Autumn

Autumns Gold early morning along a favourite local walk.

The end of September saw both my hubby and I busy getting the allotments straight for our short break away in Scotland so it would be low maintenance upon our return.. Little did we think it would be so mild.. or that in England the rain coupled with the mild weather give our newly cleared weed free allotments time to grow. But as we all know weeds seem to have a growth spurt known only to themselves.. So we still had plenty to keep us busy when we returned.. Our time in Scotland on the other hand was Sunny and dry, not one drop of rain did we have until the day we departed for home.

Tarbert Scotland Loch Fyne.

There was much to do still, as the tomatoes had all about finished, and I made lots of fresh tomato soup daily as my husband cleared out the greenhouses both at home and on the allotments. A tasty fresh tomato recipe can be found here. on my recipe pages.

The next thing we did was gather up the squashes.

For what ever reason, this year has not been half as good as last year for our butternut squashes.. They have not really ripened and many were decaying and going bad.. In fact those you see we put to ripen on the window ledge a third have already have had to be thrown away..

I spied this lone Nasturtium amid the Squashes.. A splash of Gold amid the leaves..

Nasturtium

The Autumn raspberry canes were cut back down to the ground.. The Spring ones we did in the beginning of September as I showed you below how we had thinned out the old shoots and spaced them and tied them to the frame.. We have since cut back the tops to the top of the wooden framework.

And no Autumn post would be complete with out a few Autumn pictures. So here is a local walk we often do to a wild life lake close by.

Vicars Water

We came across this quite tame Robin. He stayed posing for us for some time.. My husband held out his walking stick to invite him to hop onto.. He considered it but declined 🙂

This week has dropped colder and we have had our first overnight frost.. I gathered in what was the last of the Dahlia’s I think, they have given me a tremendous amount of pleasure this Summer and Autumn and an abundance of flowers which have been share between family and neighbours.

Dahlia’s

As the garden winds down for the year, my craft work will now come out. My Knitting and Artwork will replace the gardening.. And already I am well into a knitting project which I will share when it is finished.

Happy Gardening

~Sue~

As promised I will tell you what I have been up to this will take the form of Two posts over the next couple of days, and I will let the pictures tell their own story.

The flag stones were dug up from near the shed and moved to form a base for greenhouse

The flag stones were dug up from near the shed and moved to form the base.

We were lucky enough to buy a second hand greenhouse recently, it had a few panes of glass missing.. but it was a great bargain not to be missed.

Both Hubby and I erected the frame.. The sides are up!

Roof now on and some panes of glass are in on the roof

Hooks placed between flag stones to help secure frame

I now have 3 trays such as this ripening in the greenhouse. These tomatoes were grown outdoors among the veggies, and as its going colder would not finish ripening without help .. Looks like chutney is on the menu 🙂

The Greenhouse complete with glass and sheets of hard plastic which hubby cut to size to fill in the panes which were missing. Tomatoes are ripening in trays at the bottom. These were just grown in the allotment and there will be lots for Chutney I think :-)

The Greenhouse complete the roof window in, with glass and sheets of hard plastic which hubby cut to size to fill in the 5 panes which were missing. Also we added a water barrel.. Tomatoes are ripening in trays at the bottom. These were just grown in the allotment and there will be lots for Chutney I think 🙂 You can see Hubby put a fence panel up behind the greenhouse.. This is because the shared path has an almost 1 and a Half foot drop onto our allotment side and if you were to slip!!? So Health and Safety first!..

Long view of the allotments looking back on my hoeing weeds all morning.. The greenhouse can now be seen a third of the way down on the right .

The Dwarf beans the seeds are drying out for next years planting on these that are left over Also Red Cabbage

The allotments are looking bare, in the forground are my wallflowers which are for my home garden. I just hoed through this.. Isn't it weed free :-)

The allotments are looking bare, in the foreground are my wallflowers which are for my home garden. I just hoed through this.. Isn’t it weed free! 🙂