Lazy Day 2

For my most recent birthday, my dear friend Fi bought me a stunningly good present - a gardening planner and some coloured pens.  With spots on!  I was so excited.

She also bought me some gorgeous chocolates, which elevated the whole experience from the stunningly good to the realms of perfection. 

But I digress.  Seeing as today is officially a Lazy Day dedicated to indoor activities of a relaxing kind (we're going to see Titanic in 3D later, hooray!) I sat down with my bible, my gardening planner and my pens, and got to work.

I learnt about crop rotation, and planned what to grow in my three veg beds.  Vegetables can, apparently, be divided up into three groups - "hungry crops", "brassicas" and "root vegetables".  We'd roughly planned what to grow where and, by happy co-incidence, our plans fitted more or less with what the book said we should do.

I also learnt that there is manure in my immediate future - I have been worrying because we didn't manage to dig in any compost in in the back end, but apparently I've still got time to dig in some potato fertiliser and some general purpose fertiliser in my square bed (no. 3), where I'm going to have mainly potatoes but also one row of carrots and one row of parsnips, and to manure the top end of the triangular bed (no. 2) where I'm having my "hungry crops", my onions, leeks, peas and courgettes.  My brassicas, which will go in the pointy end of the triangular bed (no. 1), I can leave alone.  So, next weekend, there's going to be manuring and fertilising, and then the weekend after I can get my first earlies in. Yay!

Lazy Day 1

TLC for gardener's hands.

I've Got A 125 Litre Bag of Compost...

...and I'm going to use it!

I have had another busy day today.  After I finished gravelling the front garden, I established a potting station (whereabouts decided by the aforementioned bag of compost, which I can't move!).

I potted on the courgettes that remained in the fibre pots, to pass on to Mum and Dad...

...potted on the sweet peas...

...and potted on the cauliflowers, some of which will stay in our garden and some of which will go to Mum and Dad. 

The coldframe is stuffed with growing plants now - I am so glad Alastair made it for me. 

  Then I sowed some melon seeds... 

...and some tomato seeds.  They went inside to germinate.

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Then I planted some dahlia bulbs in my recently vacated big terracotta pot. 

I've never planted dahlia bulbs before - they looked sinister!

I covered them up, sharpish, and gave them a good drink (best to keep them happy).

My New Front Garden!

I couldn't resist leaving one tulip - I love parrot tulips (and have promised myself many in terracotta pots next Spring).

Rain Stops (Garden) Play

Well, I have been busy today.  I've been wanting for ages to get the front garden gravelled, and I started it today.  This is what it looked like before I started.

The tulips are a remnant of a huge bed of them that I grew once for cutting.  I was quite sad to see them go, but, after I'd dug them out and weeded all of the exposed bit I had a brain-wave.  The bulbs I've grown in pots haven't done very well this year, and I think it might be because I have been using the same compost for about five years (erm, yes!).  So, I emptied all of my terracotta pots with finished bulbs in them, and deposited the spent compost on the soon-to-be-gravelled section of the garden.  I put some bits of broken-up terracotta in the bottoms of the emptied pots, for drainage, and filled them up with lovely, juicy, nutrient-rich soil which otherwise would just have been gravelled over (I hate to gravel over good growing soil, but the window-cleaner has got to have somewhere to put his ladder).  Hopefully this time next year I will have a profusion of beautiful spring bulbs!

Once I'd done that, I shovelled some of the soil off the top of the garden to make room for the gravel, then raked it over to bring the stones to the surface.  When I'd picked them off I stamped all over the soil to pack the soil down.

There was then a long hiatus while Alastair and I went to B&Q and looked at stuff and bought the gravel, and I started laying the weed-barrier and gravelling after a late lunch.  At about 4 o'clock the rain which had been threatening all day started to come down.  I held out for a good half-an-hour - getting rather wet in the process - until I ran out of gravel.  Then I decided that the rain was obviously set in for the day and retreated inside.  It brightened up for a bit as soon as I went in the shower and got changed, but soon started raining again.  I have left it looking like this, all ready to start again tomorrow.

It's going to look great when it's finished!

Time for a cuppa and a sit down now.
 

Choices, Choices....

My house is a tip and needs tidying and cleaning...but there's work to do in the garden and sticky slices to be eaten!

Guess what I chose to do?!

Sticky Slices

It has felt like a long week this week, waiting for the Easter Bank Holiday weekend, so when I got home this evening I knew that some serious pottering had to be done.  While Alastair went in the bath, and while my tea cooked, I got on with some rather more frivolous cooking. 

I had decided that, instead of an Easter Egg, I would make the most gooey, decadent chocolate treat imaginable and eat it over the long weekend.  I am hoping to do some serious work in the garden, and am planning frequent treat-breaks as little rewards / nuggets of sustenance.

I used a recipe whose origins are uncertain, but the typeface and design make me think that it was cut out of - ahem - OK Magazine some years ago.  I made some tweaks though.  This is what I did.

First of all, I poured a glass of perfectly chilled chardonnay.  Mmmm!  While savouring that, I measured butter and golden syrup into a saucepan, and put it to melt over a very low heat.

Then I half-filled a larger pan with water and heated it so that it was barely simmering, just hot enough to melt the bowlful of chocolate balanced over the top.

Then I measured out digestive biscuits and hazelnuts...

...and mixed a beaten egg into the melted chocolate.  Then I poured the butter and golden syrup mixture into the chocolate mixture, and mixed it all together...

...before adding the digestive biscuits and the hazelnuts. 

Another good mix...

...and it went into a loaf tin to cool in the fridge overnight.  All ready for a day of gardening tomorrow (weather permitting!).

And then, as the evening light itself turned syrupy and golden, I savoured the last of my chardonnay and gave a sigh of pleasure - thank goodness for Bank Holiday weekends!

Sticky Slice Update

The sticky slices are VERY sticky.  In fact they're so sticky they have to be eaten with a spoon!  This is the result of a moment of chardonnay-related distraction while measuring out the golden syrup, but I don't mind, they taste delicious!