August visits

As I said in my last post, August has been a pretty busy month. We had a trip over to Cambridge to see the OH's friends, and did this walk in Thetford Forest, on the Norfolk/Suffolk border, along the Little Ouse river. The walk starts in Brandon, which has a station, so it's doable by public transport from Cambridge.

Although the grass on the path had been cut down, it was pretty uneven underfoot.

We did pass some canoeists but they were going so fast I didn't get a chance to take a picture!

Some parts of the walk had dense undergrowth, others were more open.

The cygnets are getting big now.

I also had a few days away in Yorkshire, visiting friends whilst the OH was beavering away at work. I really enjoyed catching up with them. As well as talking LOTS of knitting, eating LOTS of yummy food and doing some playing/reading bedtime stories, I helped a bit in their new garden, which is on a slope with beautiful views, and really quite amazing. (*jealous*, me?!)

We visited the Dutch House, which has a lovely café and wildlife garden, plus really good examples of square metre gardening (much better than mine!).

Outwitting the squirrels

I had so many good intentions about blogging more often, and now it's been a month since I last posted. Oops. August has been a lot of fun, but we've been out and about quite a bit.

Out in the garden we didn't get any apples last year from the two trees we were given as a wedding present. They mysteriously disappeared in the night before they were ripe. This year there are quite a few apples ripening, then I saw a squirrel making off with one of them (no, they're still not ripe). We weren't too impressed with the idea of the squirrels making off with our apples, so I did some googling and came up with a couple of solutions to try (along with a lot of completely impractical/bordering on the illegal solutions).

The first is to hang CDs or something else shiny in the tree to deter the squirrel. We had some CDs that had come free with the weekend papers so I've hung those up, and so far, so good. This is the espalier tree, which the squirrels have multiple ways of accessing as it's against the wall, so there wasn't much point trying to put a barrier in their way.

On the standard apple tree, which is too far from any fences for the squirrels to jump across to it, I've smeared vaseline up the trunk and the support pole, which has so far deterred them from climbing up there. It will eventually wash off in the rain though, so I'll have to keep an eye on it.

 
The tomatoes finally ripened, and have been absolutely delicious - we're now inundated with them! I haven't grown this variety before, as I usually grow bush cherry tomatoes, and these are cherry tomatoes that grow on a cordon. Next year I'll probably grow the same variety but put some better supports in. These were plug plants, from a free offer in a magazine, so I need to go and check what variety they actually are!

And the raspberries (Autumn-fruiting variety - Autumn Bliss) have started to ripen. I like Autumn-fruiting ones as they gradually ripen over a period of time so you don't end up with a glut.

We're also doing really well with the wildlife (apart from the unwanted wildlife, like the squirrels!). Birds now spotted in the garden include song thrushes, jays, blackbirds, great tits, robins, chaffinches, goldfinches, greenfinches, magpies, collared doves, wrens and dunnocks. In fact the birdfeeders are so busy they resemble a motorway service station. We (well, the OH, who is much better at spotting them than me) have also now seen several varieties of bees and butterflies.

And then there was a knitting update

Two blog posts in one weekend? I'm on a roll.

I seem to have got quite a lot of knitting done since I last did an update (OK, so that was back in June, so hardly surprising).

My Fantastic Purple Cardigan is nearly all knitted, I just have to sew the seams and knit the edging. I blocked it on the spare bed one week and it took up loads of room, as it seems to have come out rather large. That's a good thing though, as it's meant to be a baggy cardigan.

I got frustrated with the Mini Mania Scarf and ended up frogging it. I'd wanted to knit it to use up odds and ends of sock yarn, but found that linen stitch was hurting my wrists if I did it for too long so decided to give up. Plus, all my machine washable sock yarn leftovers seemed to be variations on mud colour (have I really knitted a whole pile of mud colour socks?) which didn't make for an interesting scarf. Instead I have started a Sock Yarn Leftovers Blanket using mitred squares. The pattern is more of a recipe into which you add in whatever weight yarn and needle size you want. It's very easy to follow, and this is a great project to pick up when I need something fairly mindless to knit, such as at knitting group where I'm busy talking and drinking wine, or when I'm at home watching TV with subtitles (anyone else enjoying Les revenants?)

