Tuesday 28 September 2010

Mellow Fruitfulness

The past few weeks seem to have revolved around flora and fauna, judging by the current crop of photos.  Despite the wet August and September, we've been having a good time working on the meadow, roping in gallant friends and encouraging them with copious amounts of food and drink. 

And we've been visiting one of our favour local nurseries, Woottens of Wenhaston - if you don't already know them, they're definitely worth checking out.  Woottens send out a fantastic weekly e-mail which, even though you know you don't need anything more for the garden, is always tempting.   These dahlias were looking glorious when we went on a very wet day in August, after lunch with friends at the Queen's Head Inn, just up the road in Blyford.    

That's where we saw this beautiful creature (I guess it's a hen, but that doesn't seem a sufficiently powerful description) strutting its stuff.  The Queen's Head has pigs, geese, chickens and lots of vegetables dotted around outside, most of which find their way into the kitchen at some stage.  They're supporting the current Aldeburgh Food and Drink Festival - yet another good reason to head to our bit of Suffolk over the coming weeks. 



And finally it was time to take the yurt down after a good season trying it out on friends and relations.  The wood burning stove was a definite success, and we can't wait to get it up again next year complete with rugs and furniture which we'll be aiming to source or build/create over the winter months. 








The strawberry plants are now bedded in to the long trough bought from Diss Auction Rooms a few weeks ago, freshly painted in a lovely British racing green (though applied to cast iron it feels more like an old steam engine).  Here's hoping it's relatively rabbit proof.....





And we were really lucky to get this photo of one of "our" hares nibbling at the grass on Sunday morning! It's fantastic seeing them around.  If they can't be bothered to run away, they simply hunker down and hope they won't be spotted.  And it seems to work with Jet the dog, she simply pootles past without paying attention; it's only when they start running that she gets excited.