Hotter than Honolulu

The first May Bank holiday, and it was a record breaker - reaching 28.7C (84F) it was the warmest early May bank holiday in UK history.

 So how did we enjoy the lovely weather? Stuck indoors installing a floating floor in the playroom 🙁

It used to be an integral garage, so only had a concrete floor which was cold, and also there was a step down from the house. So we added a floating floor (insulation with flooring over the top) to bring it in line. 

Looking out of the room towards the hall, you can see underneath the house, where the step was. This has now been filled in, but I still go to step down whenever I go in the room!

We were a bit worried that the floor was going to make a noise, as when just the insulation was down it was a bit squeaky when you walked on it. But once the flooring was laid on top, it just feels like a normal floor. 

Everything that was stored in the room had to be taken outside, so our drive resembled Steptoe's yard!

I was lucky to get a bit of a reprieve and some sunshine when I tidied out the greenhouse. 

I've got three raised beds in there that I wanted emptying so I could move them. Little Boy offered to help, and I gave him an incentive by paying him 20p for every plant pot he filled. £1.20 later, he'd emptied one bed and we stopped for tea and biccies. 

Once the contents were emptied out onto the lawn, and the floor swept it was already a vast improvement...

There are lots of staging and shelving ideas in garden centres and online, but the majority are expensive. We had a few garden tables surplus to requirements, and they are just the business. The smaller one fits nicely on top of the big one, and I have room on the larger one for a potting tray with a chair. 

Next time, I've got HeApS of photos to show you

XxXx

Wyevale bargains and a chocolate prize

We had to pop to Worcester today so whilst we were there I decided to pop into Wyevale. A few weeks ago the packets of seeds were half price, so I was hoping it was now time for the annual 50p clearance. Yippee, it was!!

All of the vegetable and herb seed packets were 50p. I would never normally buy seed mats as a) they are more expensive than a 'normal' packet of seeds, and b) it's just lazy! But for 50p I couldn't resist a few. The colourful cauliflowers look amazing, imagine those on your plate. The cactus seeds were picked by Big Girl. Her room is full of cactus plants that she buys really cheaply from the car boot from a man who grows them as a hobby. They take years to grow, then he sells them for a few pounds, but he says it keeps him amused. So even though she gets them really cheap, Big Girl would like to have a go at growing them herself, and at 50p for a packet of 30 seeds it's worth a try. 

I also got a few Christmas presents for children in the family. The build your own mini greenhouse, with cress, coleus and sunflower seeds to grow was £12 before. I checked with someone before I put them in the trolley, as I couldn't believe they would be reduced so much, but they were 50p too. I also got them a Grow Your Own pizza topping (basil and tomato), and sunflowers. Each box has a mini board game to play too. So a great present for two children, worth £33 altogether cost just £2!

I couldn't resist adding up all the seeds, including the ones above. Total real cost £62.51 - cost me £7. Happy me!

I don't think I need any more courgette seeds any time soon. This is what I got from one plant yesterday...

I put the 50p there just to show how GiNoRmOuS these babies are. Luckily I've discovered a lovely recipe for courgette and cheddar quiche. I also grabbed some tomatoes whilst I was in the garden. This is just a few, there are loads more ready. 

You may have spotted some split ones in there, which usually happens due to infrequent watering. The plants dry out, then get a good watering and the tomatoes swell and split. I really want to install an automatic watering system. I've put one out the front for the window baskets and having the plants watered twice a day has made a huge difference. They look gorgeous. 

Back to bargains, I also got a huge chrysanthemum for just £2. It was a bit squashed on one side but looks great squeezed in next to the asters I grew from seed...

The reason for popping to Worcester was to pick up a prize that Little Boy won a few weeks ago. That chap is one lucky boy, he always seems to win stuff! When we were at St Peters garden centre a few weeks ago there was a competition running to celebrate National Honey Bee day. Little people had to find the honey bee images hidden around the garden centre, and write down the name of the plant they were by. As usual when you enter a competition you think you'll have a go but won't win, but I was pleasantly surprised when I had a phone call saying that Little Boy's name had been chosen and he'd won! I thought it was only a chocolate making kit, but when we got there it was wrapped up with some honeybee chocolates, a bag of flying saucer sweets, a biscuit dinosaur (not sure how those two link in with bees?) and the box of Make Your Own Chocolate bee lollipops. 

