My birthday (a while ago now)

So, back in October, I had a birthday, but, as I said in my last post, life was a bit busy for a while so I never got round to blogging about it. Ever wondered what Slough station looks like at  8am on a Sunday? Almost totally deserted. This was when I had to head over to Bristol for a work conference and, of course, there was engineering work on our railway line that weekend with rail replacement buses on instead, so it seemed easier to drive to Slough and go from there...

Anyway, that is now all finished, and I'm getting caught up with all the time off in lieu that I managed to accumulate in the early part of November. So, my birthday? Well, you've already seen the plant purchases, from our lunch and afternoon out to the garden centre.

Then I got some fabulously cool presents. The crafty ones are here. The OH got me some blocking mats, which are already proving useful for pinning things out for blocking. I like being able to use just a few of them to block a small item, or the whole thing for something big. A friend gave me a make a bag kit, which I'm looking forward to trying as I want to do more sewing.

These are the other ones (I also got a new dress, but I haven't got a picture of that!). The Borgen box set - we really enjoyed the first series but recorded it then waited ages to start watching it. It turned out that the final episode was only partially recorded so We Couldn't Find Out What Happened - really annoying! Anyway, this meant we could finish watching the first series, and then get going with the next two series. And the book about the Magna Carta and Lincoln, cos, you know, Magna Carta is going to be big next year. Oh, and a Montezuma chocolate library!

It was a lovely birthday, even though it feels like a long time ago now... We'd thought about trying to have a holiday the week of my birthday, but we couldn't quite coordinate getting the same week off work, so our few days in Salisbury ended up being a couple of weeks before it.

Garden at the beginning of September 2014

Can't believe it's September already. Autumn is definitely on the way, and the weather's been cooler over the last few weeks. We've had a lot more rain, so the garden is looking greener than it usually does at this time of year!



Everything seems to have been a few weeks ahead of itself since Spring, so the apples are nearly ripe now. We haven't lost any (so far) to squirrels, partly (probably) because of hanging up the old CDs to deter them, and partly because the neighbour's walnut tree has died, and they used to cross our garden to get to it.

This is the Rudbeckia in full flower. I divided it into three in the Spring and it seems to have recovered OK.

The hydrangea (this is Endless Summer Twist n' Shout) has really pretty leaves at this time of year - it's almost exactly four years ago that I bought this one, and I was attracted by the leaves then.

The Penstemons have been great this year, with lots of repeat flowering and a lot of growth. These were plug plants free with a magazine special offer a couple of years ago. Last year they didn't do a great deal.

The newest sedum (bought last year) flowered. I didn't Chelsea chop this one.

But I did Chelsea chop the others (these were already here when we bought the house). These have been chopped to about three different heights so should all flower at different times. The idea is to have flowers continuously so there is always a source of nectar in the garden.

And the Japanese Anenome has got huge. The flowers are so pretty. I deadhead it for a while, then I let it set seed (the seed is like fluffy cotton wool), and it's self-seeded in a couple of places in the garden, which was my intention! There's also some Nemesia in the container in the background.

These are the last few Sweet Pea flowers. I've been diligently dead-heading it twice a week through the summer to keep it flowering, and I'm now going to let it set seed so that I can collect and store them ready for next year.

Definitely signs that Autumn is on the way. The first berries have appeared on the holly. These are the first berries to appear on it at all, after we bought a male holly to go right next to it it seemed to get the idea about berries.

The red Pyracantha has lots of berries on it, but the yellow and orange ones still seem to be forming.

The tomatoes are still ripening. I'm not convinced at all about the cordon ones. We've had about four tomatoes from the two plants, and they were nice. But a lot of the fruit has split, one got Blossom end rot, and one branch fell off entirely before the tomatoes ripened.

But the cherry tomatoes have been really good. They've ripened at a steady pace through the summer so we've always had some to eat. They're tasty, and not as thin-skinned as last year's variety. Last year a lot of them split, but we haven't had that problem this year.

