15th - 31st October

15^th October

I have painted the front wall and its brightness is startling. I have also half filled up a wooden box pallet with soil to be a large container for hopefully a Japanese maple to grow there. I think the stunning red leaves will look good. I have also make a raised bed edging out of pallet wood that goes from the far end of our bay window, in front of this box, along in front of the newly white wall and along the front wall. I’ll fill this with compost and soil and it will be for sowing poppies and cornflowers next spring. What with the fuchsias and grasses already there, the front garden will still be a small area but one that is full of plants and colour.

21^st October

The rain stopped after the last entry and we have continued to enjoy mild and dry weather. Sadly, the courgettes have finished. I managed to pick about a dozen in the last week that were about finger size but now the plants are shrivelled up, damaged by cold nights. Now that the plants have shrivelled I have found another butternut squash plant weighing about a pound – it’s always good to have these little bonuses. In the garden, I have harvested a couple of small portions of rocket and the hanging baskets are still managing to provide a display of colour from the purple surfinas plus the salvias are still in bloom and they make a good impact against the silvery cinerarias.

31^st October

Yesterday we returned from a family holiday to just south of Bude in Cornwall, not that far from where we were last year. It had a wood burning stove in the lounge so we took 2 large bags of logs from the garden that I split here one evening and that proved to be a roaring success. We also paid another visit to the Eden Project – again it was a delight and an inspiration. The boys were surprised to see a display of cotton plants and a cotton harvest in the Mediterranean biome. One said ‘It doesn’t really come from the plants does it Daddy?’ That kind of comment is fine from a 5 year old but when my wife let it out that she never realised it ‘grew on trees’ my eyes rolled in their sockets!

So today we took a trip to the allotment where I pulled some leeks and harvested all the carrots. A lot were damaged by carrot root fly but we still managed a pretty impressive haul considering I did nothing more than sow the seeds and watered a little. One carrot was 13 oz in weight. The calabrese plants are still producing side shoots and I cut off well over a large head’s worth. The sweet peas are still flowering and my 10 headed sunflower had all heads in bloom. It was magnificent to see such a bright yellow ball of sunshine on the last day of October amid so much end of season deadness. Before the holiday I took a couple of photos of the sunflower and I will enter them into next year’s show if they repeat the photograph category. On that note I really need to plan a time to come down and do an autumn clean up.

Back home after the holiday it seems that the salvias have come out even more.

Next post: 27th Nov