Day 4 of the Advent Season

Japanese Homemade Fans

I made these fans with tracing paper and cutouts from Japanese themed scrapbook paper. I searched for the Japanese translation of my girls names and wrote it onto the central paper strip of their fans, a couple of wooden beads with Japanese symbols complete the keepsakes.

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This of course prompted my youngest to want to watch the Disney movie Mulan, why? Because she has a fan too, of course!

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The bible the story I read to them today is pictured on the left.

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Female Green Woodpecker seen from a bedroom window

We cracked open the first bottle of 2009 chutneys tonight at dinner and from the half empty bottle in the picture I think we could safely say it was delicious, here is a link to when I made this batch.

Well tomorrow is the girls last drama class for the year, so I'm hoping to get at least one allotment visit on Saturday the 12th before Christmas, to get some early winter digging done, hopefully the weather will be kind to me.

Where Does The Time Go????

Gosh! I thought that as the days grew shorter and things slowed down on the gardening front, I would find myself with too much time on my hands, with lots of time for blogging and dabbling in crafting activities. How wrong was I??

This last week I haven’t had time to not even smile at the garden, so there is no present updates on that front and to make matters worse Wednesday and Thursday there was a lovely break in the weather with lots of sunshine and mild temps and I couldn’t even get time to fit in a visit to the plot, BUMMER!!! (My hubby was home all week as well so I would have been able to go on my own and leave the bambino home, *^%%^^$& !!!)

So what kept me so busy you are probably wondering? Well I had a commissioned jewellery job to complete for a friend, which if I was not unwell a couple of weeks ago I would have completed a while back, as it is the cold made me lose a week plus some, which meant many a 2 O’clock to 4 O’clock morning bedtimes this past week.


She wanted some dragonfly brooches for her teachers and something for the two male teachers.




I attempted some very snazzy cuff links (for the brave male in your life/ for the lady who wants to jazz up her borrowed/ owned male shirt) and was really pleased with how they turned out. I thought I would have had some leftover for the blogshop after showing her them on Saturday but she took the lot. So after this blog update its back to the loft for more creating.

Since I was stuck in the loft for long hours each day last week I decided to take a few photos to show you all what I have to look out onto when I come up to breath.

See I told you we had some lovely gardening weather this week down my way (seen while sitting).

This is if I stand and look out the window.

And when I stick my head out of the window this is what I see ( I love touching the lumps of moss).

Other things that kept me busy was the kitchen, the weekend before last I was busy turning the green tomatoes I picked previously into chutney, golly there was a lot, I also did a small pot of apple jam. The tomato chutney was made following the Glutney recipe from River Cottage Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. This recipe is certainly a fail safe recipe for garden veg gluts and I’m always pleased with the outcome. The apple jam was made simply by equalling the weight of the chopped apples with brown sugar and I added some spices such as cloves, bay leaf, nutmeg, cinnamon, and mace. Stewed it down till it reached setting stage and bottled in sterilised jars. End result was 15 jars of chutney and 4 jars of apple jam.

Well I know it doesn’t seem that much but the above mentioned stuff along with everyday life and a husband recovering from some minors surgery (not to worry he’s fine, went back out to work today), my last two weeks have left me time poor and shattered, thankfully I made it to bed early Saturday and Sunday night so I’ll be feeling good as new soon.

Oh! by the way check out what I harvested from the greenhouse on the 21st of Nov, how cool is that! This is the result of my ‘Extending The Tomato Harvest Period Experiment’. I’m afraid I didn’t label the posts I mentioned it in before and now I can’t even find them to link back to. So I’ll try to briefly explain what it was/ is about. In latter part of June I took the removed side shoots of the outdoor grown tomatoes and rooted them in water in the greenhouse. As they grew they were potted up into pots at least twice before ending up in their final black bucket pots. I also restricted their growth to a cordon style and to a particular height of no more than roughly 3ft/ at least three trusses of flowers. The whole idea was to see if I could extend my outdoor tomatoes by growing their clones in the greenhouse which should crop a little later and longer because the plants are protected by the elements when the weather change for the worse. So far so good the autumn was uncharacteristically mild so that was definitely to the plants benefit. And as of right now there are ripe tomatoes outside in the greenhouse waiting to be picked. A couple of cuttings even made it inside on to the kitchen window sill but I kept these in much smaller pots which forced them to concentrate on ripening the fruits quicker. So the question remains home picked Christmas tomatoes? I’ll have to wait and see.

I almost forgot to update you on the progress of my South American root veg. the Yukon has had lovely tubers on them since October but I’m yet to harvest any and as of last week the oca has begun to grow tubers, nothing yet noticed on the ulluca though.

Anyhow! Here are some more photo updates on my pass blog hiatus period.

What I Got Up to in The Garden October into November.

Beds were cleared and weeded, the compost bin overflowed quite a few times as a result.

Tender plants were moved from the greenhouse to the conservatory (chili plants, sweet potato, Greek basil, lemon grass and Vietnamese coriander) and from outside into the greenhouse (the South American root veges: Yukon, oca and ulluca). I also moved my succulent hanging basket (which sits as the center piece of my vege garden mini pond) that I started this year into the greenhouse, for although the plants are hardy, there is quite a lot of water retaining crystals at the base of the basket. This would definitely cause water logging over the winter which may cause me to lose some of the plants.

