Right now..

I am moving swiftly from sewing machine

to the ironing board

while drinking coffee,

listening to my new favourite music

and waiting for an opportunity to photograph my latest quilt because I'd like to enter it into the Bloggers Quilt Festival.

October gardening...

Still full of inspiration from the cutting garden course, I got planning for my spring bulbs a few weeks ago.

This weekend was perfect for pottering and planting in the garden. It felt so good to be out there in a fleece and wellies. I ordered bulbs from here, here and here. Tulips, muscari, ranunculus for the garden and amaryllis and paperwhites for indoors.

They don't look very attractive at the moment on the windowsill, but hopefully will start producing some green leaves soon. My amaryllis last year were a great success and this year I went for something a little less obvious -- Lima.

Photo credit Parkers Wholesale

Helping me out in the garden are my three pretty new hens. I bought them last weekend and for the last couple of days they have been slowly exploring the garden. 

I lost my two new girls to a fox in the summer, which was a bit traumatic and I vowed not to get another white chicken for gory reasons that I won't elaborate on here. However, I was convinced otherwise by the very knowledgable chicken man at Thornes that I would love having a bowl of pinky white eggs laid by the Coral hen on the left there, who I have named Daphne. When they all start to lay, I should have eggs of different colours from each of them. Things like that make me very happy indeed!

Anyway, back to the bulb planting.  Protective measures have been implemented to stop all my promise of a colourful spring being ruined. Again, not particularly attractive...

... but necessary because if it's not squirrels stashing acorns, it's the ever curious new girls on the block.

Still a couple of hundred bulbs still to plant in my raised beds that will purely be for cutting, along with the seedlings I have got from the course. Just a bit of leaf raking and a bonfire or two to put the garden to bed for the winter and I'm done for the year I reckon. 

Handing over...

I am ready. I am finished. It is all on this memory stick. I am delivering it tomorrow morning. I can't wait.

Eleven chapters. Four images. A resource list. A marketing form. The best and worst bits of my life.

I am travelling by train because there is champagne to follow.

Who knows? I may find time to blog again. I have a pile (actually, make that a mountain) of WIP's to finish...

Photo Scavenger Hunt 2011 - September

:: back to school ::
No2's tie, found again after a summer spent languishing at the bottom of his bag.

:: the football season ::
goalposts put up again in the park where I walk with Pippin 

:: what's in your bag? ::
not very much, although I have taken to having a bag-within-a-bag for all those annoying small items that clog up the bottom of my handbag. 

:: relaxation ::
this could have been a number of things, but I decided on walking with Pippin as I find it really clears my head.

:: Harvest ::
my own, from my tomato plants. I've been making Jamie Oliver's tomato soup, it's delish.

:: a pile of things ::
offcuts from my quilting project

:: your desk/workspace ::
Hmmm, may need a bit of a sort out ... lots of things on the go here ...

:: a public telephone box ::
quite difficult to find an old-fashioned red one around now

:: something taller than you ::
the oak trees along the footpath I walk with Pippin

:: apples ::
in the orchard at Upton House

:: a road sign ::
in the New Forest

:: a view from above ::
from the terrace at Cliveden, looking down towards the Thames