The morning sunrise. Autumn and winter provide us with the best sunrises in my humble opinion – it’s either wet, cold or both in the mornings. So whilst you’re pulling on your wellies and wrapping up in plenty of layers, wishing you were still in bed, it will be worth the effort as you watch that beautiful, burnt orange sun come up over the horizon. There’s a real peace and tranquility to being outside when this happens, so if you’ve not been outside to watch the sun rise, wrap up warm and find a place to watch the sky burst into beautiful colour – you won’t regret it.
T’is the season for cake, right? That’s a rhetorical question, we all know cake is a ALWAYS great idea. I love cooking, but I’m a bit more nervous of baking, due to actually having to follow a recipe, rather than making it up as I go along. I had a hankering for a nice slice of fruit cake, nothing too dense, but a nice sponge with some juicy pieces of fruit in. I looked and looked but couldn’t find a recipe, so I made one up which turned out pretty well! You can find the recipe here and feel free to make some changes, so it can be exactly what you fancy.
Spending time with our four-legged pooch. Whilst I’m spending time at home and interviewing for a new job, I’m lucky enough to be able to enjoy spending time at home and that means spending oodles of time with this babe. Bella truly is the sweetest girl and everyone who spends any amount of time with her, always tells us how sweet she is. I bet she wishes I just bugger off and let her get some sleep, instead of cuddling her all the time, but sorry baby girl, you’re too adorable!
Foraging! Now look at this little beauties – these are ripe for the picking, literally.
We’ve had the first frost, so there’s nothing stopping you picking your sloes now. What was stopping me was the fact that I only had a poo bag in my pocket, not particularly ideal to use when picking sloes. I will, I definitely will, be popping out to pick these sloes this weekend and will be following this recipe that I used last year to make some sloe gin. Although, I am thinking about mixing it up a bit and making sloe vodka – I reckon a drop of that in a glass of champagne would go down a treat, don’t you think?
This week I received a rather exciting parcel – the bare roots of a David Austin rose.
After the handsome one put up some fencing alongside of the house, it looked great, but we agreed that what would really finish it off, would be a climbing rose growing over the top of it. Naturally, when thinking of roses, I thought of David Austin for the quality and variety.
David Austin roses are located in Albrighton, which is just outside of Wolverhampton, where I was born – it’s somewhere that I’ve not actually visited even though my parents, who now live in Shropshire, are not that far away. I scoured their website for the rose I wanted – I knew I wanted to be highly scented as we will walk past it everyday, a light colour, perhaps an off-white or a cream and that it needs to cover the fence fully. We finally agreed on Claire Austin, which is a stunning rose that David Austin named after his daughter.
The David Austin website is fabulous and gives you all the information you need to plant your bare roots, as I had no idea what I was doing! So now that it’s all planted, we just need to wait until next year until it starts blooming and I for one, cannot wait!
Have a great weekend 🙂
A x
Abi in the Garden 