The end of an era?

 I've mentioned on here before my involvement with the Campaign for Real Ale and specifically with the Great British Beer Festival. My Dad was a CAMRA member from the early days of the Campaign, and got involved with our then local branch's beer festival "Pigs Ear" pretty much as soon as it started running. Inevitably that lead to me getting involved as well - initially working on the charity stall in the foyer, then when we relocated to a new venue without the space to have the stall, I moved on to initially working in the kitchen and then once I was actually old enough to be working in the main hall, the glasses stand. A few years on saw me shifting to the admin side - looking after press & PR, and assisting with the finances during the festival itself. It was at Pigs that I met MrEH, and there again that, a few years later, we agreed to go on our first date. Yep - it has a lot to answer for! 

A dramatic sky lighting up Olympia’s roof…

At the time we started going out MrEH was already involved with the Great British Beer Festival, having done the Bar Manager's Training Course there, and then become a Deputy Manager on one of the bars. I'd never particularly felt any urge to go and volunteer there, but at his encouragement reluctantly agreed to go along. First reactions weren't great, but at the point where he realised I was about to pack it in and head home, he suggested that there would be a role for me "behind the scenes" on their bar - so on the basis that I didn't have to serve the public, I agreed to give it another try, and sure enough, I found that the atmosphere of working with a good team of people was thoroughly enjoyable. Gradually I started adding to my knowledge, being taught the cellaring process and learning to take care of the beer that would subsequently be served to the customers (although almost never by me!), and when original Bar Manager Dave decided to move on to a new role a couple of years later leaving the bar in the hands of MrEH and his co-manager Bobbie, she asked me to step up to the role of Deputy Manager, and I agreed. The following year saw MrEH and Bobbie each taking on a bar of their own, and I became senior Deputy on MrEH's team, where I've been since. (Until this year, but more of that shortly!) 

An early team shot…

The team is the best aspect of the festival by miles - a group of people who, over the years, have become really close friends. Each year we get together for that week - and it's as though we've never been apart. It doesn't matter if we've not seen one another in the interim (although many of us do) for that period of time, it's working alongside some of your very best mates. 

2025 team - unexpectedly “Robyn’s Bar!”

In 2018 we were approached by a member of the Working Party - the committee who organise the festival from the ground up each year - and asked whether we would consider taking on responsibility for the ordering of the British Beer. To everyone's surprise, after a bit of thought we said yes, taking on the role from our predecessors ahead of the 2019 event. It is a massive amount of work, taking up a good amount of our time from November each year through to the end of August following the festival, but it's also been ludicrously rewarding curating a list of beers that we feel the public will enjoy.  We’ve found beers and breweries we’ve never heard of before, given small breweries an opportunity to see their beers showcased at the National flagship festival, and increased the range of styles to include far more dark beer options than there were before. Almost across the board, our selections have been applauded, which is a great reward for the hard work as it’s always good knowing you’ve got things right! 

Times have been getting increasingly harder in the world of festivals though, and none less than when you’re trying to put on a national festival that is primarily intended to appeal to the general public rather than mainly CAMRA members. Covid hit everyone hard, but we lost two years of festivals and a huge amount of momentum - plus the sea-change in people’s working patterns hit us hard - we used to do well from people heading to the festival after work, of taking an afternoon off to come along with colleagues. Now people work from home more and those outings are less prevalent - meaning that we were finding footfall decreasing and the venue emptying out from 8pm on. Then came a forced move of venues from Olympia in London (affected by building works that meant trying to hold the event there was not practical) - another year missed as by the time it became apparent that Olympia wasn’t going to work there was sufficient time to re-plan for elsewhere for 2024. 

Beer mat art for a social media post…

Now it’s become apparent that this year’s Festival at the NEC may well be the end of the road for The GBBF - although the festival itself received good comments about the beer and even some aspects of the venue, the attendance simply wasn’t what we needed, and it proved impossible to even break even, never mind making any sort of profit. From my perspective it was an unexpectedly hectic one - with MrEH being taken ill a couple of days before we were due to travel to Birmingham that left me (because if course he insisted I still needed to go!) not only looking after the Beer Order side of things on my own (on site we have responsibility for the two wet stock teams looking after logistics - getting the beer to where it needs to be within the venue, and dealing with collecting the empty casks and kegs at the end - and Stock Control - monitoring the sales on each bar and helping manage stock levels on the brewery bars, specifically) but also stepping up as Manager of our bar too. A tall order, and one that saw me spending the first few days running around like a mad thing trying to keep ALL the plates spinning! Thankfully MrEH was well enough by the Tuesday that he was able to join me and take over the beer order side of things, leaving me to complete my first festival as a Bar Manager with at least a little less stress. As always the team had my back throughout - they’re such a good bunch. Same with the wet stock teams - quite honestly they don’t really need me getting under their feet anyway! 