Days out: Waddesdon Manor

We decided to take advantage of having a four day Easter weekend (well, actually mine was a seven day weekend, but the OH only had four days) to have a day out to Waddesdon Manor, up in Buckinghamshire, not far from Aylesbury. We realised it would be really busy so we probably wouldn't get tickets to go in the house by the time we got there, so we stopped off on the way and had an early lunch in Aylesbury.

At Waddesdon they had new, slightly crazy, car parking arrangements - you park on the far end of the park land in a huge mega car park like something on an industrial estate, then queue for a shuttle bus to take you over to the house. It's probably great on a weekday, not so great on a bank holiday weekend when there are a lot of people visiting...

Anyway, we eventually made it over to the house. Which isn't that old, it was only built at the end of the nineteenth century, and has all this towers and turrets all over the place.

I liked the criss-cross ivy they'd got growing up one of the towers.

It must be a bit colder up in Buckinghamshire, as their daffodils were mostly still in bloom (ours were over by the Easter weekend), and formed a spectacular show in front of the house.

This is a bird planted with bedding plants, which I'd seen on Gardeners' World and wanted to see for real. I bet it looks amazing in a couple of months' time!

This ornate structure, believe it or not, is an aviary, where originally exotic birds were kept for pleasure, but which is now an important conservation breeding centre for rare species. Each section is a separate enclosure with birds from different parts of the world inside.

This little chap is very rare indeed. He's a Bali Mynah (also known as a Rothschild Mynah) and, in the wild, this species is hovering not far off extinction.

 

We got away from the crowds by walking through the woodland, where bluebells were beginning to emerge.

And some beautiful views over the surrounding countryside from the more open park land.

Garden at the beginning of July 2012

Where did June go? Time seems to be going past faster and faster.
The garden is still looking lush thanks to the monumental amounts of rain we've had. Remember back in February when it looked like it was never going to rain ever again?!

The large green triffid thing in the raised bed in last month's pictures turned out to be a weed, so it was removed (and filled the garden waste bin!). So, we now have an empty space waiting to be filled with a New Plant. What a shame, we'll have to go to the garden centre (again).

We'd wanted to have a topiary box ball type thing in this tub, to smarten it up a bit and to avoid having to keep replanting the tub, but the ones we'd seen on sale were £25-£30 (ouch). Then I spotted the "Hedging" section in the garden centre, where a pack of 10 tiny box plants were considerably cheaper than third the price of one huge one, or a slightly bigger one could be bought individually for £3.99. So this is it, planted in the tub and then trimmed into a vaguely ball type shape.It can't be that difficult to make a topiary ball, can it? It's not like I want to try something ambitious, like a topiary sheep. Now there's an idea...

Everything is growing and flowering like mad now. This is one of the sempervivums, which now looks like something off Doctor Who.

 

And a few firsts of the year. The first flower on the clematis (this was a special offer one bought last year).

 The first sweet pea (from some free seeds that came with a magazine).

 First flowers on the hydrangeas. Believe it or not, this hydrangea is called "Bluebird", but because of our soil type they come out  pink!

 And the first flower on a fuchsia. The fuchsias aren't as big this year, I think it must be the lack of sunshine (can't be lack of water!!).

These are two new fuchsias, which the OH bought me. Last year I bought a Fuchsia Mojo Boogie along with some other plants with my garden gift vouchers given to me when I left the last job. And the builder then stood on it whilst here doing some work last October. And I wasn't At All Impressed. Anyway, the OH found them again at the garden centre and got me two! I've put them in tubs (so I can move them somewhere else should the builder come anywhere near ever again), along with another one I grew from a cutting last year.

I've just finished reading "An ear to the ground: understanding your garden" by Ken Thompson, which I'd highly recommend. It's a fun read, explaining some of the science behind gardening, and why things happen the way they do.

Garden at the beginning of June 2012

We arrived back from holiday (more later - there were vast numbers of yarn shops!) just in time for my garden at the beginning of the month pictures. Although I did wait until the OH had mown the lawn.
Everything's looking very green as we've had so much rain, although a lot of things haven't grown as much as expected because it's been colder than usual at this time of year.

