Honesty

The little ones have been whisked away for a week of fun and excitement and generally being spoilt by their grandparents.  So DH and I decided to do a bit of whisking of our own to our favourite hotel.

Our room had some rather lovely wallpaper don't you think and while we gorged and rested and generally spoilt ourselves I did feel slightly wistful that our vegetable garden didn't look like this!

Although I was interested to see that they went in for close planting which is something I'm going to try next year . . .

Coming home today I was able to harvest the first of our limited crop - a cucumber.  A bit knobbly but I'm hoping it will taste lovely.

Scrumping wild strawberries

When we moved into our little cottage we were so delighted to find that quite a few of the flower beds were over run with wild strawberry plants.  I've tried to tame my beds and keep the strawberries to just a few places.

But at this time of the year, when they are producing strawberries in abundance I realise I shouldn't be doing any taming at all.  It is soooo good to walk along, scrumping as you go.  Little drops of loveliness.  Little Roo would happily spend the whole day sat in a flower bed eating strawberries but then he is our little fruit bat!

In other vegetable news there's not much to report this year.  Life, renovations and other things have just got in the way.  But I've managed to put in some sugar snap peas, beans and a whole load of lettuce.

In the greenhouse I have some tomatoes and a cucumber plant - everything is scaled back this year but I do have a couple of hanging baskets for some tumbling toms!

Peonies and Poppies

This month sees the hot, vibrant colours in our garden.

The pale pinks and purples and blues make way for the scarlet and crimson - colours so bright it almost hurts to look at them!

Memo to self - plant more peonies - I just love them!

C is for . . .

. . . cucumber!!  Our very own, home-grown (you can tell by the knobbly bits!) cucumber and it is sooo sweet and soooo delicious - its definately on my list of things to grow next year.

I've been thinking about my veggie growing this year and had been quite depressed by slugs eating my courgette plants, deer eating my beetroot and beans, tomato blight etc etc.  Then I realised I had been focusing on all the negatives and thinking that I hadn't done very well at all but completely forgetting all the truimphs, my lettuces that just kept growing, the one sugar snap pea plant that produced so many peas!  My bean plants who managed to keep going even though all the lower leaves had been eaten and produce lots of green beans.  My lone courgette plant who valiantly produced courgette's non-stop and is still going.  My one rocket plant which gave us some lovely peppery bursts.  I need to be thankful for these small successes, learn from my mistakes and who knows what will happen next year!

Glut and blight

Oh the highs and lows of one weekend.  I had a wonderful time with the kids picking all these beans and we seem to have courgettes coming out of our ears at the moment - at last a glut or something resembling one at least!  My shopping basket is now quite empty as we have all this glorious veg to eat at home.  The favourite courgette recipe's of the moment are 'courgette dollops' for the kids - which we've now managed to introduce to other families too (!) and 'courgette and lemon risotto' - lovely and yummy - that's my favourite - although I wouldn't say no to a dollop either!

 

Then we discovered, or rather had confirmation that all our amazing tomato plants had succumbed to potato blight.  I was so upset as I quickly picked all the green tomatoes and realised we would have had a bumper crop.  Sadly the only thing for it was to make green tomato chutney and quick.  So yesterday evening I chopped 6lb of green tomatoes, 3lb of apple and 3lb of onion (which certainly had me in tears by the end!) - it was a bit touch and go as to whether I had a big enough bowl to put them all in!  But I did and the chutney is made and bottled up - 15 jars in all - watch out family and friends - there's chutney coming your way this Christmas!!

Grandpa on the other hand has been growing prize winning beetroots and had one very happy helper to pull them all up.

Garden Round Up

Well, I thought it only fair to give you a quick catch up on all things gardeny.

The allotment has been coming along beautifully, entirely due to the friends we are sharing it with.  S is the driving force behind it's appearence, I would be just happy to grow a few things to eat but I'm always happy to be associated with something gorgeous!!

