A few months ago I took advantage of a special offer from Sutton’s Seeds to buy some Autumn Bliss raspberry canes. At the time of ordering, it said the new canes would be delivered before the end of December. I’d forgotten all about them.

Then on the coldest day of winter so far there was a knock at the door and I opened it to find our raspberry canes on the doorstep. It was just getting dark so they were quickly checked to make sure they didn’t need any water and left in the porch overnight.

There’s no ground at the allotment prepared for them so I’ve planted all the canes in large pots in the greenhouse at home where hopefully they can stay until they shoot next spring and then be planted out in the allotment.

We’ve entered a spell of noticeable cold weather. The temperature fell to  -2.6°C on Thursday morning making it the coldest day of autumn so far. The forecast is for the freezing weather to continue for the next week or so.

 At least we can afford to keep warm, I’m sure lots of people must be really struggling. Our gas bill for November 2021 was £61.89 (22,102 kWhr) compared to £185.53 (19,029 kWhr) for November 2022. There’s a £60 government subsidy to be added as well so without that our bill would have been £245.53 or more than a fourfold increase in the space of one year and we even used less gas this year. It’s due to increase in price again in April. Somebody is making an awful lot of money!