Happy Halloween!

 

Fruit cage ✔

Remember those two one-tonne bags of stone chippings?  Well, one of 'em is now completely empty and the other has a good quarter less than it started off with!  Whilst we are being battered by storm Aiden today, with 60-70mph winds, we were lucky to have some good weather earlier in the week.  We took advantage of those few hours of sunshine and ploughed on with the fruit cage area, which is now ready to be planted up. 

I've had a bit of a rethink about how to set out the planting.  The three cordon trees will still be going in this right-hand bed, with the two redcurrant bushes I've been growing on planted between them.  The blackcurrants will be going in the bed over on the far left.  I've gone back and forth in my mind about the middle bed, and have finally decided that this will become my cold-frame.  It's going to be a very long time until we can have a greenhouse put up in the back garden, and so I think a cold-frame is really a "must-have" to help me out until then.  I'm hoping that the wall will help to provide some shelter for the cold-frame, too!  

We've got the planters set out on the patio, too, so hopefully no unexpected tumbling over the edge now 😲  I had an azalea as a free gift with my last plant order which I'm going to put in the galvanised tank, perhaps with a couple of trailing plants.  The black planters will either have a selection of herbs or lavender ~ I can't quite make up my mind.  Perhaps I could have a mixture of both 😉 

 

Stash-busting and gifts

I finally made a tissue-box cover for myself!  The pattern is a little different to the previous ones I made for Beverly and I like this incarnation better to be honest.  I had to try a number of times to get the pattern right ~ I certainly couldn't create crochet patterns for a living, it would disintegrate my poor brain 😉  Still, I'm pleased with how this has turned out and if I'm feeling brave, I'll share the pattern with you when I make the next cover.  This one is now on my bedside cabinet and looks so much nicer than a naked box.  I want to make a couple more, one for the living room and one for the tissue box that lives beside the computer ~ oh yes, I have boxes of tissues all over the house...and my craft room...and the garden shed, too 😄

This is the other cover that Beverly wanted, made using the original two patterns that I "married together".  I wasn't too sure about the colours when Beverly picked them out, but now that the cover has been made I think that they sit together very nicely.

I've put making our sofa blanket to one side for the time being and have started on a different one that I'm hoping to have done in good time to be a Christmas gift for a friend.  I had actually gone to rummage through my stash for a completely different reason when I came across these humungous 400g balls of yarn.  I've got two each of Bramble (which I'm not using in this blanket; it's the colour of blackberries ~ surprise, surprise!), Fisher (the blue yarn) and Beach Storm.  I must have had these for quite some time.  When I went on the Wool Warehouse site, where I buy most of my yarn, to double-check the shades they didn't actually have either Bramble or Beach Storm listed, and Fisher is out of stock.  I suspect that I will find this to be the case with rather a lot of my yarn stash!  Anyhoo, this is crocheting up very nicely and will, I hope, end up being a pretty blanket.  It's the same Jane Brocket pattern I used for Beverly's blanket, this time of course simply using two different colours.  As I've said previously the pattern works well with any number of colours really, and could even be made using just a single shade to make a solid-colour blanket.  A few years ago I made a blanket for Beverly's friend using lots of different colours, with black between each one.  It turned out to be one of my favourite colour combinations using this pattern.

Of course, the yarn I was originally hoping to find just doesn't exist in my stash, namely some different shades of green.  It's a funny thing but I have barely any green at all, so when I do come to make this project I will have to actually buy some yarn ~ shock, horror 😲  Still, I have a few months yet before I really need to make a start on it so in the meantime, methinks I'd best get on with other things that I do have appropriate yarn for 😉 

 

Little words of wisdom

 

Tired of thinking about it

"It" being dieting/weight-loss/healthy eating plans/whatever-the-hell-you-want-to-call-it.  I am 59 years old and thoughts of needing to lose weight have been rattling around in my head for over 40 of those years.  I've been on countless weight-loss regimes since my very early twenties, none of which I have stuck with for any length of time and consequently, of course, none of which have had lasting effects.  And looking at photographs taken of me in those early days, I wasn't particularly overweight anyway!  All I've managed to achieve over the years is to make myself feel pretty miserable around food for much of the time...and when I am unhappy I comfort-eat.  My head has been stuffed full of guilt with feelings of being a failure and hot on the heels of that comes the feeling of worthlessness ~ which leads to the comfort-eating cycle yet again.  I am tired of the whole thing.....so I don't think I'm going to try another "weight-loss" regime for the foreseeable future.  I've got far fewer years ahead of me than behind and I think I've spent more than enough time fretting about "dieting".

