Funny Old Month...

November is proving to be a bit unusual in some respects.  This is the busiest I've been in the run up to Christmas for a while, so personal projects have had to be put on the back burner for a while.  I'm managing to put a little time each day into this though - a lace scarf knitted in a fine linen yarn.  It looks a bit like a dishrag at the moment, but I think once blocked it will be beautiful - the yarn is a soft grey with a bit of a sheen to it, and about as thick as crochet cotton.  It's quite tricky to knit with, but I am sure will be worth the effort.

I usually make our Christmas cake at the end of October in order to have plenty of time to 'water' it with brandy before Christmas.  A couple of weeks late this year as I've been so busy, but it's finally done and maturing in a tin tucked away.  I use a recipe in a Stork cookbook given to me by my parents when I left home...so that's quite an old book!  It's proved invaluable over the years and I still refer to it for good basic home cooking recipes.

Bizarrely, while the cake was baking away in the oven, I was outside in my shirtsleeves mowing the grass and tidying up the garden, with all windows & doors open.  I still can't do all the clearing up that is needed to put the garden to bed for winter - cosmos are flowering more prolifically than they did in the summer.

The black-eyed susan has gone berserk covering half the pergola and shows no sign of stopping flowering.

And against the house the pepino (tree melon) has finally got a fruit and is also flowering more than it did in the summer.

I have a feeling this will end in tears once the frosts begin - it would be nice to harvest one fruit at least though!

On the easel:  still the greyhounds
On the needles: Christmas stuff!

Sweet Surprise!

I have admitted many times on this blog that I am not the most organised of gardeners and the fact that anything grows at all in my garden is sometimes a miracle.  Last week we had quite a bit of rain....it was torrential for days, and the last thing on my mind was watering the plants outside.  Which was all well and good for everything except the poor melon vine in the little plastic greenhouse....whoops!  After the rain cleared up, I noticed a dried up yellow mess where the vine had once been and had to accept that I'd killed it without it ever having born fruit.  However, today when I was actually looking for something else in there, I noticed something nestling on top of the earth in the melon pot.........

Wow!  It was small, about 4 inches across, but  perfect in every other way.  It must have been hidden by the leaves when they were alive because as far as I knew, there were no fruit.

It was DELICIOUS!