The store cupboard is groaning.

Second flush of roses/

The last week has been a busy one.

The Victoria plums have all ripened

The first five pounds.

and I have bottled six large jars,

Chutney making.

the remainder have been made into Old Dower House chutney,

in total seventeen jars, most will be for ourselves but a couple are for friends.

Sun Gold, now coming along nicely.

Tomatoes are coming fast now, what had started off as a potentially bad crop has turned into a good one, they were very slow to get started and slow for the first fruits, they are making up for it now, I might even have enough to bottle. We only grow the Sun Gold, I have been tempted to try other varieties, but Sun Gold  are the sweetest tomato so we will stay with what we know.
Peas and runner beans continue to produce, I am once again trying to find a good way to freeze the beans, maybe I just don't like frozen veg but this time I have used the vacuum sealer bags and I have not blanched them at all, we will try one of the bags I have already done later this week and see if there is any improvement to the frozen beans.

Seed grown onions.

The last lot of onions will get harvested in the next couple of weeks, these we grew from seed, rather as an experiment, they have all grown to a good size and it's a far cheaper way to get onions rather than the sets, but we will stick with sets for the early ones that we do in the tunnel.

The Calabrese is now ready for picking, they have also done well this year, the biggest failure has been the potatoes, we grew seven different types, none have done well mainly due to slug damage, these are not the big slugs that you can easily see but the small 'Field Slugs', the damage they have done is incredible, we grew extra potatoes this year as it's nearly impossible to get a decent potato in Ireland, the Irish like flowery spuds that produce potato sludge if you boil them, the only way to cook them is to steam them, even then, they are dull and boring. We had already decided that we would have to do potatoes in the tunnel this autumn to keep us going, we would have been using whatever undamaged potato's we had but a trip to the garden centre yesterday surprised us with Charlotte seed potatoes already chitted ready for planting, Charlotte is one of the potatoes that we had grown this year, and unfortunately lost mostly to slugs.
Today was a bright warm day, we haven't had too many of them this summer, the warmth brought out masses of butterflies,

there were Red Admirals,

Peacocks and Meadow Browns, not the easiest thing to photograph but we managed to get a couple of shots.

The roses are now having a second flush,

they recovered well after suffering black spot,

not something we have had before,

cool damp weather is the perfect breeding ground for all these fungi.
The early autumn flowers are now looking good,

the Echinacea  and Bergamot are looking lovely, so are the obedient plants,

Physostegia virginiana.

Hubbard day olds.

We now have the final batch of Hubbard chicks, they have nearly doubled in size in just a week, that will be the last rearing for this year. it will all start again next March.

Before firing.

The pottery classes are going well, but once again we have three weeks off as my teacher has several shows to do over the next three weekends, after all she does have to earn a living.

After firing.

I finished my last project just in time for firing, I have another project on the go and I must think what I want to do next. It's great fun and I think I'm learning a lot from her.

Suzy hatching, he cant be comfortable.

Freddy relaxing.

 

Indian Summer.

Two weeks into September and just 1.1ml of rain it probably was not the best time for us to have planted a new hedge, according to the long range forecast there is no rain expected for the next ten days.
The weather has been very unpredictable, July was the driest for five years, August was the wettest, September, unless things change looks set to be very dry. As we are on our own rain water collection system we cant take the chance of using it to water plants, we just have to hope that the dew and collecting our grey water will be sufficient to keep the new bushes alive until the rain falls again.

A welcome visitor.

Frogs have taken up residence under stones or plastic, anything that will keep them moist, gardening this week we were very pleased to see what a large number of frogs we have, all those dam slugs probably seems like a fast food restaurant to them.

The vegetable garden keeps on giving, the calabrese has given us a second flush, much smaller heads than the first lot, but still very tasty.
The Purple Loosestrife in the damp hedgerows and river banks has been wonderful this year, I'm surprised it isn't grown as a garden flower,

From the hedgerows.

it last so well as a cut flower and looks lovely when arranged with Honey Suckle.
One thing that we have both missed about Spain was the wildlife, especially birds of prey, of which there were many, so we have been very pleased this week to see a Marsh  Harrier and two Sparrow Hawks close by, also a Red Squirrel only about 100m from our land, in this part of Ireland we are fortunate to have a good population of these lovely creatures, much redder than the ones we had in Spain which were a black red. We have never seen a grey squirrel here although I do know that Ireland has them.

For many years Simon has told me of a chutney that his mother always made when there was a glut of plums, Old Dower House Chutney, the recipe would have come from an old copy of Good Housekeeping, first published in 1903. When the opportunity arose to get some cheap plums I couldn't resist although I didn't know if I would find the recipe, I needn't have worried, good old Google to the rescue, of course some of the celebrity have their versions,[why do they always have to jump on the band waggon?] I wanted as near to the original as possible which with input from Simon I found,

A years supply of chutney.

so fourteen jars of 'Old Dower House' have been made and have been stashed to mature, I will look forward to trying it as I have never tasted it, I hope it's as good as Simon remembers.
Finally some very sad news.
 Our latest kitten Maddy died today, she was only eight weeks old. A week ago she was sick and brought up dead worms, the following day she brought up more so we whisked her to the vet, poor little mite was so infected with them it had caused toxins to build up. Despite everything the vets did over the last week, including feeding her every two hours and rehydrating her by a drip she finally lost the fight. She was with us such a short time but was so much part of the family.

                                        We miss you little one.