My cuttings and seedlings in the cold frame were looking good, I had to get the lettuce planted out quickly once we were back as it had grown dramatically whilst we were away!

All the roses had flowered whilst we were away. I love the variety of colours. All of these were planted by the previous owners of the house.

As well as the Sweet Williams I grew from seed.

Unfortunately I had a busy week ahead so had to get out there and garden in torrential rain as there wasn't any other time to do it! In the picture below my hair is as wet as it is when I've just got out of the shower! You wouldn't think it was June.

 It took a day's work to get on top of the weeding. I also potted up this fuchsia, grown from a cutting last year (my first attempt at taking cuttings) and of which I'm feeling rather pleased with myself!

 And these are the new plants we bought on holiday. Two are from National Trust properties, the others from a garden centre we stopped at on the return journey. But more about the holiday later on.

Blog statistics...

If you've got a Blogger blog like me, have you tried looking at the stats for it (on the control panel)? Mine are most amusing. I can see which sites have referred people to me (usually Ravelry), what people have searched for on Google and then found me ("lopsided cake"!) and which countries the people who read my blog are in. Which seems to be a fair few scattered right across the world. The only continent not represented is Antarctica!

A bit more knitting time this week, and I managed to get the baby cardigan finished off and blocked. I would highly recommend this pattern - it's fun to knit, only the top of the hood needs sewing up and it's very clearly written.

I got some digital kitchen scales last year, which are now proving useful for weighing odds and ends of yarn as well as cooking ingredients. I have 54g of the variegated purple cotton left, i.e. just over half a ball, which should be enough for a very small tank top or I might do a bigger one with stripes?
 

Some more yarn arrived, this time some acrylic for a tea cosy requested by a friend at church. She had requested cream and terracotta to match her kitchen and I struggled to find some terracotta at the cheaper end of the spectrum. Eventually, this came from Knitwell, who also seem to have quite reasonable postage - I investigated a few other places for cheap acrylic but the postage was much higher. It's Hayfield Bonus DK, which does feel rather acrylicky, but I doubt a teapot is fussy about what it feels like. I'm using the Terrific Tea Cosy pattern by Martin Storey.

The amaryllis put on a spurt this week, I took the first picture yesterday for the blog, and ended up taking the second picture today as it had managed to grow a couple of cm overnight! And the sun came out today so it's easier to see.

We went off on an outing to a garden centre yesterday, and went to the Longacres one which is a bit further away than the usual one. I was pleasantly surprised - it had considerably more plants than the one closer to home and they also seemed to be cheaper. We had lunch there too but the café wasn't as nice as the other one though. Amusingly we drove past two other garden centres on the way there, which makes about 5 garden centres in the space of 10 miles - do they really have enough business?!

Anyway, I'm pleased with our plant purchases. Not only were the rhubarb plants cheaper than elsewhere (the reason for the trip in the first place), we found a lovely Dogwood to go in the back garden, as well as a holly and I unearthed a Euonymus reduced to 99p in the sale section!

We also got some compost and propagating trays for use in the next few months when I want to grow some more plants from seed. And the OH found this in the pet section:

A squirrel proof bird feeder, which we're also hoping will be pigeon proof. We've been attempting to feed the birds here for months now, but the old bird feeder kept being inundated with pigeons, some even tried clinging to it and doing a humming bird impression to get seed out, and this scared away the smaller birds. As we live in a conservation area with a lot of woodland we've also been having trouble with squirrels and it was getting annoying having all the bird seed gobbled up by vermin! Hopefully this will do the trick.

Any human heart arrived at the library and I've been reading it this week. It's OK, not that interesting though and not really grabbing me. I don't really care what happens to the character and, as it's written in diary format and he's only just gone to university, there's a loooonnnnggg way to go yet. I have a feeling I'm not going to get it read in time for reading group in February...

And I've been doing a bit of clearing out. I've put some knitting magazines on Ebay to see if they sell, so if you're interested, look here.