Halloween

As my pumpkins weren't the right size for a candle I bought one to decorate. Originally I thought Joe might do the honours but he came home from work on Friday full of cold so the carving was down to me! I decided it was prettier to go with a heart theme rather than make something more ghoulish. It sat happily on top of the (unlit) log burner.

Parsnip

Dave's digs up a parsnip for our supper - it's an amazing 2 foot long! And it tastes delicious with roast chicken and roast potatoes.

Pumpkins

As it's Halloween I decided that the time is right to harvest my pumpkins, I grew two varieties - Munchkin and Kuri from seeds I bought from Sarah Raven. They look really good but the vines haven't been very productive, probably due to our miserable summer.

A healthy start

Joe has been watching the new Jamie Oliver series and made these delicious smelling muffins with sweet potato for his weekday breakfasts. If you fancy doing the same here is the link to the recipe.

Close call

This is probably the closest I have got to puss. Walking back from church I didn't notice her sitting on the gate until I was in touching distance. She sat tight and I decided my approach wouldn't be welcome. After all this time she is still so very timid.

The sheep are back

Much to my excitement the sheep have returned to the field opposite. There are ten again so I assume they are the mothers who were here earlier in the year. We didn't see them arrive (probably while we had supper) so they were a surprise!

Doors - again!

Just when Dave thought he'd finished working on our doors ....
The one issue we have with the house is that sound travels around it easily. We found an old wooden door in the barn and decided we could fit it into the space in the entrance to the blue bedroom. There had been plans for a door here but we previously thought it wasn't necessary. Dave has to construct the frame, which as with everything at the farm, turns out to be harder than he imagined!

Bedroom furniture

We have now painted and varnished all our bedroom furniture and it has made such a difference. We thought maybe we could manage without varnishing but it began to chip so Dave nobly took on this task. Just as we head to the end of our indoor 'to do' list we decide that we probably need to fit another door to what will be one of the guest bedrooms (fortunately one in the barn 'almost' fits)!

All a-flutter

This morning the garden is full of birds. I see our first jay and our first redwing - a sure sign of winter approaching. There are also a mass of blue and great tits in the hedge causing the leaves to tumble down as they flit from branch to branch amongst the berries. There are thrushes taking worms, a pheasant calling and a pair of blackbirds flying low.

Autumn colours

This is our view of the hill opposite. The colder nights mean that the leaves have started to change colour and the low sun creates a fantastic effect. The light at this time of year seems to make all the colours sing.

Dark skies

Tonight the clouds looked very dark above the autumn trees but we didn't have any rain, in fact it has been a really dry period recently.

Another year on

Despite all the hard manual labour of the last 12 months Dave is looking good for his birthday celebration. He wanted a 'showstopper' cake (too much watching Bake Off) so I compromised with 2 cakes: carrot cake flanking chocolate cake, yum! (The camera accidentally got put onto a 'creative' setting so poor Dave looks rather strange!)

Harvest wheelbarrow

As last year I push a wheelbarrow of flowers, fruit and vegetables down the hill to help decorate the church for harvest. Going down the hill is easy but coming back up I'm glad it's empty! Our harvest festival service is lovely and afterwards we share lunch - my contribution was a trifle using our home grown raspberries! To see what we got up to follow this link to St Peter's facebook page.

Hedgecutting

It's a noisy afternoon as the hedge opposite is being enthusiastically cut - I'm glad they have finished by the time I have to venture down to church with my harvest wheelbarrow!

Birthday boy

It's Dave's birthday (his third at the farm) and I find a lovely pink rose to put with his celebratory croissant and freshly squeezed orange juice. He has exciting gifts from me including 25m of hose (on a reel) and 25m of extension cable (also on a reel) and some work trousers ......

A great meal

For Dave's birthday Tom and Clare are coming over and we are going to stay in to enjoy a home made curry, birthday cake and the fire. Tonight however I take Dave out for a meal. We try The Duncombe Arms, not far from us but somewhere we've never been. It's a great success and highly recommended. After our meal we sat outside and I had a coffee by a choice of fire - an open fire pit and a chiminea (very handy for comparison purposes as we need to purchase something similar), I also fell in love with their comfy rattan furniture.

Harvest

The apples are bending down the young branches in our little orchard. The very dark one at the top is 'Spartan' and I've yet to try one. Each morning though I collect a large handful of lovely autumn raspberries for my breakfast. At the weekend we will have our harvest festival service and lunch and so I plan to use my raspberries in my contribution to the lunch of trifle.

Squash

My tiny squash/pumpkins (Kuri and Munchkin) are finally ripening and I've propped them up against their tripods to ripen. In the catalogue they had climbed gloriously to achieve this effect, but mine have insisted on hugging the ground despite my best endeavours.

Finally

Finally after a slow start my dahlias are looking glorious and I'm able to pick bunches of them for the house. Last year they appeared much earlier so I imagine the cold, dry spring weather held them back. I've done a lot of work tidying up the vegetable beds. We've taken out the huge fennel plants and transplanted some leeks. Dave manages to make another good cut of all our grass. The forecast has begun to talk about frosts and there are predictions of the worst winter for 60 years .....

Tasty pie!

Oh dear I seem to be playing 'catch up' again with the blog. Recently there have been lots of things to do both at home and outside and finding time to go online has slipped down the task list! Today Joe was unexpectedly home for supper and so I created a chicken and mushroom pie which was suitably autumnal! I've done a lot of cooking this week as it was my turn to act as hostess for our WI  meeting which meant baking plenty of cake (and sausage rolls!) and tomorrow the Bishop is coming to our church and so more baking is required!

Lookout

This crow has discovered a good lookout position at the top of the hawthorn hedge and stayed here for an hour surveying the world around him while I prepared supper. Dave had recently seen a programme saying how intelligent these birds are.

Post on the move

The local farmer came to our rescue and helped us to move the snapped post somewhere safer while we explore whether it is possible to fix it with metal rods.

Taking no chances

Puss has obviously heard that when Rob sat on one of these chairs earlier in the week the wood broke and it deposited him on the floor. She is perching very tentatively!!

How sad

Tonight after such a good and productive week we were saddened to see that one of our very old and as we supposed very solid stone gateposts had been felled. I saw a tractor go by a little earlier with a large amount of spraying kit on the back and can only suppose that was the culprit. The base has been knocked skew and there must have been quite an impact. Someone must have both a guilty conscience and a damaged tractor.

October

October dawns with yet more sun and a chance to sit outside with a glass of rose! At lunchtime yesterday we walked to the pub - making the most of our Indian summer .... a pinch and a punch!