears in the photos. The weather has been so bad the light hasn't been good for taking photos this year!

I love the cuffs - they are double knitted (the first time I've used this technique), and then grafted together, which gives a seamless finish, and looks rather good, I think.

Meanwhile, I also acquired some beads from a local shop for my South Seas stole - none of the pinks was quite right with the yarn, so I went with clear beads in the end. It turned out I also needed a crochet hook to attach them with, as the pattern called for a US 13 (0.85mm) hook, which doesn't seem to exist here. Fortunately I found a 0.75mm one in another local shop, so I could get on with the project over Christmas rather than having to order one online! As you can see from the photo, with £1 coin for scale, the hook is absolutely teeny tiny.

I also got some buttons to finish off the baby cardigan from the last post, but forgot to take a photo of it, so that will have to wait for now!

Christmas preparations were completed. I made a pencil case for my nephew using some football fabric, as I couldn't find one to buy in the shops. But I forgot to take a photo before wrapping it up, so that will have to wait until he opens it now! I also put marzipan and icing on the Christmas cake, and I'm rather pleased with this year's effort (after last year's wonky holly leaves). The holly is edible and from Lakeland.

We got the Christmas tree put up at the weekend too.

I hope you all have a lovely Christmas break and here's to a lot more blogging soon!

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...

Salmon fishing

I have bits of half-written blog posts around. I haven't blogged for aagggggeeeessss, life got a bit in the way. Weird how when I had loads of time there wasn't that much to blog about, now that there's LOADS of things to blog about there isn't any time to blog...


Anyway, I was going to review some books, but instead I'll just mention them a bit:
August's reading group book was Paul Torday's Salmon fishing in the Yemen
which I highly recommend. It really is as crazy as the title suggests - who in their right mind would think of going salmon fishing in the Yemen is the whole premise of the book. The story is told from a number of points of view, using a variety of diary entries, email conversations, narrative, letters etc, which I found straightforward to follow but I suspect some readers might not like the jumping around? It's about daring to believe that the impossible can really happen, with some swipes at politics and mad corporate worlds thrown in too. That also makes it sound deadly serious, which it isn't. It's highly amusing in parts, and also very sad in parts. But I think you have to read it for yourself!

I've also read:
Maggie Sefton A killer stitch another of her knitting mysteries. Not serious reading but a lot of fun.
Patrick Gale The whole day through Again, highly recommended. I love Patrick Gale!

Knitting-wise, I've finished one nephew jumper and nearly finished the other one. Still part way through the Owen socks, then I started Iron Knitter, at which I proved to be a total failure due to lack of time and didn't even complete the first round! Plus my knitting got exterminated by a dalek, which didn't help...

I haven't blogged for so long Blogger has changed the way you upload photos!
This is the yarn I bought at Norfolk yarn on holiday - 900g of Araucania Toconao at half price. It's gorgeous, 100% wool aran weight, all squooshy and soft and I'm thinking about making Amused by Jordana Paige with it.

Then I discovered that FOUR people I know are expecting babies in February or March. Is there something in the water? Haven't started any baby knitting yet but I'm going to have to soon.

A lot of time suddenly disappeared when I discovered that Bloglines, which I've been using to follow blog updates for the last five years was closing on 1st November and I had to shift all my blog subs over to Google Reader. It did give me a chance to go through them (and realise how many people have stopped blogging!) but it seemed to take forever....

We have been doing a lot in the garden. The huge and diseased buddleias have disappeared...

 To be replaced with a nice bit of empty space. I am gradually working my way along the raised bed with the "no dig" method I read about - you put some cardboard on top of the soil, pile compost from the compost heap on top of it and spend the winter drinking tea and eating chocolate in the warm whilst the worms do all the hard work of breaking down the cardboard and mixing the whole lot together.

And a friend of ours gave us two apple trees as a (deliberately) belated wedding present as it is only now the right time to plant new trees. They haven't been delivered yet, but this a picture I took when we went to choose them at the plant centre at the Royal Horticultural Society gardens at Wisley. One is an espalier to go against the back wall, the other a standard shape to go in the lawn.



I think that's all for now. Hopefully it won't be so long before my next blog post, still haven't blogged about more of the books I've read and some of the knitting! I got horribly behind with reading people's blogs whilst transferring all my blog subs over but have been trying to catch up with commenting.