All this hasn't come out of nowhere, it's something that has been on my mind a lot over recent months.  I hold up my hands and admit that I've gone through periods when my diet ~ using the true definition of the word as opposed to a slimming campaign ~ has been pretty dire.  To be fair to my parents, we ate well at home.  I think the rot set in when I married my first husband who was a very fussy and unadventurous eater.  It was easier for me to just fall in with his eating habits and I suppose I was too lazy to cook separate meals.  When Adrian and I got together I discovered that although he likes a broader range of foods than the ex, he still isn't keen on much in the vegetable line and really prefers a meat/fish-and-potato diet, with a little portion of a select few veggies thrown in to show willing!  So, as I did with the ex, over the years we've been together I have mostly fallen in with his likes.

I was thinking about all this again as I was re-setting the old clock I have that belonged to my Grandma.  The hands have to be moved manually all the way round the clock to get to the correct time, which is of course 11 circuits, and since it chimes on all the quarters it's a bit of a long-winded process in the autumn when BST ends!  So there I was, sitting there just twiddling those clock hands, and thinking about meals at Grandma's house when my sister and I had holidays with her during the 1960s/early 1970s.....

She made virtually everything from scratch and ate wholesome meals with lots of local ingredients from the shops in the village.  She ate breakfast, dinner, tea and supper, but none of her meals were the mega-portions we have a tendency to snaffle today.  She ate cakes and pastries but they were homemade, small and she only ate one at tea-time ~ no snacking on them throughout the day!  Grandma was a very active lady; she walked or cycled most of her life (she never had a car), worked in her garden and kept her house spotless.  She wasn't just physically active, she kept her brain busy too with all the sewing, knitting, reading, etc, that she liked  to occupy herself with.

I really believe that food was different then ~ I'm sure it's not just "rose-tinted spectacles syndrome".  I don't remember eating ready meals of any description until I was in my early teens; my Mum, like Grandma, mostly cooked from scratch other than the occasional fish-and-chip supper.  Grandma didn't even have a fridge when I was a child; I remember how cool her pantry always was.  She kept bottles of milk in a bucket of cold water and walked up to the village shops most days to buy fresh food.  Meat came from the butcher, wet fish from the fish and chip shop, bread from the village baker, vegetables and fruit from the greengrocer. 

At home we had "proper" dinners each day too, quite often with a pudding, and a traditional roast on Sundays (actually, that's something that Adrian and I still usually have on Sundays).  Breakfast would be cereals and toast or perhaps a boiled egg with toast soldiers, and sometimes a traditional English fried breakfast on Saturday or Sunday.

For tea (or at lunchtime if we were having our main meal in the evening) we would have sandwiches ~ cheese, ham, tuna or egg mashed up with salad cream.  Or perhaps it would be baked beans, tinned sardines or scrambled eggs on toast ~ plus a piece of homemade cake.

I didn't grow up in a village, we lived on the outskirts of Norwich for most of my childhood, so I guess there was access to a wider variety of shops in the city although there was still a group of local shops at the bottom of our road.  There was a little supermarket of sorts in Grandma's village where she bought packet and tinned goods (I remember one of our tea-time treats was tinned peach slices with evaporated milk and a slice of bread and butter!), and household sundries.

The main thing I remember, though, is really what I don't remember: being served large portions.  And yet I can say hand on heart that I don't recall ever leaving the table still feeling hungry.  We didn't eat until we were stuffed, we simply ate enough to satisfy our hunger.  I can hear to this day Grandma saying "I've had quite sufficient, thank you" 😉

    There wasn't much eating between meals, either; if we did want something we would have been offered a piece of fruit.  That's not to say that we never had any sweets, chocolate, shop-bought biscuits or an ice-cream ~ things like that were regarded as treats.

