Why've you gorn so quiet.....

image from Clipart Library

...do I hear you asking???  Well, Adrian and I have been busy in the garden and to tell you the truth I've been a tad too tired to work on Augusta Lodge.  I made a mistake the other day by cutting out a bit I didn't mean to when I got distracted by a wasp, so I decided to be sensible and not work on the house when I've had a full-on day in the garden 😉

The front borders have become very overgrown these past few months and I lost a fair bit of gardening time when I was having the leg cramp problems, so there's a lot of catching-up to do before the winter weather arrives.  Our first task was to clear out the wider of the two front path borders as I made a terrible boo-boo by planting one dwarf elder (sambucus ebulus) plant.....which then took over!  By 'eck, it's a rampant plant 😲  It's a shame as it is an attractive plant but it definitely needs a LOT of space to itself!  Anyhoo, lesson learned and after all that's what gardening is all about, eh 😏  The soil level in the border had dropped somewhat so we were able to use up some more of the soil mountain to top it up.  It looked very bare by the time all the elder had been dug out which of course was an open invitation to the local cat population to use it as their new favourite litter tray 😒 And although I say "all the elder" we still keep coming across new shoots so I think it's going to be an ongoing process for some time yet!

As we work our way around the garden I'm having a bit of a reorganisation of what I've planted, so that first border we tackled isn't quite so empty now. 

I'd got round to the "hedge border" and as I moved my kneeling pillow (yes, it really is a pillow 😄) this chap leapt out from behind it ~ I don't know which one of us was the most startled LOL

We have quite a few frogs in our garden, of differing sizes.  This one was very obliging and posed long enough for me to take a couple of photos.  A smaller of its brethren leapt out in front of me from the front wall border later!

And in other news I've actually done a bit of crochet recently.  Beverly asked me if I could make a tissue-box cover for her to give as a gift to one of her friends.  I think we were both astonished to find that I didn't have the right shade of grey in my yarn stash, so she had to actually buy a ball.  Naturally I pointed her in the direction of Wool Warehouse, my favourite supplier of my little yarn addiction 😄  The pattern, which I've made a number of times, is from The Royal Sisters.