Leaves. And wellies. And a quick look at the garden.

Sunday was a lovely day here, so with chores to do I put on my gardening fleece and my wellies and headed out to water the greenhouse and scrub the food recycling bins. Oh the glamour!  I'll share more from the greenhouse another day, but don't worry I'll spare you the rest. 

I was all for heading back inside to do some baking, but MOH was intent on some leaf collection, and I was soon roped in to help. We had our three sycamore trees pollarded a couple of weeks ago, sadly though that was just after the really windy spell. And in that really windy spell all the leaves that weren't down already, came down. So there were quite a few to collect. 

YEAP -  NO LEAVES THERE!

BUT PLENTY HERE

Most of the leaves had collected in the troughs we spent some time digging in the summer in anticipation for the edging installation. And I'm still not sure if that's a good thing or bad thing. We haven't made as much progress as we'd like with the edging, but as long as the weather stays dry and the ground stays wet, we should be able to continue, and hopefully make progress by Spring.

AND MORE HERE TOO

But first to pick up these leaves. It's hard work, harder than you think. My tools of choice are gloves, a trowel and black sacks. MOH favours the rake. Black sacks are ideal though, so even if you don't have a leaf compost bin, as long as you aerate - or make holes in - the black sack, your leaves will break down in the bags. 

The fact that our leaves were wet is also good for composting, just not so good for picking up. We filled fifteen bags of leaves and the fun bit - well after all that bending down it's fun - is stabbing the bags with a trowel or a fork to let the air in. Our black sacks of leaves are destined for the allotment, as one of the pallet compost bins is dedicated to leaf mulch. 

A quick tour of the rest of the garden

Now picking up leaves aren't usually my thing, I'd much rather potter about a bit. So as I made my way around the garden I decided to take a snap or two to break up the monotony. So it was good to see the pyracantha berries still out. They're in a relatively shady spot against the fence, but bring a burst of colour as you walk past. Or if you're stuck there for a while shovelling leaves into a black sack.

At the back of the garden I took a little break to check the little christmas tree from last year.  It's done well, where it is after a bit of a worrying time in all that hot weather earlier in the year, but I'm not sure I'll be trimming it this year to make a wreath.  Partly, because I think it'll benefit from a bit more growing time, and also because I'm not sure I'll have enough time to actually make one this year, but we'll see how it goes.

I managed to get one of the best pictures of my dogwoods for a while, the sun was just right and you can see it on the jasmine.  It's hard to imagine them as bare rooted plants back in 2013 now, that trellis is six foot tall, so it looks like I'll have some lovely stems to cut next year.

On the patio the agapanthus seemed to be coping well with the weather, I hope they don't mind it a bit chillier. Last year was so mild they really didn't have much to contend with.  I've a plan to cover them with horticultural fleece if we have a prolonged cold spell.

Under one of the sycamores the euphorbias were back in force, and covered with leaves - but those are for another day, and look the hosta is trying to flower too.

By now I've headed to the back of the garden again and am clearing the leaves by the stone circle, where the pear tree is. It fruits, but they are rock hard and never seem to ripen. This year we noticed more fruits than normal - possibly because we gave the tree a good prune - but the squirrels seemed to get to most of them before we did.  I don't think the fruits were any better, or tastier this year than before as we've found so many of them discarded at the base of the tree. 

I found another one on Sunday and was amazed and intrigued by how it had fared. It was rock hard, but gently decomposing. And now it's in the compost instead of just on the garden, fascinating isn't it?

And that's pretty much a tour of the garden, I was out of photos to take and still bored of collecting leaves, so I hatched a new plan to escape. This time I headed inside to make lunch, using the second cauliflower that we'd picked on the allotment the day before to make a cheesy cauliflower soup (if you're interested I included a very high-level recipe in the turnips post yesterday), and that seemed to do the trick.

I left MOH to sort out his various piles of leaves, but couldn't help but notice how much better the garden looked for picking them all up.  

That just leaves (no pun intended) taking the multitude of sacks to the allotment and picking up the leaves that are in the beds, but I read somewhere that it doesn't pay to be too tidy in the garden, as the wildlife appreciate some disorder. So that's definitely my plan, what about you?

Turnips on the allotment

Rain was forecast here on Saturday, but thankfully it didn't really arrive until after dark. It was a bit damp and drizzly before that but not so bad that it stopped us getting over to the allotment to check on the turnips. I've been looking forward to picking these and pairing them with some lovely pork chops. As we'd bought pork chops in the butchers, we headed off to see if we had turnips to pick.

And we did. I pulled up four to take home with us  - as well as our second cauliflower, which you can see in the top left below - and counted at least another ten to follow. Some won't be very far behind these, and then hopefully the row that I sowed direct on the plot will follow after those.  Ideally I should have pulled these sooner, but with busy weekends yet again this was our first visit since the start of November. 

And that cauliflower, well it's already a soup with cream cheese and cheddar, yum.  And very easy to do. Chop an onion and a clove of garlic and soften these in oil and butter. Add the cauliflower and almost cover in chicken stock and cook for twenty or so minutes until the cauliflower is tender. Blitz this and add half a tub of cream cheese, some milk if it needs it and then some grated cheddar (or blue cheese if you have it). It's a soupy cauliflower cheese, and lovely.

