C's BBQ Pear Sauce

Hello Friends,
I've finally sat down with a pretty horrible cup of tea to catch up with my blog & hopefully let the Eau de Vinegar from this morning's efforts evaporate from my person. Albert Whiskers is fed up with it settling into his fur & has stomped off through the cat flap to smell the flowers.

We have another pear glut here at the People & Cats Republic. So far, (aside from eating them simply as fresh fruit), I've baked two pear & cinnamon loaf cakes, made blackberry & pear compote, a crumble base & ten jars of pear & blackberry jam. As I've achieved this mainly just from picking up windfalls, our pear tree still looks like this:

So this morning, I've made a batch of my BBQ Pear Sauce. I came up with this recipe last time we had a glut of pears & the Bigger Hairier Half of the Relationship loved it. I thought it needed tweaking slightly, so here is the recipe with the tweaks, which were just to intensify the flavours a little where I thought this was needed. It's my own recipe, so I'm happy to share it, although it's always nice to get the credit (if it turns out nicely.....if not, you can blame it on whoever you like!)
You don't need much kit - a large pan with a lid (I used our big stock pot), a wooden spoon, a sieve, a large bowl, a jug & some jam jars with lids, which you need to wash thoroughly then lay in a roasting tin or similar ready to sterilize. If you want to get all fancy pants, you could add a spatula. Oh, & a stick blender or liquidiser. 

C's Pear BBQ Sauce
Ingredients
3lbs pears
1lb onions
8 large garlic cloves
A piece of root ginger (about 5 cms x 2 cms)
8 small - medium dried red chillies
4 tsp smoked paprika
2 tsp English mustard powder
2 tsp ground allspice
7 oz raisins
4 tsp salt
2 tbsp black treacle
1 pint malt vinegar
1lb dark brown sugar

Method
Heat the oven to Gas 2 & pop in the tray of clean jars to sterilize. They'll be in there a good long time, so turn it down to the lowest setting once you've done the prep.
OK. Prep time. Nothing tricky here. Peel & roughly chop the onions & garlic. Put in your large pan. Finely chop the root ginger & de-seed & snip up the chiilles with scissors. Add to pan. Now peel & core the pears & roughly chop those. Add to pan, followed by all the other ingredients. That's it!

Now bring the pan to the boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Put the lid on & simmer for about 45 mins until the pears & onions are soft & mushy. Give it a quick stir every now & again just to check it isn't sticking. It shouldn't do, but if this did happen, you can just stir in half a mug of water.

Remove pan from heat & using your stick blender, zizz the mixture up until smooth, when it will look like this.

 Now stand a sieve over a large bowl & ladle the mixture into it. Work it through with a spatula or large spoon.

This will need doing in batches. As your bowl starts to fill with lovely smooth sauce, transfer it to a large jug ready for bottling. The little bit of fruit/veggie fibres left in the sieve at the end can go on the compost or in the bin, they're not required.

Remove your hot clean jars from the oven & fill them with the sauce. Wipe the rims of the jars with a hot clean cloth & pop the lids on.

By rights, the filled jars should now be sterilized by standing them in a pan of water on a folded tea towel & bringing to the boil for a set amount of time. I don't do this myself, because this sauce doesn't tend to last all that long in our house, mostly because I don't think there's actually anything that the Resident Sauce Hoover wouldn't eat it on, but if you were wanting to store it for longer than about 3 months or so, you should really do the sterilizing process, which you can find in any instructions for bottling. Oh, & keep it in the fridge once it's been opened.

It's fab on hot dogs, burgers, cheese on toast, chicken drumsticks, pulled pork, veggie sausages, you name it, & I've also used it spread over the bases when making pizzas. I'm thinking this is a good year for pears. I tried to offload some on a neighbour this week & she didn't need any because her pear tree is also laden, so if you have a glut yourself, or can scrounge some, do give this sauce a try. You can easily half the recipe if you would rather make just a few jars.

Well, I must sign out now, & go & see what's happening in the garden. Whatever it is, it seems to be involving a lot of loud shouty yowling & thoughtless crashing of felines through what's left of my rudbeckia & cosmos plants.
Bye for now,
C x
P.S For AW fans......here he is on his new blanket, knitted by a friend up in North Yorkshire.

And it's off the blocks with the cauldron.........

