Communal Living.

I have always liked spiders, and tolerated their presence in my home, however they are now threatening to take over the work room. This is a big room, seldom used for anything other than storage and for rearing quail, quail attract flies as do all birds. The local spiders must have thought that a fast food spider restaurant had opened up, they moved in and set up house.

Spider Town.

The web that they have made spans two fourteen foot walls, just how many spiders are living in this gossamer apartment we can't tell, but they seem to be living in harmony together, not a fly in sight, so they are doing a good job.
A couple of weeks ago I ordered a special offer of David Austin roses, I love roses but they have to be perfumed and the old fashioned type, which Austin roses specialise in, the large package arrived in perfect condition, what had not been said about the offer was that they would be including flowerseeds and bulbs as a free gift.

Yet more bulbs, this time for free.

In total this free gift contained seventy bulbs, I'm just not sure where I am going to plant them, I have already planted over six hundred new bulbs this autumn, but these were planned for. Also included was packet of Petunia seeds, I will pass these on to friends as I don't 'do' hanging baskets or have anywhere that they could climb.

And still they bloom.

We still have roses blooming in the garden but if we do have a hard frost we will probably lose them, however all the roses bushes have buds on them so they might go on a while longer.
The garlic and onions that were planted in the tunnel in October are growing well, the garlic is now up nine inches and the onions about three inches. We have a frost warning for tonight so this will benefit the garlic which requires a cold spell to make good cloves, we are hopeful of having another bumper crop next year as we did this year.
Since we moved back from Spain we have rather got out of the habit of entertaining, in Spain someone would be holding a dinner party every week normally for eight to ten people who were all in our circle of friends. Here dinner parties are not a usual occurrence, except within families. Last night however we had friends over for a meal which made a nice break for us and also for them.

Rich and Spicy.

I decided to play safe with the menu and cooked a Hungarian Goulash with Lyonnaise potatoes followed by Lemon Meringue pie as we have plenty of eggs and it's a good way to use them. I love guests that eat! Our friends really appreciated the meal, little was left,

Every ones favourite.

the Lemon Meringue was voted the best they had ever had, which pleased me.
 We had friends in Spain that always requested my Lemon Meringue pie when they dined with us, and in fact it was something that I always made for these particular friends birthdays and other special occasions. Although we and our friends don't drink nowadays we still managed to consume a couple of bottles of good French wine. This wine is a mystery to us, where did it come from? We didn't buy it, we still have two cases of Spanish wine that we brought with us when we moved back here, the only alcohol we ever buy would be Guinness for making Christmas puddings and Specked Hen real ale if we have helpers coming. We seem to have a wine fairy.