AH BUT IT"S COLD OUTSIDE AND THE DICK FEST

Wednesday - Wild too, gale blowing, showers, some with hail, spattering the windows, not much above freezing (I know, I know, you that live in Canada, Siberia and such places think we should be out sunbathing), but it does deter one from the garden. 

By now almost all the trees have lost their leaves - the beech hedge, of course, hangs on to its leaves and the great white cherry is not quite stripped. However the liquidambar just gets redder and redder. 

I have been keeping the field drain steam clear as best I can but it clogs so easily with leaves at this time of year. When it does the water finds all sorts of alternative underground routes down the garden so a little trench has been dug near the compost heap to try and dry out the grass.

I have brought out the potted bulbs for Christmas but am not very hopeful - they should be sprouting now they have had their shot of cold and dark but, apart from the amaryllis, not a thing. They sit inertly on my windowsill.

I have been surveying the internet for sleepers - railway ones, to replace the worn out and rotten scaffolding planks I first used for the sides of the veg beds. Not cheap. I think I do not want the creosoted ones - might not agree with the plants so will ask locally with prices from the internet search in mind. May need quite a few.

Still collecting stick fall from the trees - put somewhere dry for the kindling.

Using a sunflower and niger seed mixture has really attracted the goldfinches.

Moles are about heaping up their soil mountains - I tried the human hair approach suggested by G from Dublin but the just move a few feet to one side. If G. has any further ideas I would be interested to hear of them.

Friday - R has been labouring away clearing the debris of the year from the flowerbeds and plonking it on the compost heap. I dug up some of the yellow montbretia (crocosmia) as it was spreading too widely on the bed below the house and have relocated it on the banking above the Wendy House, I am not too bothered if it spreads there - it may crowd out the bindweed and couch grass.

The grey squirrel with the red face has all but demolished its chosen peanut feeder.

I am at a bit of a loose end at the moment - thrive on projects and have just completed the last one - the family history book. I am sustaining myself with biscuits, chocolate and Heineken, tea, coffee and golf but need something more. Somehow the garden does not fit the bill. Every night, in bed I look to R and say, 'Well, here we are again. It seems like only yesterday we were here before (which of course it was) but the interval feels like a couple of hours - very strange.

It seems a bit sad when the highlight of the day might be a few wheelbarrows of well rotted horse manure.

In fact we are such a loose end that we have got almost all our Christmas presents by mid November. However, I do remember one year when I went to the January sale of cut glass at the local works and bought many of next year's presents then! Mm! a bit sad?

This weekend it is Ulverston's Dickensian Festival (Locally known as the Dick Fest) where anything vaguely Victorian goes. There will be roasting chestnuts and mulled wine on the street and the weather is set fair for the thousands who come.

R and I will walk in and back as parking is horrendous - eyes open for a bargain and something for the garden.

That reminds me that our neighbour has given us some double white sneezewort for the garden and I have not put it in - knuckle rap and stuff - off to do that before dark.

TROUSER WEARING, SOUP AND BEING GOOGLED!

First of all I have no moustache this November as my upper lip is so infertile all I get are wisps, having said that I can curl it like, alas, Cliff Richard used to do. So no Movember for me.

Saturday - Today has been Church fair Day for R. I sold 21 pots of jam and chutney!
I gardened - finished some manuring, removed the manure from the rhubarb crowns - they would rot if I left them - silly mistake - thanks Monty Don for correcting me. I cleared the shed bed of top growth and then picked the last of the garden flowers for the house.

In the morning I made 3 pots of carrot and coriander soup with the last of the carrots - so . . .

Recipe - 1 onion, 1.5 pounds of carrots, 1.2 litres of veg stock, teaspoon coriander mix, bring to boil and put in simmering oven for 1.5 hours. Then add handful fresh coriander and whuzz in whuzzer till smooth. If not thick enough add a cooked potato and whuzz again.
Whuzz is better than whizz, the machine definitely goes more whuzz. Apologies for the mixed measurements metric and sterling and all that. (You will have to work out the conversion yourselves - easy with the internet.)

Question - do I leave the dead teasels and cardoons to wait for frosts?