Hello Friends,
It's that time again. The trusty cauldron has come out ready for turning home-grown & foraged loveliness into jars of Good Things for the pantry. I've kicked it all off with greengage jam. Our greengage tree is really temperamental, but I think it must have heard our discussion about whether to keep it or have it chopped down, as it grudgingly decided to produce a small amount of fruit this year. I spent 40 mins with the apple-picking pole coaxing reluctant greengages down into my colander.....probably not the best of activities for a short person with a knackered back, but when jammin' calls, there's no stopping me. 

By the time I'd stoned them, I'd got about four & a half pounds, definitely enough for some jam, so that was the Big Yay Moment, when the cauldron made its first appearance of the season. There's something nostalgic about the smell of boiling jam. Both Mum & my Nan made jam (this is Nan's pan) and it appeals to the squirrel in me, as I love a full pantry, bursting with tasty jars to tart up our meals for the year ahead. I've been jammin' since I was about 12 years old.

Anyway, my basket of greengages made 9 jars of jam. A lovely fruit..........they always look so sour, being green, but a ripe one has a taste unlike any other plum, almost honeyed. All now carefully stowed away in the pantry.........perfect timing, as I opened the last jar of 2016's batch this morning to top a slice of rather nice sourdough toast!

"After the Lord Mayor's Show comes the muck cart" as my Grandad used to say in his broad Suffolk accent.........it was an expression for when something nice, wholesome & good is followed by.......something the exact opposite...........as in having to admit that we still have not yet administered that worming pill to Albert Whiskers. You see, you were reading about lovely jam & now it's all about worm pills. We do not have a good track record of getting pills down cats. The pill is still sitting in its wrapper on top of the freezer looking at us accusingly. We have never had to pill Albert Whiskers before. Will he be the type of cat who happily gobbles it down with his meat? Or will he be like Pussy Willow, seeing through every single one of our increasingly cunning & desperate attempts to trick him into eating it? Hmmmm. AW fans, watch this space!
Cheers all,
C x

Wild plums - (jumps up & down with excitement!)

Hello Friends,
People who know me (even just a little bit) know that the last place I'm ever going to be found heading towards is the gym........but I do like walking, & apart from the general fitness thing of walking, & the fact that it's always good for sorting my head out, one of the best things about it is that I see stuff. Sometimes it's cats, wildlife, amazing plant specimens in the most unusual places.....& sometimes, that best of all things - FREE STUFF!! I do enjoy a bit of foraging, but this little find didn't even require the special plastic bag or knife to come out, or risking life & limb against wasps, nettles or plummeting headlong into a ditch. No, these lovelies were simply sitting at the boundary of a villager's garden next to a blackboard chalked with the enticing message- "Free windfall cherries". 

Oooooooh! Fab or what? My only problem was that they didn't look like cherries. My Nan had a cherry tree in her garden & the cherries were a much brighter red & shinier. Took some home with me, anyway, to investigate. As soon as I'd cut one open, it was obvious they were wild plums, slightly sourer than the large cultivated varieties, but not remotely jaw-clenchingly so like sloes & bullaces.

Having put aside a saucerful for baking into cinnamon & plum muffins, I cooked some into compote & froze it for topping Autumn porridge. The remaining kilo has been halved, stoned & frozen where it will wait for our apple crop, ready to be turned into spiced wild plum & apple chutmey for Christmas. So no cherries, but I'm not going to turn my nose up at 4 lbs of wild plums & will walk that way again in case there is more free bounty! Thank-you unknown person with the free fruit & friendly blackboard.

Albert Whiskers is making the most of the between-showers summer sunshine. 

His 2nd best spot (when my deckchair is unavailable) is this sunny gap at the back of one of my big flower borders......it's not a great photo as the shadows were wrong, & I only have my phone camera, but AW fans will just be able to make out his supine form behind the plants. He's been trying it on a bit with food fussiness this last week. The Big Hairy Half of the Relationship (who is generally in charge of cat feeding) has countered this by only feeding him half a pouch at a time. AW is then so utterly shocked at the titchy size of his dinner that he gobbles it in one & demands the other half immediately. This little rip-off tactic seems to have nipped a season of food silliness in the bud, anyway, I'm pleased to say, as we aim to be a zero food waste household & that extends to cats.
Hope everyone is seeing at least a few rays of sunshine today.
Until next time,
C x

Nom Nom! Pesto time again!

Hello Friends,
I don't know HOW today has disappeared so fast. And as for this year, it seems like only a couple of months have passed since I was making last year's pesto. My Mum always says that feeling that time is whizzing by faster is a sure sign of getting older. On that positive note, I think I'll go back to the pesto........

