Welcome Back

I know it seems that the only birdie pictures I ever post on here are Goldfinches, it's probably true but they're so small and perfect, and look at all those wonderful colours. Just beautiful.

Anyways, if you recall back in the summer we had a wonderful little Goldfinch family, Gary and his Mrs and then six or so weeks later a whole family, three babies I think it was. Well, they were regular visitors for about two months or so and then 'poof' – they disappeared. I just assumed they were off on their summer holidays to Africa on winter migration. But ah-ha the RSPB bird identifier came in handy again. Not all of them migrate, about a third of them stay here in the UK over winter, so of the 300,000 or so Goldfinches in the UK there's very likely to be around a 100,000 that stay put.

Well jolly good show, is all I can say. The piccie above was of just one of them, we had six on the feeders yesterday. Now all I need to find out is where they went for that two month period? The only thing I can think is that with all the autumn berries around they didn't need the seeds from the feeders?

My my what a big clove you have!

Ok, I admit. Right now this clove of garlic, well, it looks like any other clove of garlic. But, oh my goodness. This garlic isn't just any old garlic, this is Elephant Garlic. And by jove, it sure is elephant. I've never seen anything like it!

Here's a shot of it against a normal sized garlic clove.
Now can you see what I mean! It's huge! Technically it's more of an overgrown leek with garlic tendancies so I'm guessing it's going to be milder than your traditional stuff. But hey, what the heck! That's what having a vegetable garden is all about, trying your hand and stuff and seeing what you like best!

We bought ours from Morgan & Thompson

Last year we planted the garlic in March time and we've only just realised that really that was way too late. It should be planted now. Apparently garlic likes a bit of cold weather to start of with, so we'll be getting them in this weekend I reckon.

Of course, planting it so early means we really have to think about what is going where this year. It's good practice to rotate your crops so you're not planting the same thing in the same place year in year out. Our garden is so incy wincy teeny tiny I don't think we'll have much of a choice where to put things. We've learnt a huge amount this year, especially when it comes to giving things space, so we'll be sure to plan our garden much better this time around. As for where the garlic is going... well we'll see what takes our fancy at the weekend!