This is so there will be some structure in the garden in the winter. However the cardoons are looking rather bedraggled and the main teasel is up through a cherry tree.
Answer - leave until I can make up my mind, because I am lazy or . . .

Sunday - R has grabbed me by the scruff of my neck and taken me on a garden tour. This is to imprint upon me what SHE wants the drainage man to do. This includes moving much of the stream so it goes to the hedge ditch rather than down the middle. Do I agree? Well, that is fairly irrelevant. As I love her what she says goes (much of the time)(but not always)(the secret is at least to let her think she has got what she wants)(which she usually has).
The only proviso will be to watch out we do not dig up the septic tank soak away which loops around the far garden. I have already found it in two places under the small stream.

This pic is from earlier in the year but R wants the stream to go straight on from the small brown tree all the way to the hedge.

Time to go out and garden - Oh! How sad, it has started raining.

Now for a post script.
I am having my arm twisted to consider letting adverts on this site. Comments will be appreciated and if there are any you see that you deem inappropriate let me know - HANG ON!
(I have been rejected by Google Adsense as not having enough content!)
Plenty of discontent though.
Well, solves the problem, eh!
Obviously they have not been to our garden and recognised its importance to the world.

Back to cardoons and teasels then.

DRAINS AND DREAMS

So autumn winds on and we steel our frozen hands to the manure heap of future growth, load the wheelbarrow and trundle down the hoggin path of possibility, scattering adjectives as we go.

There is still autumn colour and we have only had two mild frosts.

One of the cherry trees has turned and the leaves have gone a golden yellow. The last of the red amelanchier leaves are off and I have cleared away true soggy entrails of the hostas. Surprisingly the nasturtiums continue to flourish.

 I was up in the wood taking leaves out of clogged streams and collecting sticks fallen from the ash trees when I put up a snipe. It flew away with its characteristic drumming wing beat.

Putting Niger seed in a feeder had brought a flourish of goldfinches and the female greater-spotted woodpecker has been on the peanuts right outside the kitchen window.

And drainage has come to the forefront of thought. We, with a huge push from R at my inertness, have got someone with a little digger to appraise our problem.
As a consequence I have been down the garden and cleared out the stream between the two ponds and extracted the overgrowth of watercress. This has been left on the side so any creatures can slip or crawl back into the water before the compost heap beckons.

R is making rum butter and butterscotch sauce for the Church Christmas Fair at the Memorial Hall. I have donated 36 half pound jars of jam and chutney and some books wot I have read.

Now the days are colder the Wendy House is a bit forlorn and neglected. (I have cleared the leaves from the path but there are many more to come from the great sycamore).

I still have bulbs not planted - ranunculus and snowflakes (lecojum) and it is time I rose from my recumbent position (got off my bum) and did something about it. The carrots await me (I have got some coriander) as does the soup pan.

I nearly mowed the lawn again this afternoon but fortunately D., a friend, came and rescued me. He is a fine watercolourist and I reject the spellchecker trying to make me spell the word and similar without a 'u'.

The approach of winter is wrapping me in darkness, the afternoons are so short, and New Zealand seems so attractive if it was not for the interminable flight out there. I have need of a wormhole so I can walk in one end and out the other having travelled across the globe. D and J showed me a photo of the beach at Whangamata on the Coramandel Peninsula. Come on lottery - I need enough for a first class flight (or private jet), a house In New Zealand by the sea within walking distance of good eating places for the winter and three months of summer sun, warmth and relaxation.

The people who think they know are saying we are in for a stinking cold of a winter.
Mmmm!
They said we would have a poor summer and we had a good one.
R got it right for the summer and she says we will have a mild damp winter - well, we shall see, we shall see.

Time for a beer and some garlic sticks (the best bits of Bombay Mix).
I have lit the wood burner, my chair is ready.

FAUNA TIME AND A SHORT BLETHER

Plenty of birds but not many bees (Jewel Akens?)

