Although it isn’t November until Monday, I am jumping ahead a little. This end of October has been devoted to the cottage, wiping up the dust from the beam refitting, and drying dogs after wet walks. So today, as we end the month, treat yourself to a walk under the big sky, kick up some leaves, and maybe go to these jobs next month.  Thinking about that, I am definitely putting a country pub Sunday lunch on my list for November too. 

Planting narcissi

If your bulb order has come through (and mine arrived yesterday) then you can start getting on with putting narcissi and other spring bulbs in the ground now. I find narcissi and the like absolutely tough as boots so there really isn’t much that can go wrong. I have planted so many in the last few years, I wasn’t going to add to my collection, but the rumour going round the mill is that daffodils are the new tulips and I am wondering if I shouldn’t get a few more. If I do, it will probably be Minnow, one of my absolute favourite dwarf varieties. 

This pictures are not Minnow but I couldn’t find any pictures of my Minnows, which suggests I should grow a lot more.

 Planting garlic

There are only two things that can be planted at this time of year, broad beans and garlic. I saved some garlic from this summer’s harvest although I confess, I cannot remember what variety it is. I love growing garlic. Its timeline is so out of kilter with everything else that it is wonderful to have something to plant at such a damp and dark end of the growing season. I will be doing broad beans too, but the slugs have been so incredibly prolific in the last month or so that I don’t hold out much hope much growth this year.. 

Journaling & promises

At the end of the season, there is more time. More time to think and more time to reflect. More time to make notes before the memories fade. What worked and what didn’t? What triumphs and what catastrophes? I also like to make notes of the first and lasts of things. I cannot ever remember having actual sweet peas on the first of November before, but this Piggy Sue was harvested today (30 October) and there is a fresh flush of April in Paris that I cut and brought into the house for scent.

This is also a good time for resolutions; what would you do differently in the future? I have two big things. I want to spend much less time looking for my tools next year. I dread to think what I would come up with if I added up all the ten-minute blocks I spent looking for my trowel or my hoe. And so I have moved my biggest tool trug to the greenhouse and I resolve to put things back as soon as I have finished with them. The second thing is the same thing as last year, and the year before, and the year before that. Labelling. Always put a label in the ground and then write down in a notebook or phone what you planted where. My labels simply disappear, and I am, in all honesty, not actually sure that it is April in Paris that is having the last hurrah on the sweet pea tunnel, I only know that it looks very much like it. 

 Preserve hedgerow bounty

Although the big trees are shedding, the hedges are still stoically green. This week I will be capturing the very last of this. Hawthorn leaves for the dye pot, and sloes for the freezer. 

The thing that I have loved the most about natural dyeing is the lack of relationship between the material and the resultant colour. Who knew hawthorn leaves would yield orange?

If you can find a cherry tree, especially a wild one, the colours are quite glorious now. There is a tree in the hedgerow in the back field that is so deep red as to be purple. Every time I visit it, I stand and stare at the colours, the lime trees that share the field boundary shedding their more papery yellow leaves around us. If you bring some home, they dry brilliantly in a book or a flower press. Anywhere else and they just curl up and shatter. 

I am also drying as many apples as I can at the moment. It is tricky as I do seem to eat them as soon as they come out of the oven. I worked out I have eaten the equivalent to four apples in one day, simply through nibbling the slices as they were drying on the rack. I am not sure that was quite what they had in mind when they prescribed an apple a day.