Life rushes by

Term finally ended with Pirate day for the younger ones. Our two pirates look more like pickpockets from Fagin's gang . The treasure they are searching for is red-tailed bumble bees. My son, like most small boys, is fascinated by small winged or creeping things. ( He is also mighty proud of his sister's boots, which he has borrowed - he is convinced they make him look as cool as Johnny Depp)

And a birthday for my eldest daughter, who said goodbye to her primary school, and prepares to take the next step onwards in life. Granny baked her a beautiful cake, with crystallised Pinks on it, as requested. It feels like such a momentous step forwards, and part of me mourns the loss of childhood - she is growing up into this beautiful young woman before my very eyes, and so fast.

And I have to show you the fruits of Steve's hard work. We have a deal in our house. Steve works the allotment (but I have start the seedlings in the greenhouse, and do all the pricking out and potting on ) and I am supposed to be responsible for the back garden. Well, the allotment is looking stunning - finally coming into it's own after 3 years of reclaiming it from the wilderness. It is organic, but Steve is a traditionalist. He double digs, and follows his rotation plan, and I occasionally sneak extra catch crops in little gaps. At last, we are eating almost entirely from here. I am SO proud of him. He works extremely long hours at work, six days a week, then arrives home, picks up his tools and at least one of the children, and does another couple of hours working on the allotment.

I, on the other hand, am ashamed to admit that I have let the back garden turn into a jungle. I feel like I have been run off my feet, just trying to juggle work, childrens taxi services, cooking, (cleaning has completely gone out of the window) dragging water to 6 horses, and trying to keep the kids ponies vaguely fit, and two dogs who haven't had the sort of walk they would like ( a decent 3 or 4 miles) for at least a month. My temporary job finishes on Monday, thank goodness, though the money from it is also much needed, as it will pay for my winter hay delivery.

I haven't even got round to staking the tomato plants in the greenhouse, or tying up my sweet peas, which are sprawling across the flower beds. My grape vine is threatening to swamp the apple tree, and the runner beans fell over and I didn't get around to picking them up. The grass is knee high, and the bindweed and ground elder is creeping back. So, I am in disgrace, and need to devote some time to sorting the mess out. I am hoping I can persuade some small hands to help me.
I will keep you posted!

A packet of stripey socks

Two weeks of tiresome snuffles and sneezes, and general ill humour on my part ( I HATE being ill, and not being able to get on with stuff!) came to a welcome end when this long awaited parcel of socks arrived! I have searched high and low for earthy coloured striped socks in this country, but seen nothing. At the same time, I discovered these at sock dreams, and have been coveting them for the best part of a year. They are very reasonably priced, but I was concerned about shipping and customs charges adding a huge chunk to the cost. In the end, I bit the bullet and ordered four pairs. Thankfully, there was no customs charge, and they are absolutely delightful - I am so pleased with them!

The harvest from the garden, which fell behind while I was ill, is now on frantic catchup. The weather is finally turning, becoming wet and with frost threatened soon. Sunday evening was spent in front of the fire shelling these beautiful beans. They are Cherokee Trail of Tears, a variety I mentioned that I was disappointed with earlier in the year. Their eating qualities as whole beans were poor, but left to ripen, and eaten at this stage, they were delicious!

And finally, the miracle from our garden this year - black grapes! The grape vine has never had a worth while crop before. Lots of small green clusters, but they never swell and ripen properly. This year, probably due to the hot, dry September, we had a bumper crop!The grapes are not as large as shop - bought grapes, but they are sweet and delicious.
Some day soon I hope to get my sketchbook out again, but for now I must finish picking and preserving.

Anyone for exploding cucumbers?

This is an Acocha, otherwise known as an exploding cucumber. I bought seeds a couple of years ago, from the Real Seed company, but planted them out a little early last year, and every last plant was caught by the cold and died. This year, with the few remaining seeds, I planted them out later, and this interesting fruit has been the success story of our summer. We even got a second prize at the local agricultural show with them!

Perhaps they are too succesful - the vines are currently rampaging over my fence and into the neighbour's garden, and have almost smothered my ornamantal cherry tree! I am assuming that the first frost will lay waste to them and I don't have to worry about them becoming invasive. In the meantime we are picking masses of fruit daily - more than we can eat. They are scrambling vines, similar to squashes and melons, and the fruits, which grow to about 2 inches long, and are covered in soft spines, are hollow inside. We split them in half, scrape out the seeds, and then use them in cooking in the same sort of way that I would use a green pepper.

So, if anyone lives near me and would like a bowl full, do call in, as we cannot eat nearly this many!

Also, ripening beautifully for the first year ever is this black grape. They may be small, but they are super sweet!

