Work in the Garden

 This year's plum harvest has yielded a reasonable crop.  We have had crumble, slices, stewed plumbs and now have a few frozen ones put aside for a treat at Christmas.  Amongst the crop was a "double yolker" - a plumb with two stones.  It is the first time I have seen this occur.

 This bulbous fruit has two stones, which are arranged at right angles to the expected orientation.  It tasted like any other plum, but had more flesh.

 This weeks garden challenge was to clear the pond-side wilderness.  This area of the garden has become overgrown with iris and yellow loosestrife as well as being edged with Alchemilla mollis.  It was a haven for large slugs.

 It took the best part of two days to remove the plants and finger pick the soil for rhizomes,  roots and corms.  The ground was devoid of other plant life as the dominant species had killed off all of the smaller species.

 I had a collection of lithographic limestone slates at the back of the shed, left over from a dismantled 1970's fireplace hood form the original build of the house.  With a bag of cement left over from last years brickwork and a couple of bags of sharp sand, these slates were laid as a path across the patch of garden, giving better access into the planting and to the back of the pond.

We are in the process of braking up plant groupings in other parts of the garden to populate the bare soil.  The wilderness has now been conquered.