The only problem is he keeps winning everything. He has just entered a colouring competition to win £150 worth of Playmobil. I only posted it this morning, and he's just asked when we can go to the shop to get his toys. He has to learn unfortunately that you don't win everything. Maybe I should get him to pick some lottery numbers, seeing as he seems to be so lucky!

Speak soon

XxXx

Floral distraction

Do you ever get distracted in the garden? I went out after tea last night, to check on the seedlings growing in the greenhouse. As I stepped in I noticed the secateurs on the side, so decided whilst I was out there to cut some flowers for the house. About 45 minutes later, after picking and deadheading, I had this...

You have to excuse the awful photo quality, it was nearly 9pm and I took this in the utility. The vase on the right is full of amaranthus. I've called it the Sideshow Bob arrangement 😄 (if you've ever watched the Simpsons you'll get it). The vase of flowers at the back just has an assortment of flowers in it, including cosmos, crocosmia, rudbeckia, antirrhinum, and nicotiana. It just goes to show you don't need a huge garden to have a constant supply of fresh flowers for the house. It's not very clear in picture but there are a few bits of greenery sticking out of the top - they are actually bird seed which the birds have spilt when feeding, and I left it to grow! I knew it would come in useful one day. 

The two small arrangements were a last minute add on, one for Big Girl's room, one for Little Boy's room. 

And after all that, when I finally came in and sat down, I realised I had forgotten to do what I actually went out for - check on the seedlings! I must do that today, and maybe some weeding whilst I'm out there...

XxXx

First proper harvest of the year

We've been harvesting lettuce from the greenhouse for a while, but this weekend we harvested our first  'proper' veg - a courgette! It was delicious, they are so much firmer when freshly picked than the ones you get from the supermarket. Big Girl and I had it sliced and grilled with sliced red pepper and halloumi in a burger bun, with chips and salad. 

I'm not new to veg growing, we had a 30m x 30m veg garden in New Zealand and grew everything from carrots to giant water melons. The problem is it was so big an area we spent more time keeping on top of the weeds than actual planting. So it's quite nice now to have a little garden big enough to have some spare space to grow a few fruit/veg but also small enough to maintain. 

Lots of perfect shiny red cherries, unfortunately it is an ornamental cherry tree, so the fruits are tiny, about a fifth of the size of a normal cherry....

A raspberry bush, bought for a few pounds from Morrisons. It struggled in the first year, but seems to be improving with time. Okay, it wouldn't win any beauty contests but they taste good so that's all that matters. I won't be making raspberry jam any time soon but I get one or two fruits when I pass by. 

A dwarf apple tree, Fiesta (Red Pippin) bought recently from a plant nursery sale. I didn't know until I got home though that it needed a pollinating partner. It had about six small apples on it when I got it, now there is only one left....

I have several planters with strawberries in them. I decided to inter plant the strawberries in this one with lobelia, with the idea it may confuse the birds and they won't notice the strawberries. Seems to be working so far, as it isn't netted and we don't seem to be losing any. 

Another Morrisons buy, this time a blueberry bush. There's quite a decent crop this year, let's hope we beat the birds to these too...

I like a cottage garden planting style, intermingling flowers with veg. In this spot I have put in some courgettes, lettuce and a Brussels sprout plant amongst the sunflowers and achilleas....

Update - it's been a few weeks since I wrote this blog post, and with the bit of rain we have had lately the plants have shot up...

The courgette plants are exploding, I think if you stood still and watched you would actually see the courgettes growing! I picked these on the weekend...

Now just five days later I popped outside to take some photos and spotted this...

In New Zealand we had pigs and chickens who would happily polish off the surplus courgettes, over here I just have to donate them to any passing friends/family/neighbours. If I get desperate I even hand them over to any visiting workmen, meter readers... I think I need to buy a spiralizer, like this one. Courgette noodles sound quite tasty, and apparently only need boiling for 20 seconds!

