Slugs......

...awful creatures.  Came out of my patio door yesterday and there was this huge slug sunbathing near the lock.  By the time I got out my camera he had moved across the glass.  

Urgh!  I noticed all over the back wall of the house, all the way to the roof were these slimy trails.  Not nice. 

Here is another shot of him from inside the house.

Rain, rain, please come again.....

Do you remember I mentioned all the blossum on the trees.  This was in May. Was expecting loads of apples.

 

 

Its not going to happen.  Oh yes loads of apples, but cannot get enough water in the ground to help them grow. 

 

It has been very dry for weeks and soon it will be too late to save them.  I picked up this jug full from under the tree, and there is hundreds more.  Such ashame.

 

 

 

 

That is this tree, I haven't looked at the smaller one.  It looks like no apple pies this year!!!  Nor blackberry either, as I dug up a lot of the blackberry vines  at the beginning of the year, as they grow wild in our garden and they were taking over.

 





Apple blossum.....loads on the trees

 

Two very old apple trees in our garden - both produce very similar apple.  Its not a bramley, but sharp and sweet at the same time.  Perfect for home made apple pies.

With all this blossum it looks like it will be a bumper year - I still haven't used all the apples from last years crop and it was no where as full as this with blossum then. 
 

From Winter to Spring in less than a week...

Not exactly as it is still bitterly cold....but the sun is glorious today.

Last week

This week

Home Sweet Home for spiders....

 

Luckily I didn't see any spiders.  They certainly weren't at "home" when I took these pictures at 9 a.m. this morning.

 

 

So very cold it was - I even left a scarf on the clothes line last night and this morning it looked like this

A very heavy frost.....now it is late afternoon it is starting to thaw - thank goodness.

One, two, three....

pumpkins from the garden.  This is after the one I showed a few weeks ago.  So far I have cut one up and froze it. 

Those are my shoes for comparison, arn't they lovely...(no no not the shoes - the pumpkins).  I just love cutting through the pumpkin and all those lovely seeds all in rows in the middle.  To look at them gives me the shivers, but I pull them all out carefully and lay on a piece of kitchen towel to dry and we use again next year. 

Now what can we make?  Pumpkin pie, that sounds delicious.  Never made it before.  Nor have I made pumpkin soup.

I remember when I was in Australia, a few years ago now.  My friend bought this enormous pumpkin and set out to make the pumpkin soup.  As she was beating the cooked pumpkin in a plastic bowl, the bowl slipped out of her hand and the pumpkin mash flew up in the air, and landed with a plop on the kitchen floor.

She managed to save such a small amount from  the bowl, and we divided it amongst the three of us - I can still taste it - it was delicious.  Now I have my own pumpkins I must try some recipes.....

Amber and the Pumpkin.....

on a hot summers day! 

Amber.....

 She is laying in the very hot sun.  Amber never seems to eat anything during the hot summer weather, and does lose weight, but she is chirpy enough and drinks plenty of water.  As soon as winter comes she puts on weight again. 

Amber's mummy and daddy were field cats....she was pretty wild when she was young and did not like humans.  She spent most of time out in the garden - day and night and there was nothing I could do about it.  But since she has grown fond of us, she now likes to curl up on a chair or in a quite corner for an afternoon nap and rarely goes out at night now.

She is my little swan, and when I call her this and she is sitting up, she puffs out her chest.  Amber loves a good brush, and I bought a small bristle shoe brush just to do that - most days.  She wriggles about on the ground, so that I cover every inch of her fur. 

And then there is my pumpkin.....no relation at all .....but I picked it out of the garden this afternoon and Amber thought I was giving her a ball to play with....but I just wanted to show how big my pumpkin is. 

Amber is a small cat, so it doesn't say much for my pumpkin.....lets just say its as big as a football. - it is really.......I must get this one eaten soon as I have plenty more to pick.

Yummy.......blackberries and...

plenty of them.   Now got to get on with making those pies and puddings.  Perhaps I may have a go with apple and blackberry jam. 

I was bought up on blackberry and apple jam, in the days when you could buy an enormous tin from the grocery store.  Fresh baked bread and jam - thats what we used to have for our tea. 

Dad would sit at the head of the table and be the first to pull the loaf apart - never knew how they managed to bake the bread with two "humps" so perfectly.  Dad called the "flakey" middle the "maggoty bit".  We never was allowed to have this piece, it was Dad's. 

