Fruit, Veg, Flowers and Slugs

My tomatoes have been cropping particularly well of late so I have been busy in the kitchen making BBQ sauce and Tomato Ketchup; the 'Super Sauce' variety supplying fruit of 1½lb each regularly. I am no Jamie Oliver but I haven’t given anyone food poisoning yet. I am not the tidiest of chefs and chopping up 7½lb or so of ‘Bloody Butcher’ tomatoes, my kitchen resembled a crime scene at one point but I now have several bottles of both sauces tucked away in the cupboard waiting to be used over the coming months. More will be made before summer ends.  September can bring some warm sunny days and there is plenty to be getting on with in the garden in the late summer sun. As well as continuing to harvest various vegetables and deadhead plants such as my Agapanthus I am starting to think about next spring and what bulbs I want to plant. Over the coming weeks it is the ideal time to be planting spring bulbs such as Crocus, Daffodils, Hyacinths, Bluebells and Tulips in pots and borders....

Perhaps it is because I garden and as such become more attuned to the seasons, but I quite enjoy the onset of autumn. The shorter days, the s oftening light, the changes in the garden and the world around us as everything prepares for winter; there is a certain beauty to it. That said, there is plenty to be getting on with readying the garden for the weeks ahead and into next year.    The English Lavender has already been pruned back with the flowers now finished meaning the Miscanthus Indian Summer grasses are now the highlight of that bed. The plan for this bed was for the bronze stems and feathery seedheads of the grass to sit beautifully behind the green/silver foliage of the mounded Lavender plants and it is working I am happy to report and thus far the grasses are withstanding the battering they have received from all the recent wind and rain. It has to be said, though we haven't had it as bad as some parts of the country, the garden as a whole has withstood the stor...