Our garden has improved dramatically over the few years we have been here and we are enjoying every minute of it. This year the colours of the flowers have been outstanding along with the pollinators who seem to
appreciate our efforts here. The bulbs and perrenials will continue to grow and expand in the beds we have placed them in and each season should be better and more colourful than the last.
The shrubs and trees will take much longer to establish, some 5-10 years before they will get to any decent size but we are patient if nothing else and we shall continue to plant as we go along. Indeed, this winter we have new fruit bushes to plant in the fruit field, more trees to plant around the main field, and for the first time we aim to put a tree, a Horse Chestnut, in the 2nd field where, hopefully, it will get established and become a main feature of that field. And just think of the
fresh Chestnut's for Christmas, yummy. We shall also transplant a couple of the apple trees we brought with us as they suffered badly from to pony that smashed most of the orchard and they seem to be struggling. Decision made, we shall move them during the winter to just outside of the orchard and if they survive all well and good, if not, then nature can take its course. The tree in the photo below is one of those to be moved.
This does of course leave us with a new task of picking out three new trees to fill the gaps we have once we move them as the plum succumbed to 'Silver Leaf' after the pony snapped the branches during the winter months when stone fruit trees should not be pruned. We shall let you know what we pick out when we have decided ourselves. We have planted many more medicinal plants and herbs and hopefully will be using them for ourselves when they are big enough to harvest such as Echinacea Purpurea, which taken as a tincture will help support the immune system and strengthen it. This part of the gardens will take a while to do as we designate different parts of the gardens to growing these type of plants. 
Our patio area outside of the garden hut is also taking shape and is much more vibrant with all of the different flowers that you can see in the above photo. Our fruit minarettes are planted in this area and will remain fairly small and compact as they are on grafted stock to keep them that way. Two Cherry trees and two plum trees will provide some fruits as they get established and the blossom will also look great in the spring. The vegetable beds are all performing well with loraine's green fingers nurturing them as they grow. Not many dissapointments this year apart from those cold June winds that set back many plants and veggies, and they struggled to catch up if indeed they did.
Good crops of peas, brassicas, carrots, along with what appears to be excellent celeriac this year which we love. The corn looks a little unknown at the moment, could be a good crop, we shall find out when we pick it next month.
A selection of veg looking very healthy and vibrant
Tomatoes in the polytunnel have been excellent with high cropping, and we did try out some different ones to our usual Italian Plum tomatoes which have come out good. Cucumbers have been good with nice fruits, deep green skins and great flavour and they are still going strong now. We tried melons this year in the poly tunnel and have some success with about three fruits on each of the two plants we grew. The taste is wonderful along with that magical melon smell you get from home grown fruits which you can see below. The Aubergines have been somewhat prolific with long slender fruits, glossy skins and firm flesh, and these have gone on to make many pots of ratatouille which are frozen ready for those winter months. We also processed some of our apples and made apple sauce and sliced apples which we froze to use in pies, crumbles, etc. Many more apples to come in October, the usual apple cropping month.
Our melons in the poly tunnel, excellent flavour and the smell...... oh, the smell is wonderful
We had a Sparrow Hawk land on the garden ramp and it stayed there for half an hour before flying off
We also discovered a grass snake skin shedding in one of our compost bins which is quite big at about 20-24 inches long
Signing off for now, will post again real soon.
UPDATE: We have now ordered the trees to replace those lost to the pony attack. We went for another plum tree, called Jubilee Plum, a tasty dessert plum and self fertile. A Damson tree called Merryweather, tasty and hardy. And another apple tree called Sunset Apple, superb flavour and superb colouring have ensured popularity for nearly 100 years, and a superb richly aromatic flavour that is almost beyond compare, good storer too.
Along with those we have another type of Rhubarb coming called 'Polish Raspberry', a red and very tasty rhubarb.