The Garden Year: October 2025

For this year’s Garden Year linky I’m continuing to share advice from Songbird Survival about how we can make our gardens the best they can be for birds.

This year we’ve managed to get all of our lavender bushes trimmed ahead of the winter, which trust me is no mean feat. We have eight large-ish lavender bushes which can be back breaking work to trim, though on the plus side my garden bin smells the best it ever has!

A path through a garden bordered with lavender bushes - not mine though, but it feels like I have as much as this!

NOT MY LAVENDER, BUT IT FEELS LIKE I HAVE SIMILAR QUANTITIES!

#ThinkBirds

This month, Songbird Survival advise that October is an ideal month for planting trees, hardy summer bulbs and herbaceous perennials, and remember to leave fallen leaves as they provide shelter for wildlife.

Advice, inspiration and places to visit

Leave a link below to share what you’ve been up to in the last month, or add a comment sharing your plans for the upcoming month.

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This September...

I’m trying to work out as I write this if this month was a normal month, or if that was last month - or what even is a normal month. I’m not sure I know, but I think that’s ok as I’ve a suspicion that not many of us do, so phew.

But I know that despite the sun still making appearances - by the way it’s very welcome, the hint of autumn that started the month has made itself very much at home. I like autumn, and I like September, and I especially like the food and meals that this time of year brings. I’m not liking that by the end of the month there’s so many mentions of the C-word and as for the radio station even thinking about playing Christmas songs, well, if they do so early, I’m out and swapping stations.

We’re still sorting out the garage, and it’s become a bit of a jenga style puzzle with moving everything around while MOH seals the floor to make it less dusty. Yes it would make more sense to move things out, and to do that when the weather’s agreeable, but that never seems to work with everything else we have planned, or it’s too warm, too wet - you know what I mean.

It isn’t helped though as at the start of the month I had some new garden furniture delivered, which is also being stored in the garage. We’ve not used it yet, and realistically we probably won’t use it until next year now, but it was such a bargain with 30% off, that it would have been rude not to buy it. We saw it at Grand Designs Live in London in May, tried it out, loved it but didn’t buy it - then at the end of August I spotted that it had been reduced.

The two arm chairs, two footstools, all their cushions and a glass topped little table all arrived in one very large box, which we couldn’t have moved ourselves. Thankfully the delivery guys were very amenable and delivered it straight into the garage. Getting it out of the box was another challenge as much of it was cable tied together. At times it really did feel like we were ‘birthing’ this furniture!

Unpacking the new garden furniture

We’ve also had to move the garden table and chairs into the garage too, as there were predicted high winds and I really wanted to get ahead of that and get them into the garage in preparation - rather than wait til the winds were blowing things around the garden and then frantically dash out there (again) to move the furniture! It did get pretty windy, but windy enough to blow the table over, who knows?

The garden sofa is still outside and that didn’t blow away, thankfully. Though it is now much more ‘weathered’ than it was before, by that I mean it’s experienced weather for the first time - and if we get the garage straighter, then my plan will be to bring it in for the winter. I’m not sure it’s hardy enough, after its indoor life, for an outside winter!

That plan involves getting all of the new storage racks built and in place, and placing stuff on them in ways that make sense, rather than just any old how. It may even (make that should) mean that we can finally empty the last of the boxes from when we moved two years ago. I won’t miss searching through the still packed shed and greenhouse boxes when we realise we need something.

In the garden my bargain pepper plant now has a further twelve peppers on, they’re small and I’m not sure they’ll ripen to be as red as the others, but if we’re lucky they may at least get a rosy tinge. The other main job for us in September is always the lavender - we have eight lavender bushes so it becomes a bit of a mammoth task, and one I’m glad that MOH now helps with.

One of the lavender bushes isn’t looking too well, so I’m not sure it’ll survive the winter - but it had self seeded and there was a healthy looking plant growing in the pavement alongside it. We’ve yanked that up and planted that in the flower bed, so fingers crossed for both of these. We may end up with nine plants, or eight, or worse case, seven. We’ll see.

It hasn’t been all work and no play though. We’ve had an afternoon out at our local wine shop at one of their ‘Vinyl Saturday’s’ where there were many familiar tunes to listen too, along with some very decent wine to drink. For me it was made all the better with the discovery that Google could tell me the name of the tunes, and the artist from the sound.

Absolutely brilliant, and perfect for me who’s always asking “who sings this?” annoying everyone I’m sure!