The tomatoes are ripening nicely in the greenhouse, though the plants don't seem as full of fruits as recent years, and on some of the trusses the fruit seems quite spaced out.

More strawberries...

And finally, pumpkins! Big Girl planted these, and they are shooting up. She planted them near a pile of rocks, as we thought the pumpkins might like the heat from the rocks to help them grow. Now they are growing though I am beginning to think it may have been a mistake - will the pumpkins just grow to fit the space, and have rock shaped dents in them? I think I may sit them on a bit of foam or something similar to give their bottoms a bit of protection. 

So that's what is growing in the garden at the moment. Plenty to keep me busy in the kitchen. 

Speak soon, lots to tell you!

XxXx

First strawberry

We've finally picked the first strawberry from the garden this year, and it was deeelicious! Unfortunately only one was ready, so split into three it didn't go far (Little One was in bed, so we only had to share between three of us!). 

I originally bought one of these big planters, which holds loads of strawberry plants. It has some netting to cover over the fruit when it is ripening. I've learnt from last year not to put it on too early though, as if you do the strawberries just grow through the netting, then you can't take it off! It's great but I didn't really think when I placed it, as the plants around the back don't get much sun so are a lot smaller and don't produce much fruit. Maybe we should have put it on a spinning jenny so I could turn it around ;-)

This year I decided to use a three tier basket to put some of the runners in from the plants above. This is where our first strawberry of the season came from. I've planted some lobelia in there as well. The plan is to trick the birds so they only see flowers and not my yummy fruit. I'll let you know if my plan works!

Speak soon

XxXx

A pheasant visitor

My sister came to visit a few days ago, and when I went to answer the door she pointed out a pheasant wandering outside the neighbour's house. We live on the outskirts of town, and have many acres of fields and woodland surrounding us, but it seemed strange that he had decided to have a wander around a built up residential area. I went and got some bird food and sprinkled it on our lawn, then we went in for a cup of tea. 

A little while later I thought I would just see if he was still around, and got a shock when I opened the porch door....

He was stood there, waiting to come in! He looked very indignant about being shut out, and you could almost hear him saying, "I've been stood here for ages waiting for you."! He didn't even seem scared, and only moved away when I actually opened the front door. I put some more food out for him, and he spent quite a while out there tucking in, before jumping up on our fence and flying away. 

We enjoyed watching our unusual but friendly visitor. 

XxXx

Healthy new year, healthy bread

The start of a new year generally means we try to eat more healthily after the indulgences of Christmas, and one thing I decided to do was to try making bread using wholemeal spelt flour. It's not a flour I have ever tried before, and previous attempts at using wholemeal flour to make bread have ended up with a dense, heavy loaf. Surprise, surprise, I ended up again with a brown brick (if anybody can enlighten me on where I'm going wrong that would be great).

But all is not lost. I sliced a piece off and offered it to Big Girl to try. This is a child who only ever ate white bread, who wouldn't go near wholemeal, granary or anything remotely brown coloured. However since turning not only a teenager but also a vegetarian she is more open to trying new foods. And she thought it was Deeeeelicious!! She had two slices with her tea, then after eating pudding asked if she could have another slice!

I think I will persevere, after all I still have half a packet of flour to use, and maybe I will throw my tin of yeast away and get a new one. It's within date but does say not to use after four months once opened. I can't even remember when I used it last, so it must be more than that. Let's hope my next loaf is light and airy, but either way, I know someone in the house will tuck in!

I had another cake  baking session this weekend. I asked OH what be would like and he requesterd viennese whirls. Mr Kipling's viennese whirls are a favourite of his, but he does find them rather small. Let me introduce you to my whirls on steroids!...

They are that big I can only just fit them all in the cake tin! You may have noticed some of them look a little bit well done. I have a valid excuse for that. I put them in the oven then remembered I had to pick Big Girl up from riding which took a bit longer than expected, hence the 'well done' look of some of the whirls. 

