My Garden Harvest, September 2015.

I've had a few little bits of harvest from my garden this month, 

Mostly little handfuls of raspberries and a few spring onions,

The last of the broad beans, the first of my tomatoes.  The tomatoes aren't even nice though, they taste really bland.  Bad summer for tomatoes I think.  The apple came from next doors' apple tree, that hangs over into my garden!

I've had loads of leaves from my rainbow chard and spinach beet.

And lots of yummy raspberries!

Have you eaten something you've grown yourself this month?

Linking up with Harvest Mondays.

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Vegan Junk Food, Aldi Belmont Dark Chocolate Digestive Biscuits.

I was super excited to find out that Aldi's own brand dark chocolate digestive biscuits are suitable for vegans!  I've really missed chocolate digestives! 

These digestives are a little smaller than some others, and a little crunchier.  They're definitely a yummy, chocolatey, vegan treat! 

Here's the ingredients, there's also a 'suitable for vegetarians' label on the front of the packet.  

You can see what other vegan treats I've discovered here.

(This product is vegan as far as I can tell - items have suitable for vegetarians labelling, no dairy/eggs in the allergy section and the ingredients list contains no animal ingredients that I can see)

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Photo an Hour, September 2015.

Photo an hour always seems to fall on a day I'm working, and it was the same this weekend!

This month's #photoanhour day was 26th September.

Photo an hour is organised by Jane and Louisa, and I take part on Twitter.   

8am - I've dragged myself out of bed, a bit later than I should have, so I'm rushing around to get out of the house and into the bright, crisp day!

9am - This tree on my walk to work is semi-autumnal.

10am - My view for the morning, at work.

11am - This returned book had eyelashes drawn on every face (human or bear) on every page.  I spent a long time rubbing them out!

12pm - Still at work.

1pm - It's been super busy today, especially because I work in a single staff branch on a Saturday, so there's just me!  I usually fill 1 trolley on a Saturday, there's 3 today!  And that's not to mention all the computer users who needed help.  There were still customers in 10 minutes after closing time.

2pm - I missed my bus home, so I bought some chips to eat in the sunshine while I waited for the next one.  

3pm - I finally got home and rested my weary feet.  I couldn't resist the charity shop on my walk home though, and bought this bowl for 50p.

4pm - Watching Storage Hunters with the boy before he went off to work.

5pm - Napping.

6pm - Joe's finished painting the bedroom, I'm so happy!  I'm happy because I managed to persuade him to paint a wall pink, and because now the painting is finished we're close to being able to get carpets!

7pm - Time for Doctor Who.  I don't like this new storyline!

8pm - Moon!

9pm - I watched 10 Things I Hate about You.  When I was in secondary school and 6th form college, I would come home every afternoon and watch my 10 Things DVD before having my tea.  Seriously, every night.  Sometimes I'd watch it again after tea too.  I recorded this off the TV, it was shown in the afternoon so they've edited all the swearing out.  Which I don't like, but I know all the words anyway so I can fill them in!

10pm - Book and bed.  I don't like this book, I'm just skim reading it so I know how it ends.

Did you take part in #photoanhour this month?

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Garden, September 2015.

Suddenly it's autumn!

I've been planting lots of bulbs this month, in big pots and in any spaces I can find in the garden too.

My garden chum this month was this big ol' spider!

Quite often I'm kept company by one or two squirrels, who race along the fence and jump into the trees from the shed roof.  It makes quite a noise!  This one is Pirate Pete, the one eyed squirrel!

 

The lilac tree we cut down last month has made lots of new sprouts, I'm so glad it's growing back!

Most excitingly, we got raised beds for the front garden!  Last month I was talking about digging bigger beds in the front garden, but I read a book about front garden growing and decided raised beds would be quicker and a lot less digging.  

I've filled one up so far, using the lasagna method (lots of layers!), and planted onion sets, garlic, rainbow chard and perpetual spinach seeds, leek seeds and some pansies from a bargain 20p pack of almost dead plug plants from Wilkos.  

As well as being excited about having some extra growing space, with nicer soil, spending all weekend in the front garden doing something unusual means I've spoken to loads of neighbours I haven't met before.  Lovely!

I had some onion sets left over, so I popped them in the garden bed, in the space where the broad beans were.  I don't hold out much hope for these ones, the soil isn't great in this bed.  I'm planning to harvest some of these onions early, and to eat the leaves, so maybe I'll get something out of them. 

 

This is a very confused strawberry!

There are still some pretty, colourful flowers!

This is the garden bed at the side of the house.  In the foreground you can see my courgette plant (it's grown lots of courgettes, sadly slugs keep getting to them before I do), and my autumn raspberries, in the background are lots of lovely herbs. 

Here's the garden in all it's glory!

What's happening in your gardens this month?

I post garden-y updates on my facebook and twitter too!

Birmingham Owl Trail, The Big Hoot.

We went to Birmingham last week, not realising that the city has been taken over by owls!

We didn't have an owl trail map, so we didn't get to see them all.

Here are my favourites,

This was THE BEST OWL MADE FROM MOSAICS OF RETRO CROCKERY!!!!!!

You can never have too many owls, I say!

Have you seen the Birmingham owls?

Charity Shopping, Birthday Charity Shop Haul.

It was my birthday earlier in the month, and I went charity shopping  on my birthday, to a market the day after, charity shopping later in the week and some of my presents came from the charity shop too!

I really came home with a haul, here's what I got,

Wicker Owl (his head comes off, so he's a basket-y sort of owl!).

2 for £1 table, local charity shop.

Glass plate.  I had to buy this, so I could have the owl off the 2 for £1 table!  I quite like it though, I will serve nuts from it in a retro fashion at Christmas.

2 for £1 table, local charity shop.

Snail and tortoise funny tiny creatures with holes in, maybe for tiny plants?  I have no idea what these were originally used for!

29p and 39p, local charity shop.

Hornsea Fauna deer vase.  Yes, I have another one of these, but I needed this one too! 

£3, stall on Birmingham Rag Market.

I never find nice t-shirts in charity shops, but this one is STRIPY! and like new, and from Marks and Spencers.

£1, local charity shop.

Wooden necklaces.  

99p for 2, local charity shop.

Retro Swedish kitchen canisters.  I'd looked at these myself in the charity shop, but my mum actually bought them for me for my birthday (without me knowing!).  They have 'JIE Sweden' imprinted on their bases, and I think they're mid-century.

Present, local charity shop.

Phew!

Have you bought something beautiful (or lots of beautiful somethings!) from the charity shop recently?

Linking up with Flaunt it Friday and Vintage Bliss Tuesdays.