Preparing for autumn in the garden

After the excitement of the week end, today was a quiet, pottering sort of day.  Surprisingly for a bank holiday, it was sunny and warm, so we spent some time in the garden, looking around at jobs that will need to be done to prepare for autumn.  

The runner beans - not a successful year at all

Courgettes still flowering and producing

The brassica seedlings N successfully germinated a while back have proved popular with the bugs, and are now little more than spindly shoots devoid of leaves :(.  It's a shame as we were so pleased to have nurtured them to the seedling stage.  However, thankfully we have a Plan B, and took ourselves off to the local nursery to check out their poly tunnels.  Sure enough, we found what we were after and have put by some winter cabbage, broccoli, sprouts and kale to collect mid-September.  By that time they will have grown a little and hardened off ready for us to plant out.  We're very happy to support this little nursery, which works alongside adults with learning disabilities, and they raise many of the plants themselves.

Lots of height ...

... but no sign of a flower yet

I continue to monitor the progress of the sunflowers, which are now taller than me, but I am becoming increasingly concerned about the lack of flowers.  Lots of leaves and plenty of height, just no yellow petals!  The coreopsis, on the other hand, are just blooming away for England; they have proved to be the most reliable and honest little perennials, covered in bright gold daisy-like flowers continuously through the summer and showing no sign of stopping for some time yet.  Some of the other flowering plants are beginning to look a bit straggly, their flower-heads dying back and falling over.  I shall have to take action this week.

Coreopsis gleaming in the sun this afternoon

Several of the tomato plants have finished producing now.  We have had a good crop from all of them, and N has been using some for ratatouille to freeze.  Last year he made tomato sauce with some of the surplus, carefully removing the skins as he went; this year he's simply blitzed a load with the hand blender, skins and all, and frozen the puree in the silicone fairy-cake tray.  Once frozen, the little moulds slide out and are then bagged up to return to the freezer.  They're great with courgette and onion for a lovely accompaniment to meals:  fry diced red onion in a little margarine/butter/olive oil, add sliced courgettes and cook till beginning to caramelise.  Add a couple of tomato moulds, stir into mix and continue to cook until any liquid is gone.  Very, quick, easy and tasty.

From early this morning, we have watched a steady stream of scooters as they made their way to the ferries to leave the Island.  It seems strangely quiet now, and the delightfully distinctive and nostalgic smell and sound of 2-stroke scooter engines has gone for another year.  Another week and it will be September - autumn is just around the corner.









  

Scooter Rally . . . and a killer at the church!

For the last few days the Island has been alive with thousands of scooters, gathering from all over the country for the annual Bank Holiday weekend Scooter Rally.  Lambrettas and Vespas, many vintage and beautifully restored, buzzing around with their  very distinctive puttering 2-stroke engines and accompanying fumes and smell!  All highly nostalgic for those of a certain age - I can of course barely remember!

Yesterday we had a walk along the seafront to admire the machines, parked on every spare inch of the esplanade.  Scooters bedecked with mirrors and lights, Davy Crockett tails and flags.  There was like a big party - they're a very friendly bunch.  Fashions and music of the 60s all around.  About 6000 scooters were expected from clubs around the country, it's one of the biggest rallies of the calendar and very well supported and organised.

Last minute arrivals for the ride-out

 Today we were back again for the 'ride out', and boy, was it a spectacle!  All morning, scooterists had been gathering in a huge car park on the seafront, and at 1 o'clock, their massed ranks formed up and paraded out along the esplanade.  For 20 minutes they just kept streaming out - it was staggering to see.  The noise was almost deafening, and by the end the air was hazy with fumes. 

Ready for the off

 The roads were packed with locals and visitors watching, all enjoying the view.  We never found out the route of the 'ride out' and I'm not at all sure that many of the scooters would have actually made it up the first big hill, let alone all the way round, but for a terrific, fun and good-natured get-together, this was hard to beat.  We spotted a couple of ex-colleagues on one scooter (I nearly knocked the poor lady next to me off her feet with my excitement - oops!) but they'd passed by in a cloud of exhaust fumes before we could get a photo.  Just great, great fun.  And as I type this evening, little groups of scooters are still puttering past the flat.

Well, I thought that was quite enough excitement for one day, so we had a while in the garden, pottering and dead-heading.  Then I heard something that made me stop.  I got N to listen, too, and we both felt it could be a bird of prey.  It was a very distinctive bird cry, and I remembered hearing it a couple of days ago while walking past the church.   We can see the steeple from the flat, and with his binoculars, N could see the bird with it's catch on one of the parapets.  Never ones to miss out on the possibility of a good picture, we headed off down the road, and were rewarded with wonderful (if slightly gory) views of the bird with it's kill.  The people waiting at the bus-stop gave us a few funny looks, but soon they were craning their necks skyward, too.  And the bird of prey?  We are as certain as we can be that it was a peregrine.  And there wasn't just one, but three.  We were just amazed and thrilled to view such a beautiful bird.  Peregrines take their prey in flight, and the pigeon that it was tearing to pieces didn't stand a chance against such a powerful killing machine.  We watched for a while until the peregrine flew off, taking it's dinner with it in it's huge talons.

