Barking Mad

So, yesterday afternoon, we went and bought three bags of decorative bark , a packet of mizuna seeds and some Japanese onions. Then, after we had had our tea, we went back to the lottie, where we ran into Julie and Kieran (next door the other way) who we hadn't seen for ages. After a little chat about tomatoes and potatoes, Julie said she has found a blight free tomato called Legend - yippee!! so we are going to share some of those. She has also found some interesting potatoes called Anyas which we will try next year. They then went home for their tea and we laid down the wooden slats to hold the bark for our new path between us and Alison (she is on the front) and put down a good layer of bark up to the compost bins. It looks really neat. Then we sowed the mizuna seeds ( a little bit late they should be in by end of August) and also 50 Japanese onion bulbs to overwinter. There was still lots to do but the midges were biting mercilessly so we decided to go back in the morning.

Today, after baking some hazelnut fudge brownies, and some buttermilk scones to come back to, we went off again. We bumped into Alison who was picking her runner beans for lunch and tea, she reckoned and doing a bit of tidying up as well. Lionel (three plots down) came up for a bag to take his produce home in. First job was to widen the top path to stop us tripping over the gooseberry bush and this used up the rest of the bark. This meant we had to pull up half of the mint and its runners, which we had wanted to do for some time as it was spreading too far. We weeded all the broccoli to give it a fighting chance, took off the yellowing leaves on the swedes, and moved the foxgloves to a spot under the evergrowing buddlea by the lupins and bird bath. We also moved a selection of herbs and flowers to prevent the mint growing back again and generally wore ourselves out. Had a cup of tea and decided that enough was enough for this weekend but congratulated ourselves on a job well done as everything is starting to look much more organised. Now the top half is finally getting a more cottagey garden feel to it which is what we are aiming for. When we came back, we noticed that the leaves on our little pear tree are starting to turn gold.. Autumn is on the way.....