Bramley Apples!

After all the glorious sunshine and rain this year our apple trees have gone absolutely crazy! We have lots of Bramley apples, golden delicious and galas! We've kept the edible ones for ourselves but decided to sell the Bramleys and they have been going like hot cakes!  I've popped some pictures below of our trees!

Bee hunting!

As we now have our beehive I wanted to share some pictures of the types of honey bees we have in the garden.  As it would happen it seems the bees have gone to ground and actullay finding them is proving difficult!  Thankfully though I have managed to capture a couple so have included these below for you to see:

Below are some pictures of bees captured previously:

Bees!

As our first year cutting garden is noticeably attracting many bees, we decided to take the advice of our local bee keeper Tim Moore.  Tim found the perfect quiet spot in a private area of the garden to site a decoy hive, which hopefully will attract a swarm who will take up residence.

Our bee hive

Honey bees like to occupy vacant previously occupied hives.  Tim has created a very desireable residence from parts of old hives.  To allow a colony time to establish and thrive can take three years so we will not expect a harvest too soon.  Fortunately we can watch the hives progress from our sitting room window and with Tim's guidance hope to be able to update the blog with a hive of activity!

Bartley Horticulture Society 102nd Annual Flower Show

Today we were invited to hold a stall at the Bartley Horticulture Societies 102nd Annual Flower Show at Copythorne Village Hall.  My son's girlfriend, Laura, decided to come along and give me a hand on the stall, so we got up bright and early on Saturday and began to pack up for the day.

I decided to pack a selection of flowers that I already have out for sale and include a bucket of cut stems so we could show a selection of the plants/services we offer.

Car number 1 packed to the brim!

 

No room for any passengers unfortunately!

Car number 2 was just as full!

 

Barely space for anything else!

 

Even the passenger seat in car number 2 wasn't spare!

The cut flowers smelt divine!

 

The big blooms certainly brightened up the cars

 

The last bucket of flowers was just as nice as the others

 

A picture of us setting up

The finished stall!

The show opened at 1.30pm so after packing the cars to the brim with plants, tables, boxes and the all important gazebo we were off!  We decided to arrive at 11am so to give us plenty of time to set up!  The weather was quite blustery at times and I was grateful for the gazebo but thankfully the rain held off.  I've put some pictures below of us packing the cars and the set up of the stall.

We had a very sucessful time at the show and met some lovely people - some who we had seen at our grand opening and some new faces who have expressed their intentions to come and see the nursery.  All in all we had a lovely time at the show and very much hope we will be back there next year!