My Aeolian Shawl is coming on well, I've just started the edge pattern, although there still seem to be a LOT of rows to go. I've really enjoyed knitting this and, apart from a blip last week when I did four rows wrong, it's been fairly straightforward knitting. It is quite time consuming, as it's now at the point when it takes about 45 minutes to do a knit row.

On a trip to our nearest proper yarn shop, Mrs Moon, with a friend back in May...

I bought a couple of balls of Rowan Cocoon to make a scarf as I wanted a nice straightforward pattern for TV knitting and to take on holiday with me. I finished knitting this in the hottest week of the year - because what more could you want in 30°C than a chunky knitted scarf?!

Not sure why my ribbing looks a lot more even in the photo than it is in real life.

That was a really good shopping trip, as I also found in the sale a copy of a book I'd wanted for ages, Little red in the city, which has lots of info inside about knitting to fit your size and shape.

Think that's all for now.

More gardening 2013

I was going to do a knitting update as several projects have made real progress, but there's more going on in the garden at the moment so I'm doing that first!

I had a lovely day out with my Mum to the Royal Horticultural Society gardens at Wisley (more in a different post), and bought a couple more plants so that I could plant up this new border. The new plants are a Physocarpus, plus a Heuchera "Chocolate Ruffles", to go with two Euonymus  "Emerald n' Gold" we already had, a Phlox and a rose we were given as a wedding present. Of course, it's been ridiculously warm ever since, over 30°C sometimes, so we've ended up having to water these a lot to help them settle in!

We've been able to harvest some produce already. This was the first strawberry, and we've had loads more since then. Unknown variety, I propagated our plants from runners from one plant given to us by a friend a few years ago.

The apple trees both have a lot of fruit ripening, which I've thinned out in the hope of ensuring at least some of them get as far as the eating stage. Unfortunately the squirrels love eating them before they're ripe, so we have a strong suspicion that we're not going to get to eat the ones from the espalier tree as there's no way of protecting it. This fruit below is on the standard tree, which I think we might manage to protect.

The first lot of broad beans I brought in from the garden today. Can't wait to eat them tonight, combined with...

the first crop of potatoes!

In the less edible but pretty side of gardening the Phlox paniculata is in full flower, and much loved by the bees.

All the fuchsias are developing flowers, but this one, Fuchsia Mojo Boogie is my favourite (Fuchsia Mojo is a newly bred range). We've had a few accidents with it, as the first one I had was trodden on by a builder when we had a new wall built, so I had to get replacements the next year. It's also only half-hardy so had to spend the winter in the cold frame. But worth it for the beautiful flowers.

This is my now huge Eryngium planum, which I bought for £1.50 as a teeny tiny plant last year at a nursery 'oop north (where plants are a LOT cheaper). I was hoping it would get big, as it's a really good source of nectar for insects, as well as having seed heads that look dramatic through the winter. And it has SO many more flowers on it that last year, it's brilliant. Behind it you can see the wire netting I've put up so I can espalier the Pyracanthas. (does this sound like I actually know what I'm talking about?!) The Pyracanthas were rather spiky to prune, but I did manage it with many "Ows".

I'm rather pleased with this new acquisition (as a plug plant) last year - it's a new type of Foxglove, called "Illumination Pink", which won Plant of the Year at Chelsea last year and is perennial. We've got three of them and they've all grown really well and have beautiful flowers this year. Next year it should be even bigger with even more flowers.

And this is the rather pretty Sisyrinchium, which I've had to move as it wasn't very happy where I'd originally planted it a couple of years ago. It's now flowering in its new home.

I've using the RHS' Plants for pollinators list when planning what plants to buy, as it helps you find plants that flower throughout the year.

That's all for now, I'll be back soonish for more of an update!