If we can pick something every time we visit, especially in winter, then we'll have been doing something right, I think. That might be restricted to turnips for a little while, but hopefully the brassicas won't be too much longer. The weeds, I showed you last month are still there - no weed fairy on our allotment! - and it isn't until I looked back at those pictures, that I've realised how much our cabbages have grown, so that's heartening.

The cavolo nero especially has grown and while it still has some more growing to do, it looks like cavolo nero should with its knobbly leaves. I'm very much looking forward to picking our own, and as well as the weeds still being there no one's planted out my extra brassicas or composted my sweetcorn and tomatoes. Shocking hey?

I'm hoping that the weather is good enough to get over there again next weekend and in the time between Christmas and New Year, although with everything I'm putting on the list for those few days, it's going to be busy! 

Elsewhere on the plot

The celeriac is still there, and alongside the brassicas full of weeds, I need to check when to dig these up. I think it's probably about now, but I have no indication of how big they could be. I guess that's part of the fun. As I thought of it I've just checked on the RHS website, and they say celeriac can be harvested between October and March, so I've some time yet. The picture on their page shows the celeriac almost out of the ground, like the turnip above. Mine aren't like that yet, so I'll leave them there for a while I think. The website also says to cover with straw or bracken incase the ground freezes, if the weather turns again I'll be off to find some straw from somewhere...

It was noticeable how bare the crab apple tree was. All the leaves - and any remaining crab apples - were down. The crab apples littering the floor around the tree, so that's another job to do next time I'm there. It's a fun one though as I use this opportunity as shot practice, throwing the crab apples to the compost from where they've dropped, with apologies in advance to the nearby plot owners when I get a bit enthusiastic.  It would obviously be much more effective to pick them up, put them into a trug and carry them over. But nowhere near as much fun!

With the crab apple tree bare, the climbing artichokes are once again visible - they're not climbing ones at all, but normal artichokes which grow under the tree, so I think they grow taller to get the light, we'll see next year won't I? They are pretty much dead now, but the flowers (fruits?) have now turned fluffy. The stems are rotten and I suspect it could be a good time to move the plant to where I want it. If the tomatoes had gone, that would be a relatively simple job...

So once again I've a list of jobs from this visit, but it amazes me that each time we visit we're enthused by what needs to happen, and one of these months we'll find time to actually start on that list.

To save me time for my next visit the list of jobs is currently:

• Target practice with crab apples

• Take a black sack to pick up the rubbish the foxes have brought onto the plot (including a couple of nappies... not so nice)

• Compost the tomatoes and sweetcorn remains

• Consider moving the leeks (the ones that have survived MOH trampling on them)

• Compost the beans, sweetcorn and any remaining squash plants

• Pot out my extra brassicas, currently in the back garden: Kale, PSB and some more cabbages I think

• Prepare the leaf mulch compost bin for the new additions from the garden

• Weed the cabbages

• Move the climbing artichoke

• And as usual, do some more digging!

Let's hope the weather stays good, and I find some more hours to put into the day...

A Christmas table with TK Maxx

As this year has been all about our new table and chairs, when TK Maxx got in touch to collaborate on a homewares post, I was keen to see how I could use some of their christmas decorations to dress my new table in a fun, and probably not so practical way. So on a recent miserable Sunday afternoon we headed along to the Orpington branch, to see what we could find.

I was rather pleased with this Merry Christmas garland. It's on two strings, so normal people could hang them one above the other. Clearly I'm not normal as I spent more time than I should have getting these to stand up on the radiator cover. The Christmas was trickier, as you can see, and some of the letters were refusing and a little skew-whiff. But I don't mind that, and rather like the character this brings to what is usually an undecorated part of our house. 

I think some blu-tak might be deployed!

On the table the jingle bell lights, with gingham bows brought much amusement, as the bells are proper bells. The lights are battery operated and will be great to have on our table Christmas Day for some festive fun.  I'll also be having some of those cute tea lights on the table, even though it will be tough to light the top of his hat.

I was keen to pick up some of these recycled glasses. Not only because they're recycled, but also because our hi-ball glasses are getting tired and could do with replacing. At just £5.99 for four glasses I don't think you can go wrong, and as I'm on a bit of a "drink more water" campaign, having glasses I'm proud to put on the table helps.

And how could I leave this cheeky faced reindeer garland in the shop. It's wooden with hints of gold and cheeky faces, and I know it'll fit in with the rest of my wooden decorations. I also think it'd look good intermingled with my garland of dried oranges, cinnamon sticks and pine cones.

I told you the jingle bell garland lit up didn't I? Here you can see the one of the owls looking on. These have been the decoration of the year for me, they're really quite cute and have migrated to my tree, making themselves perfectly at home.

I had great fun styling my festive table with the decorations I picked up from TK Maxx. You'll be pleased to know that as well as the glasses for water and the water jug, there will also be some bubbles on our table this Christmas, because well, because bubbles were made for Christmas.

The other thing I was keen to pick up was a new star for the top of my tree. I'd converted a beaded star decoration which I've used for many years, so it was time for a change. In the end I settled on this gold diamante style star, with its spring-like base, which makes it way easier than my converted star, especially when the tree is 6 foot and I'm not!

I'm pleased with the items I picked up - the glasses, the jingle bell garland, the reindeer garland, the Merry Christmas sign, the Father Christmas tea lights, the cheeky owls and the glittery star tree topper - and I was even more pleased with the price, all of this came to £38. 

Have you updated your decorations this year?

This is a collaborative post with TK Maxx, who provided a gift voucher for the purposes of this post. All views are my own.