Here comes autumn

Standing outside our house there is the sensation of it snowing as the leaves from the street trees rain down on us - autumn is in full swing, so I've been out and about collecting bags of leaves for the leaf mold store - Vic has also been out sweeping the streets and it's about half full so far :)

Just one broad bean left to germinate, they are growing well and have lovely roots developing. They'll be big enough to transplate to bigger pots in a couple of weeks. I can't decide whether to plant them out into the bed ahead of winter, or keep them in pots ...

Some of my early peas are looking fantastic, but I've had sporadic germination which is a bit strange. One drainpipe is completely germinated, but the other two have germinated at each end, but not in the middle. I'm not sure whether something has been nibbling or whether they are just taking a while to pop through. I'm going to transplant them to the bed in a couple of weeks and tuck them up with some protection to keep them safe

Here are the lovely Peru 'Chinese lanterns'

The Hydranger in the lower garden has an amazing array of flowers in different colours and shapes - is this normal ? I'm having second thoughts now about removing it completely ... maybe I'll give it a very hard prune instead.

The Welsh poppies are having a resurgence and adding some welcome colour to our slab of concrete in the upper garden area

The two acers in the front garden have their winter palette colours - the green one is transformed and looks as though it is on fire ... but the leaves are dropping fast, so it won't be long until we are enjoying their structural branches - Tom, the guy who planted up the garden, was an amazingly skilled planter. We've enjoyed year round colour along with a succession of interesting plants and textures.

The Japanese anenomies have just about finished flowering, they've had an amazing season - I will definitely be trying to split the tubers :)

The front garden also has some beautiful little cyclamen nodding in the sunshine, the pink ones have just replaced the white ones:

I've planted up one of the china sinks with succulents

Not so keen on the dying tree that is attached to the property next door, but the fir cones are pretty ... will have to think about how I can use them in my Christmas door decoration ... did someone say Christmas !!

oooo sunshine !!

What a great weekend - brilliant sunshine, beautiful blue sky and not a cloud in sight :)

My peas are coming along nicely - two drainpipes are fully pea'd and the third one is almost fully up. Thirteen broad beans have already germinated :) The temperature is dropping pretty quickly here and overnight frost is becoming a real risk.

I decided to tackle the alpine strawberry bed this weekend as the various self seeded flowers have finally finished flowering. The bed has some blackberries which in theory are trained up against the stone wall that borders the bed, but in reality they're sprawling over the bed. Initially I thought the strawberries just needed thinning but it soon became apparent that the bed was riddled with those old favourites, creeping buttercup & bindweed, grrrrr.

here's the after shot !

It has now had a thorough dig over and I've tamed the blackberries. Access to the fruit has been tricky this year, so I've added a couple of paving slabs along the back of the bed.

I've now got a lovely square of clear earth to plant up next year - maybe my sweetcorn will go there :)

There are still around 50 alpine strawberry plants to be moved - for now they are heeled into a bed to keep them alive until I find somewhere for them to go permanently.

Kittie no. 4, Fergal, obviously thinks she is a herb, as she has taken up residence in the herb box - it was hard to admonish her, as she does look so pretty :)

Here is naughty kittie no. 3 practising his second favourite activity - lolling around in the sun.  He loves following us around the lottie - I'm not sure he's going to shape up into much of an apprentice though...