The bread was baked in a bakery about seven miles away.  I never remember how it got to us, only that our names, one of many families living on the sheep station,  were written on the  white paper wrapping and we collected it every day from a huge wooden box high (only because we were little) in a tree with a lid that opened upwards.  The lid was on a spring, so often needed two of us to hold it open, while we found our loaves of bread. 

I am getting distracted here.....but then as we get older we do think about our younger days - mmm - now where was I?  A sure sign of getting old, if you can't remember....... Ahhh yes the blackberries I picked today.  I will freeze some as there are far too many to eat over the next few days and I will make some pies. 

Not so sure about the jam though, I will have to think about that.  Never been successful, so best not try - yet. 

Alright for some in this heat.....

Absolutely beautiful day today.  Very hot which I don't normally like, but I knew it is time to hack away the wilderness in the garden.  Not sure if I will get it all done this summer, but worth a try.

Getting started on this patch - first - thats all gone now, except for a few blackberry plants up in the corner. 

Now to attempt to put up the pagoda.  I just happen to have one that is at least 15 years old, when you had a bag full of numbered poles, a silly instruction sheet, which is so difficult to follow, some pegs, string, stands, joins, and last of all the plastic sheet to go over.

There is only me to do it - not that there isn't anybody around, they decided to be just an audience and make jokey comments.  Not my husband I hasten to add, he was busy in another part of the garden. 

Well here goes.....

Hey some of the numbers have come off the poles.....oh no.....which goes where?  I scrabble around for the instruction sheet, only to find out that it had got damp in the shed and here I am pressing out the creases so that I can just about see the number poles to go where???

Whee - so far so good - now the tricky bit, getting the last two poles onto each corner.  Thats three poles to hold this up on each corner.  Oh no the wind is picking up.......huff and puff......holding on the whole thing with one hand and trying to place the poles in the corner......

I have done it!!!  Well done me. 

Oh look you can see beyond the pagoda where I have been working today.  Lot better, but still got at loads of "patches" to do. My patches are about 3 meters square. I couldn't cope with any more than that in a day.

Our garden has an abundance of self sown blackberry bushes, everywhere.  I won't allow them to be dug out til I have harvested every blackberry there is.  Only then can the roots be dug out - because at the end of the day it is a weed, a weed that spreads with the help of birds - cos they like blackberries too and spit the pips out somewhere else...and presto another blackberry bush for the following year!

Ahhh here I am sweating bucket loads......and here is my companion -

Resting in the sun......Its alright for some!

Now where did she go?

I was in the garden this evening just as it got dark and our two black cats were playing with a mouse in the grass.  I wanted to take a photo with the flash, so rushed indoors to get the camera, only to find that the cat who caught the mouse was watching the other cat eat it.  Ugh....there was nothing left to photograph...

Once she had had her hearty meal she disappeared into the long grass, supposedly for her desert.....so with camera in hand I used the flash to look for her.

I can't find her.....

Not there either

Nor there....

Aaah there she is!  You need good eyesight to see anything from up there.....

Nature can be cruel sometimes....

From 0 - 60 mph in 8 seconds.......

I wouldn't be in a car 0 to 60 mph in 8 seconds.....and.......

From "0"

To "60"

within a blink of an eye.

And now we come to the end of June, I know I have been busy every single day, but I can't account for any of it.  Have I achieved anything?  Well yes.....I have but nothing to show for the time spent.

We did go away for a short break, so that I could meet up with good friends on the beach.  The weather wasn't brilliant, but we all had fun.

I read only one book, I made one cake (ginger preserve gluten free), a mixed berry crumble, a meat pie and an apple pie - all made from ingredients from the cupboard.  Nothing creative and no recipes used.

Home projects are a disaster - the heating system is still not completed.....a setback.  The boilers were mounted on the wall and plumbed in, except no thought on how the cables were to be fitted to the unit....the hole at the side  of unit is still in tact and no means of knocking it out other than the plumber to take the boilers off the wall for the electrician to do his job and remount and plumbed in again.  An absolute expensive nightmare!

Vegetables are growing - beetroot, carrots, potatoes, marrows, courgettes, pumpkin, beans, gooseberries, pears, rhubarb and apples.  But with the extremely cold weather for the middle of summer, I don't think we will get a good crop of anything this year.

Another book meet with  good friends to finish of the month,  with something in common - books.  We had a fab time -

All the books for the book dip, were nicely wrapped, some wishes (books on "wish" lists)  were granted  and more books were provided to take .  Lunch at the Italian Restaurant was very nice, and two of us even had a desert!

