Monday 08 September 2014
It Must Be Autumn
Monday was another lovely sunny day but it was a cool start to the day and it took a while to warm up especially out of the sunshine.
It a sure sign that autumn is on its way when the seed catalogues start falling through the letterbox.
Wouldn’t it be fantastic if we could grow they fruit and vegetables as described in the seed catalogues but then there wouldn’t be any fun in it would there? I was thinking how quickly the plot was looking very autumnal this year as we seem to have cleared beds pretty early.
Our cut flower beds are still putting on a good show though.
Monday afternoon was spent on the plot tidying up and doing a little bit of harvesting. Considering I’d been thinking how autumnal everything was looking we came away with a pretty good harvest.
Tuesday 09 September 2014
Most Unusual For Us
Not to be outdone by Monday, Tuesday was another brilliant September day. The last couple of nights have just fallen into single figures centigrade and it’s taken a little while to warm up but each afternoon has managed around the twenty degree Celsius mark.
Believe it or not we visited two garden centres today and didn’t buy a plant at either. The first visit was to buy some bird seed. Our very own flock of sparrows are getting through lots at the moment. We checked if the garden centre had any autumn onions but they’re expecting them in at anytime.
After lunch we made our second visit. This was to return some pruners with a telescopic reach and saw attachment which we’d bought to prune our crab apple tree. Whilst the saw attachment proved very useful the pruning part of the equipment wasn’t and broke when I was cutting through one not particularly large twig. It certainly wasn’t 25mm claimed to be the maximum cutting diameter for the pruners. The goods news was they were exchanged without any hassle so hopefully the new pair will be a bit sturdier.
We did buy an extremely large pot for our cherry “Stella” to move into though.
It’s spent summer outside in this “air pot” which I’ve found very difficult to keep watered. Stella now has a new home in a bigger pot and I’m hoping she’ll produce a few cherries next year.
I sorted our last batch of potatoes, dug up a few days ago, into supermarket boxes and stacked them in the garage. I think I might have gone a little over the top with potatoes this year.
I’m not really too sure how this happened as I thought I bought fewer seed potatoes. I even let our new plot neighbour have a few Charlottes for his patch. Maybe we’ve just had a better crop than usual. I’ll have to tot up the totals and check. Provided nothing goes wrong with our potatoes in store they should easily see us through to next spring.
We’ve now finished sorting out our photos of our visit to Boundary Cottage, open last Sunday under the National Garden Scheme, and these have been posted in a new web photo album located here.
Wednesday & Thursday 10/11 September 2014
In Search of Some Reds
The fine spell of settled September weather continued on Wednesday and Thursday.
On Thursday we visited the National Trust property at Formby in Lancashire. Visiting our local RSPB reserves we normally end up photographing grey squirrels as these photogenic little creatures make the most of the free food on offer. Formby has the much rarer red squirrels and we decided on a visit to see if we could spot some.
The squirrels have their own walk “Formby Red Squirrel Walk” but the property has walks through the woodland and sand dunes down to the sea. Our walk took us through the pine woodlands planted up in the 1800’s and past small fields where asparagus was once cultivated. The woods turn from pine to deciduous woodland known as Nicotine Wood. In the 1950’s and 1960’s thousands of tonnes of tobacco leaf waste were dumped here.
The woodlands give way to more open ground before reaching the sand dunes and eventually views of the beach and the Irish Sea.
After a walk along the beach we headed back to the main “Red Squirrel Walk”. There were lots of reds about but they don’t sit still for long and you have to be very quick on the shutter release button if you don’t want a blur of red fur as you chosen subject heads up the nearest pine tree.
We did manage one or two shots that didn’t come out too badly. I’ll post a link to more photographs once I’ve finished sorting them out.
Friday & Saturday 12/13 September 2014
Turned Out Well
Friday and Saturday were much duller than the last few days and correspondingly a little cooler with the lack of sunshine.
On Saturday we had a train trip to North Wales. Initially I’d planned the trip as it included an optional trip on the Ffestiniog Railway through the Welsh mountains. Unfortunately we hadn’t booked early enough and couldn’t get tickets for the steam train ride and so decided to spend our afternoon at Betws-
As it turned out no-
We planned some walks along the banks of the rivers Llugwy and Conway which pass through the tourist village of Betws-
We were lucky enough to spot a heron on the river and managed to follow it along the river.
In this environment the heron was extremely well camouflaged making it difficult to spot at times as it hunted alone the river banks.
Occasionally it broke cover giving us a better view as it kept a close eye on exactly how close we were getting.
Then finally it decided it had had enough of being stalked by us and took flight and disappeared off down the river leaving us to continue our walk along the river before returning to Betws-
Sunday 14 September 2014
Falling Apart
Sunday made it three days in a row without any sunshine. That lovely sunny start to September hasn’t continued for us although the conditions still remain settled.
The forecast for the next few days doesn’t offer much hope for any sunshine either.
Looking at the facts and figure half way through the month it’s not been as warm a month as I seem to imagine. Whilst 2013 was cooler, 2010, 2011 and 2012 had higher average temperatures at this stage of the month.
Some more sunshine would be nice though even if it meant a few more coolish nights.