Starstruck at 5am and drinking cider before nine!

It was a starry night. This morning, at 5am when I got up and let Holly out, I was shocked by how bright the stars were.

Dawn hadn't started to brighten the eastern sky and the morning was warm enough (13 deg C) to stand and admire the sky for a few minutes. Orion was brilliant, you could see almost every star in his bow. I hate having to get up so early for my morning commute (it's one thing I won't miss when I retire) but then, if I didn't have to get up at 5am, I would never have seen such a beautiful sky.

As I'm writing this travelling to London on the train, the sun is rising across Sawtry fen to my left and turning the few clouds deep pink. It looks lovely - some small compensations for long-distance commuters.

I have been a little worried about my cider. It looks OK and has smelled yeasty, but it hasn't seemed to be fermenting. I'd expected froth overflowing from the top of the fermenting vessel; there's been a yeast scum but nothing else.

I don't want to lose this batch of cider after all the hard work we've put in, so I've been watching it anxiously. The first phase of fermentation - when the yeast is multiplying - needs some air and so I'd left the bungs slightly loose in the barrels. After a week, I thought it had to be working, so I greased the seals and bungs and fitted airlocks. There was nothing bubbling out of the airlocks in two days.

I thought the yeast must have failed to start, so yesterday I ordered more cider yeast and thought I'd re-inoculate the must this weekend if nothing had happened. Last night I decided to test the must to see if any fermentation had taken place. You do that using a hydrometer, which tells you how dense the liquid is. If it has more sugar, it's more dense. As the sugar ferments to alcohol, the liquid becomes thinner and the hydrometer sits lower in the liquid. You can use the readings on the side of the hydrometer to calculate the amount of sugar in the liquid and the potential alcohol. It can also tell you when all the sugar is fermented and it's therefore safe to bottle.

Extraordinarily, the sample showed that fermentation had happened and that all the sugar had gone. It was saying "safe to bottle." When I tasted it, it tasted like rough dry cider, all the unexpected sweetness of the pressed juice had gone. I've only tested one barrel, but it looks as if fermentation has happened right under my nose without me realising it. I'd expected cider fermentation to be longer and slower, but perhaps this is down to the warm weather this year.

The experts say a long, slow fermentation is desired because that adds more character and complexity to the finished drink. If that's the case, then I can kiss goodbye to complexity, but, to be honest, I'd be glad just to get some drinkable cider next summer. Character and complexity, I can work on.

I took a little sample into the office (and it looked exactly like a sample, if you get my drift). Everyone in the office had tried some by 9.30am and there were mixed views. Quite a few found it very sour, others thought it was excellent. Darius, being a Cornish lad and knowing his cider, said it was good, Davina said it needed sugar and Laura has taken the remainder home for a nightcap!

Cider sample went down well at work.

This has been a wonderful summer weather-wise and it continued at the weekend. Margaret and I had a barbecue and lit the chiminea on Saturday and sat out as it grew dark. I'd spent the day pottering in the garden and had pruned the Acer Drummondii tree which had been casting a little too much shade onto the border by the gate. I took quite a bit out of it and so we had a small pile of thin logs for next year and the smaller branches produced three buckets of wood chippings which went down the bottom of the garden in the front of the laurel where there's a short-cut between wood pile, compost bins and the summer-house.

I felt a little sorry for the acer, as I often do when pruning. It developed a strange, weeping wound on the trunk a few years ago and it transpired that Max had been shooting lead pellets into it to check his air-gun sights. That wound has now stretched into a long bare scar, perhaps two feet long, where the bark has opened to expose the hard wood below. The bark is quite open around the scar and I think it will continue to grow. It looks unsightly, but doesn't appear to be harming the tree at the moment. It's the first tree in the garden to get its leaves and they are a beautiful pale green and yellow when they appear, often waving in the wind like little flags. It looks amazing in a light spring breeze. It's also the first tree in the garden to lose its leaves and they have been falling now for a couple of weeks. The lawn and border have been covered and in a week's time (even with this nice weather) the tree will be bare.

The gourds have also stopped growing and we've now stopped watering them to encourage the fruits to dry and ripen in the remaining sun. They've been very big this year - perhaps a little too big - but there's a good range of different shapes and colours.

There is still quite a lot of colour in the garden. The bidens on pots and baskets have been magnificent, the sweet peas are still a beautiful show and the begonias have been amazing. One of my favourites is a pot of winter pansies, which looked amazing in the spring, but which have kept going all summer and are still a lovely show. The small, yellow single dahlias, which I bought as a bee-friendly dahlia where disappointing. They made lots of leaf, but not many flowers. I had said I wouldn't bother keeping them over winter, but in the past fortnight they have started flowering profusely. It's almost too late for the bees to make use of them, but they are a show.

Begonias have been a super show this year.

I should also say a word in favour of nasturtiums. I've grown quite a lot this year. They weren't a success in hanging baskets, but those in the garden have bloomed, been eaten by caterpillars and have regrown leaves. They are now a magnificent show of yellow blooms at the bottom of the garden.

One disappointment has been the butternut squash. Andrew Knights told me they wouldn't grow, but you have to find these things out for yourself don't you? I bought a variety supposedly well suited to an English summer and, with us having such a good summer, I did have high hopes. We'd had seven squashes from three plants, so a pretty poor hit rate and the fruits are not that large.