Snow in October?

IMG_2083, originally uploaded by Racmol.

First time in London since 1934, apparently.

Sofia's artwork

IMG_2073, originally uploaded by Racmol.

Sofia's portfolio

We've brought Sofia's "portfolio" i.e. artwork home from nursery to 'show the family' so I took some photos as I have to take it all back tomorrow.

We're quite impressed with the amount and variety of art she's done at Chaston Nursery. Bebi, her key worker, is very keen on painting, which definitely helps.

Yesterday when I picked up Sofia, I asked her what she did that day and she said 'Painting! Stars!'

So she's having a good time, which is the main thing.

All the photos of the artwork are now up on flickr.

Ruby Wedding

Ruby Wedding, originally uploaded by Racmol.

Autumn review - the novice gardeners' first season

Well, it really is going to be a lean Heath Christmas this year, or at least it would be if we were trying to be self-sufficient from our garden! I can't help noticing that our entire autumn harvest fits into one Abel and Cole weekly organic mixed box, with space to spare...

So, to recap, in the Spring we got two raised beds and filled them with topsoil from Norfolk. In one I sowed spring onions, carrots and leeks. The spring onions were smothered by the carrots but, after the carrot harvest, we seem to still have about 10 leeks. Hurrah!

Being short on space, we also squeezed in a butternut squash plant into the corner of that raised bed. 'Apparently, your butternut squash needed to go in in March,' said Jules the other day having somewhat belatedly read up on it on the web. Me (snappily): 'Yeah, well you didn't buy them until May...'

In the other bed we had a big patch of salad leaves, some broccoli and two courgette plants. The salad leaves were a runaway success - we didn't buy salad leaves at all this summer. The broccolis did produce some very small calabrese broccoli and we did eat one or two of them before they flowered but they weren't great. Maybe we overcooked them.

The courgette plants grew amazingly and had small yellow courgettes. Only two made it to harvest without being eaten by slugs. I put one of them in a vege chilli and it wrecked the chilli - Jules sat there picking pieces of small, hard courgette out of his teeth, which was a bit dispiriting. The other, about the size of a small carrot, we put in the vege crisper in the fridge where it got squashed up against the side and hidden under some apples and then half of it went mouldy and I couldn't be bothered saving the other half - so who knows if yellow courgettes are better than green ones or not? I suspect not - and not worth the bother. Plain green zucchini for us next year.

The apples were moderately successful - apart from the James Grieve which lost all its shiny red apples in about June and was left with maybe one on the tree. More Bramleys than Windsors this year but that is probably because we had the trees pruned in January and the guy said they were well overdue so the pruning was quite drastic.

Some of Jules's 12 sweetcorn that I put in in May survived to adulthood although most were destroyed by slugs and snails. We got one cob and when we opened it up it only had about 12 kernels of corn, so we didn't bother to cook it. Yet again, maybe May was too late.

The tuscan kale (cavolo nero): every leaf eaten by slugs.

Rhubarb: ditto, plant destroyed.

Sunflowers: ditto

Cucumbers: ditto

Garlic: got some bulbs but they were about the size of one normal clove of garlic.

Hydrangea: (bought in desperation when I was trying to think of a shrub the slugs wouldn't like) barely hanging on to life. May see out the winter if the slugs die down before it does.

Nasturtiums: thriving, smothering the struggling hydrangea.

Tomatoes: pretty good - definitely several large punnets of cherry tomatoes.

The compost however is brilliant - about 50 worms to every spadeful. So the bed where the salad leaves and broccoli were has been dug over and I planted mustard seed as a green manure, so we'll see how that goes next year.

The plan from here:

Crocuses in the lawn for February and the new baby.

Pots on the patio: tulips and irises (but will the squirrels eat them, like some got eaten last year?

More daffodils in around the beds at the edges of the lawn (some still left from last year.)

The roses were a success - especially the Ruby Wedding - which we have a cutting of on our kitchen windowsill. The two small pink patio roses were quite prolific too.

Some successes, some failures. Next year we'll have one bed just for butternut squashes. Someone on the web says you can get 32 from one plant - but we're just aiming for 10 squashes overall. We know our limitations...

B2 at 22 weeks

IMG_2064, originally uploaded by Racmol.