Globe artichokes too ( in fact, just one head - we will have to share!)

Chillies of many varieties, and tumbling tomatoes are ripening in the greenhouse ( no sign of the dreaded blight yet this year - I am crossing my fingers)

And these are the delicious spirits, to warm us up on cold winter nights! Raspberry gin (beautifully delicate flavour, goes down like a fruit cordial!), blackberry rum ( tastes a bit medicinal, this one!), and elderberry gin to ward off the coughs and sniffles.

I may just have to go and sample the raspberry gin right now!

The Garden Tour!

Ok, so I finally managed to upload the video. I hope it doesn't make the blog impossibly slow to load for you!

The Harvest Begins!

I bought a bag of mixed chilli pepper seeds to sow this year, so I am not sure what any of these varieties are, but I have about 8 pots of peppers in my greenhouse, all which a rich crop of chillies! There are fat, lime green upright peppers, like the ones above, and long green curly fingers, which I suspect will be fiery!

And many sorts in between. None of them are ready to ripen yet, but I don't expect it will be long before the first ones begin to change colour.

We have masses of beans. The large purple ones shown here are the best ever! Prolific, large, and completely stringless, they are a variety called 'Cosse Violette'. This is the third year I have been growing them ( still from the one original pack of seed!). This year I have grown one tripod of them in the greenhouse, and so I am hoping I can save seeds from these as they should be isolated enough from the other varieties. The other ones here are 'Cherokee Trail of Tears', but I am a bit disappointed with them. They haven't been nearly as heavy cropping, and they are a bit stringy and tough, even when picked small.

I dropped one on the way into the house - Beetle is sure it is a small wiggly snake!

Disater struck in the fruit garden, probably because of the sheer volume of water everywhere. One of my young apple trees was so weighed down by the apples, that a bough snapped off, and it broke much of the tayberry bush on it's way down. Luckily the tayberry was nearly over, so we stripped all the berries off it, but I am sad about the apple tree.

It is a variety called 'James Grieve', and we did manage to rescue the apples from the broken branch. They are very nearly ripe, and I will keep them for cooking.

A Jam Packed Week

Jam, Jam and more Jam this week! Blackcurrants, Tayberries, Gooseberries and other assorted berries. There has been no time for anything else, so here are some pics instead!

Perfect peas

A birthday cake for my aunt( created by my aunt and my daughter)

Parsley and Shallots coming on nicely

Jack

Two Rooks

I finished another pair of transformation paintings this week - two rooks.
These are actually portraits of myself and my sister ( I'm the one on the right, for those of you who don't know me - and those who do, but still don't recognise me with a bird's head stuck on top of mine!)

And a busy day in the allotment! I picked elderflowers for elderflower champagne, and thinned the beetroot. We had the beetroot for supper, both roots and leaves - they were so sweet and delicious! The fruit will go in the freezer for a few days until I have got enough to start making batches of jam. The blackcurrant bushes are laden, branches almost snapping under the weight of fruit, but something is scrumping our strawberries, despite them being carefully netted.

Sweet Peas and Roses

What better way to relax for 10 minutes than a pot of tea in the fruit garden, and the scent of sweet peas? I hurt my back at the beginning of the week, and have spent more time at my desk than I would have planned to in this glorious midsummer weather. Thankfully my desk is against the window, and I can see almost all of my little garden from this spot!

This shady rose bower is a favourite spot in the midday heat, although my smallest child keeps collecting snails and relocating them to the old mossy table in there.

And here are Magpie and Beetle. Beetle got accidentally shut in my studio for 24 hours , and I only found him this morning. I expected him to be very hungry and thirsty, but it seems he was only starved of company. He has been very vocal all day, and is following the dog everywhere, talking to her and trying to lick her face. She tolerates this, but sadly, although Beetle obviously adores her , I don't think the feeling is mutual!

And now, off to watch Glastonbury on television - the closest I want to get to the festival these days! Gone are the days of climbing the fence and sleeping in cardboard boxes beside a campfire for three nights. Now I can't bear the thought of so many crowds - I have become very hermit-like in my old age!

A trip to Rosemoor

Well, first I must apologise for my absence from the blog this week. I had an old friend visiting, whom I hadn't seen in 10 years, and the hours were far too precious to spend on the computer! We have had a wonderful time, walking on the moor, and whizzing around the sights, but the highlight of it all was a trip to Rosemoor gardens ( blissfully unencumbered by small children!).

Sweet rocket is definitely on my seed list for next year! Best of all, I love to see the model potager. This is how I dream my garden will look one day! Their vegetables are way ahead of ours, but I took plenty of photos, so that Steve could see how his allotment should be looking!

