Today I’ve been putting the finishing touches to some items for the Rivendell Garden Centre Craft Fair.  It opens tomorrow (23rd October 09) for three days (Friday, Saturday and Sunday).

a bit of a production line going on

It’s definitely feeling a lot colder lately, and my thoughts are turning to things like yummy vegetable soup in a flask as well as gloves, scarves and hats.  I’ll be taking my flask of soup to Rivendell, which I hope will keep me warm - we are sited in a marquee.  Not the warmest place to spend an autumnal weekend.  I shall dig out my gloves and scarf too.  Will I need a hat? 

The weather has been a bit mixed of late, and the plants seem a bit confused.  This little apple tree (below) currently lives in a big pot in the garden.  It’s patiently waiting for its permanent spot - but there’s a lot of hacking down of overgrown conifers to do first.

my baby apple tree

Have you noticed what’s unusual about this little tree?  It’s now well into autumn, and most of its leaves have turned brown or already fallen.  But there’s a confused little branch which believes spring has already arrived.  The leaves are bright green and fresh, and there’s even blossom!  Look a bit more closely:

apple blossom in October

What’s happened with the weather?  It’s been glorious these past few days, and I woke up this morning to hear the rain pouring down! 

I took a few pics of the garden yesterday.  Remember, we only moved into this house in March.  The garden was a bit of a jungle (still is, in places)… anyway, here’s the tour!!

baby courgette plants

I made the raised bed for the courgettes from various bits of a felled tree.  Worked pretty well, I thought.

onions in a raised bed

The rased bed for the onions is a folding frame which I found outside our front door when we moved in.  Not sure what its original purpose was, but it works really well as a raised bed.  There are four of them, here’s another housing the potatoes:

potatoes in rased bed

Surrounding the raised beds is an area which was a bit wild - well-established ivy vying for ground space with healthy-looking weeds and dozens of stray cherry tree suckers.  I pulled out what I could, given my limited timescale, and covered the lot with cardboard (we had plenty of it, having just moved in!).

The worms apparently love cardboard, and I’ve used this method of weed suppression before.  It has the advantages of being easy, cheap and environmentally-friendly.  The cardboard will have rotted away in about 12 months, and will improve the soil structure as it does so.  If I get round to it, I will add shredded twigs on top of the cardboard (and there are lots of twigs and leaves under the cardboard too).  The only disadvantages to the cardboard method is the lack of visual appeal.  it does end up looking a bit like an allotment, but it is temporary.  And the autumn leaves will cover it later in the year if I don’t beat them to it with my shredded twigs.

We found a few gems hidden in the garden, such as:

a plum tree

this plum tree, which is laden with baby plums.  There looks to be more plums than one family can reasonably manage to eat, so apart from plums at beakfast, dinner and tea, I think I’ll be looking up recipes for jams and chutneys.  Yum.

There was also:

a pear tree

this pear tree, with lots of tiny baby pears.  I thought it was an apple tree to begin with, but if it is then they are very odd-shaped apples!!  There’s also an apple tree, but it’s looking a bit poorly and doesn’t have much fruit on it.

Before you get jealous of my lovely garden, let me just show you that everything in the garden is not coming up roses:

the nettle patch

Yes, we have a flourishing nettle patch.  I think I may have to look up a recipe for nettle soup, although if I tell Mr 1st Unique that’s what we’re having for tea, he may well decide to go off and find somewhere else to live.  But, hey, credit crunch and all that!  Surely it has to be worth a try?  I think I’d have to call it something more attractive than nettle soup!!

Oh, and look here http://www.nettles.org.uk/ - we’ve just missed “Be nice to nettles week”.  There’s a recipe for nettle soup, too, but it needs half a pound of nettles.  My God, that’s a lot, even for my garden!!

Back to work!!