Its all about seeds..

I couldn't do anything in my garden without seeds. They are the most important thing here. The arrival of this weeks seedypenpal email ( more later) , once more brought them to the front of my brain. I have planned to try and collect as many seeds as I can from my flower patch this year, and so today I started that job. 

There are not too many flowers ready yet, but there are a couple so I set about collecting what I could. The candytuft was an early flower and are the first to have finished. 

I had saved some brown paper from an amazon parcel, to make some paper bags to catch the seeds in, so I picked a loads of seed heads and made a bundle with string.

This was put in a marked bag and set aside . The Calendula has also started making seeds so they were the next bunch. 

Finally the coriander.

The bags are now hanging in my nice warm and dry summer house, to finish drying and drop the seeds for me to use next year. 

Next job was to deal with the Mange Tout I murdered about a month ago. I shall be very careful in future how much feed I use on a plant. It seems odd that something that was supposed to make it grow, has done this to the plant. 

It tried valiantly to regrow but couldnt get going again. So it finally has ended up on the compost heap. 

There were a few edible pods so we are having them for tea tonight.

Once again the frame was naked. 

And I have planted a few late peas to fill it again. 

I have also planted a few more lettuce to finish off the year. 

Its time to make another visit to my squash disaster area. You should by now, be very familiar with the tale of the climbing Vegetable Spaghetti!! well it gets better. I am occasionally a complete plonker, and this is one of those occasions. After 4 days away, we came home and I took a stroll to find out how things were going. The squash suspended in mid air, had grown again.. and now it was quite obvious, that they are actually , PUMPKINS!! I couldnt have picked anything bigger to hang 5 feet in the air. And of course, they are nowhere near full size. The poor bamboo canes are groaning. I don't know how long its going to stay upright. There is now also a third that needed to be helped, so I have three bits of net now, acting as Pumpkin Hammocks. 

The flower patch needed a bit of a clear up. The candytuft and corncockle were in a real state and after a bit of thought I decided to pull a lot of it up to make space for a September planting.

And here are a few new arrivals in the garden

There are still plenty of bees in the garden. The cosmos were covered today, and I think this one had nodded off, as he was on this flower for a good half hour. 

I mentioned SeedyPenpals at the start. This round, I am sending seeds to Linda and receiving them from Jenny. I have picked out what am going to send but wont put it on here yet so I dont spoil the surprise. 

If anyone wants to find out more or join the scheme you can sign up here 

Out and about - Jim and I went to our first classic car weekend. It was the TR Register International Weekend at the Three Counties Showground in Malvern Wells, Worcestershire. 

This meant that Gibson was also having a weekend mini break. He went to stay with his Mum, Rosie and her owners  Paul and Ciara .

He had a wonderful time. Goodness knows what he was doing but he is pretty tired and is currently snoring his head off in his bed. 

We stayed at a wonderful hotel called the Cottage in the Wood and this is the view from our very pretty room

Spectacular. 

The show was very interesting sadly, Freda wasn't with us as she is still in the garage but, it looks like we shall have her back later this week. We collected some bits  at the show for her. 

If you were wondering what a show looked like, here you are

And finally some beautiful cut flowers to finish. 

Have a great week