Day 8 of the Advent Season

Handmade Ribbon Flower Hair Clips

.

.

The girls got pretty little hair clips which I made from some of my ribbon remnants I have laying around. It was good practice as I have been meaning to make a batch of these for the blogshop, so now that I have finally got round to making a few and ironed out any glitches, I hope to be making a batch between now and the weekend.

.

The bible story they heard today is on the left.

On the walk home from school today we saw this healthy specimen of a fox sunning itself in some one's garden.

Whoopsie Another Long One!!

Well it’s the last bank holiday of the year and there was a definite change in the temperature on the Saturday and Sunday , for the first time in months I felt cold. Thankfully today on the bank holiday the temps were back up and the sky was clear and blue without a cloud insight.

Saturday disaster almost struck, I fell off the garden bench not far a stumble really, my camera was in my hand and in use at the time and got damaged. I was able to fix it but the shutter that protects the lens when not in use won’t close so now I have to be extra careful so as to not scratch the lens when its off.

In the garden I have been busy weeding a couple of beds that were getting out of hand. Other jobs in the garden all concentrated on maintenance, such as; watering, tying in the tomatoes, pruning back plants off the footpath (my youngest keeps complaining that the plants are attacking her) and lets not forget harvesting.

Friday

Sunday

My onions I grew from seed should have been harvested about a month ago but excepting a few plants they weren’t bending over but Saturday I spied to flower buds so decided to get it done. There turned out to be three with buds only.

Another thing I see no need to waste my onion tops, so when I harvest I always cut off the tops leaving about 5” - 6” of stalk attached to the bulbs, I use them as you would spring onion.

My harvest of mainly tomatoes meant that I’m also cooking lots of new exciting dishes for the family. Sunday I recreated this very tasty baklava inspired dish posted by mangocheeks.

The only thing I did differently was to add salt to taste to the tomato sauce as I found it a little too sweet and I used vegan cheese instead of feta cheese. In the comments of mangocheeks posting, she advised to prepare the dish as individual ‘spring rolls’, to make the eating a little easier. I followed her advice but worrying the sauce would have soaked through I used five sheets which was too much and I think two/ three would do. I’m afraid it tasted so good I forgot to take a picture of the bitten package for you to see, I served it with couscous and garlicky perpetual spinach. The dish was a huge success and I hope to repeat it before the tomatoes are over.

Tonight I prepared another recipe from mangocheeks blog.

Differences I made was to replace the fresh chillies in the courgette mixture with a whole Hungarian red sweet pepper and because I didn’t have any chick peas flour I used Soya flour (big mistake, I’ll explain further down). The tomato sauce I chose to leave chunky and didn’t puree, I also decided to cook the sauce with a whole chilli in it rather than add chopped up ones (have to think of the little ones tongue, both dishes still had enough heat at the end).

Now it was silly of me to forget that the Soya flour doesn’t really bind, so when I dropped the first three into the hot oil, they quickly disintegrated. To remedy the situation I spread the courgette batter onto oiled baking paper, I also lightly oiled the top and popped the tray under the grill. When the top was golden and crispy I laid another sheet of baking paper onto the surface then upended another tray and flipped it so the top was now on the bottom and the bottom was now on top (I do hope I’m making sense). I then returned it to the grill till the new top turned golden and crispy. PS the three that fell apart in the oil was drained and spread on the surface before I placed it in the grill - waste not, want not.

I served the dishes with boiled potato, sweet potato and cassava with garlicky sautéed runner beans. Hats off to mangocheeks her creations are spot on with my family’s taste buds and the dish was another winner. The tomato sauce tasted like curried green mango a dish from my home island and the differing flavours of the courgette dish’s ingredients blended beautifully.

Now for some pictures:

Crop progress;

Friday saw me netting my largest melon to support its weight.

The borlotto beans pods are beginning to dry, you can hear the beans rattling in this one.

‘The Patch’ is beginning to die back, if you look closely you can see the gems that await me.

My sunflowers have done well this year and would have done even better if I got most of them planted out on time (ho hum maybe next year), most of them weren’t attacked by the local squirrels so I looked forward to harvesting the seed heads to use during the winter to feed the birds that visit my garden. Yesterday I found evidence of squirrel munching on the first ripe seed head. So I removed it and hung it in the shed to keep it safe.