The mini meadow area was strimmed down (I removed the seed heads carefully first) then the area was raked quite roughly to remove some of the faster growing grasses which opened up some bare soil. Then I distributed the seeds from the saved seed heads and the seeds I saved from the field poppies that grew elsewhere in the garden this year evenly over the area (some of the wheat and oat seeds were already germinating with the warm wet environment of mid October). I then netted the are to prevent the birds taking the seeds.

In October month I was still fortunate enough to be harvesting a few summer crops, with some like the runner beans giving of their last right into November.

08/10/09 - A continued bumper harvest of plum tomatoes made me a second batch of chunky tomato sauce.

09/10/09

12/10/09

15/10/09 - The very last of the patty pan squash and sweetcorn (eaten as baby sweetcorn and baby squashes) included in this harvest.

15/10/09 - The last of the container grown potatoes, a main crop variety.

15/10/09 - WHAT THE !!!!!!!! a little aubergine. It never did get much bigger than this, I ate it anyway :)

The borlotti beans shelled and chucked into the freezer because as you can see from the green beans not all got to dry on the plants or in their pods.

23/10/09

03/11/09 - The last harvest of the runnerbeans.

03/11/09 - A combination of outdoor and greenhouse tomatoes.

09/11/09 - Still harvesting outdoor and greenhouse tomatoes, picking enough to keep the two tomato bowls filled.

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Other developments in the garden has been the self seeding of the 2008 over wintered parsley plants. As you can see the mild weather has encouraged a plethora of parsley seedlings in this years sweet corn bed and where I wanted them in the cracks of the brick footpath boarding the beds.

Well I think this blog post is more than long enough so I’ll end it here and will try to complete my October into November updates over the next couple of days.

Best Laid Plans

So I got up yesterday with the plan to be a real organized ‘Super Mom’.

The plan was to cook up a batch of ketchup in the morning and then to take myself and the younger offspring to the allotment to do some more clearing of my plot, then on our return, we would go straight to the school and pick up the older offspring return home and cook up a batch of chutney before dinner (there was enough leftovers not to actually worry about cooking dinner).

Ok now for what really happened:

Ketchup making took much longer than expected so morning session at allotment was moved to mid afternoon after picking up older offspring (perfect as little one will have company which frees me up to get more work done) and chutney making moved up into empty time slot, great save I thought.

Feeling well smug about saving the day but in hindsight I am suddenly aware of the old proverbs, such as; ‘pride goes before the fall’ and ‘don’t count your chickens before they hatch’.

So leaving 5 minutes late to go pick up the eldest and the youngest running ahead falls not 20ft away from our gate on pavement and badly (I mean badly skins her knee). The scenario plays out as follows; grab child up off of the ground, run back into house , grabs box of bandaids and run next door, thrust screaming child onto neighbours kitchen counter and ask her to please clean her up for me so I’m not late picking eldest up.

On the return home youngest is no longer crying (she is a toughy) but her knee is hurting a lot and her mood is not nice. She doesn’t want to visit the lotty (can’t blame her) I dose her up with some painkillers and she promptly goes off to sleep within an hour.

SIGH! So much for being a super organised mom, never mind, better luck next time as they say.
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This morning she is still very sore and walking very higgly piggly, so the lotty is out of the question this morning as well but hopefully once the knee has warmed up sufficiently maybe we could fit a trip in this afternoon with big sister in tow as well.

So walking backwards so to speak from yesterday to my last posting date I’ll fill you in on what I have been up too.

So yesterday I finally got round to cooking up a batch of ketchup using some very ripe tomatoes that had gone pass their eating fresh best but were still lovely to use in sauces etc.

I used a recipe from Jamie Oliver’s - Jamie at Home: Cook Your Way to the Good Life cook book. It took a lot longer than I thought it would and though it did taste delicious I think I would look for and use a simpler recipe next time.
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(Clicking on the recipe will open it up bigger)

I did do a couple things differently though; as I had no bulb fennel I used one bunch of fresh fennel seeds right off the plant (I think this did impart some bitterness to the sauce but once I added the sugar and vinegar that bitterness disappeared). I also did not dice up the chilli but cooked it whole in the sauce to impart its flavour but without too much of it’s heat (gotta think of the kids). The end result was approx 900- 950mls of yummy homemade tomato ketchup.





After lunch I started to make some chutney with some of the patty pan squash I had in the vegetable bowl. This plant is cropping really well this year and as such I have had to give away and now pickle some into a chutney for winter relish. I used this recipe ‘Glutney’ from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall last year for my courgette glut and it was a huge success, so as they say don’t fix it if it ain’t broken. I got 6 bottles jars, my larder is stocking up nicely.

The weather over the last five days or so have improved greatly and with this return to hot sunny days and relatively mild nights the beasties are remerging from their hidey holes. Here are some photos taken on Monday of the garden’s wildlife and flora.

I am seeing a few more of these of late.

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The bees are also more active again.

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As are the hoverflies.

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Female Ichneumon Wasp query sp.

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And not sure how many of you have noticed but gosh there are tons of these about, they are making huge webs in all manner of places, which freaks my girly girls out.

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The flowers as I mentioned are still at it although not at the numbers they were before:

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New sunflowers are still opening.

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California Poppies are still blooming.
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And finally the Jerusalem artichokes are finally going to open their buds.

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Monday I also did another big harvest; along with the usual stuff another of my winter squashes were ready ‘Blue Banana’ weighing in at 5lbs 4ozs.

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Well that’s it for now, toodles.