The first day of Autumn

Today is the first day of autumn but the weather this weekend has been warm and sunny, it seems we are finally getting a bit of summer weather. Yesterday we were out most of the day and spent quite a lot of time indoors but today we had nothing planned and I made sure I spent most of the time in the garden making the most of the unexpected sunshine.

My husband gave the chicken coop a thorough clean and tidy. He disinfected it and stood all the pieces in the sun to dry. The chickens were definitely a bit put out by the whole process.

Just a few things left in the garden to harvest, a few autumn raspberries

and some tomatoes. Everything is packed close together in our little garden and the tomatoes have grown into the grape vine. Despite all the wet weather, the grapes seem to be really small this year.

I picked most of the Bramley apples today. I needed the ladder to pick some of the higher ones and decided to prune the tree at the same time. I tried to make it into a nice symmetrical shape but it still is a very lopsided tree.

I think I might have been a bit late picking as the blackbirds had already sampled some apples. I sorted them into apples for storage and apples to cook straight away.

Unfortunately rather a lot fell into the cook straight away category. I brought my preserving pan into the garden and sat in the sun peeling and chopping a pan full of apple. We now have lots of stewed apple to eat this week and in the kitchen at the moment, three jars of apple are back in the pan and coming up to temperature.

So the first day of autumn was very pleasant and productive, though I wouldn't mind a break from peeling apples!