Wet stock teams! 

So what happens from here then? We don’t officially know yet - but we’ve been told that there will be no festival under the GBBF Brand in 2026. Realistically, while there may be some form of national festival again at some stage in the future it’s unlikely to be in the same mould, and so chances are that leaves us without a role going forwards anyway. Whatever happens now though being involved with it has been an incredible experience, we’ve met some wonderful people, worked in some iconic places and had huge amounts of fun with it - but I’d be lying if I didn’t say that the thought of a little more free time to explore other options in life isn’t quite appealing. Even things as simple as being able to do the whole of the Royal International Air Tattoo in July without feeling guilty for leaving all the work with MrEH will be quite a change! 

For now at least, au revoir GBBF - it’s been a blast! 

Robyn

September in the Garden

 Well here we are yet again, approaching the end of another growing season, and yet right now, we're still harvesting. I'll probably use next month's post to review how things have gone for the year, and to note some things that we've already discussed that we'll do differently next year, as for now it seems right to focus on the current season.

The weather this month has been a mixed bag - between some gloriously sunny days and still quite a lack of rain a lot of the time, we've also seen winds strong enough to demolish the tall runner bean wigwam built around our lovely metal obelisk, and rain sufficient to pretty much refill the completely empty water butt. That's been helped by the new log store roof and guttering completely filling the large blue trug that it feels into a couple of times at the start of the month as well. We're also seen the first couple of frosts towards the end of the month - so far not reaching the ground, but very much evident on the shed and office roof. 

We're still drowning in beans - and in spite of the collapse of the wigwam the ones we planted elsewhere have not only continued producing, but are even still flowering! They look very pretty clambering over the  arches, too. 

Before the wigwam collapsed we did spot some small insects crawling about on the beans - it appeared that we'd had several batches hatch, and a bit of research suggested that they were probably shield bugs of a non-native variety, and that they might well be interested in noshing their way through our crop, so those were dealt with in the best way we could muster - by cutting off the affected areas from the plants and dumping the lot into the garden waste bin! 

The Nasturtiums finally started growing properly - although sadly so late that we suspect they will be frosted and die before we get the benefit of many flowers and the resulting seeds (which are a great ingredient for piccalilli!). If you look in the very top of that photo you can also see that next door have entirely put us to shame with their sunflowers as well - they've had some giants this year, and the battle lines are very much drawn now, for next year we WILL be upping our game! 

The last of the tatties have now been dug and again we've been impressed with the size of some of them - of they weren't quite badly affected by scab they'd be great for jacket potatoes! Allowing that they were grown in a narrow strip of freshly dug soil they've done amazingly though - and of course in the usual way they've also done a huge amount to improve and break up that soil as well - we're intending to re-use that area for cabbages before the year is out. 

All in all, not a bad month. Now if we could just get a last couple of weeks of warmer temperatures and just a little more sunshine, we might even persuade the final courgettes to give us a last-minute glut! 

Robyn

A job well done...

So I mentioned in my August in the Garden post about the work we’d been planning on the old log store area. When we moved in it was part full of logs - but a lot of them were rotten due to the fact that water was easily getting in and soaking them - and we rapidly realised that if we wanted to use them, we’d do best to move them into the shed, where we've been keeping our supplies ever since. When we looked at it properly a lot of the issues were fairly apparent - the roof was made from rough chipboard which had long since pretty much rotted. The base was made from the same material - giving the dual issue of a roof that was allowing water to leak straight in, and a solid base refusing the let it drain out again! 

The "assorted rubbish" store - as it became for a while...