It is a dark damp November morning and the garden is sodden. I am gazing out of my window at the work that need to be done when, suddenly, there is a flash of colour, and another, and several.
I have put some Niger seed into a mix with sunflower seed in a feeder and goldfinches have arrived, as always not singly but in a small flock.
The blue, great and coal tits continue to muscle in and the dunnocks, robins and chaffinches wander about underneath hoping for dropped seed.
We do get bigger regulars - pheasants and wood pigeons - but I have not seen the collared doves for a while. Wrens skulk, high-sterned galleons hunting the shrubbery.

I have cut down the perennials in the back bed by the front door - as I have said before, the front door is at the back of the house - and taken the dead and dying vegetation to the compost heap. I also began the collection of fallen leaves and put them into my builders' sack to compost down to leaf mould.

On arrival at the veg beds I discovered the new spring above the apple tree in full flood, the water running onto the paths around the bass and making surrounding grass a quagmire. I am not sure what to do about this - pray for a drought?

Here is one of our grey squirrels caught with a red face stealing my peanuts. It has forced entry to the feeder with its wire-cutter teeth. I have bought a squirrel proof feeder - Ha! - and given up on this one. They can have the peanuts - if I let them have this feeder perhaps they will leave the rest alone.

There are some branches and many twigs down in the wood. Whilst we were away there must have been a gale. The big stuff will go for a bonfire, the smaller twigs put under the eaves to dry and be used as kindling.

Talking of animals, and nothing to do with our garden - saw in the paper one of the dogs the Yorkshire Branch were training up to be a Hearing Dog - to help the deaf like Guide Dogs for the Blind - when it was 8 weeks old,  they discovered it was not responding as it should to instructions. It was stone deaf!

We still see the odd bunny but I wonder if the dreaded myxomatosis has re-emerged.

I look out on the lawns and see the fallen leaves in the grass but do not worry - my buddies, the earthworms, will drag the leaves underground, I hope, unless the thrushes and blackbirds have eaten the lot - the worms not the leaves - now there is an idea, leaf eating birds. I must talk to my local genetic scientist - perhaps we could insert a herbivore gene into rooks and starlings?

You know, all this blogging is just a bag of hot air - a rising bubble of blethering, a random rabbiting, a pompous pontification. (Thesaurus out!)
So, I wondered which of my many photographs would be most irrelevant to a garden blog - try this one!

AUTUMN SPLENDOUR IS WITH US

So here we go with the red and the orange and the yellow!

Maples and liquidambars, hazels and everything, all the colours of autumn.

The top is a maple, then a cut-leaved maple, the magnificent liquidambar and finally a something or other.

Right, got that out of the way.
Plans are afoot for getting an estimate to tame the stream in the lower garden - R has someone in mind to do that and drain the boggy bits. Whilst they are at it I suppose they might as well create a proper pond, not a muddy bottomed puddle.

Having said all that we will probably get to November next year still full of good intentions and nowt done.

I have cleared and manured the asparagus bed, cleared the rhubarb and the courgette remains and roughly dug over the beds. No frost yet but imminent despite some of the larger trees still having green leaves. One cherry has turned a pleasant yellow but the great white one is stubbornly green,

Have just been to Herefordshire, land of lanes and small villages, few people and cider. Daughter I. and family live 850 feet up on a hill with wonderful views and a suicidal drive up to the house - needs a five wheel drive! Must be steeper than 50% (for old fogeys like me - 1 in 2) and slippery.
There many of the trees are still green.
They have two organic rotervators, rotivators, rotavators (spelling debatable) ?? who are about to turn into two freezers full of bacon, sausages etc. They remove everything - I lie - they do not like docks!
R wondered if they would be a good thing here but I said NO!!!! as they would churn everything and make a terrible mess. Any way she has me and a fork. (:-)=
(It's a smiley Bonnie.)

So the future is slash and compost (or burn), dig and muck.

It is now so cold I live in a fleece like a sheep. R insists that we do not need the central heating on (and she is the one who is supposed to feel the cold.)

I huddle near the Aga or the wood burner.

I wonder where I put my fingerless gloves?

So to carrots of indeterminate shapes and so on. I am about to lift them - I know they can stay in the ground even if the tops have died back - and turn them into soup - probably with coriander (not grown by me but harvested from the supermarket.

