Sunday 29 April 2012
Garden Update
This morning dawned grey and cold which was no surprise given the foul weather we've been having for the past few weeks. We reckoned we had a maximum of two hours before it started raining again, so we rushed outside after breakfast and did a load of jobs.
We declared war on the slugs eating our courgette plants. See what they've done?!
Get past this, you slimy beasties!
I put the broad beans out to harden off. I hope they'll be okay!
And we planted the first earlies! As readers know I have a bit of a thing about 'tates, which I put down to my Lincolnshire peasant ancestry (I should add that my Mum is from Nottinghamshire. I get my style from her). I have been twitching with frustration ever since the Easter weekend and fretting that I haven't got my first earlies in, but now, much to my relief 'tis done! Even though I'm pretty certain that if I'd pulled my trousers down and sat on the soil it would have been cold (my Dad told me that's how you know it's time to plant your 'tates out, which caused me to laugh immoderately).
We've got two rows and a bag of Arran Pilot, courtesy of the wonder that is Wilko's.
We've also got King Edwards and Maris Piper chitting in the pantry (Tesco's finest).
I also planted my sweat peas out - I hope the poor little things don't get too battered.
Finally, I cleared the narcissus and miniature iris bulbs from the pot by the front door. They've been beautiful this year and it seemed such a waste to throw them away, so I planted them near buddleia to give a bit of colour next Spring. Just there (for when I forget!):
We declared war on the slugs eating our courgette plants. See what they've done?!
Get past this, you slimy beasties!
I put the broad beans out to harden off. I hope they'll be okay!
And we planted the first earlies! As readers know I have a bit of a thing about 'tates, which I put down to my Lincolnshire peasant ancestry (I should add that my Mum is from Nottinghamshire. I get my style from her). I have been twitching with frustration ever since the Easter weekend and fretting that I haven't got my first earlies in, but now, much to my relief 'tis done! Even though I'm pretty certain that if I'd pulled my trousers down and sat on the soil it would have been cold (my Dad told me that's how you know it's time to plant your 'tates out, which caused me to laugh immoderately).
We've got two rows and a bag of Arran Pilot, courtesy of the wonder that is Wilko's.
We've also got King Edwards and Maris Piper chitting in the pantry (Tesco's finest).
I also planted my sweat peas out - I hope the poor little things don't get too battered.
Finally, I cleared the narcissus and miniature iris bulbs from the pot by the front door. They've been beautiful this year and it seemed such a waste to throw them away, so I planted them near buddleia to give a bit of colour next Spring. Just there (for when I forget!):
Everyone should make their own ice-cream!
My husband has an idefatigably sweet tooth, a liking for the finer things in life, and a tendency towards the artisanal. These have recently combined and resulted in the production of home-made ice-cream. He's been making it every Friday night for the past month or so, and it's AMAZING.
I've been meaning to post about it for ages, because I think EVERYONE should make their own ice-cream. It's easy, cheap, fun to do, has absolutely no additives or preservatives or other nasties, and is much nicer than even Haagen Dazs or Ben and Jerry's. And - and I feel quite evangelical about this after going into Lakeland and seeing the prices - you don't need an ice-cream maker. Particularly not one that costs £209.99. I nearly died when I saw that!
Here's how much it costs and how to do it. Alastair doesn't like having his photo taken, so I offered to wash up for him as he was making Friday night's ice-cream and sneakily snapped away as he did so.
Ingredients and Cost
300ml milk (50p for a pint of Tesco's whole organic milk)
Seeds of 1 vanilla pod (£1.69 for a Tesco vanilla pod, or free if you have a bottle of vanilla essence in the cupboared)
4 large egg yolks (£1.45 for 6 Tesco free range eggs)
125g caster sugar (about 25p or £1.99 for a 1kg bag of Tesco golden caster sugar)
300ml double cream (£1.25 for 300ml of Tesco organic double cream)
Total - £5.14 for at least 600ml, probably more like 700ml when you count the egg yolks as well as the milk and cream.