Interestingly, they were mulching their slug susceptible plants with sheep's wool. I stopped and questioned one of the gardeners about this when we noticed the young courgette plants snugly tucked up in fleece, and he said it is the first year they have done it, but so far it seems to be proving to be an effective slug barrier, and moisture conserver. It was most noticeably in evidence on their squash plants and hostas.

Oh, for a walled kitchen garden ( and a fulltime gardener to help!)

Foal watching

Seedlings are coming up everywhere! My greenhouse shelves are stuffed to bursting point with vegetables. The labels are made from plastic milk bottles which I just rinse out and cut into strips. I use plastic milk bottles for all sorts of things actually - they make great scoops for chicken and horse feed, as well as all sorts of little collars for young plants.

I've decided to try a slightly different approach in the greenhouse bed this year. I've planted my tomatoes and cucumbers in large 7.5 litre pots, which I have cut the bottoms out of. They have wonderful local compost in them, full of nutrients, and this means I have packed them in much closer than normal. I am hoping this will have several advantages : I can water the pots and avoid wetting the rest of the soil, which should cut down the weed growth, as well as use less water. Plants in pots above the ground should mean that they don't get damaged by the cats, who sleep on the beds , or worse! And of course, more plants, should hopefully mean more fruit! My main worry about this system is that the drier bed might 'suck' all the moisture out of the pots very quickly, but that doesn't seem to be happening.

I've been watching the foals out on the commons this week. Here is that foal again - it's a filly. This is one that is likely to make a good price at pony sales. The foals from this herd averaged nearly £400 each last year ( the average price at sales was £65 ish). There are now several foals with good spotted markings. Here is another (not 'Paddington') that is nicely marked.

The allotment takes shape

After so much navel gazing on Saturday, Sunday was a day of spring sunshine and work outdoors! I have been hard at work in the greenhouse ( watched over by Miu, sitting in his second favourite place - his most favourite place is on top of my parsley plants , but I have threatened to water him if he sleeps there)
I love watching seedlings emerge. When I worked at a nursery my favourite part of the day was checking the propagator in the morning to see what had come up overnight. Even pricking out trays and trays of seedlings is satisfying. I'm not so good at watering them though!
I have lots of vegetables started - tomatoes and chilli peppers, french beans and cucumbers, swiss chard and a couple of early summer squashes, and of course, my favourites - sweet peas. I am determined to stuff my garden full of them this year.

In the afternoon we all worked on the allotment. Steve has been digging every spare moment he has ( which sadly is not often!) but he has done a great job preparing the vegetable beds. The scruffy bed at the front of the picture shows the remains of the Kale (self seeded) and the leaf beet which has kept us going through the winter. I managed to get the first lot of potatoes in the ground, and while digging over the old potato bed, Steve and the girls managed to find enough small stray pink fir apples for supper.

There was even time to clear 'the jumping lane', which had been rendered impassable by drooping and fallen branches. We used the logs to make new small jumps. As the bracken grows up, this path becomes a tunnel, and it is brilliant for trotting small ponies down and gaining confidence in jumping. It is impossible to run out, and almost impossible to turn round, so there is no choice for them but to keep going. Having said that, I thought I had better just pop down it on Red and check it out, and he was convinced the track was covered in monsters. He shied and spooked and thought about trying to climb the bank instead of jumping a 9 inch log. Needless to say, he DID go down the lane and over the logs, but I was glad the children weren't watching me!
I have also been awarded the Passion For Painting Blog award, by Gail Ragsdale and Carol Buck, both extremely skilled painters themselves. Do check out their blogs!
I am supposed to list 7 things I love, but I think you are probably sick of reading about 7 things I love - I have posted several different lists!
I am going to nominate one painter to pass it on to - Ellen Morrow,, whose work is truly exceptional, and whose love of watercolour shows in every piece she paints. You must go and look at her work! ( but don't buy her crow pieces - I am saving up to buy one, one day!)

The Winner is .....

.....Leola, better known as 'South Shore Artist' to many of us! So, Congratulations Leola, I will send you off a set of ACEOs as soon as I have your address.

As an irrelevant aside, the flowers in the little jug are ones I picked from my garden in the rain this morning. I love the fact that it is the depths of winter, and I can still find flowers! The yellow are Mahonia flowers, which are just coming to an end, and the lovely coppery flowers of my Witchhazel (Hamamelis x intermedia 'Jelena' ). Also , smelling divine outside my studio, is the pink flowered Viburnum x bodnantense. It is weighed down with clusters of pale pink flowers, but sadly they seem to brown very quickly on picking, so it is difficult to bring their scent indoors. (Apologies for the latin names - a legacy from my RHS training!)