The middle one, but on the left, looks a bit anthropomorphic to me - sort of a carrot orgy with tangled limbs.
Ah! Well, now for a (no not an orgy) sandwich as R has deserted me for a reading group Thai meal out.
Nice mug of tea, sandwich by the fire (and some hot-buttered toast but not with butter, something veggie called Pure) and watch all the recordings from the TV R does not like.

IT'S THE LATE SHOW AND COLLECTIVE NOUNS

So the mighty storm has just clipped the southeast corner of England and is all the news.
If it had been up here it might have got a mention on page 20? London news is big news, all else is just regional stuff of minor consequence?
Spouting over. There is little of great importance south of Lancaster, let alone Watford.

Outside my window a charm of goldfinches are feeding. The flashes of colour, yellow on the wings red on the face, make me understand why people used to keep them in cages. However seeing a dozen together is special.

To collective nouns later.

The late show - of flowers - is on - November and still blooming. However have just cleared away the sweet peas carefully leaving the roots in the ground so the nitrogen fixing bacteria can enrich the soil. The cosmos in the cutting bed have gone over - six feet tall- and have been removed along with a sunflower. Above is the last of the white ones.

The pink cosmos in the garden proper are still in flower as are the nasturtiums and phlox.

Roses are still flowering and will do so right into the hard weather. Often I can place a rose on the table at Christmas.

So to collective nouns of birds - fascinating.
Yes, there are exultations of larks convocations of eagles but what about the following -
siege of bitterns (they will be on BBC Autumnwatch this week at Leighton Moss),
bellowing of bullfinches,
gulp of cormorants,
deceit of lapwings,
unkindness of ravens (a fox has got a couple of the ones at the Tower of London)
scream of swifts and, peculiarly,
a herd of wrens.
Having said that there are two which are great - a murder of magpies and - nothing to do with birds, sort of -
a superfluity of nuns!

Back to gardens and woodland - we were in Oxford last weekend and went to the Harcourt Arboretum which belongs to the University Botanical Gardens. It seemed pleasant enough but a bit tired. Fortunately the company was excellent so it did not matter. (Enjoyed a pint with C in the Lamb and Flag and two Canadians, one of whom was a nuclear physicist, now retired so just pottering about with astrophysics as one does.

Back to our corner of the universe. The photograph to the left is at the parting of the ways - right up into the wood and straight on to the far wood. Leaves are falling everywhere and will need removing from the paths. Left alone they will compost down and make a good place for weeds to grow.

The grey squirrels are back and have chewed through the wire of a peanut feeder (some teeth!). There has been no further sign of Ratty.

Just a note on the boring old sycamore - why cannot its autumn leaves be more cheerful - rather than brownish grey?

It seems a long wait for our small trees and shrubs to get big enough to make a fine impact in autumn.

(By the way the new Weasdale Tree Nursery Catalogue is out.)

So I have to steel myself to the great garden clear up and get my hands dirty.
This is of more consequence than usual as I have stopped biting my nails and now muck gets under them looking  - unclean, unclean, D is unclean!
The to-do list gets longer faster than I can clear it  (which is very slow at the moment as I cannot be much bothered to do anything)(except eat and sit and - well, did go to the gym this morning)(must be crackers).

The word "advert" has been muted with this blog and I am resisting it. This is not intended to be a money maker blog, just the ramblings of an old man who potters around.

So, my daughter is about to be forty - how dare she! It makes me feel ancient. (I am ancient).
Last night went to my poetry group - 4th Monday Poets - followed with a pint of Wainwright with Neil Curry, a proper poet and author (and friend). He is off to America to visit his daughter for her birthday, but she is to be 50! Makes me feel almost middle earth aged. Got to get out of the hobbit habit of feeling decrepit.
Time to take another gandalf gander at the garden and see what I can avoid doing next.
Or have a cup of tea.

SNOWING LEAVES AND A CONFESSION

This is the garden a week ago before the ash trees started snowing pale yellow leaves. It looks like high summer but you can see the first telltale leaf colouring on top of the cherry tree.
Now I do not have a blower, just a rake, though I have just pressure washed the paving around the house as I nearly went toe over tonsure on the slippery stone. Whilst washing away the debris I found it was an effective way of blasting away the fallen leaves.