Since moving in we’ve been thinking through how best to deal with it, and also starting to salvage materials for the task where we’ve been able to. A storage cupboard being cleared out at my place of work yielded a number of lengths of sturdy timber, and some clearance out the back of the garden revealed a pair of wooden doors that looked suspiciously as though they may even at some stage in the past have been fitted to the log store! We had no plans to replace them, but we did realise quite fast that they might make a nice robust base for a new roof. We already had various wood screws kicking around - some purchased for previous projects, and others salvaged from dismantling things previously. The final part of the jigsaw was realising quite how well two leftover slatted timber decking tiles from when we did up the balcony at the old flat fitted to form a new base - there was going to be a gap between them but we figured we could easily enough work out a way of filling that. There were always going to be some things we’d need to buy - some form of roof covering and the means of fitting it, notably. The timber would always need treating too, but as you’ll recall from recent posts, we’ve been working on repainting the shed and office anyway, so the various bits for the log store were all given a few coats of the same “Cornflower” colour being liberally applied elsewhere. 

"Cornflower" blue paint - and a completed structure

The one thing we had no solid idea how to go about was dealing with the roofing - and we kicked various ideas around before eventually settling on what seemed like the simplest solution, roofing felt. The complication here was that neither of us had so much of an ounce of experience about dealing with it - however, we adopted a somewhat cavalier approach of "well, how hard can it be?" - perhaps not the best approach, however, in the absence of wanting to take the "pay the nice man" approach, it was the only option we had. 

MrEH fixing the roofing felt in place

The first step involved lots of measuring, and a fair bit of painting. We wanted to slightly enlarge the roof area, to create more of an overhang and so more cover from rain actually blowing in, and that also required an additional bit of timber being fixed to one side, too. To avoid the risk of it rotting from the base, that needed fixing in a way that left it sitting above the ground. Most of the existing frame was in pretty good condition, and the side panels too - but removal of the old chipboard roof really showed how much damage had been caused to the cladding on the side of the office by getting drenched every time it rained - we weren't going to be able to replace that cladding, so took the only option available to us - with it being (thankfully) bone dry currently, we slapped on as much wood preservative as we could persuade the remaining wood to absorb, and hoped for the best. A couple of additional supports for the new roof were required - the old ones having totally rotted away - and those were swiftly fashioned from some of the free-to-us timber. 

Some spending was inevitable, and after a bit of shopping around for best prices, off we trotted to a local DIY superstore, emerging a little later - and £90 lighter - with a roll of roofing felt, the correct nails to fix it in place, a roll of flashing tape, some fixing plates for the side panel, some mastic and a guttering set specifically designed for smaller roof areas - we'd intended looking at what guttering options might be open to us but weren't expecting to actually buy anything in that line, however a special offer of £25 for a set that would do everything we wanted seemed a good deal. We also opted to pay a little more for a roll of felt with a longer expected lifespan - 15 years rather than just 5 for the most basic option.

Beautiful old tools inherited from my Dad...

It then just (ha!) remained to put everything together. Handily, and in part thanks to my lovely Dad, who was never knowingly under-tooled, we had all the various bits of kit that we needed for the task - and I thoroughly enjoyed using some of his old equipment too - including a VERY old yardstick which I suspect originally belonged to one or other grandfather! The work bench in the photos was also his - I can remember this being in regular use during my childhood, along with the electric drill we also used (and which you can see in the picture) which is still going strong! We were glad of having replaced our old jigsaw recently too - this made the cutting down of the various items far quicker, particularly as one of the doors-turned-roof-panels had to be cut. While MrEH worked at getting various parts in place, drilled and fixed, I turned my hand to making a further cut to the bit of old door that was being discarded, and with the addition of get another free-to-us piece of timber drilled in place, that filled the gap in the base perfectly - once again fitting the brief of allowing airflow. With the structure finally complete, we faced our nemesis - the roof covering! As it happened, "how hard can it be" turned out to be "not very" - much to our surprise the felt was incredibly easy to work with, and beyond a few head-scratching moments over how exactly to fit the felt into and around the various corners, that was almost the easiest part of the task! the final steps were to add the flashing tape around the top (had we realised quite how much this would look like duct-tape we would have bought a different colour!) and then fix the guttering and downpipe in place. 

The finished project.

To say we're impressed with the result we've achieved would in honesty be an understatement. We're accustomed of thinking of ourselves as not really being people who are good at DIY, but we've surprised ourselves here. I'd be lying if I didn't say that at one stage we were indeed considering paying someone else to do it for us, but when we thought it through, it seemed to be a false economy - we wanted the ability to store more logs as that would mean bulk-buying = moneysaving. If we paid out more than we had to to sort the storage though, it was going to take a long while to recoup that spend. In the event, we've ended up with a solid and (hopefully!) watertight structure for well under £100 plus the cost of a couple of days of work. We're almost hoping for a bit of rain now so we can see if the guttering works OK - and if we need a bigger bucket! 

