Aga Dried -V- Sun Dried!

The first of the Apache's

Drying on the Aga

Here we have some Apache chilli peppers grown in the greenhouse which I am harvesting as they ripen and drying them on the Aga. Their rating on the Scoville scale is between 70,000 & 80,000 shu.  Now that's quite a lot of heat when you consider that a Jalapeno has a rating of a mere 10 - 20,000 shu.  Of course there are far hotter varieties and at the the other and hottest end of the scale is the Carolina Reaper which weighs in at a hefty 1,569,300 shu! When fresh, Apache's are rich in vitamin C and antioxidants.  They also make ideal decorations when dried, threaded and hung up.  I might eventually get around to alternating some with Bay leaves and hanging them in the kitchen with the odd one finding its way into a beef chilli on a cold winter's evening!

A Hugely Successful Twilight Garden Opening

Chris's Scandinavian log candle

Rob's Retreat

More Scandinavian candle admirers

In the conservatory

After a pretty frantic week, our Twilight Garden opening was a huge success. We had the prefect weather - for once! As always, an ENORMOUS thank you to a wonderful team without whose help, we couldn't even contemplate such an event!  Eve, Dave, Di, Lyn, Lindy and Sandra for all the washing up and serving of drinks and cakes from 2 - 10pm!!  What amazing hard work.  Another thank you to  Chris who illuminated 100's of candles and placed them around the garden - definitely NOT a 5 minute task! He even made rafts and floated them out on the pond and also a Scandinavian log candle never before seen by any of the visitors.  The garden looked perfectly magical and we made a clear profit of £670.57!  How amazing is that? We had over a 100 visitors which meant that Head Gardener & Chief Blogger was too busy to take photos so these are a few that Chris took at the end of the evening. We await more from Dave!

Chris's tea light rafts

So now it's all over and we need to collect even more glass jars for next year.........that is, when we've found all the empty ones in the garden!!

Lastly, thank you to all our visitors for their support.

A few more photos!

Working in the rain!

Whales Nailed!

Having cleared up following a visit from Contact the Elderly, Chris called about a jumper left on the hedge. It was a ruse to disguise his latest plan to give Moby Dick some attention. Now; Moby is a Portugese Laurel carefully sculpted into a whale shape by Chris. His eye is a piece of down pipe with a budgie's mirror hung inside to catch the light. When in bloom, the flowers resemble barnacles but he didn't look quite right by an old cattle sign. The cattle sign was moved to the Aspen grove and Chris's splendid solid oak sign now stands beside Moby. Chris hand cut each individual letter and shape securing them on to a sign made from reclaimed oak fencing rails. Quite the perfect feature to place next door to a Laurel whale! Thanks very much indeed Chris!

Perseids Meteor Shower 2016

Hands up who saw the night sky on Thursday?  It was spectacular. So bright in fact, the first meteorite was seen in the western sky from the bedroom with the light on! In 10 minutes, we saw 6 meteorites. I wish I could have taken a photo as good as this one!

Meteor Image by Mike_Lewinski

Luscious Lilies

Dipped in cocoa powder?

These beauties have weathered the high winds and their perfume is outstanding. With velvety anthers and stigmas glistening with dripping nectar, it's just another excuse to pop up to the greenhouse pausing to inhale their heavy fragrance en route.

WOT a WET Weekend!

Finished and now visible pond

One small piece of water lily

Rescued fish

Well, we had put it off and postponed and prevaricated over mammoth pond work for much too long - over a year in fact. That was until, Saturday and then we just...went for it! Chris donned on the waders and manhandled the biggest heaviest water lily in the deepest part of the pond. It was so big and heavy it had to be cut into lots of manageable pieces even for him! A single 8 year old plant had filled the entire pond sump. It was a GIANT! We hadn't seen the fish since the spring and couldn't feed them as their food sat on the lily pads out of reach of hungry mouths.  All of the white water lilies were removed and as before, 3 small pieces were tied to bricks and lobbed back in. None of those nasty plastic baskets for us! 

Clearing up was also pretty monstrous as Chris had pruned the surrounding trees and shrubs. High winds had taken their toll on the Dogwoods and many had broken off and so, at the expense of winter colour, they were reduced in height.  Chris pushed  barrows heaped high with water lilies off to the compost heap. I hosed off the mud and silt deposited on the surrounding grass. The following day, I edged, mowed, netted fallen leaves in the pond and weeded. Result! We can now see the pond again and the fish!! I promise that the pond couldn't be seen from the spot where the top photo was taken as it was totally obscured by vegetation.

A weeded beach!

Did I say wet weekend? Well the waders sprang a leak! New ones are on order. The only mistake was failing to take a photo of the aquatic jungle that we faced at the outset. Now we have exposed water, I'm expecting blanket weed to proliferate. Why is there always a downside?