Our basil crop is fab this year. It's always one of two extremes here, either a greenhouse border edged with fragrant green lushness.......................or a tragic terracotta pot hosting a collection of stalks & reluctant leaves. So glad 2017's another good year, as we love pesto & it's so easy to make & can be pretty much adapted with whatever flavours you want to put in.

 I use the quantities from Delia Smith's Summer recipe book, but although I really like the authentic one, I've used walnuts & cheddar today, instead of pine nuts & pecorino or parmesan, as they are what I had in. You need 50g fresh basil leaves to make one quantity but I usually wait until I can get a really good basket of basil & scale it up.

I save small plastic pots from buying hummous, olives, etc, for dividing up & freezing pesto. I'm not sure freezing is recommended, but it seems to work fine & still has plenty of flavour when it comes out for livening up our pasta in the middle of winter. 

Albert Whiskers has been for his MOT today.......jabs, check-up, etc. He was dispatched with a small packet containing a worm tablet. Much sinking of heart........we do not have a good track record of getting tablets down cats. If I have not yet done a blog post to date on the Sorry Tale of How We Once Spent A Whole Afternoon Of Our Lives trying to get a worm tablet down our grey tabby, Willow, then I may have to subject you to this story. Even after 15 years, it will provide catharsis. Albert Whiskers is not nearly as clever as Willow, who had the mind of a criminal genius. I am still feeling fairly positive that a pill wrapped in a piece of pastrami, especially if we pretend it's come out of Steve's sandwich, will do the trick!
No thunder yet. So far, the big storms & mega-rain forecast for this afternoon have amounted to about 6 pathetic plibs of rain. Shall have to get the hose out & water the veggies after all at this rate, so boo to that.
OK, must go & get bread out of oven,
Till next time,
C x

Zinnias, green beans & Security Cats.

Hello Friends,
Well, how's this for a lovely zinnia?

I could fancy putting a streak of exactly that colour in my hair. Zinnias are so cheerful. Have to hold my hand up & admit, however, that this isn't one of mine. It was a gift from my good friend Hel. And a good thing too, as I am cursed when it comes to Zinnia growing, despite really liking them.

Every year, this is what happens:

1. Mum give me a packet of zinnia seed.
2. I sow them in my greenhouse with my usual Spring optimism that this will be THE year.
3. They germinate. 
4. They become strong little seedlings. (I am planning my summer containers at this point..........)
5. I go down to the greenhouse & discover an Evil Snail has eaten them ALL overnight.
This is despite the greenhouse door being closed in early Spring & regular mollusc patrols performed by Yours Truly.
This year's Evil Snail was worse than ever because it ate only the leaves....but all of them....so that I was greeted by an entire tray of perfect little sturdy upright stems with no hope whatsoever of re-sprouting. Said mollusc was later discovered tucking into a marigold for dessert & was launched into space with my throwing arm.........a better fate than ending up underneath the Bigger Hairier Half of the Relationship's Size 11s......& far better than it deserved.
So that, yet again, was the end of my patio tubs bursting with tootie-fruity coloured zinnias (except for this one!)

Veggies doing quite well. I grew climbing French beans this year, instead of my usual runners. Just fancied a change & had been getting a bit of pea & bean wilt. I chose a variety called 'Fasold' & so far they're earning their keep. I've got 2 bags blanched & in the freezer, we've eaten quite a few & they look like they're going to keep coming for a while yet.

I only popped out earlier to see if there was a small handful to add to a stir-fry & picked a colander full, then as many again. They're quite attractive plants with lilac-coloured flowers, which so far, the Naughty Sparrow Army has left alone in favour of peanuts for a change!

It's that time of year when cats seem to do a lot of swaggering around outside their house getting all territorial. Now, Albert Whiskers is without his love nuggets but this hasn't stopped him spending a large proportion of his time guarding his property. Big Grey Fluffy rarely wobbles his way up our end of the street these days & most of the local cats are too small & insignificant to bother with, but there are one or two.........a very large exotic-looking lad (maybe a Himalayan?) who lords it up & down the street despite living elsewhere, & Splodgy who has put on some size now........I'm not surprised given his skill in silently sneaking through neighbouring cat flaps & sinking his robbing gob into dinners that are not his own, So this is how Albert Whiskers has spent most of today. If he had a little high-vis jacket, he could be an actual real Security Cat.

 This behaviour will continue until all Cats Who Have Annoyed Him have stopped their silly nonsense & gone home!
And now I must get wokking those green beans.
Cheers all,
C x

Do herons eat frogs?

