7th OCTOBER 2025

 I opened the door this morning to find the delivery man had left me a rose arch.  

We sent for it last week .... 1st October to be exact ... when I could not decide where to place my birthday rose arch.  Instead of having to make a decision Andy sent for a second one!

We were expecting it to arrive last Friday but when the email arrived to say it had been delivered we failed to find it anywhere.  

Andy made some calls and discovered it had been sent to Peterborough rather than our house in Yorkshire.

Its arrival today meant my planned tasks were put on hold so the arch could be built ...

The birthday arch is now forming an entrance to the pond area.  Obviously the bamboo needs to be chopped right back and something will have to be done about the bench and compost bins, but for now I just want to plant a couple of roses or honeysuckle at the side then add more bark to the path.

I had intended to place the second arch on the edge of the lawn providing a central entrance to the path to the pond .... 

 ... but Andy thought creating an entrance to a path on the other side of the garden would be better and I agreed with him ...

I was already with the spade and sharp edged trowel to create holes for the posts ... then Andy asked for the bulb planter and attacked the ground with force.  He had eight holes dug in record time!  

This is a shady area so a white rose or yellow clematis would brighten it up ... if either of them can survive in shade!!  

I have planted a couple of shrubs and some Lambs Ears  in front of the fence ... see the silver leaves?  That was a tiny cutting two years ago ... October is the time to propogate it so I should see if I can get another clump for free.

I might also string some bunting along the fence to add some colour.

A very tall spruce grows in view of my study window.  For the last few nights I have watched a number of rooks land at the top then each pulls an unripe fir cone off a branch and flies away with it in its beak.  I found this to be rather odd behaviour so I looked it up on line.  Apparently the rooks bury the cones ... as they do acorns and walnuts to help them through the winter ... but there is no evidence they actually eat the cones ... more research is being carried out.

 

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6th OCTOBER 2025

 Another beautiful day to be out in the garden ... but not such a lovely area to work on!

This was today's chosen task!

I dug up the lawn to form this a couple of years ago.  Imagine viburnum, weigela, tea roses, brearded irises, aqueliga, chives, sweet williams, wall flowers and geraniums and you have some idea of what it used to look like ... then this happened!

Well, three hours later I managed to tame about half of it!

I was careful to dig up only the weeds and leave the seedlings in place.  

Too many foxgloves have self seeded here though so new locations can be found for those ....

Obviously the bird bath needs washing out but the rest has to wait until tomorrow!

5th OCTOBER 2025

 

Our patio is enclosed by a walled raised bed.  This mess is the side to which I have given the least attention over the years.  

There are wallflowers, blue geraniums and Chinese Lanterns in there ... 

but they have been joined by large nettles, dandelions and a couple of sycamore saplings.  

The soil is also covered by dead leaves from a holly bush and a rather lovely mahonia ... both very spiky so not easy to pick up!

It took a while to dig out the enormous nettle root ....

.... and fill in an old rabbit hole ...

... and get the dandelions out of the wall ...

... but I now have room for some tete-a-tete daffodils. some grape hyacinth and a few small alliums.

When we first moved in I tried to dig out all the Chinese Lanterns ... I like them but I thought they were too tall for this area ... anyway as you can see I failed to get them all and they reclaimed the land!  Quite glad they did as they add colour at this time of year.

Today was a Vis Mig Day (Visible Migration).

  This morning we saw over a hundred pink-footed geese flying up the coast heading north.

 At the same time we were saying goodbye to the last of the swallows.

We haven't seen any for a couple of weeks then five appeared flitting about over the field obviously feeding up before their six week journey to South Africa!

After that awful storm we enjoyed quite a pleasant afternoon.

The butterflies were making the most of it:

Red Admiral .... Large White ...

.... and Speckled Wood joined me as I was clearing the raised bed.

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4th OCTOBER 2025

 Another windy day so I am staying inside.

Looking out the window I have a clear view of our neighbours ...

... it was amusing to see the deer running away from the feeding station a few minutes ago swiftly followed by a couple of angry looking cows.

Then Stoaty appeared on our lawn.

We catch sight of him/her quite frequently ... but not recently.  I presume he has been busy caring for young ones and is now free to wander where he pleases.  He is not shy.  He gets quite close to us sometimes.

A few months ago he was wandering around our living room!  The back door had been left open and he was tempted in by the cat food.  He ran further into the house when I walked through the door and got trapped inside.  It took ages to persuade him to leave.