Of course, this morning it had leafed again and I will now wait for the last ones to drop. Then they can be picked up and put in a large sack I have - to make leaf mould - a slow process but good for the soil.

Our dog has been nodding away in the gales (and rusting away) but seems to appreciate the pansies.
The pot is subplanted with bulbs and I now realise I have done the usual thing and ordered too many. Where to put them to advantage? Where to put them at all!
Add to that the 20 small box plants - Mmmm!

Our garden has hidden corners (apart from the grandchildren's den) where I can surreptitiously dump mowings without going all the way to the compost heap. There is one as shown concealed behind the flowering currant (the one adorned with a huge Rambling Rector rose) by the old well. The latter is capped and fenced in and so on to avoid anyone falling down it.

Apart from the stream and two small ponds there is plenty of water in the garden - it springs up all over the place after heavy rain.

You can see from the photo that not quite all of the scruff has been cleared. The dead brown things were wild angelica which seeds itself widely across the garden.

The weather remains very mild, no frost yet, and so the slugs are out clearing up the last of the courgettes - it has got to half for us half for them. The Cardoon shown below has only just ceased flowering but its heavy architectural flower heads are still standing - tomorrows gale might deal with that.
Nasturtiums flourish on and have not gone slimy from the cold, there are a few roses and cosmos on a cosmological scale.

Berries survive as the fieldfares and redwings are still absent.

Incidentally the BBC TV programme Autumnwatch is coming from Leighton Moss next week - not far way across the bay.
Yesterday went north to Carlisle and though they are but one and a half hours up country they were definitely more autumnal.

Ah! Yes - The Confession - I am a lazy gardener. Not an everyday with the Wellies on one. Plants that give ground cover, need little management are great. I know the great clear up is almost upon me, the great manuring, and am steeling myself for that but tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and so on.

What Ho! Molesworth - can you not invent a garden machine like your fantastic lines machine?
What Ho! indeed - more of a Huh! at the moment.
Wot? Not heard of nigel molesworth the curse of st custard's, creation of geoffrey willans and ronald searle, every boy should have one, young or old.
After all nigel says boys are Whizz! (except his brother molesworth 2 and fotherington-thomas who are utterly wet and weedy.)

That beings me back to gardens, does it not - weeds, Huh!
Time for tea.

TODAY IS MAINLY MARROW

In fact today is mainly Marrow and Ginger jam (preserve really as it does not set). Recipe later.

There are still flowers in the garden. As a photographer I know we used to say that the third week in October was the best for autumn colour but that has definitely changed over the last few years. Yes the bracken has turned but the trees are a week or two off yet. I would have said we have moved two weeks later - first week in November then.

The white Japanese anemones, right, are mostly over but still giving a lift to the flower beds as are the cosmos. 

It had been difficult to get into the garden because of heavy rain which makes the lawns a no go area. The stream is burbling loudly and full.

We are 120 metres up from sea level here and you would not think that would make a big difference but down by the bay they have almost 2 weeks less of winter at each end. We seem to often be just above the winter snow line here (which is a nuisance as I have a BMW with rear wheel drive and it is USELESS in icy conditions) (I have to use R's aged Toyota Yaris which is much better).

Now R has a thing about grasses. She does not like my Miscanthus and Stipa. Especially she does not like the wild wood millet which inhabits the banking by the stream.

We had the pendulous sedge by the small bridge near the pond - BEWARE! - it is a thug and not only very difficult to get rid of (impossible to dig up) but seeds itself all over the place as long as the ground is damp.

Back in a minute - just going to check on the jam . . 

Ow! Just picked up the jam pan without gloves on! 

It is not reducing as fast as I would like - need something between the cooler plate (where it boils) and the simmering oven where it doesn't (simmer much).

Oh! And no sign of ratty so either he has found pastures new, someone else has got him or he is just too clever for mere mortals like us.