Feeling proud

I picked up my newly framed Vogue pictures this month and they’ve done a stunning job framing them. I know where I want them on the wall, and currently still have the template up pinned to the wall. The picture’s not hung yet, as it seems every time I get into my sewing MOH appears and suggests hanging the picture. We’ll get there.

newly framed vogue pattern book pages

This month I had a proud sewing moment, and donated nine of the quilts I’ve made for Project Linus UK. So a double proud moment actually. I went along to a new-to-me patchwork sewing group for the charity day, and have since been back for one of their Friday afternoon meetings. I’m planning to head back for the Tuesday evening meeting too - which will mean four outings a month for my new ‘take to’ machine, which definitely makes it worth buying.

Remembering how ‘to weekend’

This month we’ve had a last minute and impromptu weekend away, and it was glorious. I shared more in my post last week about being reminded how ‘to weekend’ and it really has made such a difference. We’d originally planned to head further afield but that didn’t quite work out, though we’re still working on that, but North Yorkshire was a good alternative.

It’s funny how that by going away you discover the joy of doing something different, albeit for a short time, and how that reignites the travel bug. My list of ‘go to’ places is growing, and Malton’s definitely on my ‘go back to’ list.

In one of the fabulous independent shops I spotted a series of ‘cheeky’ cake plates, I didn’t buy them at the time but found them online where they were cheaper so ordered them. Now I’m having to make cake just so we can get good use out of our treacle, tart, cupcake and crumpet plates - well, that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it!

If you want to read my previous monthly updates in my ‘This is’ series you’re very welcome.

A kantha stitched landscape, and a hare too

Back at the start of August my SIL and I headed off to the Festival of Quilts at the NEC - I’ve so many photos still to edit, and posts will follow but in short so many beautiful quilts! We’d booked on a workshop, and again there were so many to choose from, so in the end I left it up to my SIL to choose which one.

And she chose well, the kantha textured mini landscape workshop by Angela Daymond. I knew little about what we’d create, but I had been to one of Angela’s workshops before at the Stitch Festival in London back in 2023. And if you go back and read that post, I’m still curious as to how the notebook will turn out as I’ve not yet ‘cooked it’ - though, I do now at least have a saucepan which I could use for this, so maybe I’ll get around to that and show the results here - but don’t hold your breath!

I was looking forward to Angela’s workshop though and was hopeful that I’d stand more chance of completing the outputs from this one, given my increased opportunities and interest in hand stitching. And I was right, but first let me show you how I got on.

A kantha stitched landscape

Unusually I didn’t take any pictures while we were in the workshop, not even of Angela’s finished piece which was a bit daft. But then again it gave me free licence to do what I wanted, and interpret the written guidance shared on the day.

This was as far as I got in the workshop.

We’d started by tracing the design using a fabric marker pen and during the workshop Angela guided the group through the different stitching methods including tips for stitching circles, and sewing with the different thickness threads, as well as how to complete the weaved effect of the whipped running stitch on the stems.

I was keen to carry on and get this finished, so the week or so after the show this became my project.

I loved how it turned out, and I’m sure that each one from the workshop will look the same but different. I decided I needed to add some glitter to mine, on the sun and in the first few circles of the sky - and then well, in for a penny, in for a pound, onto some of the red berries too.

Angela had said that to remove the blue pen you just had to go for it, if you tried to spot remove the markings then it would likely show up elsewhere in the design. So there was nothing else for it, but to plunge this into water and under the running tap.

Miraculously it disappeared. Phew!

I left it to dry on a towel, and as it was drying I began to think what I’d do with it. I decided to frame it, and as luck would have it when we were in the framing shop getting the Vogue pictures framed, I spotted some small frames made from offcuts in the sale. By now I also knew that I wanted to do another one, so I picked up two frames - and added my landscape into the pale green frame.

Designing my own version, with a hare

I’d enjoyed the kantha landscape so much I decided I would do another picture to fill the second frame I’d bought. I knew I had some ‘hare’ stamps and thought one of those might work with a similar horizon as before. In the end I flipped the background and half-traced half-drew the hare in the bottom right corner.

Then I got sewing. I used the same yellow and blue threads from the workshop - there was (and still is) plenty left. But I decided on something different for the ‘land’ and for the hare itself. I had some crochet threads from mum and thought the neutral-green-pink reel would work for the land, but also added a thin darker grey thread to this, sewing with two threads, to give it some extra texture and to keep a consistent colour throughout both ‘land’ sections.

For the hare I used another variegated thread, this time ranging from brown through to bright pink. What do you mean, you’ve never seen a bright pink hare?! Me neither, but hey, I think there may be hares out there wishing they were pink!

Once again the fabric marker pen washed out easily, and revealed the end design.

That too has been framed, this one got the gold frame - but both are now in our spare bedrooms on two of the four fabulous bedside tables, and they look great. I’ve plans for something slightly different on the two bedside tables which remain empty, but that idea yet to be started, so it may yet turn up on a ‘future stitching project’ list at some point. But in the meantime I’m going to enjoy these, and I hope our guests will too.