In winter his coat turns a beautiful white meaning he stands out when there is no snow around.

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3rd OCTOBER 2025

Today is a day to settle in with a warm

fire and a good book ...

[in my case Imprimatur by Rita Monadi and Francesco Sorti]

Dylan knows exactly where he wants to be.

Storm Amy is rampaging outside and it's quite dangerous out there!

The farmer has used his tractor to clear a large tree branch from the road and the horse-chestnuts are pelting the tarmac with conkers!

Not a day to be outside!

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2nd OCTOBER 2025

 

Although I have not finished work on the pond area yet I had to turn my attention to the 'allotment' beds today.  

On the way there I carried a few succulents into the greenhouse which is already starting to look quite full.  I still have some daliahs and begonias from two more village planters to put in there over winter and I haven't sown any sweetpeas yet but I'm sure we will manage!

We refer to this area as the 'allotment' but it is given over to flowers.

Originally I dug out four beds intending to rotate veg and cut flowers.  That idea only lasted about 3 seasons because the veg were always a disaster.  I could grow potatoes and nothing else.  Even when I bought ready grown veg plug plants and spent hours putting chicken wire fences round the the beds it still failed to produce decent crops.  So I now grow flowers.

I love bearded iris. 

Many years ago I dragged my husband all the way from Nottingham to Seagate Nursery in Spalding as they specialise in Irises. Our eldest son had just qualified to fly fast jets in the royal navy so I had to buy 'Top Gun' ...

Unfortunately that one was left behind when we moved to Yorkshire but the ones I brought with us thrived and I have bought more since so I was able to separate the clumps and form two iris beds like this one.  The bare middle section had a sweetpea obelisk until a few weeks ago.

My other favourite plant is the peony rose.  These plants were purchased locally this year but I have some in the main garden that my mother gave me at least 15 years ago.  That is one of the things I love about gardening ... as I wander round I remember friends and family because their plants are growing in my garden.

I bought a couple of plants from The Peony Farmer when she was just starting out a long time ago.  The Gardener's World team filmed her peony fields quite recently and it looks a sight to behold now!

Click the link to see what I mean!

This whole bed was filled with roses until I decided we needed a fruit cage so I could grow rasperies and strawberries.  The canes have been cut back now.

The other roses have been transplanted to different parts of the garden but this one was far too big to shift.  I should do something with those rosehips ... but I know I won't.

The final two beds have lupins in one and a pear tree in the other side ...

... but this was the weed filled area I knew I had to work on today.  I needed to rescue it before it became a real problem patch. I have made that mistake before.  You can concentrate on getting one area just so while another place is being over run with creeping buttercups and the problem then takes weeks to sort out! 

Today I turned the wet soil over quite easily and picked out the weeds then covered it over for winter.

I want daliahs in one part next year ... not sure what to plant in the other part but I do have a number of seed packets from Higgeldy Garden: I have always had great results from his seeds so it may be a productive cut flower patch next year.

We had filled this whole bed with tulips a couple of years ago and it was lovely.

However last year there were large gaps so I let the leaves die back then dug up all the bulbs.  

I have just scattered them round the rest of the garden which means we are in for a surprise as I have no idea what colours will grow next to each other!

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1st OCTOBER

 

 Although it is dry right now (7.30am) the fiery sky suggests rain later and the weather forecast agrees .... showers by 8am then 60 to 70% chance of rain most of the day.  

Well that means 30 to 40% chance of it being dry!!

Optimist!

Rain will probably stop play over the weekend though as two tropical storms are heading our way!

A group of friends bought me a rose arch for my birthday last October.  We finally got round to constructing it today!.

I envisaged it going beside the summer house to form an entrance to the pond area ...

 

... but now it is built I quite fancy it forming an entrance in the middle of the path with a rustic fence or various shrubs at the sides ....

I can't decide.  

It doesn't matter today anyway .... it has to be erected securely by digging deep holes and that was not happening today.  In the meantime it had been laid on the ground as I don't want it damaged by the two tropical storms!  

I went a bit mad on the bulb order last month.  This is not the whole lot ... the tulips are already in pots. while some daffs and hyacinths are in the ground.

Today I potted up three lots of hyacinths so I'm getting through them slowly!  Still got boxes of daffs saved from last year in storage and a bucket full of bluebells!

The cutting stuck in there is a euphorbia ... I accidently chopped it off so stuck it in the soil to give it a chance to survive!

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