We are adding peregrine to our list - after all, we were in our garden when we heard it!

All in all, a pretty good day.

(And I must just mention the small matter of the Ashes!!  If you have never listened to cricket commentary on the radio, you are missing an absolute treat.  Great entertainment.)

Just to say thanks

I was all set to blog about the scooter rally today, but that can now wait until tomorrow.  Today I want to say 'thankyou' to everyone who has visited my blog over the past couple of days.   I have been gobsmacked, absolutely stunned by the impact of having my blog linked on Rhonda's Down to Earth blog.  My page views have doubled in 24 hours, and are still increasing.  Lovely readers have left comments!  

Why has this made me so ridiculously happy?

I started this blog at the beginning of the year, partly to see if I could fathom out Blogger, and actually create a blog myself (and that is still very much 'work in progress', as those of you who have far more knowledge of bloggy things will have noticed ;-)), and partly as a diary/journal of our daily potterings.  For me, it has been interesting looking back to see how our garden has grown, quite literally, and seeing the seasons change.  I have enjoyed sitting down most evenings to record our days, taking photos to look back on, and sometimes just jotting down my thoughts.  The only person I told was DH - I was far too timid and cautious to let anyone else know.  

I have gradually, and somewhat tentatively, ventured out into the big wide blogosphere, and discovered so many other people busy blogging away.  It's addictive, isn't it, this blogging lark?  I could spend all day reading about lives in other countries, so different from my own.  Those differences are interesting, yet maybe there are also similarities than link us together, each of us recording, musing and sharing in our own small ways.  I have been amazed by the wealth of wonderful writing I have found, and been awed by beautiful photographs.  But mostly I feel a sense of community through the keyboards of so many others around the world.

Have a great day!

A new bird for the book

We were very excited this morning to see a Lesser Spotted Woodpecker on the garden fence.  It's the first time we've seen one in the garden, although we do see them from time to time on our walks through the local woods (and we hear woodpeckers 'drilling' in tree trunks, too).  Unfortunately we were so absorbed in watching it, neither of us managed to get a camera in hand quickly enough, so no photo.  It had a distinctive red cap, and black and white barred back feathers.  That brings the total number of different birds species we've seen in the garden this year to 27.

We had a walk along the seafront after dinner, making the most of the evening sun.  It was a really low tide, almost to the end of the pier (which is over 680 metres long - a long way to run if you're late for a ferry!!).

Mainland in the distance

The pier, seemingly high and dry.  The little train travels along the one line between Ryde Pier Head and Shanklin, and the coaches are old stock from London Underground.

I've noticed the days are creeping in, little by little.  This past week or so, we've had to put a light on if we've been reading later than about 8.30pm, and the sun isn't quite so high in the sky as it was.  I think this is the first year either of us has had time to really notice the subtle changes in the seasons - when we were at work we were so busy rushing around, there never seemed to be any time to register much.  Now we have time to note the position of the sunsets through the year; to follow the birds nesting and see the fledglings grow; to watch plants grow from seed.  I think we needed to slow down to appreciate these things, and I'm glad we have.

The Island is getting ready for the annual Scooter Rally this weekend - already there are many scooters coming over from the mainland, and on Saturday and Sunday they will all gather on the seafront.  It's quite a spectacle, but just a little noisy!  I shall be there with my camera.

(And if any one visits via Rhonda's Down to Earth blog - welcome, and thanks for dropping by :))

Flour from the water mill

One day last week we had a trip out to Calbourne to visit the water mill, the last working one on the Island.  Specifically, we wanted to buy some of their stone-ground flour to bake bread with.  Although we weren't there at the milling time, we did come away with a wonderful selection of their flour.

We have a malt flour (wheat, malt, spelt and rye mix), a large-flake wholemeal, a fine wholemeal and a biscuit meal - the latter two are also organic.  The other bag (with the photo of the mill on the back) is porridge oats, and it wasn't until we got home we realised we hadn't bought any strong white!  A return trip may be needed.  Anyhow, yesterday I tried the soft bread roll recipe using the large-flake wholemeal with great success.  The bread is so tasty and certainly not heavy in any way.

