Wineries and group gardening Thursday 8- Sunday 11 Dec 2022

Despite it not being a long weekend, it still took us about 3 hours to get to Inglewood on Thursday night.  

Justin thought that he would work from "home" on the Friday - which he did

I did a few loads of washing - sunny and windy, good drying day.  Was tricky stringing up the washing line - as the almond trees had lots of new sucker growth - so I couldn't easily get to the stronger bigger branches to tie the line to.  Ended up using the ladder to prop it up, so that the sheets wouldn't touch the ground.

And then I went and had a morning coffee and chat with Terry

Dropped in on Pauline afterwards and gave her back the last Inglewood Town Hall folder, and she gave me back my notebooks which had got mixed up in a box that I'd given her previously.

By this stage it was well after 12,- so back to the house to have lunch with Justin

After this, I emptied out another few litres of water from the cellar (from the low point in the corner)

And then we packed up the plastic tubing from the pump, as it was still there in the scullery.  It was so long and unwieldy, that it took 2 of us to do it (still had water in it )

 Pauline dropped over later - and she showed us around the 3 shops on the corner - they all need a lot of work.  Was very interesting seeing them inside though.

Then back to the garden....

Val and George were coming later, and we booked the pub for dinner

However, Val had a challenging day at work, and wasn't able to leave early, so we ended up cancelling the pub, as we thought they might not make it before the kitchen closed.

Therefore, Justin and I went to the IGA for supplies - hot roast chicken, and some salads - easy

Saw Bernie and Marcus on the walk there, and then kept bumping into them in the supermarket aisles.  

Given that it was a lovely evening, and Val and George weren't arriving til after 8 - we invited them back for a quick drink 

Went up on the veranda and had a nice time 

And we put the hot chicken in the oven on a very low heat.

They stayed about 1/2 hour, Justin and I pottered around after this, set the table etc 

Val and George  arrived just after 8, got them sorted, and then had dinner in the dining room - with guitars out afterwards

 

Saturday, and I donned my overalls and started weeding - first outside the orchard.  I'd unfortunately missed my window of opportunity with easily pulling out the weeds.  The ground had dried/hardened over the last week or so, making weed extraction much more time consuming and difficult.

Before

After

Before

After

While working around here, I also noticed a cut off star picket slightly poking out of the ground - will be very difficult to remove.  I'm surprised that we haven't noticed it before

Next stop was the orchard - I'd neglected here, as I'd wanted to get the front /more public areas done first 

Before

After

Given the very drastic trimming of the fig, I ended up with lots of chopped off green figs - looked up a recipe for using them. And decided on preserved green figs in sugar syrup.

And then the berry corner

Once all trimmed back and weeded, I found an almost ripe berry and ate it - better me than the birds

 Meanwhile, Val went and bought supplies for lunch - cheeses, smallgoods etc - so we had a lovely deli lunch in the rotunda.

After lunch - Val, George and I (Justin stayed behind to do some work) went to WaterWheel  in Bridgewater -and supported the local economy (bought wine), and then to Kingower - Blanche Barkly - where we bought some more....

Given that we didn't go to the Pub on Friday, we went tonight - was surprisingly not very busy, and we got our meals nice and quickly. Justin had ordered a pizza, but Steve came and told him it would be much later than our dinners (backlog on pizza orders), so he swapped his order to prawns and calamari like Val and me (George had a parma)

Then back to ours - and upstairs to the bee room.  I had wanted to have an outdoor movie event - but the mosquitoes are just too ferocious, so we stayed inside.

Played a bit of music, and then watched Kinky Boots - which was a bit predictable, but still a lot of fun 

 

Sunday, and a bacon, egg and prosecco (to cut through the fat) brunch in the rotunda

And then more weeding/gardening - with everyone helping

Before

Close up - before

After

So, it's no surprise that we filled up Gordon's trailer again...

Meanwhile, the others were out the front - George with a spade and broom - tidying up the edges, Justin trimming, and Val picking up

A lot of lavender was trimmed - so I cut off and kept the flowers - plan to make lavender and lemon cordial

By this stage it was spitting a bit, and then started raining more - so that was it for the gardening 

The rain brought out  an extraordinary amount of snails - pity they're not edible!

I should also add that Justin took some "mood" photos - which were quite atmospheric