Method
1. Bring your milk and vanilla gently to the boil over a low heat, then remove from the heat.
2. Beat the egg yolks and the caster sugar in a large bowl. They go lovely and creamy.
3. While beating, add the milk.
I've been meaning to post about it for ages, because I think EVERYONE should make their own ice-cream. It's easy, cheap, fun to do, has absolutely no additives or preservatives or other nasties, and is much nicer than even Haagen Dazs or Ben and Jerry's. And - and I feel quite evangelical about this after going into Lakeland and seeing the prices - you don't need an ice-cream maker. Particularly not one that costs £209.99. I nearly died when I saw that!
Here's how much it costs and how to do it. Alastair doesn't like having his photo taken, so I offered to wash up for him as he was making Friday night's ice-cream and sneakily snapped away as he did so.
Ingredients and Cost
300ml milk (50p for a pint of Tesco's whole organic milk)
Seeds of 1 vanilla pod (£1.69 for a Tesco vanilla pod, or free if you have a bottle of vanilla essence in the cupboared)
4 large egg yolks (£1.45 for 6 Tesco free range eggs)
125g caster sugar (about 25p or £1.99 for a 1kg bag of Tesco golden caster sugar)
300ml double cream (£1.25 for 300ml of Tesco organic double cream)
Total - £5.14 for at least 600ml, probably more like 700ml when you count the egg yolks as well as the milk and cream.
Method
1. Bring your milk and vanilla gently to the boil over a low heat, then remove from the heat.
2. Beat the egg yolks and the caster sugar in a large bowl. They go lovely and creamy.
3. While beating, add the milk.
4. Return to the pan, stir over a low heat until the mixture is the consistency of double cream and starts to coat the spoon (if you stop here, you have just made custard without the Bird's powder).
5. Pour in the cream and mix. If you were adding another ingredient, say chocolate to make chocolate ice-cream or fruit puree to make strawberry/raspberry/whatever ice-cream, this is probably when you'd do it, although it does depend on the recipe.
6. Decant the mixture into any kind of bowl/tub/freezer-proof receptacle and leave to cool overnight.
7. Stir a couple of times the next day, then enjoy any time you fancy ice-cream. I am unable to comment on the expiry date as it's so delicious it's always eaten way, way before it even *thinks* of going off!
And meanwhile, here is one he made earlier. Peanut butter and salted caramel ice-cream.
Words are not sufficient to describe the deliciousness!
Wednesday 25 April 2012
Goldfinches!
A couple of months ago, I got Alastair to put up another bird-feeder with niger seed in it to attract goldfinches. Word has finally got 'round amongst the local goldfinch community!
Monday 23 April 2012
Strawberries, Face-packs and Apple-blossom
This evening when I came home from work I stripped off, put on a five-minute face-pack and lay down in a shaft of sunlight on the bed, looking out at the big white clouds in the blue sky - bliss!
But not before I'd had a good look round the front garden and noticed that the first flowers are appearing on the strawberries.
Later, I noticed a shaft of sunlight streaking across the front garden and lighting up the apple-blossom. I ran out - clad in my 'jamas and dressing-gown! - and took some photos.
.jpg)
But not before I'd had a good look round the front garden and noticed that the first flowers are appearing on the strawberries.
Later, I noticed a shaft of sunlight streaking across the front garden and lighting up the apple-blossom. I ran out - clad in my 'jamas and dressing-gown! - and took some photos.
.jpg)
Sunday 22 April 2012
Saturday 21 April 2012
Knackered!
When we first bought our house, two of the boundaries were lined with huge, light-absorbing conifers. We dug the ones behind the flower border out some years ago and recently, after getting our neighbour's permission - they're actually on her side - we entered the final phase of the conifer-eradication programme. Alastair and John cut them down to stumps back in February, and today we decided we could no longer pretend they weren't there. War was declared.
I started at one end.
Alastair started at the other.
It's back again tomorrow to do something about the fact that Yvonne's garden now looks like the Somme!
Meanwhile in the front garden, clematis montana is flourishing, and my tulips are all red and lovely.
I started at one end.
Alastair started at the other.