Meanwhile, back in our greenhouse, DH has fashioned a couple of raised beds for our tomato plants out of an old bed of ours - I love the upcycling/recycling aspect to it.  Our tomato plants are now completely out of control and have taken over the greenhouse.  We will have a bumper crop this year if only they will ripen, otherwise there's going to be a lot of green tomato chutney - watch out family and friends . . .!

My little helper who has been doing a lot of watering this year.  It's been a funny year in the garden.  We have been inundated with slugs at home so very little outside has survived.  We've had better luck at the allotment but I think we are just getting used to the whole idea of growing  veg and a lot of the plants were put into the ground quite late in the season so we haven't had as good a crop as we could have.  But the whole community spirit of the allotment is just wonderful.  I spoke to one chap - who has offered to lend anyone who needs it his wheelbarrow - about general vegtable growing and he takes a very scientific view of working out exactly how many plants he needs in a growing season - how many parsnip plants he needs if he is going to have 2 parsnips a week for 6 months!  I have a feeling I need to learn a bit more about this and think more about quantity and timing.  We've been having some lovely things to eat - but certainly haven't produced enough to feed two families!!

My first year of growing sugarsnap peas - very exciting this is too!

Ah, and finally some courgettes - now where did I put those courgette receipes . . .

Wet Tuesday

You could insert any day of the week at the moment and it would ,sadly, be true.  Being a nation known to like to talk about the weather I tend to resist that topic - but what weather!!  Cripes it has been horrendous!  So much rain has fallen in the last two months it makes us laugh in the face of the hose-pipe ban earlier this year!  My veg growing has been very disappointing and the only thing that seems to be going well at the moment are my tomatoes in the greenhouse.  Courgettes, beans, peas, potatoes, beetroot, carrots, lettuce -  all very disappointing.  The allotment is faring no better - hopes of self-sufficiency are fading.  I just keep thinking Thank Goodness we aren't totally dependent on the food that we grow!

In other news someone has taken up residence in our garden.  We are not sure who he or she is or who he or she might belong to, but we've all started thinking about how much we miss our pussycat and how we might be tempted to get another . . .!!

Wow

It almost hurts your eyes to look at this lovely doesn't it?!  I have a lovely patch of these peonies growing just so I can see them through my kitchen window.  They do bring a zestful  wake up call in the morning.  I am plotting another patch of peonies somewhere in the garden, because as you know - I do love them!!

So our first camping trip of the year was a huge success.  It only rained on Saturday night when we were all tucked up in bed.  The rest of the time we had lovely weather.  There was also a bit of BBQing, bike riding, kite flying, watching boats in a harbour, pub lunches, general running around and splashing in puddles - ah a perfect receipe for a weekend (won't mention the mountain of washing, putting away and actual sleep that was needed on our return!).  My camping quilt also had it's maiden outing and kept my little ones toasty warm.  Ah I do love camping and just all the being outdoors of it all - it's good for the soul.

A garden post

As you can see from the sun and lack of rain, I took these photos a while back.  Since then we have had about 3 years worth of rain in one month.  Good for the aquifers and the garden, not so good for our roof (a small leak above Flopsy Bunny's window) and general mood and morale!  Although the upshot is that the hose pipe ban has now been lifted!

All the spring flowers are starting to come up and fill the garden with colour.

My peonies are just about to flower now and I'm very excited about that - Oh I do love peonies (here and here)!!

We were hoping to go camping this weekend but the weather has driven us indoors - maybe next weekend - there is a little bit of sun promised then!

After the rain

April has been, well, typical of April I guess with the showers (and heavy downpours) and then sunshine.  Today was such a day, one minute it was tipping it down, the next, bright sunshine.

I popped out to take a couple of shots of my lovely tulips which I planted in the Autumn.  Very strawberries and cream don't you think? 

Of course all this rain is a blessing for the garden and it is so typical that it has arrived after a hosepipe ban has been issued!!  Ah, British weather - you've got to love it!

What got me running outside with the camera in the first place was the steam coming off the shed roof!

In the garden

There seems to be a mass of bright yellow everywhere.

Forgotten about plants and bulbs are starting to push their way out to make themselves known.



