July Garden



Once again it's raining.

A typically English summer.

Cornflowers grown from seed

A fuschia already here when we moved in

Lavender

Geranium

a waterlily - only a few flowering now 

Nicotiana grown from seed

Cosmos grown from seed by my sister in law

The vegetable garden is benefitting from all the rain even if we are not

We have been harvesting lots of courgettes, which taste so incredibly different from those in the supermarket, so much sweeter and tastier.

One sneakily managed to achieve small marrow size before I spotted it - just a few days not checking, and this is what I found.......

The sweetcorn is growing tall, and now half of them have both silks and tassells - fingers crossed that they pollinate (I must confess to giving them a helping hand - I wonder whether it will work?)

The tomatoes are very slowly getting there - we've had lots of flowers for several months, and a few tomatoes are coming, but despite spraying the flowers to help them set and keeping the sideshoots pinched out, it seems to be very slow - I wonder whether we shall run out of time and end up with pots of green tomato chutney as opposed to red tomatoes for eating.

The greenhouse tomato plants aren't significantly more advanced than the outside ones in terms of number and size of actual tomatoes, but the plants are definitely taller and more vigorous.

Baby cucumbers from bought in plants, one planted in a grow bag and one direct into the ground - the growbag plant is more vigorous and has loads more baby cucumbers and flowers - its all a learning process

The first broad beans are ready, so we should taste those this week

The dwarf beans are just about big enough too, so later this week we should be eating those



More climbing french beans - the first ones have already been enjoyed

The grape vine along the back wall of the house is prolific, and has many bunches of grapes. I need to read up on what to do!

Last year, having just moved in, I did nothing to them and yet still had an incredible amount of ripened black grapes which I made into Grape Jelly. This turned out to be very good indeed.

The honeysuckle over the arch continues to bloom and smells wonderful as you walk under, and on a (rare)warm summers evening the fragrance reaches the terrace where we sit

The nasturtiums I grew from seed have gone rampant in the vegetable plot, keeping the black fly at bay

 

Haven't yet taken any pictures of whats happening in the front garden - maybe tomorrow if the weather improves, but I think more rain is forecast. 

Edited 21st July to add a few more pics:

The first dwarf beans picked this morning - surprisingly I think there are actually enough for a meal!

I grew so many tomato and pepper plants I had to resort to putting some in hanging baskets!

But they seem to be doing alright.

sweet pepper plant with tiny peppers forming

baby peppers on hanging basket plant

baby tomato on plant in hanging basket

And yes, it is lightly raining again here this morning!

Hope the weather is better where you are!

 

Don't forget to enter my Giveaway on the 11th July post - ends 31st July!!!

 

Stop Press!

Catherine over at Kids and Capers is having a wonderful Giveaway of some fantastic Avoca items - pop over there to enter!

And please don't forget to enter my Giveaway too - see 11th July post

Post to follow soon!

If only they could talk ............they could do a post for me!

Am hoping to find time tomorrow afternoon!

Hope you are all well,  and welcome to my new followers!!

Hooked Up

Just a quick "show and tell" regarding some crochet that I started a few weeks ago, when I felt the urge to hook after finding a large mixed bag of wool and wool/acrylic mixes at the Boot Fair for £1!

In the bag was a huge unused 400g ball of cream Aran (60% wool) together with a started one with probably still about 300g left; some dark grey wool; some very pale pink; and a few other bits and bobs.

So I had to start something new of course!

After a quick flick through one of my favourite standby crochet books, I decided to have a go at this Gothic Square design with a view to making a cushion cover for the bedroom.

This crochet book is a must for any crocheter to my mind, offering a huge variety of granny sqaures, as well as edgings, and even for a beginner the instructions are easy to follow, with clear illustrations on how to do different stitches.

The patterns are graded into levels of difficulty which is useful.

I have worked each centre in dark flecked grey, then pink, then white, then the outer rows are worked in the cream aran.

As I'm using a combination of weights of wool here, some aran, some DK amd some 4 ply, I have switched hook sizes to allow for this - my usual ad hoc approach!



 Using pale colours in crochet is new to me, and I'm quite pleased with how its looking, although until the magic has been worked by blocking the squares, they will look a bit raggedy.

I usually prefer to use brighter colours.

The first thing and the brightest thing I ever crocheted after making a few granny squares, was a bag from Attic 24.

The first weekend after my Mum taught me to crochet, I jumped straight in the deep end and crocheted like crazy for a whole weekend until I had finished this bag.

It started out looking like the biggest rastafarian hat you have ever seen, and as i was pretty poor at keeping track of the number of stitches I had done in this vast bag, it is very higgledy piggledy, and baggy, but very capacious and excellent for storing wool!

i had no wool other than the scraps and odds and ends that my Mumhad bought with her, and after sorting through all my craft bags and coming up with a few more odds and ends i just crocheted away for England.

I had a ball!

And I was so thrilled at my new found skill!

Making this particular pattern also meant that I attempted flowers, made straps and added edges, as well as working a huge circle, changing colours and increasing and decreasing (supposedly!!).

Logan also likes messing around with wool.

Twice in the last few weeks I have found him having great fun with a ball of wool, which he sneakily steals from the lowest shelf in the sewing room then takes onto the landing to "play" with.

A couple of weeks ago he managed to completely unravel a ball, and I am still in the process of untangling and re-winding it.

Then again, yesterday afternoon he found a small ball of wool and managed to get it all tangled all round his legs so he could only hobble!

Logan just being de-tangled!

Well, on that note I'm just off to do a bit of crochet before I pick Bella up I think - too late to start any painting, and that's one of the joys of crochet - you can just pick  it up and do a bit whenever you get a spare moment!

Oh!! And please don't forget to enter my Giveaway !!!

See the previous post dated 11July!!