And after a couple of hours of sawing, digging, sweating and panting we still had four to go.
At this point a tea-break was called, and then it was back to work until they were all dug out.
It's back again tomorrow to do something about the fact that Yvonne's garden now looks like the Somme!
Meanwhile in the front garden, clematis montana is flourishing, and my tulips are all red and lovely.
Thursday 19 April 2012
I Need My Tea NOW!
Now, normally I like it when it rains, because it's good for my garden. Yesterday, however, could only be described as DANK.
Dark grey veils of cloud swathed a grey backdrop that didn't budge all day, and it rained incessantly. By the end of the working day my mood matched the rain, and achy eyes, a stiff neck and a suspicious tickle in the back of my throat from cycling in the rain the other day didn't help matters. Neither did the fact that we had to do the food shopping after work. By the time we'd got home and unpacked the shopping I needed my tea and I needed it NOW. I was also very sure, what with the dank wetness of the weather and having cycled to work for most of the week, that I needed something hot, substantial, comforting, and heavy on the carbohydrates. It had to be pasta and sauce.
On the vast majority of occasions, I make my own pasta sauce (we have been known to make our own pasta too). It's vastly cheaper, invariably nicer, hasn't been processed, and isn't too sweet and/or too salty (don't get me wrong, I love salt, but I'd rather ingest it in the form of hand picked sea-salt from the Guérande flavoured by Dad's home-grown herbs than courtesy of a processed ready-meal). However, on this particular occasion things would have got very nasty indeed had I not been fed within minutes of putting the last item of shopping away, so I while we were shopping I availed myself of some "fresh" pasta and own-brand bolognaise sauce. However, when I got it home I did tweak it a bit to make it more appetising.
I set a large saucepan of water to boil for the pasta, laced with a sprinkling of the afore-mentioned salt and a few drops of olive oil. While this was heating up, I melted some butter in a casserole dish - could have been a frying pan, my casserole dish was handy - and threw in two huge handfuls of spinach. Its lovely green-ness cheered me up then and there, and even contemplating eating it made me feel healthier.
I stir-fried that for a couple of minutes until it had wilted down, then popped the sauce in to heat through while the pasta cooked.
Loads of black pepper to take away the sweetness of the bought tomato sauce and a spoonful of marscapone to give some depth, and it was almost as good as home-made.
Do excuse the slightly out of focus photo and the crumpled tablecloth - I was too hungry to spend much time on photography before diving in and, as you know, I am only an occasional housekeeper!
Dark grey veils of cloud swathed a grey backdrop that didn't budge all day, and it rained incessantly. By the end of the working day my mood matched the rain, and achy eyes, a stiff neck and a suspicious tickle in the back of my throat from cycling in the rain the other day didn't help matters. Neither did the fact that we had to do the food shopping after work. By the time we'd got home and unpacked the shopping I needed my tea and I needed it NOW. I was also very sure, what with the dank wetness of the weather and having cycled to work for most of the week, that I needed something hot, substantial, comforting, and heavy on the carbohydrates. It had to be pasta and sauce.
On the vast majority of occasions, I make my own pasta sauce (we have been known to make our own pasta too). It's vastly cheaper, invariably nicer, hasn't been processed, and isn't too sweet and/or too salty (don't get me wrong, I love salt, but I'd rather ingest it in the form of hand picked sea-salt from the Guérande flavoured by Dad's home-grown herbs than courtesy of a processed ready-meal). However, on this particular occasion things would have got very nasty indeed had I not been fed within minutes of putting the last item of shopping away, so I while we were shopping I availed myself of some "fresh" pasta and own-brand bolognaise sauce. However, when I got it home I did tweak it a bit to make it more appetising.
I set a large saucepan of water to boil for the pasta, laced with a sprinkling of the afore-mentioned salt and a few drops of olive oil. While this was heating up, I melted some butter in a casserole dish - could have been a frying pan, my casserole dish was handy - and threw in two huge handfuls of spinach. Its lovely green-ness cheered me up then and there, and even contemplating eating it made me feel healthier.
I stir-fried that for a couple of minutes until it had wilted down, then popped the sauce in to heat through while the pasta cooked.