Today I finally got round to gathering and properly storing some of the seeds in the garden. The pic depicts my seed saving staple; a stool to sit on, a notepad to make my seed packets out of, sellotape to secure the seed envelope and a pencil to write the name and year.

Now for some flowers:

More sunflowers.

The garlic chives are blooming.

Today I noticed the water aven plants which are in the boggy area and were in flower late spring are in flower again.

The garden’s wildlife.

The fox cubs that were around a lot till early July suddenly disappeared for most of the summer holiday they have made an reappearance over the last ten days or so, they both look rather worst for wear and I’m sure are very hungry as they are both quite skinny (wheelie bins don‘t offer much free meals).

I disturbed this ‘Silver Y’ moth while weeding.

This ladybug has been resting at the base of this sweet corn cob for days now.

I thought this was a spider but have been told differently that it is a female ‘Leiobunum rotundum’ of the Opilione family which are also arachnids.

Seen today for the first time a lacewing larva, it was busy eating a caterpillar (sorry Maureen).

Two different stages of ‘Mid Instar Nymphs’ of shield bugs.

Well that’s it for now, I do hope you all had a lovely bank holiday weekend, now lets all wish for a great Indian Summer.

PS I've updated my Supermarket Saving Post and boy what a saving August harvests have produced.

Foxes >:(

Now I really like wildlife and unlike some do not see their normal behaviours as sneaky, mischievous, conniving or maliciously wicked I any way, after all they are just trying to survive the best way they can.

BUT!!! why in my garden :(

A couple years ago when I began to really whip the garden into shape their was a fox family with cubs being raised who thought my new flower beds was their playground. I would put a plant in and they would try to tell me in not subtle terms to move it by digging it out again. So to give my plants the chance to establish themselves I bought some chicken wire and proceeded to fence my flower beds in. Though it was not pretty to look at (I was not going for the chicken coup look) it worked and stayed in place for a year coming down last summer, when there was no signs of fox cub activity to be seen early in the season. Which really allowed us to use the area to its full potential.

Well about ten days ago my neighbour asked me if I had had any damage in the garden because he not had experienced some damage but had seen the offenders all four of them!! (in 2007 we only had two cubs to contend with). Well the day after he let me know they were about I found evidence of their wandering in my garden, a couple of shallowly dug holes in my vege beds (the flower beds are pretty filled out now and as such has very little bare soil to interest them). that same night I spotted the runt of the litter running past outside the conservatory and very cute he was too.

Well as the days continued the damage grew, they seemed particularly take by netting (this is how they caused damage to my neighbours patch by rolling over the netting he was using to protect his onion sets from the birds and in doing so they flattened all of the new growth). I noticed they two nights in a row removed and peeled back the netting I was using to protect my mini meadow seedlings from cats using the area as a toilet and then they proceeded to rip a hole in the netting I had over one of the mini ponds and threw one of the pond plants onto the foot path (there they go again telling me they don't like my style in relation to plant placement, BAH! critics who needs them).

Then they started digging up my sown in situ seedlings, I'll be resowing the salsify and some of my parsnips this week because of them. The legume bed is also a favorite digging area with great amounts of soil displaced and the contents of my bean trenches being brought up to the surface. Then Thursday morning I was greeted with bite holes in my carrot fly barrier ????

Friday night I forgot to close the greenhouse and well I was greeted with a lovely little package and evidence of frantic chewing on the corner of newly bought box of Blood, Fish and Bones Fertiliser.

So far the cardboard that has been laid to suppress weeds in the area earmarked for pumpkin and squash growing has not been to interfered width, fingers cross it will remain this way as its my experience in the past that the adults love to dig this form of weed suppressant up.

Yesterday I decided to fence my vege beds in as I don't think my plants would get a moments peace if I leave them to the mercy of the cubs. It does mean that now I have only one entrance to this area so a bit inconvenient but at least my veges will grow.

So that is it for now I did get other things done over the last few days since my last post but I will go into more detail in another post update.

Here is a parting video of the rambunctious cubs with one of the parents in my neighbours garden two doors down, (sorry about the picture clarity but it was shot through the bedroom window).

Here have a listen to a fox calling at night, creepy :)