I won a competition - sort of!

A few months ago I entered a competition on FB hosted by Rachel of  'Successful Garden Design' , all we had to do was scrutinise a photo she had posted of a Spanish courtyard garden and tell her what was unusual about the planting, the prize was one of her garden design courses for free.
I tried for days to get that elusive answer because I really wanted to do one of her courses and poor Rachel had to put up with my weird answers at all times of the day and night. I couldn't get the answer though and for a while no one else could either, then a lady called Louise pops in and gets the answer straight away not even realising it was a competition. I felt so deflated because I was pretty sure I had to get it at some point but I'm not a sore loser and so I congratulated Louise and said I hoped she enjoyed the course.
Fast forward a few months and I discovered FB has an 'others' box in the message centre, in amongst many messages I didn't know I had was a message from Louise asking if I would like to take the prize as she wouldn't get a chance to do it.
Damn FB and it's 'others' box!
I figured it was way too late to accept it now as a fair few months had passed so I answered the message thanking Louise for the generous offer, explaining why I hadn't replied and that I hoped she enjoyed the course.
Turns out she still hadn't started it and hadn't passed it on either so I am now enrolled on 'Small Garden design' course free of charge - how nice was that of Louise to hand the prize over to a complete stranger! I should be starting it next week and although it's small garden design there's alot more to it that I can make so much use of so I want to thanks Louise for gifting me the prize and Rachel for hosting the competition.

I pulled a few of the Carrots today. I didn't thin them out this year as I was suffering a bad back right when it needed doing and I couldn't trust Mr TG to do it as he'd already murdered the Parsnips, so the carrots are smaller (much smaller) than I usually get and I admit I was tempted to throw them but I figured I'd see what they tasted like. Gorgeous!

So many of the garden flowers are showing Autumn colours now and really dieing back so this Escallonia 'Red Carpet' is adding a real splash of colour to the borders and looks to have a few weeks of blooms to go yet.

I'm still getting a decent flower cut for the vases though, this Rose 'Compassion' is still in full bloom and I'm going to have a go at taking cuttings from this one this year, the fragrance is incredible.

There's a lovely light in the garden in the garden this time of year and I'm enjoying the chance to just look around and snap views as I see them.

I've been dismantling pallets for what seems like months now though it's only been a couple of weeks. My scrap wood pile is looking healthier than it ever has and I haven't even got half way through the pallet stack yet. I've got lengths of wood varying in size from 6ft down to 2ft, all different thicknesses and good sized chunky pieces from the stringers so I've been scouring Pinterest for ideas of what to build. I've got plenty of plans of what to make for inside the home but I've settled on making  a couple of Adirondack chairs for the garden. This wood pile has become precious though as I never want to be without material again so I decided that I am going to download plans for the chair. This is a first for me - using any kind of plans - but I'm not wasting any of this wood. It felt really good to the wood piles with a shopping list of what I needed and stacking it in my shopping cart wheelbarrow as I found it.

That's alot of wood for one chair, I won't be wasting an inch of it.

So that's what plans look like.