In my garden, getting ready for Winter

As I said yesterday at the weekend we started to pack up the garden, and I took the opportunity to do some pruning and tidying too. I'd been meaning to cut out the agapanthus stems for a while, but I do like the look of them, and hadn't gotten around to it until now. Even then I was struck by how architectural they are, and instead of putting them in our green bin found some room in our garden compost for them along with the dried sweet pea heads.

I'm late taking the agapanthus stems out but they look so pretty

It was only as I was cutting the agapanthus stems that I realised it had set seed. While that's good if you want to grow more plants, I don't expect it's so good for getting energy back into bulbs - hopefully we'll still get some flowers next year.  As they'd set seed I thought I might as well save them, or else there was little point right?

And I've got quite a few.  Looking online it says they're easy to grow from seed and if I'm lucky I could have a flowering plant in a couple of years. We'll see, but wouldn't it be good to have some of these at the allotment which I could use as cut flowers?

Agapanthus seeds

A week or so ago, our neighbour cut down the ivy which was growing across our conservatory roof, so in a reciprocal kind of neighbourly action I got out the step ladder and trimmed the chilean potato plant and jasmine back to the level of the very tall fence.  Four trugs later, and I was done, I wasn't expecting so much!

While MOH collected leaves in five black sacks - and there's more to come down - I busied myself collecting in the garden lights and remembering where I'd hung the garden ornaments. Anything to not collect leaves... 

Packing away the lights in the garden

Well, he does it so well...

piles of leaves - and many more to come

It's amazing how much tidier the garden looks with the leaves collected and the grass cut - and you can see we've quite a few more leaves to come, so I'll be looking for other jobs to keep me busy when they're down.... Shhhh!

Stacking the garden furniture before covering with a tarpaulin

It really does feel like winter's on its way, the barbecue gas is away, the garden furniture is pretty much all covered up and the temperature's plummeting, the lowest so far in the greenhouse is 0.6 - brrrr!  

And now MOH tells me it's getting chillier this week, perhaps we should have moved the hibiscus after all...

Love this #77: Baa baa tablemat

Just a quick post today as I've got some fab new tablemats that I just had to share. 

New, yellow and funky table mats from Wayfair

Since we got our new table (ages ago!) neither of us have been happy with using our old, more traditional mats as they just didn't seem to go.  I'd planned to make some fabric mats, which we could slip the older, less favoured mats into, and I still plan to make these, but like many things I've not got to it yet...

Browsing the Wayfair site one day I spotted these and I was smitten.  MOH is less sure, but even he admits they're an improvement on our French Bistro scene!

Aren't they fab?

Post Comment Love 10 - 12 November 2017

Hello there and welcome to another Friday and of course another Post Comment Love. If you were here last week it was great to see you, if you're new here this week you're very welcome. I'm certain you'll find some great posts to read this week as I continue to be proud about the quality and variety of posts, and blogs, that link with Morgan and I each week.

I wasn't wrong when I wrote at the start of the week that it felt as if winter was on its way, as our first frost happened the very next day. Thankfully only a mild one, but it was a reminder that we really should pack up our garden for the winter. We haven't done too bad though have we, it is the middle of November.

I've been getting back into the blogging swing of things after a quiet week. I've been catching up on blog reading too, but as ever there is always more to do isn't there?

I'm looking forward to another quiet weekend. Our garden is the priority this weekend, so I'm hoping the weather will be kind. I'm also hoping to get some baking done and some crafting too.

As a reminder to myself my photo is from our plot - if we get time we should pop over there again as there is still plenty more to do. But in the meantime I'm just going to admire that freshly dug soil. Don't mind me...

On the plot

Bloggers Showcase: Vicky Elizabeth from Fragola Franchise

Vicky Elizabeth has recently moved her blog to wordpress so if you haven't checked it out yet, do pop over and take a look.  She says she blogs to "get it all out there and you'll be pleased to learn she has a love of Disney, coffee and yoga.  She's a native Miamian, raised by Cubans which means she's 100& a coffee and cake kinda girl.  Do head over to Morgan's to find out more about this week's bloggers showcase and her blog, and give her a follow on Twitter.

If you'd like to be featured in a future Bloggers Showcase, then please get in touch with Morgan or I.