wood and harvest

merry meet )o(
here you can see a small amount of the first of our winter wood being split and stacked in our lean-to; in fact swampy is up at the woods with our neighbour as i type, chopping more wood. this week we have had the rayburn going for most of the day and i think it will only be a matter of time before it is going 24 hours a day with the arrival of colder weather.
our neighbour has lived within a six mile radius of our home for all of his 70+ years and we often get our general weather forecast from him as he more accurate for our little eco~system in our valley than the forecasters on the tv, he is forecasting a bad winter, and i agree with him,looking at the amount of berries on the trees and bushes it certainly looks like mother nature is making sure all our small creatures are going to be well stocked for the winter.

i thought you might like to see some of my small harvest, chillies of an unknown variety from my dad's garden. he gave the plant to me when it was about two inches high and despite the dreadful summer weather has flourished and produced some nice fruit~they are being dried above the rayburn for use over winter.
the apples are again an unknown variety from an old tree in our front garden, this year was the first time we had a decent crop~possibly due to a very vigorous pruning last year! they will be made into a crumble tomorrow for swampy. we have harvested all of the tomatos now and looking at my butternut squash i am not convinced that they will amount to anything which is a shame. strangely the two pots of blck eye susans i planted out late are suddenly flowering really well and are a joy to see on my kitchen windowsill when everything else is starting to look a bit dull.