Did you enjoy St Valentine's Day ?

 I hope you had a lovely Valentine's Day , this is how our day went .

                              Wednesday the day before Valentine's Day .
 We had been working hard out in the vegetable garden. Trying to prepare this one last bed for the next season . The bean frame had to come down....this always makes me  feel a little sad ....and as I took it apart my under gardener  took great delight in cutting it all up for kindling and actually it wouldn't have been able to bear the weight of another crop of Runner-beans .
    I had planted a small cutting of Rosa Dorothy Perkins here a couple of years ago , and while I had been out of action due to quite a major health issue , it had really got away and become a large clump . I did think that it would look lovely growing on the Bean frame together with the Runner-beans and thought it would be no trouble to pull out at the end of the season  ....  very silly me !
 What you can see here is after we'd lopped down all the very long climbing and trailing stems . Dorothy Perkins fortunately doesn't have a lot of thorns , but the ones it  did have , managed to tangle in my hair, scratch my face , snag my jumper and pierce my thumb .....got most of it out....but it's still very sore .
   We still hadn't got the blooming rose clump out and we were both tired and fed up and the wheelbarrow was full of rose branches..so we decided to leave it for now , have a cup of tea and come back to it later .



 I pulled up the very last of my leeks to have with our dinner later .
As  I wheeled the barrow of rose branches over to the bonfire/compost heap , I wondered to myself how long it  would take for my newly sown Leek seeds to germinate...I sowed them just the other day all mollycoddled on the windowsill of the Solar Shed .
 As I tipped the wheelbarrow up to empty it , to my great surprise I noticed this huge clump of Leeks growing there !

They must have grown from a seed head that I had cut off and discarded onto the heap back at the end of Summer and being thrown on to  the South side as you can see they have done really well .
 It seems we can grow them all year round here on the Lizard !

They look like the variety of Leeks called Jaune de Poitou which I had grown last year .
 So that was a nice surprise ....and more work though as I then had to dig them up and replant them into the African Keyhole bed where I,m growing all the oniony things this year .

I grew all my Squashes and pumpkins in here for two years in a row..it needed a rest .

The onions are doing really well but the garlic-bulbs that I was sent were very small and I don't think they'll come to much .
So then very tired I dug a big hole and dropped the clump of lovely newly discovered Leeks into it , heeled them in and that was that , as I had no energy left in me to separate them or even think about what to do with them today .
  Went in for my dinner and long soak in the bath .

.........and then it was Valentine's Day and the sun was shining and the sky was blue and the under gardener swept me away to Charmouth for the day !
                It's o.k.... lol !....he's also my loving husband !

....and what a beautiful day we had hunting for fossils along the beach towards the Golden Cap .

                                      ... and explored Iron Age forts ...

           .......and he took me to Groves Nursery , where we enjoyed Sweet-potato Soup and the most delicious bread and butter ... and he bought me an Epiphyllum to add to my  collection ...you don't often see Epies for sale at Garden centres or Nurseries but they have some really interesting plants for sale in their conservatory , Orchids, Tillandsias, Cacti, Succulents , Ferns ......I got a grip and just came away with the one plant ! One very happy girl !

          We drove past Colmer's Hill ....we'll climb it next time we visit .

                                     Dorset countryside is beautiful .

                    Drove through Chideock past pretty thatch cottages .

On to have a quick look at Lyme Regis .

Then we drove home to beautiful Cornwall , taking photographs of the majestic trees all the way along !

                 The shadows getting longer across the fields and meadows  .

                                            .....as the sun went down ...

                  ...over the trees and pylons , glistening streams and rivers.....

                                  Shining through the branches .....

                Appearing to set then rise again as we past each hill ....

 I love this circle of trees that we always pass and I look out out for every time we go this way .

....and the Sun set was just such a fabulous ending to our lovely day .