Some plants seem to love the autumn - look at this lot below, taking over the back bed. They will have to be moved though I might retain as small piece there. 

However, that will be too big by this time next year. It is suffocating a rare berberis I got from Cally Gardens a few years ago - amazing place at Gatehouse of Fleet in Scotland. He travels the world hunting down new and unusual species. If you are anywhere near it is worth a visit.

Now, I know that is a stupid comment for my Russian and Kazakhstan readers but you never know. Anyway some of the plants may have come from your countries (though I think he often goes to China and the Far East).

And there is a thought - to someone in China surely, though we in Europe might be the west, is not the USA the east? And is Europe not the East to the USA and the Far East the west?

Or is it all to do with we British imposing our stuff on everyone else - including latitude 0 deg. at Greenwich.

It is about to rain on my waterproof trousers which are hanging on the washing line so I will have to rescue them.

So to a Recipe : -

Marrow and Ginger Jam (Preserve)

4 lb Marrow (overgrown courgette (zucchini)) after peeling and coring (keep some seeds for next year - wash and dry on kitchen paper and store in a paper envelope)

3 lb sugar

2 oz root ginger

3 tablespoons lemon juice.

You will notice I have gone back to non metric measurements so -

1 lb = 4.448 kg, there are 16 oz in a lb (don't ask me why), 1 tablespoon is near enough the same as USA and 15 ml. 

I note that 1 Roman quart is 136 ml!

Back to the recipe - Peel marrow and cube, pop in jam pan and cover with the sugar. Leave over night.

Next day stir up the mixture as the sugar may have got stuck to the bottom. Bash the root ginger with a hammer and tie in muslin. Suspend in jam pan. Add lemon juice and stir. Cook slowly till reduced to equivalent of 5 lbs. (How do I know that comes the cry?) Before you start take a 1 lb jam jar and empty 5 jars full into jam pan. Take wooden spoon and stand in pan. mark with pan surface level of water. You can use this to measure depth of jam and when down to marked level and syrupy it is ready.

This is not really as "jam" so it will not set just be thick and syrupy.

But yum!

It is raining again so I leave you with a few liquid jewels on alchemilla leaves.

AAAAAAGH! AND CHUTNEY RECIPE

Today we have going to the gym - we have had going to the gym - we are glad it is over.
Today I - well in a minute.
Today R went into the garden and picked flowers for I and L who are coming to lunch tomorrow.

The cosmos are still bursting with colour and fill vases in the house. They do have one snag and that is that they shed pollen as they age and make a bit of a mess of the surface they are on.

I trundled around the garden with my new little Sony camera (the canon G9 is dead) and admired the work of our strimmerer up in the woodland.

In the spring it will be a sea of red campion, woundwort, pignut, bulbs and so on

Oh! Yes, R has cut back the pink Japanese anemone so now I must go a-digging and reduce its domain.

And moi?
In order, I saw there was a big digger, tractor and trailer at the horses below the house. So I nipped down the track and he agreed to leave me a wonderful heap of well rotted manure.
Hooray! No 47 wheelbarrow journeys down the lane this year. I can pop out of the gate across the cattle grid and fill up as I wish.

Then the gym. After that lunch and a post prandial snooze before I went ditch digging by the copper beech hedge, plunging the spade into the turf and opening up the overgrown channel.
OW! Yarroo! I say chaps! I stuck my spade into a wasp's nest. I have not run so fast for years! Only two stings - one on my left hand and the other through my shirt on my tum but Ooooh! They hurt so much more than a bee sting.

So off to the garden centre for some foam I can spray at them from 3 metres away - I know, not the Buddhist thing but I want to dig that ditch without pain.

I bought a bag of bulb fibre as well for the Sarah Raven and J Parker orders have come. Hyacinths potted up in the famille vert bowl, lilies in  another pot and two deep red amaryllis - now all in a dark cupboard upstairs till mid November.

Finally I have made a load of green tomato chutney - it is in the Aga bottom simmering away at this moment. I hope to sell it at the Church Christmas Fair (if it is edible) and raise some money for R.

Recipe derived from Delia S. Great one Delia (up Norwich Football Club). (Or as I am a vague Liverpool supporter up Norwich FC.)