Robyn

August in the garden…

 Another month with a little more unintentional neglect than would have been ideal - with the Great British Beer Festival taking up the first 10 days of the month for us. Once again Mum stepped into the breach as hose-wielder, and as a result combined with some unseasonably heavy rain showers relatively little damage was done this time. 

The main harvest for most of the month has continued to be beans - both the runners and the yellow bush beans have cropped marvellously this year - after a slow start in the case of the runners - and most meals through the month seem to have come with some form of beany element, with the freezer being plentifully loaded with lots more to see us into the winter months too. That's one of the best things about having the ability to grow or forage stuff to feed ourselves - the knowledge that spring's effort and summer's bounty will be turned into delicious food to eat through the rest of the year - whether essentially "fresh" (frozen), or as chutneys, jams or whatever other form we're able to preserve things in.

Project patchwork shed continues - with the main focus this month being the area above the log store as once that was all done it would enable us to start work on the extended roof and side to the store - and that in turn would enable us to get the logs we bought in ready for the winter out of the shed, creating more room in there to actually get things stored away. Paper brick making has recommenced too now that the greenhouse is no longer full of seedlings - another example of work now meaning we're better set up for the winter months. There will be another blog post shortly about the log store, too… 

On the subject of seedlings though, some sowing is continuing - with troughs of salad and additional herbs being sown this month and already poking their heads up. I touched on my herbs last month - but truly, those are really one of my main joys from the garden this year, all the more so after the essentially complete lack of success with soft herbs last year. I have been regularly making small batches of pesto - albeit not a "classic" version as mine uses sunflower seeds and Padano cheese - and those too are stored away in the freezer ready to provide joyful little bursts of flavour in pasta dishes. I do still keep a keen eye out for herb plants for "rescue" as well - with the supermarkets and DIY centres garden clearance areas being good for those. Generally speaking there is little wrong with them that a re-pot and a proper watering can't fix!  The cabbages we sowed last month all got eaten - almost certainly by slugs and snails, so I am stealing a bit of greenhouse shelf space from the drying fire bricks to use for new sowings of those - I'm determined that home grown cabbages will be in our future! Hopefully being able to keep them off the ground will help ensure that they stay intact long enough to get to a size they can be planted out! 

We're now enjoying a decent supply of courgettes - albeit a lot of the plants are a long way behind where we might have expected. The chillies meanwhile are clearly loving life - the picture above shows the “Bishop’s Crown” variety with vast numbers of fruit swelling. Those peppers I photographed last month are still going well, too - we've got several at a size where we're just waiting for them to ripen, now!

We ate our first sweetcorn over the bank holiday weekend and it didn’t disappoint - we’d both almost forgotten the delicious sweetness of ears of corn picked and cooked within minutes! 

The tomatoes too are lagging behind and disappointingly don't seem to be fruiting as well as they might either - this could be related to the exceptionally hot temperatures we had earlier in the year which may have affected the flowering and subsequent fruit setting. That said, my little “Minibel” bush tomatoes are cropping prolifically- and it was one of those that gave us our first ripe toms, with plenty more still to ripen.

The other task that inevitably begins at this time of year is starting to make plans for next year's plot. We've decided that a shift of position for the "cucumber trellis" is a good idea, and following our successful growing of sweetcorn this year we've earmarked a suitable spot for that, too. The main bean obelisk may well move to the opposite end of the main bed - with the additional plants being grown up and over the arches/metal frames. I intend definitely getting some of the Tromboncino squashes that I know will climb over those too - I had planned that for this year but just ended up with different varieties.  We've been potting up the sturdiest strawberry runners as we have seem them - so should be able to increase our quantity of strawberry plants for next year while keeping our current mix of "Sonata", "Cambridge Favourite" and "Elsanta" - and we may try to fashion some sort of stand for those too, whether by buying or building is yet to be established! 

Robyn.

Frugal Friday…

Homemade Scotch Eggs! 

