Bottle Boys, Blooms and Bounty

What a wet week, torrential rain most days usually at night which has helped the plants grow but at the same time destroyed some of the petals of the more fragile plants. I am busy weeding and also harvesting.This week I harvested my first cauliflower, very tasty and I used a second one in my homemade piccalilli, the recipe to follow next week.

Cauliflower variety All year Round 

This is my crop of potatoes that I grew in a florist bucket. This is a very successful method and very useful and productive if you are limited for space.

A bountiful harvest

The apples on all the trees are beginning to swell with the rain.

Crab Apples make excellent crab apple jelly

The courgette plants that I put in the centre of the raspberry bed look as if they have been on steroids as they are 1 metre tall, the plants not the courgettes!

Giant courgettes

In the hedgerows the floating rosebay willowherb is all beginning to fade but the pretty pink flowers brighten up the countryside.

Pretty in pink

The cow parsley is pretty in the hedgerow and also the flower heads can be dried.

Found in the verge

I found a beautiful field of phacelia which must be being grown as a green manure.

A stunning sight

This giant thistle was in the walled garden at Hutton in the Forest, it must have been 5 meters high! The Scotsman standing next to me said he had never seen a thistle so big. 

Och what a whopper

Various plants have now produced seed. This is a lovely allium seed head looks as though it should be in outer space.

You can dry these flowerheads

Poppy seedheads are very good to use as print blocks, the star shape on the tip of the head. They can also be dried, but be careful not to split the seed pod as lots of little black poppy seeds will scatter everywhere.

Poppy stars

Some great big prickly teasels are growing on the railway bank. 

Bonny bands of purple flowers

The red and white grape vine in my front garden is thriving and I keep tying it back to the wall. I am not planning to make any wine but the leaves are very pretty.

Grape vines

I have grown a lot of cosmos it is such a jolly flower. I have different varieties in various shades but the white looks very regal and fresh.

 The bumblebees love the white cosmos

The Japanese anemones are now beginning to flower. The blooms do not last long but the plant continuously flowers.

Japanese anemones ans veronica spikes

The pink flox is now in full bloom.

Shades of pink blossom

The fuchsia and blue lobelia look pretty together.

Some of my garden planters

This pretty little flower is called swan river daisy and is very easy to grow.

Bonny blue buttons

This is my first sunflower, a modest specimen.

A little bit short of sunny petals

There is a coffee shop in Carlisle called Watts that has an amazing collection of old grocery equipment downstairs on route to the toilet.

Wonderful old grocery exhibits

Weighing scales and coffee grinder

Crazy Maisie has found a pair of sunglasses. I am not sure they are very flattering but Maisie does like to be noticed.

Some glasses

Stop Press

The Bottle Boys have arrived in the Artful Garden. They are all looking rather dapper and have already started to chat up the Bottle Babes. By the look of them they like a few bevvies.

Bottle Boys

Bottle Boys and Bottle Babes

Check out the moustache

Cool dude