Hope your November went off with a bang. 
I have been very lazy lately. So lazy that I even got my neighbour to bag up his leaves for me to make mulch. Well, he was sweeping them up anyway, might as well put him to good use. I think he thought I was a bit nuts. Today I have been very good and swept up mine too. They are bagged up and ready for mulching. 
Flash is very tired, so we took his house away on Monday and put him on the soil. He still had his eyes closed.
The green manure is working. Clover.
Grazing rye.
Phacelia.
We've got some kale happening.
The tortoise food is what seems to be growing best. He won't be needing it for a while now.
Went to check on him and he had dug down ready for winter. Good night Flash, see you in spring, it is officially the end of summer now. 
Massive pear harvest of one pear. It was the best tasting pear ever. Shared between four people.
Success! Our first ever pumpkin. Small is beautiful.
Got my over wintering onions and garlic ready to plant from the allotment shop. The onions are Senshy, I think the garlic is solent white. 
We've been to Dorset for a couple of weeks. The place we stayed was up in the hills and we saw birds of prey like the one above just sitting on telephone poles by the side of the road.
We found lots of fossils like this ammonite at Charmouth Beach.
I wasn't quite quick enough to get a good shot of the birds of prey that we saw every day but trust me they were amazing. The village was called Powerstock they had a great pub there but no shop or phone signal, just the old church. Makes you realise how you get used to having so much on your doorstep.
This is the one track lane was like to get there. It went on like this for miles. Nice to escape from the world for a week or two.
Not updated things for a while. I've been busy! We got real peas, that actually look like real peas this year so I was pleased.
Autumn raspberries are doing really well. They seem to be always a lot better than the summer ones so I'm glad I planted both types.
Here are the remains of our raspberry ice cream. It went down very well! Half a pint of double cream, a pound of raspberries, juice of a lemon and 4 oz sugar, puree all the fruit then bung it in the ice cream maker, very nice.
Here are the visitors that we had for a week, courtesy of the school to look after. Thank goodness they survived the week with us.
I picked my lavender and had some bunches of it in the hall to combat the stinky guinea pig visitors, worked a treat. They needed cleaning out every day. They were quite cute though, for a week anyway.... 
Look at our apples. I'm pretty chuffed with these, it's a dwarf tree but we only planted it last year so it's done pretty well. There are lots of apples on it this year. 
Look, real apples! This one has even got droplets of morning rain on it.
The blueberries are really fat as well this year. Must be all the recent rain that has swelled them up. Since we got the hosepipe ban here it hasn't stopped raining.
I've grown teasel this year, we have got them all along the back fence. They are lethal, really spiky, probably not the best plant to put in a garden with children but they are pretty and are attracting lots of bees and hoverflies. The seeds should attract goldfinches too later on, we'll see. So if you are thinking of scaling my back fence be prepared to get spiked. Ouch! Serves you right.
If you've got a glut of raspberries and you've done jam and crumbles, I recommend making some raspberry and chocolate muffins. The raspberry melts inside the cake and goes all gooey. Delicious. 
Don't know if you remember my pear tree last year. The leaves had some wierd stuff growing on them. I moved it down the side of the house for its final chance. There have been a couple of yellow leaves this year that I have had to pluck off but it has managed to grow a pear on it.
Tina Turner is going to be so upset, she can't stand the rain against her window but I am very pleased with this weeks showers. Sorry Tina but my plants need a good soaking but it makes it super easy to pull out the shocking number of weeds that I 've cultivated.
This is the first crop from the allotment, I've had lettuce and salad leaves from the plants at the house but it's nice to pull something up from the ground, even if it is a radish.
We went to London at the weekend. This is the wisteria at Kew Gardens. It is over 100 years old. They have trained it so that it forms a huge den that you can go and sit inside. How fantastic is that? It is slightly more impressive than mine. I started growing it last year, it is a spindly little thing, but in one hundred years time who knows, or dares to dream...
The children planted these tulips. 
Oh yes, check out my prize winning parsnip. I haven't put soft focus on this picture by the way because I have fallen in love with the parsnip. Someone, possibly a small child put a big thumb print on the lense of the camera. But the parsnip is impressive is it not? It is good when you are as easily pleased as me, there is a lot to be happy about. 
There is blossom everywhere. I like it. The cherry trees at the back of the house are really pretty in spring. It is their way of giving us compensation for blocking out our sun for the rest of the summer.
Our cherry tree was on its final warning. Last year it was an embarrassment to us all. There was one tiny bit of blossom hanging off a branch and it has produced a total of 2 cherries in three years. We told it, you're getting the chop if you don't buck up. It has heeded it's warning. Our amateur pruning may have worked, we no longer have to hide our faces in shame when we come out of the front door. It may be too much to ask for to actually get cherries but we have the flowers so there is hope.
Do you remember my disgusting mangy disease ridden pear tree? I moved it so that it didn't spread its gross diseases to everything else and look, it has not only come back to life but has got blossom on it too. Fingers crossed. 
When the wind blows all the petals from the trees behind the house fall all over the garden. It's like confetti.
I put my bean poles up too, including swirly bird scarers on the end which just look pretty and don't scare the birds. The world is good this week. 
Here is the entire broccoli harvest. It was enough to feed two children one meal. It was worth growing for a year. I did rubbish with all the brassicas this year. I am going to take care of my little seedlings better this year and there will be muchos broccoli next year, oh yes there will be.
The asparagus has survived the winter. Not sure if I need to protect them from the slugs and birds though. It is only their second year this year so we will have to wait a bit before we can eat any. Don't want those filthy slugs ruining all my efforts. Have planted out some lettuce, spring onions, radish, beetroot and perpetual spinach under a cloche. A good day at the allotment with no dead animals to find and no fellow allotmenteers arguing with their spouses. Just nice sunshine and wonderful silence. 
These are the bean seeds that I saved from last year. They have since been planted. They have got a Jack and the beanstalk feel to them. I love these big fat seeds, they are really tactile. I probably would have swapped the cow myself.
Mmmmm delicious. This is the compost I've been fermenting. It is good stuff I am so happy happy. Hurrah!
I made it in my whirly turny darlik compost maker or Blackwall Composter if you want to get it right. I chose this one because we had a rat once in a compost heap and I don't want a new resident in the garden. Although if you keep poking at the compost it deters rats I'd rather be safe. The rats can't get in here. I wouldn't have such a posh one for the allotment we've just got a pile there and a plastic bin. 
Spring is here. The primroses are out. I love these wild primroses. They do really well and they keep their colour. If you plant these you will soon have them all over your garden, they seem to clump up quickly. Yellow flowers in spring really cheer me up. I'd have a garden full of these if I could.
Look who stuck his head out yesterday. Yes flash has decieded to wake up. Spring is officially here. This is a sure sign that the weather is perking up.
Today he emerged from his hole and had a sniff around.
Then later on this morning he emerged fully. 
We went to Wales at half term. Going on holiday in the British Isles in February is a good idea. One day it is like this.
And the next day it is like this. Brilliant. You can't beat it. 
I thought I had been restained this year in my seed buying. Until I got out last years seeds and put them with my new ones. I guess I wasn't so restrained after all, oh well, some women buy shoes. I buy seeds. 
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