I should imagine that most folk of my generation grew up eating in a similar fashion; our parents and grandparents would almost certainly have eaten those kind of meals, too. What went wrong then? Back then, it was "real" food; no one would have even heard of low fat this/low carbohydrate that/full of fibre the other. People just ate food! What so many of us eat nowadays seems so far removed from good, basic, wholesome food, it's more like something concocted in a laboratory. How can it possibly sustain and nourish our bodies ~ and our minds too, for that matter?

I guess the only logical step is to cook from scratch, using good old-fashioned basic ingredients, as often as possible. I have enough cookery books to open my own flippin' library, some of which belonged to Grandma including her battered old notebook with her own handwritten recipes 😊 Unlike Grandma, I have the convenience of a freezer which makes it so much easier to buy meat and fish on a weekly (or longer) basis. I can also do batch-cooking ~ after all it's no more bother to make, say, a big pan of stew instead of enough for just one meal, and freeze half for those days when we are going to be busy and won't want to be spending ages in the kitchen.

I'm not suggesting for one minute that if I start cooking from scratch my excess weight will just magically melt away. For the first time in many years that's not my primary objective. I just feel that it's time to feed my body, mind ~ and yes, my soul too ~ some good wholesome, nourishing food.

Grandma with my little sister and I sometime in the mid 1960s

I'm rather looking forward to falling back in love with cooking and baking again, and trying out some new-to-me "old" recipes. Be warned, though, I may feel the need to share my upcoming kitchen adventures 😃

Peace...

www.allposters.co.uk

Father, Mother, God,

Thank you for your presence during the hard and mean days.

For then we have you to lean upon.

Thank you for your presence during the bright and sunny days.

For then we can share that which we have with those who have less.

And thank you for your presence during the Holy Days.

For then we are able to celebrate you and our families and our friends

For those who have no voice, we ask you to speak.

For those who feel unworthy, we ask you to pour your love out in waterfalls of tenderness.

For those who live in pain, we ask you to bathe them in the river of your healing.

For those who are lonely, we ask you to keep them company.

For those who are depressed, we ask you to shower upon them the light of hope.

Dear Creator, You, the borderless sea of substance, we ask you to give to all the world that which we need most.....PEACE.

Maya Angelou

(4th April 1928 - 28th May 2014) 

The a-z of me!

Just a bit of fun on a Saturday afternoon! 

scary photo, eh!

A ~ Age:  59

B ~ Bed size:  king size

C ~ Chore that you hate:  most housework, if I'm honest 😉

D ~ Dogs:   none since our lovely boy, Matty, passed away back in March

E ~ Essential start to your day:  a lovely mug of Lady Grey tea, with the tea brewed "properly" in a pot these days

F ~ Favourite Colour:  most shades of blue

G ~ Gold or silver:  I much prefer white gold or silver

H ~ Height:  5' 6"-ish 😉 I actually think I've shrunk a bit in recent years though LOL

I ~ Instruments you play:  although I like listening to music I don't play any instruments

J ~ Job title:  tricky, as I haven't actually got a job.  I suppose I could be called a housewife but it wouldn't be very accurate as I'm not that keen on housework 😃

K ~ Kids:  two, Sam and Beverly; they are twins and will be 30 in January 😲

L ~ Live:  Orkney, one of the Northern Isles of Scotland

M ~  Mothers name: Patricia

N ~ Nicknames:  Hubby occasionally calls me "lovey" ~ does that count??

O ~ Overnight hospital stays:  well yes, I have a few, the most recent being some years ago now when I had a prolapsed disc and "stayed overnight" for 2 1/2 weeks!

P ~ Pet peeves:  since I have turned into a decidedly Grumpy Old Woman there are way too many to list here LOL

Q ~ Quote from a movie:  well, the only one I can think of is "Badges?  We don't need no stinking badges" from Blazing Saddles!