Seeds have been planted and now we just to wait in anticipation for yummy things to eat in the summer.

Rhubarb is eagerly awaiting, thoughts of crumbles and pies are tumbling around in my mind.



Ah and then there's the lovely sunny weather we have been having.  Life becomes transformed with a bit of a sunny day and a bright blue sky.

Late harvest

Somehow the carrots got forgotten.  I'm not sure how, but there it is, they have sat in the ground all Autumn and this weekend I decided to see if I had any that where worth eating!  Well I must admit I was surprised.  I guess it is thanks to the mild winter we have had this year.  But we certainly got a crop and they are tasty too!

We had a lovely weekend in the garden, harvesting(!), chopping wood, collecting kindling, sweeping leaves, you know those kind of winter gardening jobs!  I also planted a pear tree to replace the tree that came down in the snow.  It will soon be surrounded by crocuses that Flopsy Bunny and I planted in the Autumn.  I am really looking forward to seeing where these flowers appear - there are going to be some straight rows I think - not the random effect I was after I fear!!  



Then today my search for a shepherds crook, to hang my gorgeous bird feeder from, was over!  Thank you lovely friend who gave it to me!  This was also the lovely friend who gave me this . . .  Excellent taste this friend has in pretty garden things!

Baking and Storing

Sarah Raven's lovely apple cake, and even though it didn't all go according to the receipe (my fine breadcrumb consistancy was rather more like large doughy balls!) this didn't seem to make much difference.  Very yummy and a hit with all.



I also had a bit of an epiphany over our fennel plant the other day.  When I planted the fennel about four years ago I didn't intend to eat it, I just liked it's fluffly leaves and thought it would go well in the herb bed.  Each year the plant gets bigger and bigger - this year it must have been about 6-7ft tall!  So it wasn't until I looked out of the window one day while washing up that it suddenly dawned on me - those are seed heads I was looking at - Oooo I could dry those and use the seeds!  I can't really believe I haven't done it before - lots of lovely fennel seeds. 

A mottled harvest

DH and I are trying to decide how many Borlotti Bean casseroles we might make with these - I'm going 3 but DH reckons just the one!  What do you think?  Memo to self - only grow high yielding crops next year . . .!  Pretty though aren't they!

Autumn

It must be autumn again as I've started photographing conkers!!

Of course there's also the annual step art that goes with it . . .

Little Roo and I had such lunchtime fun today - trying to spot the Red Arrows - WOW - here they are

Being thankful for small harvests

I've been quite grumpy recently about our veggie patch. When we started to grow veg this year, I didn't have any particular expectations of what I hoped to achieve. But then my enthusiasm went into overdrive and my mind started thinking about self sufficacy and all of a sudden I had great expectations for my veggie patch and I'm afraid to say became very disappointed when it didn't live up to all my new big ideas.

It hasn't been helped my numerous articles recently on how to deal with vegtable gluts - arrgggghhh - if only we had had a glut. I had dreams while on holiday of all the blanching and freezing and cooking and freezing I would be doing when I got home, but no, nothing remotely resembling a glut materialized.

Then I thought - hold on a minute - we have grown things this year and eaten them, I must remember to be thankful for that. The green beans did well and we grew enough for a good harvest to eat each week, we have borlotti beans drying as we speak and the tomatoes are coming along, OK not masses but probably enough for what we need each week. Of course the courgettes were the big disappointment of the year and next year I won't get carried away by fancy yellow varieties and will stick to a good old green variety.

But what I must really be thankful for is the masses of potatoes I've got!! Well with a whole new vegetable patch turned over to them, I couldn't fail could I?!

But it turns out my real talent in vegtable growing is my interesting shaped potatoes - here's one that looks like a mouse and I've dug up other oddly shaped ones too!



So with so much in life I've learnt a lot this year about vegtable growing and have ideas about what I will do differently next year and that's the thing to keep hold of, to remember to take baby steps rather than galloping off with heady ideas of self sufficacy - especially when I hadn't set out to do that in the first place!

Talking of galloping off, here is a visitor who seems very interested in our veggies too . . . !