It’s getting tougher to be frugal isn’t it? While we are still doing many of the same things we did when tackling the original mortgage, it feels rather a lot tougher this time round, and particularly on the food front. Back in those days our monthly food budget was around £150 - and we used to save a reasonable chunk of that most months in order to enable big purchases like a whole lamb from time to time - now, £250 a month gets transferred to our groceries account and it’s frequently a struggle to stay within that! 

Of course, in reality, 10 years has passed since those £150 a month days, and while a lot has changed, a lot has also stayed the same in terms of our approach. We still mostly cook from scratch - although always with an eye out for a yellow stickered bargain that we can incorporate into our meals. We make most of our own bread and rolls for weekday lunches - although very much appreciate the odd artisan-type loaf as well, and of course if there are reduced price goodies in the bakery section that beat the price we could make bread for, then we are all over that! Areas where we are still very happy to spend a bit more are still much the same - eggs (always free range),  meat (chickens are always free range, and most of our other meat comes from the stall at our local farmers market, or at least the supermarkets “posh” ranges where we can be more confident of its welfare standards) and cheese - because life without decent cheese is barely life, surely?! We’re also not quite of the same mindset we were then - these days we are more inclined to go for slightly more luxury variations of things where there is a food or a flavour we particularly appreciate - I’ll pay a bit more for British tomatoes for example, or for a variety of apple that we really enjoy eating - we are probably far more inclined to buy based on “likes and wants” now rather than being quite so price-focused as we once were. That’s fine too - and while it does impact a little on our future plans, sometimes a good life now has to be prioritised over future planning. we definitely still aim to  make savings where we can though - and my recent discovery that air-fryer scotch eggs are an absolute winner means that this Scotch-egg fan can enjoy really good, tasty ones at a far lower cost than the better shop-bought options! 

Of course there are still areas where sometimes a saving comes along and surprises us - this year it was insurances. We always follow the golden rule of doing the comparisons for renewals roughly 23 days out from the renewal date, and never simply accepting an autorenewal. in spite of that the past few years have seen prices increasing, and the insurance claim I was forced to make when an idiot in a van rolled backwards in the region of 8' to smack into my vehicle on the way to work one day didn't help! Thankfully common sense eventually prevailed there, and that claim was changed to "No fault" on my part earlier this year after the idiot's insurance company finally paid for the damage. That combined with a general drop in pricing across the market to ensure that both MrEH and I saw a fall in our premiums this year. Breakdown insurance prices stayed much the same, and in fact I opted for an autorenewal there having looked at options elsewhere, and MrEH switched to the same company that I have been with. The home insurance surprised us both when the renewal quote came through with an immediate saving on last year's premium. As this was for cover we were happy with, and a quick look at the comparison site suggested we weren't going to make much - if any - saving by switching, we've left this one where it was too. 

As for the scotch eggs, if you want to have a go at making them, the recipe can be found by searching "Air-Fryer Scotch Eggs" on the good old BBC Good Food website. On this occasion I opted to use a budget supermarket's delicious chorizo style sausages, and some bacon that was bought yellow stickered a few weeks back, and popped in the freezer. The breadcrumbs are, as always the ends of loaves that have been blitzed up then frozen, herbs from the garden and the eggs were from one of those "15 mixed weight" boxes - often the most economical way of buying them. I reckon they cost me around £1.10 per Scotch egg, but it would probably be possible to cut that back a bit by using a more basic sausage and upping the seasoning a little. You could also omit the bacon, in reality, although it does add to the succulence and flavour. In any event they fed both of us for a couple of meals, and tasted delicious! On this occasion they were also cooked at a time when our electricity cost was super-low - thanks to our Octopus "Agile" tariff. As much as getting frugal is getting tougher - there are still ways of making a sneaky saving!

Robyn

July in the garden…

 July started HOT - just keeping up with keeping everything watered was a challenge! I got my second salvaged wine box planted up with herbs though - it’s in the background there planted with a golden marjoram, a variegated sage, a blue hyssop and an upright thyme - plus a sprinkling of chive seeds which may or may not germinate. Best thing was that the four herbs used there were all bought for a bargain reduced price from a garden centre we’d not visited before. The sage is struggling a bit but the rest look happy enough,

In that picture you can also see another little project I’ve had in mind for a while - namely re-using old peanut butter tins to plant herbs. 1 has a mint- just a classic garden mint - and 2 others have “rescued”  supermarket basil and coriander - each bought for pennies because they were apparently pretty much dead… 

The beginning of the month saw the runner beans really take off - and start flowering. We’re growing two varieties this year - Scarlet Emperor and Polestar. Strangely enough we had little success with the Polestar seed last year, this year they’ve done OK, particularly those we sowed direct into the ground. 