This was followed by a stroll around the charity shops, but because we talked too much at lunch, we did not have an awful time left.  Of course, like book addicts do, we acquired more books on our never ending piles to read. 

Right for the month of July I am going to set myself some challenges. 

1.  I am re-instating the Photo a Day Challenge - I missed not doing this in June.  Not sure if I will get started today though.

2.  Cooking - I love making cakes etc.  anything sweet - and I never get round to it.  So at least one recipe a month.

3.  Read quicker.  One book in a month is not acceptable.  So my challenge is to read no less than 50 pages a day/night.  That would mean the average book should take me less than a week.

4.  Another challenge is to get on with something I really enjoy doing, whether it be a DIY, knitting, sewing, painting, sorting out photos, etc.... just anything - to actually complete a project before the end of the month.  That is my biggest challenge!

5.  To use my senior Bus Pass at least once every two weeks - travel somewhere different, meet new people, read books, shopping, see the scenery......and to remember to take the camera! 

So thats it folks........ not the most exciting month for me - room for improvements.  Now to plan my day tomorrow, so that I can at least fit in one challenge.

This month has gone quick....

but we achieved lots.  The house is still upside down with having the radiators put in for the central heating, but we have come to a standstill as we can't find an electrician who will connect the boilers to the electricity supply.  "Oh come on guys this looks like a straightforward task!  And I am not even an electrician". 

The living room carpet is back in place - we thought about changing it as it has been down for almost 30 years, but still in good condition.  "Star Wars" this pattern is - not sure how they come to that - very 1970s, but maybe it will do for a few more years yet.

The walls were very 1980s -

Rather than removing the paper and putting up lining paper, we gave it several coats of magnolia emulsion and I put up another pair of curtains, and it is amazing how much lighter the room has become.

We never got around to too much decorating over the years as our jobs and children took up a lot of time, but now we are heading for retirement, its time the house got its own make over.  I never imagined we would be in so much mess. 

The vege garden is taking its time.  In the meantime Mr Fox has dug out another den right beside the potatoes.  I am almost certain our vegetable patch is over a number of tunnels and holes, as everytime they dig they create another mound of earth, and it is very much like growing your veg on top of a hill!

Look at all those weeds - nettles too, knee deep all around the apple tree - days and days of work there.  Mr Fox does not take too kindly to us moving about, but he is determined to stay put!  Often sits on next door's shed roof during the day to watch us busy working in the garden.

Look at this too - more shrubbery to clear.  Wouldn't believe how much we have cleared this month and still all this to do. 

You might ask me what I am going to do with these!  These are two drums from old washing machines, and the casing of one of them.  The idea is to fill with earth and grow some flowers.  Since I got hundreds of flower seeds, I want to find out if I can grow them, having never had flowers in my garden, just shrubs, vegetables and weeds!


I was given two large pots by a neighbour and he said I should grow carrots in them.  So I am going to have a go. 

OK some of you and probably all of you have a garden and you grow lots of nice things.  Well I have the garden, but never had the time to do anything with it.  Mainly because I don't like gardening, but I don't like to see it like it is now.  So rules have been laid that within six months, we are going to clear this garden as it was 30 years ago!  That is certainly a challenge, because I have only given you part pictures - too embarrassed to show all!  Yes we have grass, and we have trees, but we have lots of other things that shouldn't even be here.  Its called "junk".  And I mean J-U-N-K....and I am not the hoarder. Although I do like to recycle, if I can find another use for it.

I am also trying to do some things I personally want to do.  And this month has been so busy that I haven't made one cake, nor pudding, and barely have had time to cook a meal each evening.  But I have sold lots of stuff from the loft on ebay, and feel pretty good about it.  I have space and I am saving for a trip to Australia.  Another story, another day.

Not yet given up work - if there is work - I will work - if there isn't then I will stick to home things.  Working from home can be an advantage - but sometimes you may not leave the house for days.

So - thats it for this month - now I can look forward to other things to do next month.  I have so much to do, I know I won't ever be bored on my road to retirement.....

Strawberry thief......man or beast I shall never know

I photographed my first strawberry late yesterday afternoon, just before I gave it a watering.

 I was so proud of my first strawberry I asked my husband to come and have a look this morning - but oh no - it was gone!!  Plucked from the stem, maybe only with the last half hour as the tip that is attached to strawberry was still wet.

Now I am pretty sure it wasn't a squirrel as it was too close to my door,  too much activity.  But then it could be I suppose, or someone in a man's body - and I know it wasn't my son or my husband.  I have my suspicions...... but can't prove it and I might be totally wrong!

Can't believe it though...