This week I have been mostly travelling and doing stuff, and helped to get national lottery funding for a new social enterprise for teenage ‘neets’. Neets are young people ‘not in education, employment or training.’ Shared Earth Learning forest school, (which is now officially a charitable community benefit society) is working with local groups to set up a permaculture space where young people can grow produce for market (eg salads, herbs etc), learning horticultural skills and building confidence, and developing local food supply chains. There’s a lot to do and I’m only involved in some of the planning – not the delivery – but it’s a big step forward to get the funding, and there’s lots of people involved with the drive and skill to make the project a success. Having said that, my first action will be to update the risk list and start worrying about potential problems!

But first, six things in the garden.

1. More nuts

The squirrels are busy harvesting hazelnuts from the hazel trees by the fence, and from the twisted hazel. They collect the nuts and bury them into the lawn and borders. Surely this explains why there are several hazel saplings around the garden. I guess this is a form of re-wilding, or perhaps it’s the squirrels doing a bit of tree planting for the benefit of future generations.

I do like hazel, its a fine looking tree, produces useful stems for basketry and hurdle-making, and it’s easily coppiced, so I’m quite relaxed about the garden getting a bit nuttier over the next few years, and having a few hazel stems growing in one or two corners. However, the middle of the lawn is not the right place for a nuttery, so this squirrel was shooed orf the lawn.

2. Arachnophobes look away now.

Spider warning!

Don’t say you weren’t warned.

When I opened the back door earlier this week, a spider had created a web in the doorway. It looked pretty groovy, once I’d got over the surprise of an eye-high spider web waiting to catch me out first thing in the morning.

It’s a seven legged spider, that probably has a few stories to tell.

My third thing garden thing this week is a wildlife mystery… It looks like a bee at the back and a fly at the front, but was the size of a moth (here it is on the bay tree). Any ideas what this rather fab looking creature might be?

My 4th thing isn’t in the garden, but from the garden. Here’s a bunch of blooms I cut this week, with some wonderfully scented roses and sweetpeas, as well as some exuberant anemones, and a bit of valerian.

A view of the front garden shows how the colours seem to be changing, just a little, on the stag head sumac. The leaves on this tree put on a fabulous show of autumn colour, and although I’m lamenting the end of summer, there’s some good autumnal stuff to look forward to… I suppose.

The yellow flowers of the Hypericum glow in the early morning sunshine, and the light catches the acer and sumac leaves beautifully.

And finally, here’s an early morning picture of the pergola today. The wisteria has officially reached the top, after just a few weeks. It won’t be long till this is covered.

Well, that’s my six this saturday, as well as a bit of a ramble. See more garden collections for Six on Sat at the propagator’s blog.

I’d better go add some concerns to the risk list and, then set out plans to manage them. It is really exciting to think that this autumn Shared Earth Learning will work with local social enterprise group Edventure to get things started, and by spring there should be a new ‘green’ training opportunity for teenagers in our town.

That’s all for this week. I have a feeling I may have less time for blogging this autumn, but let’s see how things go. I hope your plans and plants are doing well.

Jen x