Autumn Tints

Summer has finished with avengence this last week, with Wednesday and Thursday being lovely warm days to the weekend being really cold and dropping about 7 or 8 degrees. This has brought out some of the Autumn tints in the shrubs and trees, bring them back into the foreground after months of being green they are all colouring up really well. Some to look out for are the Euonymus they have gone either bright red or pink depending on the variety, also the berberis are always a dependable shrub for colouring up, if like me you are on neutral soil.

Winter Warmers

This week we have been sorting out the pots ready for the winter and next spring, we have found that if you have one good pot and then put in liners with a sucession of different bulbs eg early daffodils followed by tulips and then on to summer plantings this works very well.
The cyclamen are looking fabulous at the moment, I forget how spectacular they are and each year they come up no matter what the weather and they are spreading and seeding themselves nicely.
I have picked my blackberries to make some blackberry whiskey ready for Christmas, as last year we drank all the sloe gin and most of the rosehip vodka that I had made. I have also picked some elderberries to make some cough syrup, although the recipe says that it good for an evening drink The sloes are not ready yet so sloe gin at little later.