autumn garden Archives - Zeens and Roger

Garden on the last day of October

November 1, 2016devon, flowers, garden, outside7 Comments

There was lovely autumn sunshine yesterday. I went into the garden in my Hallowe’en get up to take a few pictures. The garden isn’t as exciting to me now but I think I should have a record of what it looks like in a different season.

Autumn is seriously beautiful. The other day I drove back home from the weekly shop through an orange tunnel of trees. Low sun, autumn leaves, winding roads through the woods. There was definitely some magic going on.

I haven’t got much to say today. It was only five minutes in the garden, finding what I liked best about it.

There is one last courgette hanging on. And since I can’t be bothered to tear up the bedraggled runner beans yet, there are still some of those too.

One bed dug over and manured. Nasturtiums are trying their luck. I could salad them up before the frosts, I suppose.

I’m most impressed with the hosta seeds. Pretty! Last year I took some of these and planted them. Nowt happened. Next year I’m really going to look after my hostas. This year so many snails and slugs dined on them, they ended up looking like lace.

That’s it for now. Shock,horror, I have done very little crochet in the last week. We’ve been away for half term and had poorliness. I’ve taken to reading more too, which takes up stitchy time. I’ll try and find a better balance this week.

Ps. I found a couple more dodgy pictures of my little halloween garland.

September Garden. The End of Summer.

September 19, 2016flowers, garden, veg patch17 Comments

I am getting old; I’ve watched Gardener’s World three weeks in a row. Monty has given me a long list of garden jobs to do and I’m adding tasks quicker than I’m tackling them.

At the beginning of September, the garden still looked quite pretty. Two weeks later I’ve still got some hot pink roses and pelargoniums but other things are looking really tired.

The Japanese anemone that was beautiful two weeks ago has swapped its pink petals for cobwebs.

Spiders are eveywhere. I keep getting a faceful of garden spider. A few years ago I would have flipped my lid but I’ve gotten surprisingly used to them now. I still had an episode of Bake Off ruined by a gargantuan house spider last week. Now, those ones do make me pee my pants. It was so big you could hear its footsteps!

They’re making homes all over the garden. This teeny one has made its home in some old parsely.

Talking of bugs… I cannot believe how the cabbage white butterflies are still laying eggs. They’ve been at it all summer! I’m still out there, smooshing eggs. As I smoosh, the farty waft of brassica goes up my nose. I wonder if that’s just encouraging more butterflies to come along.

Up close the eggs they’re really interesting. I had no idea that they had those vertical ridges.

Is this one a red admiral? I’m rubbish at butterflies. I spotted it proudly sitting on my runner beans. Very haughty.

My runners have been the most successful thing this year. But mostly, it has been quite lacklustre in the veg beds. I’m going to spread what compost I have over the beds and then get my hands on some manure.

Weeds have been the happiest things.

Look at how tatty this bed has become! The shame. This weekend I took out the pea sticks and it was the first time I’d really noticed how messy it all was. I’ve been a particularly lazy gardener this year. But when spring comes around again, I’m going to be really good.

After a Gardener’s World injection I did try out some rosemary cuttings. I think I’ll smarten up the front garden with these (if they work). I don’t show pictures of the front as it is a spectacular hell hole.

Himalayan Honeysuckle is a weed I keep because the bullfinches come for the berries. I don’t think I’d like it otherwise.

And that’s that. Overall, I’m disappointed at how scruffy I’ve let it all become but I’m also feeling enthusiastic for next year. I think I thought that, I could get away with letting it do its own thing. It turns out that a garden is a lot of work. Monty would not approve.

The Middle of November, Already.

November 18, 2015November 18, 2015crafty, crochet, felt, garden, sewing11 Comments

I’ve been mega busy over the last couple of weeks, getting my craft on and all that. The weekend after next I will be busy trying to make people buy my wares at the PTA Christmas Fayre. I am not going to blather on today because I’m going to plonk myself down on the sofa in a minute and start some more stitching.

Anyway, before I add a few pictures of what I’ve been doing with my crafty ways, I’m just going to squeeze in some garden pictures. It’s all very well being smug about the prettiness of it in spring and summer [it was hard to choose those links as there are betweeny posts with lovely summery flowers in, I just looked in the garden category!] but I shouldn’t hide the tattiness out there come late autumn.

This morning looked very promising but it’s since greyed over and is threatening rain. Again.

Only mildly depressing.