Morning Friends,
Well, do they? I researched the answer to this question a couple of months ago when our local heron was spotted eyeing up our pond with the same level of intensity the Big Hairy Half of the Relationship reserves for menus featuring smokehouse ribs. I needn't actually have squandered the electricity on powering up the laptop, as the very next morning, the beaky raider visited three times. Knowing that we had lost almost all our frogspawn to heron attack in 2015 & 2016, the Rib-Fancier twice encouraged him to try his luck elsewhere. Before being chased off a third time, Mr Heron made a swift grab beneath the water & launched himself skywards with a frog in his beak.......a grim scenario ably illustrated by my youngest Neff - thanks, Leo - great picture!

I just love the expression on the frog's face.....I bet he looked exactly like this. Our garden is long, but narrow, with high privet hedges on both sides plus trees. Naughty heron visitors can only just clear enough height for take-off & then need to perform a tight turn before heading off to the river to feed our amphibians to their heronlets. So we got a good look at its long legs skimming the edge of our hedging, while it flapped madly to achieve its escape, with its scissor beak kept clamped around the latest of our pondy community to provide somebody's breakfast.

So......I'd already covered the area of the pond where the frogspawn was waiting to hatch. Following the frog kidnap & almost certain gobble, I covered the rest of it with netting, leaving a small gap for frogs to get in & out. I counted 24 breeding pairs this year. Heron sightings stopped. The tadpoles hatched & the frogs did what they always do. They hung around for a bit before taking themselves off back to the borders & potato patch ready for summer slug patrol. A few smaller ones stayed in the pond for tadpole-sitting duties. I removed the netting, to allow access to birds & hedgehogs for drinking & bathing.......as well as idle cats who can't be bothered to walk to the kitchen for the lovely clean water in their own bowl.

It's only a small pond - for wildlife, we don't have any fish in it. With the river Trent very close by, as well as the village ponds, you would probably wonder why a heron would even bother to have our pond, with all the difficulties in taking off again, on its breakfast radar. The very morning after the netting was removed, I was watering the greenhouse plants when there was a humungous PLONK on the roof. It was so loud I jumped & managed to spray the hose down the inside of my boots. I looked up & there was the heron sitting right above me. He stretched his wings out fully before taking off & with the amazing beak as well, it was astonishing to see how big they actually are at close quarters. Was this already a return visit? I suspect so. The pond had a murky film across the surface entirely consistent with a large pointy beak stirring up the muddy depths. And there were no frogs. 

The tadpoles, however, have thrived this year. They're enormous, & have already got their back legs.

Although we are visited by frogs of all sizes, I'm conscious that breeding has been unsuccessful here for the last two years because all the frogspawn was lost to heron-slurpage. I think we should definitely see some tiny froglets this year.....& soon.

Now, we do have an anti-heron-device. It is visibly disturbed by Albert Whiskers & won't land if he is in the garden. It circles warily before going off to bother somebody else's wildlife. The problem is that herons visit early in the morning, at a time when Albert Whisker's objectives are almost entirely to do with getting on the bed & securing his breakfast. Sadly, guarding the place from heron raids doesn't even feature on his list. If he thought it was robbing his 'Dreamies' or getting a stroke it wasn't entitled, too, it would be a different matter!
Ah well, herons have nests to feed too, & despite the frog-thefts, they still remain one of my favourite birds.
Cheers,
C x

In which Mrs Tightwad plants her climbing beans

Hello Friends,
Election campaigning was suspended today, following the tragic killing of concert goers in Manchester last night. As I'd planned to make a start on my rounds, I unexpectedly found myself with a clear day in my diary, so used it to progress the veggie garden (or National Collection of Weeds, as would be currently more appropriate). 

Our climbing beans (variety 'Fasold') have been hardening off for the past week or so & the weather forecast looks OK for the next week, so off they went, into a bed prepped by the Bigger Hairier Half of the Relationship at the weekend.

As you can see, I've been up to my recycling tricks again. If you have access to a supply of used 'disposable' coffee cups, bring them home, rinse them & stash them. Then you'll never be tempted to pay actual money for the 'root trainer' trays which Monty Don was demonstrating on 'Gardener's World' recently. Beans like a deep root run & they get just that with recycled coffee cups, which are free & are generally off to landfill anyway, so it's win-win.

So, into the earth they went. I haven't grown this variety before but the seed packet said 'Huge crops', which is what I like, as we positively welcome gluts here at the 'People & Cats Republic'.