R~ Right or left handed:  Right

S ~ Siblings:  a sister, Amanda, who is four years younger than me

T ~ Time you wake up:  well, I usually wake up when my alarm goes at 7.30am but when I actually emerge from my cosy little cocoon can often be quite some time later LOL

U ~ Underwear:  yup, I do indeed wear undies 😉

V ~ Vegetable you hate:  I don't know that there are any that I hate exactly but there are some that I just don't fancy and so have never tried ~ like artichokes and fennel for instance

W ~ What makes you run late:  I don't tend to run late to be honest, I'm much more likely to end up being early!

X ~ X rays you’ve had:  I've had a few over the years ~ the last one was when I had the prolapsed disc

Y ~ Yummy food that you make:  I make jolly good Christmas puddings ~ even if I do say so myself 😏

Z ~ Zoo animal:  lots of animals in zoos, sadly, but of them all I do have a soft spot for orangutans

 

Still hush-hush

I'm 59 and have gone through the menopause but I still vividly remember my first period.  It was not a happy occasion, not least because I had only just turned 11, was still at junior school, and was the only girl who had started to menstruate.  To be fair I didn't have a negative experience so far as the school was concerned and my class teacher was very nice about it, but I still felt different to my friends.....and I cried.  To be honest, I wasn't ready for what is after all a life-changing event for we females of the species; I was still a child and didn't want to be dragged into womanhood.  My friends and I still played with our dolls and despite having had sex education lessons at school, I don't believe any of us really related what we had been taught to ourselves.  I don't recall any talk of loving relationships between adults, the lessons only covered the mechanics of procreation; in our minds sex was something that grown-ups did in order to have children, it didn't interest us in the slightest.

And then when that day of my first ever period dawned, my Mum gave me "the talk".....which simply consisted of these words of wisdom: "you must be careful with boys now".  That was it, the sum total of any sex education I had from either of my parents, so I suppose it was just as well that we did have those lessons at school.  Perhaps back in the day that's what the parents of my generation did, simply left it to the school to tell their kids about the birds and the bees.

Adrian and I always tried to be open with Sam and Beverly; I can still remember, when they were only very young, explaining about sex and loving relationships between mummies and daddies.  This arose from the fact that my sister had just had her dog neutered, and in trying to explain about that it just seemed to lead naturally into a full-blown sex education lesson tailored for the understanding of rather little children.  I admit that I did feel a tad awkward, not least because the whole episode occurred whilst we were in the garden on a lovely sunny day.  It seemed that one minute our neighbours were busy moving their lawns, and the next everyone had gone quiet ~ it felt like they were all listening in although I'm sure that no one actually was at all 😃

It probably did Sam good to have grown up with a sister and a mother neither of whom ever hid their periods from him.  He's witnessed plenty of female hormonal "stuff" over the years, so at least none of that will have come as a shock in any of his relationships.  I'm pretty sure, though, that there are still young men and boys who haven't got the faintest idea of what goes on in a woman's body ~ nor, perhaps, even why, despite the sex education they will have had.  And I am equally certain that there are still many people, both men and women, who view menstruation as something to be feared...something "unclean"...something gross that should be kept hidden and never discussed.

I truly feel that menstruation should be something that is celebrated!  Isn't it really rather wonderful that women's bodies are the most amazing creations?  Our wombs can prepare to grow and nurture a new life every single month!   Oh by the way, before anyone says anything, I am well aware of how painful/heavy/debilitating periods can be; I've had my fair share of menstrual difficulties but that is a tale for another day.

And despite those difficulties, I still believe that we should take time to give ourselves a little hug, gently caress our tummies and say a little "thank you" to our beautiful bodies for what for what they are capable of doing 💖

Houseplant inventory: October 2020

Now don't you all be panicking, thinking "omg, she's going to show us all of those poor houseplants again" ~ you'll be pleased to hear that it's just a handful this time 😉  Apologies in advance for the picture quality, by the way ~ I'm afraid my photographic skills are definitely not improving!

I didn't actually show you this spider plant (chlorophytum comosum) previously.  It usually lives out in my craft room where it has been growing quite happily.  But now that the nights are getting colder I thought it best to bring it into the house for the winter. 

