Day 4 of the Advent Season

Japanese Homemade Fans

I made these fans with tracing paper and cutouts from Japanese themed scrapbook paper. I searched for the Japanese translation of my girls names and wrote it onto the central paper strip of their fans, a couple of wooden beads with Japanese symbols complete the keepsakes.

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This of course prompted my youngest to want to watch the Disney movie Mulan, why? Because she has a fan too, of course!

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The bible the story I read to them today is pictured on the left.

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Female Green Woodpecker seen from a bedroom window

We cracked open the first bottle of 2009 chutneys tonight at dinner and from the half empty bottle in the picture I think we could safely say it was delicious, here is a link to when I made this batch.

Well tomorrow is the girls last drama class for the year, so I'm hoping to get at least one allotment visit on Saturday the 12th before Christmas, to get some early winter digging done, hopefully the weather will be kind to me.

So What Have I Been Up To: Time to Spill The Beans

So the kids thought they would be generous and give me their cold last week Friday. I still had to be mummy though and although it hasn’t really knocked me down it sure is hanging on and I still feel a bit rough.

Wow! that was some windy weather over the weekend wasn’t it. My greenhouse lost a pane of glass right over my storage boxes and with the torrential downpours I have a wet mess still to sort out. One job I was leaving to do last Sunday was to take down my outdoor tomato shelter (it’s a two person job) and to bring in the green tomatoes to ripen and to make a few jars of green tomato chutney. Well Friday night windy weather also sorted that out and so I left my mum and hubby to put away the shelter (really glad it didn’t get broken) in a secure place for me while I took the girls to their drama classes.

So Sunday bright and early with the wind finally died down and the sun out nice and warm, I wrapped myself up and went outside to tackle the garden. Hubby repaired the greenhouse broken pane and I got on with surveying the damage of which thankfully there was little. The tomato plants and their supporting poles were taken down and the bed was cleared and weeded. I also took down my mini greenhouse I erected for the melongene and sweet peppers, which also survived the high winds well. That bed was also cleared and weeded, harvestable fruits were picked. I also weeded some of the other beds with over wintering crops in them, with the soil being saturated from the night time showers the weeds came out with out any resistance. With all this clearing of the beds the compost bin got a colourful top up of spent calendula and French marigold plants, all full of seeds mind, so in two years time I expect to see lots of self seeded annual flowering plants through out the vege beds, which I don’t really mind, they are easy enough to weed out if they pop up in the wrong place.


Sunday’s harvest: inclusive some root veg, sweet peppers, herbs and green or half ripened tomatoes, two small celeriac which were roasted with the JAs below, the jury is still out on both these new veges to our home, we'll make a comprehensive decision on growing them again after a few more recipe ideas.


The Jerusalem artichokes I dug up had root aphids on them see the pic on the right, they didn't appear to have harmed the roots in anyway but I disturbed the soil as much as I could so the birds would find them.

At the end of the next few postings I’ll end with a little catch up postings of what I photographed or did during my blog hiatus (this of course will make the post very photo heavy, so bear with me). Right with this in mind here are my:

Autumnal Observations:

Well we are in the middle of November and autumn is drawing to a close but what a mild autumn we are having. Its currently 12°C with a possible maximum of 16°C forecasted for Thursday and Friday this week. Anyway here are my autumnal focused pictures.

There are so many sunny warm days, you'd be forgiven for thinking its August.


Very poor shots I know of the spectacle that is autumn but its all I got.

I have always wanted to capture a falling autumn leaf, I obviously haven't got the camera/ skills to capture the beauty of such a shot but well pleased to actually capture it.

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What's autumn without fungi, they fascinate me...

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Another life form I find intriguing are mosses...

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The old apple tree have fruited well this year and the fallen fruits have brought back the birds with earnest.

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Ripened Seed Heads...
Yarrow

Corncockle

Wheat

Fennel

Buddleia

Nigella

Fox Glove

Chamomile

Mullen

Columbine

Salad Burnet

The warmer temps also allowed some flowers to keep on blooming or even to restart…

St John's Wort

Toad Flax ?type

Carrot

One last Opium Poppy

Potted Honeysuckle's first bloom in bud.

Jerusalem Artichoke in flower.

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With the warm October month we experienced the mini beasts were very much in attendance, imagine I saw my last butterfly to date on the 4th of November a red admiral flutter by my mom’s bedroom window and last night a moth was flying outside against the kitchen window (attracted by the light no doubt).

The JAs blooms attracted many pollen eating insects such as the hoverfly on the left and the lacewing larva on the right which was probably hunting pollen eaters.

With all this warmth the ladybugs made a last ditched appearance in quite larger numbers than would be expected. Any i disturbed while tidying up the vege beds were moved to the greenhouse to over winter. I found many tucked up among the seeds heads and thick leaf cover of some plants.

Once upon a time a ladybug got caught in a spiders web, "yum" thought the spider "a tasty morsel to keep going over the winter, just what I need". "Not on your life" said the ladybug "take that" as it excreted some bright sticky stuff from its body. "Blech!!!" said the spider as it tried to bite the ladybug, it scampered away to wash out its mouth. "Whew!" said the ladybug as it tried to untangle itself, then off it flew. (PS sorry but I didn't have the camera with me so I didn't get the first shot of the spider trying to bite the ladybug, if you click on the first shot in the right hand corner you would see the remains of the sticky yellow excretions of the ladybug).

Stink bugs and Spiders


Butterflies and Moths

Bumblebees; the one on the left and the left one in the blue shot looks like queens, the first shot is one appearing to look for an over wintering spot in my greenhouse but I sent it on my way.

The birds have returned to the garden, have naughtily not started to actively feed them as yet plan to do so end of the month. (The pics are not my best taken through windows, so as to not scare off the models).

Great Spotted Woodpecker

Green Woodpecker

Coal Tit

Robin

Blue Tit

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There are bigger critters visiting the garden more now as we go into the garden less...

Cheeky Squirrel

Bedraggled fox from this year's litter.

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By the way my Blogshop have had new items added to it over the pass couple weeks. Please pop on by and have a look.