The dough came together very well and has a good colour

 

Delicious served with cous cous and ratatouille using courgette and tomatoes fresh from the garden

The weather has been lovely again this week, so we've made the most of it.  This afternoon we took the grandkids to the beach for the afternoon, and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, paddling, digging holes in the sand and trying to play beach tennis (not very well!)  I had forgotten that sand gets everywhere, and sand and suncream is not a good combination.  However, fun was had by all, especially Grumpy Grandad ;-))  

This morning N had two fruitless trips into town to find a new watch strap, so after a few minutes' discussion and a bit of searching around, he fashioned a replacement piece of leatherette from an old glasses case.  

The new piece on the right-hand side - I suspect the other side will need replacing in due course

A little bit of machining to hold things in place, and he succeeded in saving himself £11 for a new watch strap.  He was quite chuffed!

Yesterday afternoon we had a lovely walk along the front to Dell Cafe, which sells, in our humble opinion, some of the tastiest ice-cream we have sampled this year.  And just to prove that we take ice-cream tasting very seriously ....

Rum and raisin and rhubarb crumble - by Kelly's of Cornwall - we're slowly working our way through the varieties!

(Taking 'selfies' usually has us in giggles :))

Catching up on sleep

The sunflowers continue to grow, but no sign of a flower yet

Monday again!  How did that happen so fast?  

For some reason, N and I have struggled to get a good night's sleep for nearly two weeks now, and by the weekend we were beginning to struggle.  Sleep deprivation is no fun at all, and takes us back to when we had to do nights at work.  Everything becomes a chore; simple things become difficult.  By 7 o'clock last night N gave in and went to bed, and I followed shortly after.  I'd like to say we both slept for 12 hours solid, but the 5 or so uninterrupted hours we managed is considerably better than the 2 or 3 hours we've been getting by on recently.  Not too sure why exactly we've had problems sleeping - certainly there have been a few things we've been mulling over - but it has brought home to us the benefits (or not!!) of a good night's sleep.  Sleeping tablets are not the answer, although I did resort to them in desperation, so I shall have to find alternative remedies.

The new water-harvesting system on the shed front has proved very successful!

FIL has returned safe and sound to Manchester, and although it was unfortunate that he was a little under the weather during his stay with us, for him the most important thing was having company and having someone to talk to and interact with.  His visit has given N and I quite a lot to think about, and we have talked at some length about aging, and how some people seem to be able to accept getting older whilst others seem to fight the advancing years.  I think there is a lot for us to consider and learn from, especially how different generations deal with old age.  Perhaps it is to do with how content and satisfied you have been with your life, goals achieved, being happy with your lot.  Maybe if you feel you have missed out on 'something' in life, the prospect of time running out leads to panic and the need to search out whatever it is you feel has eluded you.  I don't know, but it has made me think.

These are the grape hyacinths I rescued from DILs garden at the beginning of the year.  They flowered in Spring then died right back.  Now the little bulbs have split and spread and new shoots have emerged.

Anyway, a (relatively) good sleep had us up and about this morning, trying to make up for lost time.  Phone calls made to sort out travel insurance - and money saved in the process, so major ticks off the list there!  Washing on the line and dried by the afternoon.  My on-going project is finally making good progress so I'm pleased with that, too.  We've replaced a couple of pans in the kitchen and N has fixed a batten to the kitchen wall for storage.

Out in the garden, we're starting to think about preparations for autumn and winter - beds being cleared, fed and dug over.  The cabbage seedlings have had mixed success, some are doing well but some have been nibbled at.  We may have to supplement them with established seedlings from the nursery.

Still plenty of tomatoes in the greenhouse  

I had lovely phone calls with both my children yesterday evening.  I caught up on their news and we had a good old chat.  Lots of exciting plans to look forward to over the next few months.  Talking with them always puts a smile on my face :-))

Work vessels

These two little sailing dinghies caught my eye 

We had a very pleasant walk along the front at Cowes yesterday, and although the water was much quieter after the excitement of racing during Cowes Week, there was still plenty to see.

This is the Seaclear, the work vessel belonging to Cowes Harbour Commission.  One of her tasks is to lay, maintain and recover the moorings (like the orange one in this photo) that are used during Cowes Week.  It was really quite interesting watching the crew winching the mooring bouys in board and judging by the number already hauled in and stacked on-board, there were a fair number that needed recovering.

The black plastic shapes the Seaclear is displaying (to the left of the mast) are part of the International Maritime Navigation Rules of the Roads.  The configuration of ball-diamond-ball is Rule 27, 'vessel restricted in ability to manoevere'.   N used to be in the Merchant Navy and he tells me he used to know all the rules, but we had to check up on this to make sure we were correct!   I find it interesting to learn little snippets of information as it helps me understand a bit more about the boats and their activities.