Climate

The leaves are still falling, but the weather was good enough a few days ago for yr obed servt to get out with the mower.  With a lot of wet grass and some chopped down rudbeckias and sedums now populating the garden waste bin, it’ll take a bit of schlepping to the front when the toon cooncil deigns to empty it.  

We have finally got round to the images for the Christmas card, rather later than usual.  Nothing spectacular this time, but they’ll do.  We’ve had to replenish supplies of envelopes, labels and card (though the printer ink is holding out so far…).  Finding labels compatible with our address list was a real struggle, and we were finally obliged to buy from the generous and altruistic Mr Bezos.  We've largely finished writing the cards (pending fresh supplies of card), and are reminded (notably by my arthritic knuckles) how rarely we need to write these days.  

Correction

In my last blog I said 50% of Sainsburys was held by a Qatari institution.  I had misheard: the correct figure is just short of 15%.  Think I’ll still stick to Fortnums.

Apologies for absence

No dramatic reason for the long gap since my last posting.  We’ve been bumbling along much as usual, spending a lot of time watching the torrential rain.  Some places near us were getting a month’s worth of rain in a single day.  It has improved over the past few days, so we have been out and about a little.  On Wednesday we were guests of Chris and Jon for lunch: great company, and a splendid lunch in sensible portions.  (We find we can’t shovel it down the way we once could: just as well, given our circumferences.)

Meanwhile, having discovered that a Qatari institution is a 50% shareholder in J Sainsbury, we emptied our on-line shopping order, and shall not be buying from them in future if we can help it.  Now that we’re out and about again, we’re concentrating our regular shopping on Lidl, and saving a fair bit in the process.

Today we finally got round to spending a garden gift voucher on some bedding plants to give us winter colour.  

 

I can’t remember whether it was a birthday or Christmas gift, and if the latter, which Christmas it was, but thank you, Marion and John, nonetheless.  Quite a pleasant drive out to our nearby garden shop, though the low sun and a none-too-clean windscreen made for a slightly testing drive!  Anyway, the pots on the steps are top-dressed and re-stocked, and we hope the pansies will do as well as last year’s.  Some of the geraniums are now potted up and stashed away in the greenhouse: cuttings in the spring, perhaps.  

Elsewhere in the garden things are a bit confused: the penstemons are growing as one expects them to in Spring, and we have a clematis in flower that we don’t expect to see blooming until later in the autumn.  The acer ‘Garnet’ is in its autumn colours of bright scarlet.

It won’t be long before it’s as bare as the dogwood behind it.  (And the observant will notice some leeks growing nicely in the rose bed.  Well, why not?).  

I think we have a couple more fine days in prospect, so perhaps I’ll sort out the baskets at the front.  The fuchsias and geraniums need to be under cover soon if they’re to stand a chance of a safe dormancy over the winter.  The one on the wall by the door is still doing pretty well, so as it’s well sheltered, I’ll leave it a bit longer, and settle for chopping back the trailing ivy, which threatens to take over the world.