Loads of black pepper to take away the sweetness of the bought tomato sauce and a spoonful of marscapone to give some depth, and it was almost as good as home-made.
Do excuse the slightly out of focus photo and the crumpled tablecloth - I was too hungry to spend much time on photography before diving in and, as you know, I am only an occasional housekeeper!
Tuesday 17 April 2012
Planning Notes (Flower Border, Spring)
One of the reasons I started this blog is that I find it very difficult to visualise what I want a bit of the garden to look like in a particular season at the time when it's necessary to do the work for that season. So, I thought I'd take a photo of my flower border in the back garden and make some notes on what I want it to look like this time next year.
Here it is. Can you see the lambs in the field - aren't they gorgeous? We stand and watch them for ages. It's enough to turn you vegetarian.
As you can see there's quite a lot of work to be done in the back garden. The main problem with the flower border is that it doesn't really have a shape. It's meant to be a sinuous "S" shape...I need to get round it with an edger and some grass seed!
However, another problem is that there are no colours apart from green and white at this time of year. So, I've decided that next Spring I'm going to keep it simple but introduce some really strong colour - three big clumps of big, what I call "proper" daffodils, the most gorgeous Spring flower there is.
They will sustain me through to April - the first months of the year before the garden comes back to life can be difficult ones and a bit of cheery colour makes all the difference. I'm going to put them in - as I said - three big clumps, one, I think just in front of viburnum - who's getting the chop after he's finished flowering as he's getting a bit rampant - one in between the temperamental possible philadelphus and weigela - due for the chop too - and one just to the right of the little blobs of aquilegia that you can see near the right edge of the photo.
That's not all though. What I'm really excited about is my plan for growing bulbs in pots. I'm going to go to the garden centre and buy LOADS - 12 is the number I'm thinking of - of terracotta pots, and fill them with hyacinths and different varieties of daffodils and tulips. I'm going to find a variety of daffodil which flowers really early so I can have colour right from January onwards, and then go mad with different varieties of tulips. I can move the pots around depending on what's flowering and where I want splashes of colour to go - I can sit them in the flower border, line them up on the veg patches, put them around the front door, arrange them them in the front garden - I can't wait! And you know what the best thing's going to be? Forgetting what I've planted and waiting breathlessly for first the little green shoot to appear, which gets bigger and bigger then slowly, almost luxuriously unfurls, revealing the gleam of colour within which in turn becomes a beautiful flower - magic!
Here it is. Can you see the lambs in the field - aren't they gorgeous? We stand and watch them for ages. It's enough to turn you vegetarian.
However, another problem is that there are no colours apart from green and white at this time of year. So, I've decided that next Spring I'm going to keep it simple but introduce some really strong colour - three big clumps of big, what I call "proper" daffodils, the most gorgeous Spring flower there is.
They will sustain me through to April - the first months of the year before the garden comes back to life can be difficult ones and a bit of cheery colour makes all the difference. I'm going to put them in - as I said - three big clumps, one, I think just in front of viburnum - who's getting the chop after he's finished flowering as he's getting a bit rampant - one in between the temperamental possible philadelphus and weigela - due for the chop too - and one just to the right of the little blobs of aquilegia that you can see near the right edge of the photo.
That's not all though. What I'm really excited about is my plan for growing bulbs in pots. I'm going to go to the garden centre and buy LOADS - 12 is the number I'm thinking of - of terracotta pots, and fill them with hyacinths and different varieties of daffodils and tulips. I'm going to find a variety of daffodil which flowers really early so I can have colour right from January onwards, and then go mad with different varieties of tulips. I can move the pots around depending on what's flowering and where I want splashes of colour to go - I can sit them in the flower border, line them up on the veg patches, put them around the front door, arrange them them in the front garden - I can't wait! And you know what the best thing's going to be? Forgetting what I've planted and waiting breathlessly for first the little green shoot to appear, which gets bigger and bigger then slowly, almost luxuriously unfurls, revealing the gleam of colour within which in turn becomes a beautiful flower - magic!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)