Wild Fenland

End of October and a weekend away visiting family - a bit of shopping and dinner out on the Saturday, and a quiet family day on the Sunday, including a walk round some of the local fenland nature trails.

We started at the Whitemoor Prison Nature Reserve - fenland countryside on our left, looming prison walls on the right (felt slightly strange!).  This eventually joins up with the more formally recognised Ring's End Nature Reserve, which follows a disused railway line, past ponds, reedbeds and scrubland - with views out over the fens:

Not a huge amount of wildlife to see - a passing dog walker claimed to have spotted deer in the fields but we weren't so lucky.

Lots of  Ink Cap Mushrooms in evidence though.






Back home again we were however treated to a (not terribly good) view of a Sparrowhawk, in the tree outside the conservatory window!

Into the Fruit Cage

Final garden task of the autumn was to bring the fruit cage back under control - forgot to take a 'before' photo of the jungle of weeds - but the 'after 'looked something like this (but with slightly more flourishing strawberry plants as again I forgot to take a photo, so this is a retrospective taken nearer Christmas*).

So - what did we do?

• Weeded throughout (which took a lot of doing!);
• moved the strawberry plants to allow the impacted ground to be dug over, before replanting them again; 
• dug up the two gooseberry bushes, one of which was definitely dead after repeated saw-fly attacks, the other of which is now in a pot, and; 
• replanted some raspberry suckers which may or may not take (might need to get a new batch of raspberry plants in 2017).

Along the way had to relocate one frog and one toad who had taken up residence.

Will see how it all looks in the Spring - just have to remember to weed more often in the future!

* Yes I've been a bad blogger again, and am blogging October in December!

Moss, Moss and More Moss

Another autumnal task - de-mossing the back lawn - where it had started taking over again.





We ended up with a lot of bags of moss - and this from only half the lawn.  The rest will have to wait for the Spring!

Apple Harvest

Autumn winds have been bringing down the apples on an almost daily basis - so it was out to pick the remainder today.

Not a bad harvest - some were even a fairly decent size. I foresee lots of peeling and chopping in my future, although will try and get some at least to 'keep' for a while.