Autumn has well and truly arrived. I love this time of year!
I don’t have many garden photos to post this week as I am still trying to get rid of the mountain of bloody pebbles. We’ve taken a few to the tip but it’s a slow task because they are really really heavy and we don’t want to break the suspension in the car. And if we’re going to break it, it’s got to be for something good like a boot full of peanut butter or bottles of Malibu (preferably both).
Blackberries
Because we moved right in the middle of blackberry season (what were we thinking!?) I’ve hardly picked any blackberries this year. We had no freezer for a couple of weeks so I couldn’t pick a load and freeze them for the rest of the year like I normally do. However, at the weekend we went on a bike ride and found some hedgerows with the last plump fruits of the season.
They were a bit smaller than those I’d picked early September but I’ll be cooking them in crumbles anyway so it doesn’t really matter as long as they taste good.
The bird feeder
A bird feeder was one of the things I wanted to buy before Winter. Scott suggested we look for something a bit different and I’m really glad he did because we found the terracotta bird apple feeder on the RSPB website. Quite quirky and much nicer to look at than a traditional wire feeder don’t you think?
We also bought an Arched Heavy Duty Bracket to hang the feeder on. I love the simplicity of it but I’m not keen on the brushed gold finish so I’m hoping that will wear off over time.
Garlic
Remember the bag of garlic given to us by our pebble freecycler? Well this is it. His advice was to get the garlic in the ground now as the bulbs will be bigger and better next year. So that’s exactly what I did.
The bag contained cloves of purple garlic and elephant garlic. As you can see, the elephant garlic cloves are huge!
I’ve put two cloves in terracotta pots, three in the ground and I’ll probably plant a more in a few weeks time. We eat shed loads of garlic so I’m really looking forward to pulling some up in a few months time. I’ve never grown it before so fingers crossed everything works out.
Leafroller / leaf roller caterpillars (moth)
In other news I spent an hour and a half the other night making myself feel itchy by reading about caterpillars and larvae. I think we have leaf roller caterpillars on our rose bush. I noticed the leaves were stuck together, almost as if they had been glued: sometimes 2 separate leaves are stuck together, sometimes both sides of one leaf are stuck and rolled up.
When I peeled the leaves apart I found small green caterpillars. I’d never come across this before so I did some research and came across leaf rollers. I found this video of a leaf roller rollin’, it’s pretty amazing! I’m pretty sure that’s what they are. There are loads of them.
Apologies for the lack of eye candy…but that’s how my garden is growing this week 🙂 Keep your fingers crossed for my garlic and that I can be ruthless enough to stop our rose bush being decimated by caterpillars!
Will be interested to hear how you get on with the garlic.
Holy Garlic Batman! That’s mahoosive – but yummy I bet!
Loving that terracotta feeder, off to have a look on the RSPB site, it’s really sweet and unusual.
The blackberries haven’t lasted as long as they did last year it seems, we picked lots this year but they either seemed as hard as bullets or so juicy they exploded in our fingers as we picked them. Totally in love with the frozen blackberries photo by the way.
We have a long drive, about 200ft, of gravelled drive, not our choice it was here when we moved in, that we hope to replace one day but I could scream at how much gravel gets in the house and car just from the bottom of peoples shoes – so I feel your pebble rage of sorts !
Thanks for joining in again, love your photos as always x
I think the gravel would drive me bonkers too maybe you could bury it under something else 🙂 Thanks for hosting again, some great posts this week.
It’s a fabulous time of year isn’t. Sounds like you have a mammoth job on your hands moving those pebbles, good luck with that. Great you managed to pick some blackberries, I’m sure they’ll taste delicious in a crumble. The garlic is amazing and how funny to find those caterpillars in-between the leaves 🙂
Fingers crossed the pebbles will be gone soon. Give me caterpillars over pebbles any day 🙂
look at all the goodies you have going on! love it
Lack of eye candy? I think not! I love the frozen blackberry shot and the (non-gloved) hand holding the garlic. I’m a spur of the moment type of gardener and rarely stop to pop my gloves on! I’m glad to know another peanut butter lover!
I do have gloves but forget to put them on. I generally dive straight in!
Love that bird feeder! Good luck with the garlic… Those cloves were huge! The photo of the frozen blackberries is just lovely 🙂
Thanks Sara 🙂
I saw on country file a few weeks back about that caterpillar they are interesting though i don’t think i could squish them i always feel bad killing bugs. jealous of your garlic i tried to grow some but it was a wet winter and it rotted maybe i should try again, the elephant bulbs are massive.
I’m not good at killing bugs either. I’m hoping the wet weather holds off, I’d love to dig up a nice crop of home grown garlic in a few months! Good luck if you try again.
That garlic! I want to see how growing them comes out for you – I really want to try but can’t get up the nerve to make room in my tiny little kitchen garden for them.
Blackberries are worth the pick no matter the size, and if they are too tart then just add more sugar! Ha – my husband’s waistline doesn’t thank me.
I love your bird feeder Gemma, really pretty. I’m excited about your garlic too and can’t wait to see what happens, the elephant one is amazing it’s just huge.