We were home again by 9.30 and after a coffee C went off to work for his Leiston customer, he came home at lunchtime with a bag full of Hollyhock seed heads. So they will be sprinkled around the flower border too. The Hollyhocks that I had all went rusty and I pulled them up, but I think someone said they could have been left and would have flowered OK.
A bit later the postman brought a small parcel of bulbs. I had sent for a few cheap plants from one of those catalogues that comes unasked for through the post. The Trailing Pansies came a week ago and some teeny weeny Polyanthus plug plants arrived yesterday. The pansies are also for containers on the ladder over winter and the Polyanthus will be to sell in spring. The crocus are called Cream Beauty and were on offer for £2.99 for 50 bulbs. This will be about the 10th time I've tried to grow crocuses here. Snowdrops and primroses are fine but crocus just vanish. Also in the parcel were 50 dwarf narcissus bulbs which were free with any order. I shall probably plant them in pots and also sell them later - that's the plan anyway.
While we were out this morning I wanted to nip into the nearby WHS for a copy of Home Farmer Magazine. When it first started I subscribed for a few years but now I only buy a copy if we are somewhere with a WHS - nowhere else seems to stock it. I had looked at the contents list on their website and was interested in reading the articles on Dig for Victory and WW2 cookery. I also enjoyed the diary by Dot Tyne who is a VERY self sufficient smallholder now living in Wales. She seems to have more hours in her day than I do!
You know I've been huffing and puffing about everyone else having lots of blackberries whereas here we have none, despite having brambles all round the hedges, well we hope to have solved this annual problem by digging up some runners from a friends cultivated blackberry patch. That was a couple of months ago and they are coming along nicely so that C has put up stakes and wires to train them on.
Next year we WILL have blackberries right here on the smallholding - fingers crossed.
Welcome to several new followers on Google friends, Debra, Jibberjabber and Lynda and Tricia, Rona,Stephanie and Debijanebell, Belinda, Shellw and Leisha who have clicked the Bloglovin'button.
I hope you all enjoy reading about our quiet life here in the beautiful Suffolk countryside.
Back Tomorrow
Sue