Other little bits of 'Pay now't resourcefulness - old CDs re-purposed yet again as sparrow scarers, an old fence post as the top brace-pole & lots of my horsey friend's invaluable & completely unbreakable Amazing Orange String! And at the top of the structure? 

A metal frog! Well why not? He came off a broken tap handle & I couldn't bring myself to throw him away. I wonder if our garden frog population will look up & think "What a hero, to get all the way up there!"
Albert Whiskers ate his breakfast jelly & spent the rest of the morning on my deckchair. I put it up. He suddenly appeared out of the bushes. I popped in to put the kettle on the hob. In less than a minute he was on my chair. I went out & moved him (much growling & chuntering ensued.........swear box, Albert Whiskers) and had the seemingly bright idea of putting my glasses & book on the seat so he couldn't get back on. What a pointless exercise. Came back out with my coffee & he was sitting on them! Repeat x 3. <sighs>

He'll be trotting in soon, demanding another top-up of jelly.
Broad beans tomorrow. Will I ever catch up?
Have a peaceful evening all. I think I'll light a candle for the Manchester bomb victims tonight & for all those whose lives have been lost or destroyed by extremism & zealotry.
Talk to you tomorrow.
C x

Late Spring borders

Hello Friends,
I had three gardening jobs on my list for today & I've done them all. I've taken up the black plastic from the strip of bed near the greenhouse & dug it over ready for my outdoor tomatoes, I've planted out two trays of pot marigolds & I've taken another bucket of duckweed out of the pond. This took longer than I'd planned because of having to rescue tadpoles as I went along. Our taddies are colossal this year......I don't think I've ever seen such humongous ones. Goodness knows what they're eating......certainly not duck weed! Nobody wants to look at buckets of pond-clearings, so I'm sharing some photos of my flower borders instead This is a lovely time for late Spring colour. The many aquilegias are coming to an end but other stuff is starting to do its thing:

Sweet rocket, centaurea, sweet pea obelisk & a self-seeded foxglove right in the front. 

Sweet rocket was grown from a packet of free seeds. The insects are enjoying it & it's quite tall, so it' a good one for the back of the border.....& very easy.

I had several blue aquilegias, but this is the only one left. They're very promiscuous plants & cross-breed all over the place. I quite like this, actually, as it means I never really know what colour the flowers will be until the buds open.

More aquilegias with alchemilla mollis just beginning to flower.

Not sure what this geum is, but it's one Mum gave me years ago which I brought with me from my previous little garden. It's easy to grow, can be easily divided up to make new plants & looks nice with pretty much anything.

Geranium ibericum jubatum in full flower......I couldn't get the colour right as the sunshine was so strong. It's actually a much more vivid mauve than this. Another easy grower & divides easily to make new free plants (my favourite gardening word again!)

And punctuating the borders, the alliums are just getting going. These are bog standard 'Purple Sensation', but they are well worth growing because I find with these, the fancier the variety, the less reliable they are. These come up without fail every year & we'll still be enjoying the amazing 3-D star shaped seed-heads long after the flowers have finished.
So I know I ramble on about the veg garden, but there's plenty going on in the flower borders too. Everything's woken up & now just needs to get into its prime.

Something else that's just woken up is Albert Whiskers.........

.........and true to form, he's managed to stagger indoors (from my deckchair) to suck some more jelly off his meat before refusing to touch it at all & deciding it's biscuits only.......which is business as usual where he's concerned at the moment. When you think he was living rough on the streets of Eastwood & most likely eating out of bins, he's turned into a very naughty picky eater. Whatever pouches of food are bought for him, the first one that's opened is officially the Best Food in the World. For the remaining 11 pouches, he will only eat the jelly. The chunks are left to turn into leather, while he mopes around giving us the sad-eye, nibbling our jeans & trying to blag a bit of whatever's going into somebody's sandwiches. NOT GOOD ENOUGH, Albert Whiskers!!

Hope you've all seen at least a bit of sunshine today.

C x

Guatemalan blue squash

Hello Friends,
Well, surprisingly after the incessant rain of last week, not only have I achieved my 10,000 steps around Clumber Park (so much easier when there are baby goslings & manic squirrels to look at, instead of pavements & dog poo), but the sun was STILL SHINING when we got home, so I have potted up my Guatemalan Blue Squash plants.

I've never grown these before. The seeds were a gift from a gardening friend, saved from her crop last year. 

