Garden

I was going to show you around the garden a little bit last week and then I got distracted by patchwork flowers. This just about sums up my attitude to the garden generally, it does very much get neglected in favour of sewing - or cooking, or trips to the beach or river, or most things really. It's not that I don't like gardening, it's just that I like other things more! It really doesn't help that the garden is such a dauntingly huge, wild project either. And showing you around today is very bad timing, since we visited the beautiful RHS gardens at Rosemoor yesterday, and that would be enough to give even the keenest, most diligent gardener an insecurity complex. Here are a couple of photos from there first, just so you get to see a gorgeous garden:

Very beautiful there. So to try and make me feel better about our wild mess I'm only going to say positive things about our patch now. Here goes...

Our garden is great for finding mini beasts and wildlife generally...
 

A beautiful slow worm

Making a wormery

So often we come across amazing grass snakes too, much to the excitement of the children. And when we head back after an evening walk down to the river, the whole field seems to be echoing with the chirps of the crickets - which, by the way, are perfect for supplying Theo's most recent, beloved pet with food ...



His pet Preying Mantis!

 There is also an abundance of dandelions - which another of Theo's pets appreciate!

We do manage to grow a few vegetables. Potatoes were good this year, lettuces are still going, we have some tomatoes and I haven't entirely given up hope that our beans will still take off up their posts - perhaps I'm being a little optimistic there though!

Beans are struggling a bit.



We grew tomatoes in hanging baskets this year.

We have lots of apples - eating and cooking varieties. 

Snacks don't come much better than picking an apple straight off the tree and eating it. And as for the cooking apples, we do find another particular plant tends to go well with them, and also flourishes (much too well) in our garden...

At this particular time of year it's a pretty good thing to have around the place.

The children all love the garden. Even though it is a little on the wild side for Maria in places, she still finds plenty to enjoy out there.

Anything that involves water is always good. And potion making has been even more popular than usual this year.



 This is Maria's latest potion - not sure whether it will stay outside or be strained and brought upstairs for bath time later.

 Despite completely neglecting the flower element in the garden we still have plenty of blooms...

The hydrangeas are always beautiful, outside and inside the house:

And the girls seem to pick and bring me flowers daily over the Summer. Maria isn't always great at picking with a decent length stem, so I find these odd bottles I've picked up in Charity Shops extremely useful - even the shortest stemmed flower can work in one of these:

And just last week we found an interesting, old bottle half buried in the woods next to us. It took a bit of cleaning up but it looks lovely now:

I have a strange collection of vases all round in fact. Here's another one I picked up in a Charity Shop that looks very like a little tree trunk:



These are the girls' favourite flowers to pick for me, they grow like weeds all around the house so I've had a never ending supply for this vase all Summer long.

The boys aren't so interested in the flowers, and would probably say that this is the best thing in our garden:

Just a gate you might think - but this gate leads out into some woods, another great place to play and make and explore in itself, and also our route down to the river near us. We've spent so many wonderful afternoons and evenings down at the river this Summer, and we're off there again shortly, after tea, And on the way back, we're all organised tonight to warm ourselves, now the evenings are getting a little chilly, with another of our favourite garden activities...

It's a perfect garden for campfires.



So despite being wild, messy, completely out of control and way beyond our current capabilities to tame it, our garden is a wonderful place and we're incredibly lucky to have it.

I'll be back tomorrow with a photo, and then on Saturday I've got a new quilt to show you - finished in a mad rush this morning and currently hanging on the washing line to dry.

See you then, Sally.