Sweet Mary

Over the last few days we have started the final autumn clean-up. Its officially winter here now in New Zealand but there is still alot of autumn colour around. I love pansies so like to fill any spare pots with them - these ones will be red and in the white washed pots should look very striking when they flower. I think these pansies are mixed colours with an underplanting of anenomes and ranunculus. The bamboo canes are there to support the sweetpeas planted as seeds which hopefully will be climbing up them come the spring. I wanted to leave this mountain of leaves as a haven for hedgehogs but the landlord doesn't agree so I will pack them into bags tomorrow to mulch down over the winter. My favourite tree on this property is this glorious copper beech - it is huge and the most perfect shape. Photo taken from the rose garden where I am still picking the odd bunch - see blog below. Today was a cold but sunny, cloudless, blue sky day.

Well it must be nearly upon us - spring that is. I was tempted to cut these pretty things and bring them into the house but decided against it as they look so pretty in the middle of the lawn protected by the large tree. Honey took the day off work to help me put up and fill the vegetable boxes in readiness for our spring planting. Luckily we actually delayed the planting for a week or two as we were given notice to leave a few days later by our landlords. The funny thing was we had been thinking of moving on but had put it on hold as we couldn't make up our minds so we got the shove we needed. We have already found a new rental which we move in to in 3 weeks time! Its an old farmhouse again but this time on an organic orchard which is much more our thing. We do love large rambling farmhouses in rural areas and when we are finally sick of that (hard to imagine) we will buy something small in town. But for the next few years we will continue to enjoy being country bumpkins. Anoth...