And I should get over myself because in other years there is no way I’d still have flowers in the garden at this time of year. The little purple flowers are a summer annual, Nemesia. Beyond the wall you can see flecks of orange, which is the nasturtium, still going strong.

The blue sky didn’t last. The pumpkins are still resisting the urge to disappear. I chucked them in the runner bean grave after Halloween. Sadsack leeks are sharing the space. Just blinkin well grow, please.

View from above. Bottom left is where I lobbed all the twigs from the Halloween decorations. The kids have played with them in their funny games.

This is what I’m working on at the moment. Lots of felt decorations. Some I’ve made before, some I’m just making up as I go. I’ve designed them all myself, if you can call it that. Not sure how hard it is to draw a Christmas tree really (not very?). And it’s a big lie anyway because my eldest boy drew out the Elf boot last year and I helped modify it. That one, he is the designer of.

I rummaged through the fabric drawer for any green and red fabric I had. Mostly it is just scraps but I reckon I can work something out. There is new stuff there too; the reindeer fabric and the stuff above it is a recent impulse buy.

And then there are these jobbies. To ensure I had a lot of them I have done away with the colour changes that made me thing of these as Granny owls. Making them up in just one colour was a lot quicker and they still look nice.

I did blathering when I didn’t want to. Wasting precious making time…. And I’m also trying out a C2C crochet blanket, which I forgot to take a picture of. It’s mainly for stash busting purposes and I wanted to try something new. Any way, I”m off!

Getting rid of garden grubs. The polite way.

October 6, 2015garden, veg patch4 Comments

I have an infestation. Vine Weevil. They are not my friends.

Whenever I have spoken about them with other gardeny types, most have never come across vine weevils or, if they have, they may have seen just one or two of the nasty little grubs in a random strawberry pot. Well, when I first discovered them, it was in their masses. I would dig up dozens and dozens at a time. Enough to make you puke. They are writhy and gross. To treat them, you cannot nuke them. Certainly not when it comes to edibles anyway. Be nice, be organic (pay a fortune).

This stuff arrived on my doormat a month ago. I ordered it from Harrod Horticultural and they send it to you in March and September. It takes some dedication to do it (it takes flippin’ ages) and I procrastinated for a whole month. The instructions tell you to make a kind of soup that you have to water the garden with. A million watering cans later and you are supposed to water the garden all over again, give it a good going over. It also gives you mini heebyjeebies too. Within the candyfloss-like mixture that needs to be dissolved, are millions and squillions of microscopic worms, waiting to burrow into the vine weevil grubs and eat them from the inside out. Something like that any way. Despite heebyjeebies, they are my parasitic pals and I hope they do their thing.

I was out in the garden forever, getting in a soggy mess. It is time consuming, measuring your soup and diluting it with water. Alongside my veg patch I have troughs with strawberry plants. I ignored them this year because they were poorly. If I’d sorted them out (perhaps by getting rid of them) I wouldn’t have been fannying about in the garden today. Vine weevil grubs feast upon strawberry roots and that’s probably where the problem stems (!) from. The adults leave notches in the leaves. I hope that by treating the soil with nematodes, the strawberries will perk up for next year and I will be nice to them again. Perhaps I should have looked after them in the first place.

I had enough mixture to do the whole of the garden, including on the gravel. The strawberries send off runners that end up wedged in gravel paths. I think it looks quite nice so I leave them there. They are at risk of the dreaded weevil too, so it went all over. The gravelly bits look a bit messy right now. It’s autumns fault.

It’s all collapsing. Meh, I don’t care at this time of year. It doesn’t matter. This picture is post nematoding, it’s all the more heavy with watery soup.

The figs are at an end now. There were so many. Weeks and weeks of figs. I ate one of the last ones yesterday. Forced it down. I think there may be one or two left up the top but no more will ripen now. The leaves are dropping and the baby figs are giving up and going brown. I ate more than just one this year, in fact, I surpassed myself and sometimes ate two or three a day! Crazy, I know. I got used to their funny, pappy crunch and floral weirdness.

I wonder if anyone goes to the effort of saving sunflower seeds? I left this head turned upwards, thinking that a bird or two would take a fancy but it’s just going mouldy. I guess they hang their heads down for a reason.

[you know that no won picks thos sunflouer seeds but me and sumtims my brothur picks them. The petls wur reley brite yelow but now it is browney yelowey and they were a nice colour.] – Briefly taken over by a six year old. He’s in his jammies waiting for bedtime, it’s 8pm.