1 kg minced up green tomatoes
1 kg peeled and roughly chopped baking apples (including 3 off our Bramley)
about 800g peeled and chopped onions
Bung in a big pan and add 6 crushed garlic cloves, 0.5 kg raisins, 600g soft brown sugar, 0.5 tablespoon cayenne, 1 heaped dessertspoon ground ginger, 1.75 litres malt vinegar, 0.5 tablespoon salt.
Give it all a good stir.
Wrap up 25g of pickling spice in muslin and tie up - hang in pan.
bring to boil, simmer 3.5 hours stirring well especially at end.
It is done when thickened, almost all vinegar gone and spoon leaves a trail in surface.
Bottle into hot jars.

Yum!

I hope you noticed the modern me full of decimals and metrics
It is probably a side effect of the wasp sting.

Hello! Bell has gone - time to stir and stir, 1 hour gone (and put in the salt as I have forgotten it).

R has just said I am a wimp - re wasp bite - she has just been bitten by an earwig!

OF RATS, ROBINS AND A STRIMMERER

Before I get onto Ratty and related difficulties, I am sure you can stand the suspense, here is a photo taken from the kitchen doors looking south to Morecambe Bay over my pots. They are planted up with tulips and yellow pansies.

I went to the Manonthemarketstall, garden centres all over the place but yellow pansies I could not find. There were mixed selections and yellow with white blotches and small yellow but not big yellow ones - until - I went to get the groceries at the local Booth's supermarket and there they were outside in trays of 6, much cheaper than the garden centres too!

The pansies will flower all winter and spring - the yellow flowers contrasting well with the dark tulips I have chosen. 

A few crocks are put in the container bottom and then a 5 cm layer of compost. Then one layer of bulbs, a little more compost and a second layer of bulbs alternating with the one below. Finally there is topping up, planting of pansies and a good watering. We should have a splendid display in the spring. 

P. the strimmerer has been! Is coming back for half a day! 

However he is thinking of giving up gardening and going off to a rig off South America, 6 weeks on, 6 weeks off and some dosh. He could charge a lot more for his gardening but won't - well he has a bit as I insisted.

So, the place looks a lot tidier, at last.

One consequence of the strimming is that it has revealed many sticks fallen off the ash trees. Some have been collected and will be used as kindling for the wood burner, the rest went on the bonfire which I lit and fumigated next door with acrid smoke - whoops, sorry.

The leaves are falling like yellow snow and littering the lawns. The easiest way to collect them is to put the mower on a high setting and vacuum them up. They can then be put into a plastic sack with a few holes in the bottom and left to make leaf mould.

Before I rat on a bit - it is surprising how some plants, after virtually dying back after early flowering, do so again. The oriental poppy below is lighting up a dark corner.

All right - Ratty time.

Have we caught him (her) (it) ?

The clear answer is NO! and I have given up because, no matter how I tried to prevent it, robins got to the trap and two died!

Now I have done R's bidding and tried to catch cuddly Ratty but I will not sacrifice robins in the cause.

So there!

R took my biggest marrow to the Harvest Festival at her church - and brought it back - no one wanted it. So, I have bought 100 little jam jars and will make marrow and ginger jam for the church Christmas fair. I will also make some green tomato chutney as they sit in the drawer and remain stubbornly unred. Then there is still fruit from last year in the freezer so that will be a jam session though the only music will be on the CD player.

It is time to sort out the veg beds - the sweet peas have all but stopped flowering and the rest is winding down. Clear them, weed them, manure them and fork over, then leave to settle down. The winter frost will break up the soil. 

Time to get some kindling in and light the burner. It is getting more chilly.

THE RATTY NEWS, COLOUR AND POTS

So, you are all an tenterhooks (or asleep) for news of the hunt for Ratty. The trap was set - a giant mouse(rat)trap called Big Cheese. It was primed with Twix and we have caught something every day - mainly mice and a small robin caught by a wing feather which flew off when released.
This is NOT what I had intended. The beast is at large and has not been seen again. I suspect it is a wise rat and is not going to fall for a big mousetrap. After all perhaps it feels it deserves something grander.