I didn't really have anywhere suitable for a trailing plant elsewhere in the house, so decided the top of the freezer would be the best place for it.  It's been merrily producing lots of babies...

...and sweet little white flowers, too.

I removed and potted up a handful of the spider plant babies.  These are living on the half-landing windowsill and I have a very small one on the kitchen windowsill that I didn't photograph.  

The monstera has settled well into its new living space.  It's sent out a couple of new leaves and has aerial roots growing again.

The quality of this photo is just awful but I wanted to show you how the anthurium is thriving since being re-potted and trimmed...

...and look at how much the spathe has grown!  I'm hoping it will eventually send out more 😊

This plant has also been living in my craft room.  I'm not sure what it is, to be honest, and at one point I thought I'd killed it off.  Some of the leaves are still somewhat sickly-looking but it does have some nice green ones too.  It doesn't seem to be keen on too much sun but hopefully it will be happy here in the utility room.  If it grows well over the coming months I will leave it here rather than taking it back out to the craft room next spring.

The ctenanthe really likes this spot in the utility room.  Perhaps it will encourage the little mystery plant to thrive, too.

And finally, the monstera obliqua "Monkey Mask" in the kitchen is doing really well ~ just look at all those lovely little shoots and leaves!  It's obviously very happy in this spot beside the freezer and now has the spider plant up above it for company 😊

A Monthly Make 2021

I've been enjoying my recent forays back into the world of crochet and was thinking that it would be good to have a little "creating" goal to work towards each month.  So I'm setting myself a challenge over the course of 2021 to make something every month, even if it's only something small and quick.  Of course, I'll still be trying to bust that stash of yarn with more blanket-making but I'm really not good at just sticking with one thing at a time 😄  Having a goal to make some other little "somethings" each month will hopefully help to satisfy that butterfly mind of mine }i{

It's pretty obvious that I mostly crochet but there are lots of other crafts out there that I would really like to try out.  I used to do a lot of cross stitch and it would be nice to take that up again ~ perhaps I could concoct my own chart incorporating my favourite tea phrase!  Mind you, I think any cross-stitchy stuff will take longer than a month to complete 😉

Perhaps you too have things you would like to make?  If so you are more than welcome to join in with me ~ I would love to hear about what you are creating ~ and I won't feel quite so lonely in my little self-imposed creating challenge!  

Little words of wisdom

 

A dreich day

It's wet, chilly and grey.....and sadly, no view of the sea today.  Still, on a day like this there are no feelings of guilt for not getting out in the garden 😉  I've got things I could pootle about doing in the house but here I am, surfing the web instead LOL  Oh well, it's good to have some slow days mixed in with the busy, busy ones! 

 Our boy is back home where he belongs, too.  Beverly picked up Matty's ashes for us from the Northvet surgery in Kirkwall, as the Stromness surgery was closed for a few weeks during lockdown.  Amber and Nikki's ashes are both in little wooden caskets but I think this pottery container is much nicer.  All three are now in a cupboard in our bedroom and the plan is that whichever one of us pops our clogs first, the dogs' ashes will go in our (joint) plot at the same time.  Might all sound a bit morbid to some folk, I guess, but Adrian and I have always been open about our wishes for when the end comes.  Hopefully, though, we both have a good few more years left on the clock 😉  

Wear a Mask (Be Our Guest Parody)

Just couldn't resist sharing 😉

Making gifts

Ta daa ~ the first stash-busting blanket is finished!  I love this blanket...and so did Beverly when she spotted it LOL  So, guess who's getting this for Christmas 😉  It does go rather well with that cushion on our sofa, though.....

I made a rod for my own back started a Christmas tradition for Beverly a few years ago: "Christmas-every-day" ~ which is basically a little gift I've chosen for her to open each day in December up to Christmas Day.  I have decided to make a few of the gifts this year, and this tissue-box cover is one of said handmades.  She has been nagging asking me to make her a couple of square covers for a while, as the tissues she now buys come in square rather than oblong boxes.  She chose the colours herself from my humungous yarn stash, and this is the first one.  I have made a few oblong covers from a pattern by The Royal Sisters but they don't have a square pattern.  I was able to find one, though, for a Santa-themed cover which I just tweaked a bit 😊  I have another one to make for Beverly, in a different colourway, and I'm going to make a couple for myself too.

