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| Ollie Marshall's finial |
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| Ollie & Chris remove the old finial. |
The old wooden finial on the summerhouse had completely rotted through and was under attack by woodpeckers. The base on which it stood was in the same sorry state. Enter Ollie Marshall! He made a new finial and base and brought it over today. This time, woodpeckers will have no chance as Ollie has made a new finial out of metal and also a metal base. He and Chris installed it today - just in time for open gardens tomorrow. As a finishing touch a saline solution was made up and poured over it finishing off with a sprinkling of salt, all to speed up the rust process.
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| The new metal finial in place. |
As well as mowing, hoeing and blowing everywhere, Chris trimmed and strimmed hedges and unmowable grass! We practically hoovered the entire garden and then, we sat down and filled a couple of hundred jam jars, lanterns, tea light holders. After dinner, and, as if that wasn't enough, we checked, tested, adjusted and cleaned every single electric light.
Now; with Pat Finch's amazing cakes, all we need is good weather!!
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| Pat Finch's fab cakes. |
How exciting to get 2nd at Stoke Bliss for a chutney made from home grown excesses! Just because we have been really enjoying eating it doesn't necessarily mean that a judge will like it and the competition was pretty fierce! The ingredients were our Bramley apples, yellow & red tomatoes from the greenhouse, grated ginger, onions & spices. Instead of using malt vinegar which I think is always rather harsh; I opted for cider vinegar. I reckon it was the cider vinegar that nailed it!
As the nights draw in, temperatures begin to drop and the hours of daylight shorten, so egg numbers will reduce accordingly. However, in the 4 months, excess egg sales made £44.00 another small PTC record. This pays for their layers' pellets and mash
I can now report that our Twilight Garden by Candlelight event was a roaring success and easily broke all previous records! We enjoyed having over 300 visitors who ate every crumb of cake and drank every drop of wine. We cleared an astounding 
£2,014.30 
- more than three times last year's total. All this will go to the National Garden Scheme which supports all the really caring charities.
A big thank you to all the ladies (and in this case, gentlemen too!) who made delicious cakes, helped serve teas and wash up. Another big thank you to Chris and Ian who lit hundreds of candles in perfect weather conditions making the garden look like a magical fairy tale garden! It's not a five minute job lighting so many candles and placing them all out AND finding time to make a couple of Swedish log candles and lighting them too! Thank you also to the local media who helped promote our event and, lastly - a big thank you to all our visitors who turned out to support the event and make it the great success it was! 