I mean, if we manage to erase the human race from the earth then who else better suited to take over than rats. They have hands (yes, R, paws - I know) but they do have opposing thumbs, are omnivorous and are survivors. And they have a reputation for leaving a sinking ship so if we really mess up the earth they might build space ships and get the hell out as fast as possible. The dolphins might go too.

The tomatoes have been brought in and stuffed in a drawer with a banana. If they do not ripen it will be green chutney time again.

I have spent the afternoon potting up bulbs which are arriving in their cardboard boxes. Every year I say to myself, "Did I really order all these tulips?"
So far I have potted Florentine tulips, 4 sorts of dark tulips (go so well with orange ones and yellow pansies) - Muriel, Black Parrot, Ronaldo and Havran.
The orange are Princess Irene (on an offer) and I have some double patio tulips as an experiment.

The ranunculus and scented lilies (Casablanca, Muscadet and Regale) are still in the box and there are more to come - I know I ordered some very dark hyacinths which will be potted up for Christmas and flower in March.

Colour is splendid now with the leaves of the Euonymus elatus and Rhus (that I called a Sumac the other day) (which is also right R has said) exceptional. From top to bottom - Euonymus, Rhus and Liquidambar.

The pelargoniums have been repotted too so they can be brought in at the first sign of frost. Arctic winds expected later this week. 

Also, I hope, some dry weather and I can tidy the garden a bit, last mow and so on.

Just been listening to Don Maclean, The Everlys and The Big O - Ah! Nostalgia - Starry, Starry Nights! Ebony Eyes! In Dreams!

I need waking up so here we go with Howling Wolf and Spoonful, Smokestack Lightning and Evil.

Supper and then The Great British Bake Off on the TV - Wheeeee!

HERE RATTY, RATTY, RATTY

And there it was on the peanut feeder, a beautiful brown rat - cue wobbly from R and off to the WC Farmer's shop for a trap - now baited with piece of Twix bar (personally I prefer Kit Kat but ain't got none) in a brick tunnel under feeder.

We have voles and wood mice, squirrels (grey) and rabbits but only recently dear ratty. It does not look at all like Samuel Whiskers. (has no jacket on).

Actually if you take this image of a rat and squeeze it a bit it begins to resemble a cuddly bunny. Sweet is it not?

R, I am sure, would find it preferable if the animal, Rattus Norvegicus, went home to Norway.
My nephew and I have just had a lateral conversation on Facebook pondering on images such as rats wearing helmets with horns and wielding giant hammers. Such is life!
(We all know that the Vikings never wore helmets with horns but, you must admit, a rat in such attire does have a certain piquancy, does it not?)

R has been out dead heading (not rats) and picking up sticks to use as kindling. I have mown a lawn or two but the place is a quagmire after yesterday's torrential rain.

Liverpool are leading 3-0 after 60 minutes - hooray!

I have received some bulbs, more to come, ordered seeds and seedlings to be delivered in April. No that is a really lazy thing to do but what the rat!

This is a Robin's Pincushion (also known as the Bedeguar Gall) caused by the tiny wasp Dipoloepsis rosea. It is a good 3 cm across (over and inch for the oldies) and turns up on wild roses.

Making soup - Cauliflower to come (not ours but as a big one's 50p in the supermarket how can one refuse.) However have made Borscht with veg from friend and used one of our two big marrows to make Marrow and Mint soup - really yummy.
Bananas are only about 15p each too but banana soup - ?

Being eternally hungry I really fancy a Twix - I wonder if I could substitute soup for it?

Also, now we are eating dairy free (nearly) and with a definite vegetarian bent there comes a time - we have gammon in the fridge - I admit it the temptation has got me (us) and one can eat only so many lentils and beans before exploding - with the desire for meat. Still on the soya though.

Mr Pheasant is looking in the window at me with a mournful expression. The feeder under which he like to forage is empty and he is plodding around in dismal circles.

Time to go out and top up the feeders.
Cannot let him go hungry.
Or Ratty
But that twix - ???
My mouth waters.