I've started on another blanket in that same colour combination to put on our own sofa.  After all, those colours do go extremely well with that cushion we have 😉  The pattern is a simple granny stripe from Granny Square Crochet by Catherine Hirst.  It's actually for a scarf but the pattern length worked out beautifully as the width for a good-sized lap blanket.  I'm simply going to keep on crocheting the stripes until I reach a length I'm happy with, ending with the same colour I started off with.  The scarf pattern has a nice edging which I shall probably use, too, to give the blanket a neat finish.  I shall use the beginning and end stripe colour, Mocha, for the edging.

Do you like my little cushion, by the way?  I've had it for a few years ~ I got one for Beverly at the same time.  Although I'm not really a fan of Union Jack-themed stuff I really liked the sentiment, it just seems oh so very British doesn't it!  I wonder if I could incorporate the phrase into a cross stitched picture ~ another project to add to my never-ending list methinks 😄

Peace...

www.allposters.co.uk

Father, Mother, God,

Thank you for your presence during the hard and mean days.

For then we have you to lean upon.

Thank you for your presence during the bright and sunny days.

For then we can share that which we have with those who have less.

And thank you for your presence during the Holy Days.

For then we are able to celebrate you and our families and our friends

For those who have no voice, we ask you to speak.

For those who feel unworthy, we ask you to pour your love out in waterfalls of tenderness.

For those who live in pain, we ask you to bathe them in the river of your healing.

For those who are lonely, we ask you to keep them company.

For those who are depressed, we ask you to shower upon them the light of hope.

Dear Creator, You, the borderless sea of substance, we ask you to give to all the world that which we need most.....PEACE.

Maya Angelou

(4th April 1928 - 28th May 2014)

Definitely autumnal...

...and yet there is still beauty to be seen in the garden borders.  Some folk find autumn to be a rather sad season, where the voluptuous bounty of summer rapidly fades away, but really it's just the garden taking off it's clothes and pulling on it's pyjamas ready for the long refreshing sleep of winter.  And before we know it spring will be here once more, and we can renew our friendships with all of our beloved plants 😊

I love the glossy red hips of rosa rugosa ~ as do the blackbirds if the half-eaten remains left on the lawn are anything to go by!  These are actually growing in our neighbour's garden but we get to share the beauty of their blooms.  The hips always remind me of my Mum telling me how much Dad liked the rosehip syrup I had as a baby 😄  I wonder when ~ and why ~ giving rosehip syrup to babies stopped being a thing?  I know it certainly wasn't something I gave to the gruesome-twosome almost 30 years ago (omg, how can my kids be nearly 30 years old 😲), so things must have changed sometime between the early 60s and early 90s.

I was having a poke around in the ornamental garden that is currently masquerading as a wilderness when I spotted that this poppy had decided to have a second flourish of leaves ~ and pop out a flower bud, too!  I have read that if they are cut back after flowering is finished then some poppies will have a second flush in August but I think this one has left it a bit late this year!

Apologies if you are arachnaphobic ~ I'm not that keen on the eight-legged little beasties myself, to be honest.  This one, though, wasn't really scary despite it's looooong legs and apparently isn't even a spider!  It's a harvestman according to the RSPB, and they are Opilones, which is a group of arachnids closely related to spiders 😉

Moving swiftly on from that little natural history lesson...

...take a look at something that's much prettier than a spider-that's-only-pretending-to-be-a-spider, a sweet little potentilla Pink Whisper.  The bees really like potentillas, I guess it's easy for them to get to the pollen with those flat open flowers.

This is potentilla nepalensis Miss Willmott.  It's a very different-looking plant to Pink Whisper despite them both being in the potentilla family.

Autumn is, of course, the season for asters.  This is aster novi belgii Jenny.