The biggest thing we’re noticing about the garden is the contrast between when we moved in and now - I mean obviously we use the garden very differently to how our sellers did - to them it was a place to sit in the summer I think, and not a huge amount more than that. The pictures above show one side after and before the veg bed was dug out though and give at least a taste of how the feel of it has changed. The other side has the arches now, we’ve let next door’s honeysuckle and winter Jasmine continue to romp over the fence, and of course both sides of the path now being planted up has given that a very different feel.

Harvesting has now started well and truly - we’ve been enjoying wonderfully crisp, fresh beans with most meals, and although we’ve only had a couple of courgettes so far, there are an awful lot of flowers and I suspect very shortly we might be over run with them! The cucumbers too are flowering really well - and we seem to be getting a decent sized cuke every few days. The tomatoes are still a bit behind where we’d really like, but there are fruit forming now on most of the plants, so hopefully not long now before I can take them off my weekly shopping list! 

One thing I am really pleased with this year is that I’ve managed to get a decent crop of Basil. Last year every time I showed a pot of it, the squirrels came along and dug it up - the best I managed all year was a few handfuls of leaves for throwing into pasta dishes. This year is a different story - I’ve been doing successional sowings and it’s doing really well, I’ve managed to make a couple of batches of pesto as well as doing plenty of cooking with what is definitely one of my favourite herbs! 

Finally - and a first for us - is successfully growing peppers.We did chillies last year, and have a few plants of those again this year too, but we’d always assumed that peppers would be a bit optimistic allowing that we have no indoor growing space. So far though they seem to be doing well - they’re in tall pots tucked in front of the compost bin to provide a bit of shelter, and we’ve got some decent sized fruit forming! Very exciting! 

Robyn 

June in the garden…

Finally a month that we weren’t away for a great chunk of, and a chance to really get stuck in to the garden! In spite of our “neglect” over the past few months though, it’s already doing well - with the notable of our first peas harvested…

As expected they are absolutely delicious- in fact early on we were  pretty much just eating them raw - thrown into salads, couscous etc. The later end of the crop have been lightly cooked. Perfect little flavour bombs - and definitely a crop we will grow again allowing for how relatively low effort they have been. In future years we’d probably sow successionally to keep them coming for longer, too. The final few pods that dried on the plants as they were missed on picking have been set aside to dry for saved seed.  The strawberries too were producing well right through the month - we don’t have many plants so we’re never going to be looking at suitable amounts for jam or similar, but we’ve been thoroughly enjoying a few each here and there, often just eaten freshly picked from the plants as a treat! Those too will be multiplying by themselves as we’ve caught some runners and potted them up which should double our plant numbers for next year. 

Once again our trusty bargain mini greenhouse is proving it’s worth - less so the cold frame purchased earlier this year from one of the discounter supermarkets - that has turned out to be flimsy and with a tendency to pull itself apart in all but the lightest winds - so we wouldn’t recommend. It has shown us the value of a cold frame though so it is safe to say we might look into a rather more sturdy one at some stage.  It did serve a purpose, and we might see if it can be put back together in a slightly more structurally stable way! 

As for the general look of the garden - the front is really starting to come together into the sort of look we were aiming for now - sort of cottage garden on a very small scale. 

The Nicotiana in the middle there is a complete win - it sprang up from nowhere in the veg patch in the spring, we weren’t sure what it was but as it looked interesting MrEH dug it up and popped it into a pot…a month or so later it burst into the most beautiful flowers, and as it had just the amount of height we wanted, off to the front garden it went! The rose at the back was one of those we bought from a clearance section (either a local garden centre or the big orange DIY place, can’t recall which) last year and it’s one of the best things we have out in as it just flowers constantly and beautifully. The bright pink Salvia was purchased from the lovely plant chap at the local Farmers Market - £4! What a bargain! 

The back too is starting to look good - we’re intending to train the squashes over the arches, and with the Campanula, lavender and Rose Campion flowering we’re quite the haven for the local pollinators now.  We’ve started keeping a list of the various more interesting insects we’re seeing in the garden too - with the highlight being a couple of visits from a Hummingbird Hawk Moth the other weekend - the first time either of us had seen one! 

Robyn