I dont think I better eat too many, I dread to think how many calories are in one of those babies. Enough to feed a starving African family for a week I would imagine. I think whoever invented calories should be ashamed of themselves for stripping me of my enjoyments. I absolutely love Battenburg, and can quite easily polish of a quarter of one. Have you ever read the back of a Battenburg wrapper. Do you know how many slices they allow for in that teeny tiny cake? 12. Seriously?! Who are they feeding - the Borrowers?! So that means my quarter portion should actually feed three people 😩

The cake at the front in the photo above is an orange and chocolate cake. Its called a Jaffa drizzle loaf, and you can find the recipe here on the Good Food website. Yummy! 

The cake that was hiding behind the Jaffa cake is Davina's sugar free fruit tea bread. It is sweetened with maple syrup rather than sugar, and is a good recipe to use up all the dried fruit lurking in the cupboard - figs, dates, apricots, pears, sultanas, currants. That was another recipe using the dreaded wholemeal spelt flour but this one turned out okay (well taste wise ok, but it wouldn't win a beauty prize hence why it is hiding in the background in my photo).

On a completely different topic, did you notice the row of yoghurt pots in the background of the first cake photo? We get through a lot of yoghurt in this house, and I buy the big pots and decant into smaller reusable pots for everyone to take to work/school. So I got to thinking, what could I do with all those pots? Then I had a lightbulb moment - they make great mini propagaters! I planted sweet pea seeds as they like a nice deep pot, planting ten to a pot, popped the lid on (with a few holes poked in for ventilation) and wrote the variety on the side in marker pen.

I'm thinking I might give some pots to the children, so they can plant grow their own pumpkin and courgette seeds. I think they look prettier on the windowsill than a bunch of brown plastic pots, and I'm doing my bit for recycling 😀

Speak soon,

Claire

XxXx

Happy New Year!

A belated very happy new year to you all! I was doing really well in December, with Elvis the elf visiting I was doing a daily post. Now I am ashamed that it is already mid way through the month and this is my first post of 2017.

Well the forecast snow on Friday 13th came and went in a few hours. What a disappointment. I didn't think it would come to much but I still got a little bit excited, just in case. Don't you just love it when it has snowed during the night, and you open the curtains in the morning to find a white blanket? Even better if you get to see it before any feet or car tyres have spoilt the pretty picture. 

On the house renovation front, we are still waiting for a builder (surprise surprise). The ones we have been in contact with are either too expensive or haven't got back in touch. So we decided to get the ball rolling on the weekend and started clearing the gravel from the back patio. 

It's all being bagged up and hopefully re-used somewhere, possibly in the bottom of the raised beds we are building around the lawn. I'm hoping a combination of membrane and a layer of gravel will keep the darned ground elder from invading the beds, at least for a few years.

We were a little surprised to uncover what looked like a pond shaped hole, filled with rubble. Rather worrying if it had been a pond, as the drains run along underneath there! Somebody suggested that it may have been a soak away that went wrong. Maybe we will find out when the building work finally begins. 

Speak soon (hopefully, if I pull my finger out and make an effort!)

XxXx

Fungus Among Us

We have a problem in our garden at the moment, the mushrooms are taking over! There are quite a few tree stumps in our back garden, and that's where most of them are, but they are also taking over the lawn too...

Around the climbing frame...

By the shed...

I attempted to try and identify some of them, but there are so many that are so similar. I reckon the one below is 'Hypholoma'...

This one I think is 'Turkey Tail', which often colonies decomposing pieces of wood (mine was on an old tree stump). Turkey Tail is apparently one of the most medically researched mushrooms in the world. A compound from this species of mushroom is used to boost the immune system in conjunction with standard cancer treatment, with promising results in the treatment of breast and lung cancer. Wow, how amazing is that, I feel rather bad about digging them up and throwing them away.

This clump of mushrooms was huge, about 18 inches across...

So I think this weekend we will be busy clearing all the mushrooms up. I feel a bit bad digging them all up, as some of them are quite beautiful, but they have taken over, and I'm a bit concerned if I leave them they will spread. 

Our neighbours have the same problem, and I wonder what is causing this fungus infestation. Does anyone else  have a mushroom outbreak? Do you leave them be, or clear them up?

Hope you had a Happy Halloween, and have a safe Bonfire night, if you celebrate it. (Just remember to check bonfires for sleeping hedgehogs, and keep pets safe)

XxXx