The verbena bonarensis is still going strong.  We've had some high winds but it seems to cope admirably.  I love the way it is rising up behind the montbretia, and the contrast of the blue against the orange 😊

Despite being moved all the lupins bloomed, and some have even put out a second flush of flower spikes.

More of those beautiful rosa rugosa hips, this time in the bed beside the pond.

It seems that the sedums Autumn Joy turn a deeper red every day.

Fungi-opolis!

We've had masses of these cute little fungi this year.

I don't know anything about fungi, I'm afraid (other than the ones in the supermarket are very tasty 😋), but have been told that these are probably from the Coprinellus family.  They like to grow on or near rotting tree stumps.

And finally, I couldn't resist taking a photograph of the view from our house.....we are very lucky to live here 😍

On the home stretch

There's still work to be done but the light at the end of the kitchen garden tunnel is definitely visible, thank goodness!  Mind you, we'll be tackling the ornamental side of the garden next year which will also be something of a mammoth task 😩  Oh well, no rest for the wicked, I suppose LOL

I thought long and hard about how to set out the fruit cage area, and it took me a while to make a decision on whether to plant straight through the membrane into the soil or use raised beds.  As you can see, in the end I decided to use beds which Adrian is gradually filling with sieved soil from the raised beds in the back garden.  We haven't yet decided whether to just cage the individual beds or the whole area; I suspect we will end up doing the latter.

I have three vertical cordon fruit trees on order which are all supposed to be suitable for the climate up here (let's hope so, eh!): Scrumptious, which is a red-skinned dessert apple; Victoria plum; and a dessert cherry, Summer Sun.  They can be planted as closely as 2'-3' apart and are going in the bed where the rake is in the photograph.  Hopefully the stone walls will provide some protection.  I am considering planting spring bulbs with the trees next autumn, which I would like to use as cut flowers for the house rather than them being simply ornamental.

The other two beds will be for the black- and redcurrants which I've been growing from the cuttings a friend sent me.  We also plan to grow some raspberries.  I need to do a bit of research first, though, on which varieties would be best and which need the least amount of space, as they will be going in a long narrow bed in the remaining area in the lower part of the kitchen garden.

I also have strawberry plants on order, which will be going in one of the raised beds in the lower kitchen garden.     

We are a step closer towards "losing" the weed membrane ~ we had a couple of one tonne bags of Orkney Blue stone chippings delivered last Friday.  We originally thought we would have to have the bags put on the grass in the ornamental garden, but the delivery guy was able to swing them into the kitchen garden which has made life a little easier.  Our first task is to make the paths in the fruit cage, then we can spread out what's left in the lower garden ~ well, on the area that has membrane in place, anyway.  We thought that two tonnes would be such a lot of chippings but it's not going to go as far as we thought it would!  Adrian reckons we will most likely need at least another tonne ~ I see a lot of shovelling in our future 😉 

The broccoli has been a bit of a disaster ~ I have a lot of vegetable growing research to do over the winter LOL  But there are some florets that look as if they may be harvestable, which is a miracle considering how decimated the plants were by the cabbage white caterpillars!  Still, it's all a learning process and hopefully I will be more successful next year.

The plants I ordered from J.Parkers arrived and have now been put in a "nursery" bed until next spring.  They are supposedly garden-ready ~ which, to be fair, they would have been had we still been living down south ~ but I know from last year's experience that it will be better to let them sit out the winter in a raised bed.  I may also get some windbreak netting to protect them a little.

It's not the best photo, I know, but this pair of erigeron karvinskianus have spent a couple of months growing on in the raised bed and are now very much bigger than when they arrived.  I may plant them in the garden before the winter weather sets in.  I have quite a lot of these sweet little daisies dotted around the borders, and in the alpine bed too, but I can always find room for a couple more 😍 

And finally, I thought you might like to see a photograph of our neighbour's cat who plainly thinks that our garden is his judging by the amount of time he spends out there!  I can't actually remember what his name is but it's General somebody or other, named after a character in a book apparently.  I have to say that thus far he hasn't proved to be a very friendly cat, in fact he has been known to hiss if he thinks we are getting too close ~ I took this photo from the porch! ~ which is a tad rude considering this is our flippin garden LOL