I sowed 4 seeds & all of them germinated, unlike this year's wretched courgettes, which have done nothing but snivel & mess about since the moment the first seeds went into the compost. Guatemalan Blue would appear to be a storable autumn/winter squash, & they apparently look like this!
Pretty aren't they? Am hoping I can raise at least a couple to try out stuffed or roasted this autumn, & if they come true, I'll be sure to save some seed to pass on to other gardening friends - I don't think I know any gardeners who don't love to swap things. I think our favourite horticultural word is 'free!'
Till tomorrow,
C x

Hailstones! (Loads of 'em)

Hello Friends,
Well, you remember that 'chilly veg' I was moaning about last time? They are now officially sub-arctic veg. I have just been down to the greenhouse to cover them for the night. Not that they have actually been properly uncovered this last couple of days. I mean 'cover' as in putting a tablecloth & a sheet over the two lengths of bubblewrap & enormous piece of polythene that is currently covering them in the daytime. Oh, & I should add that the chillies & peppers are also under bottle cloches. Three tiny basil plants succumbed to the cold in the night, despite being wrapped like 'Pass the parcel'. Others look to be considering it. Boo to such cold April nights!
Is it Spring? I try not to make banal utterances about the weather, as we all know it can snow in April. I can remember building a snowman with my friend on Good Friday when I was a child. I've also stood on a Suffolk beach on May Day in freezing sleet (in my new sandals, naturally!) watching a man & his girlfriend fall over at the water's edge & fail to get up in time for the next icy wave. I was hugging my chips for warmth!

Yesterday we had a snow shower. Today has been the turn of sleet - 5 big showers of it, building up in piles along the garden wall, making the grass crunchy, barely melting before the next lot. So there are good signs of mid-Spring in the garden, but all have taken a bit of a battering today:

The hydrangea petiolaris is covered in buds, but the layer of hailstones has hardly thawed today.

Snowy....or rather haily bluebells and........

......our lovely clematis was looking distinctly soggy. It's usually such a herald of springtime. I hadn't realised how far it has escaped up the greengage tree.......no matter, it will help to cover up the dead bits.

The dark strip behind the wildlife pond has been like this most of the afternoon. No frogs popping up to sun themselves......though I have a horrible feeling this may have more to do with our naughty heron. More about him next time. I love herons - one of my favourite birds, actually, but this one's a bit of a crim.
Such dark photos, but all I could manage as we were underneath a bank of black cloud at the time. Albert Whiskers got caught in the first hailstorm. He wasn't impressed. Dried himself off on the sofa throw, watched some TV, lorded it up on the bedroom window for a while then started the Tummy Time Pester. As the Bigger Hairier Half of the Relationship is busy slapping eggshell onto dado rails, I caved in & applied a pouch of Chicken & Kidney Stink to bowl...........where most of it was left. With Albert Whiskers, anticipation of what he MIGHT get, is always much more exciting than what he actually gets. Tiring task eating 3 mouthfuls of meat......he's had to drag himself upstairs to recouperate on the bed. Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em.
PLEASE can there be some warmer weather soon? 
C x

Greenhouse cucumbers (& other chilly veg)

Hello Friends,
It was one of those days today where I really needed to sort my head out, & as usual, the best place for that was outside, throwing myself into seasonal veg-growing jobs. I have recently discovered a task-planning method in which only 3 tasks can be added to the list at a time. I was keen to try this, as I am known for the epic nature of my job lists.......& then the equally epic sense of deflation when only 29 of the 50 tasks are actually completed, the list having been unrealistic & self-defeating in the first place. With the 3-tasks only method, you can add as many additional jobs as you like, but there must only be 3 outstanding ones on the list at a time so that it doesn't become overwhelming. So on today's list:
1) Plant cucumbers out.
2) Pot up baby pepper plants.
3) Sow climbing beans

Mission accomplished! Cucumber frame put together using canes & 2 strange lengths of white plastic plumber's pipe (not a clue where that came from - it's one of those strange things that just happen to 'live in the shed'). This cucumber variety is 'Carmen'.....which makes me think it should be grown on a rampart in Seville rather than a corner of the grey chilly East Midlands. To be fair, the greyness had lifted in time for me to pot up the peppers, which I will grow on before transplanting to their final pots. And then onto Task 3 - I punched holes in the base of my stash of wombled 'disposable' coffee cups & sowed my climbing beans:

These are now sitting in a wheelbarrow under a sheet of heavy-duty polythene. The nights are still way too cold here to risk putting tender veg out unprotected. These will be polythened until they germinate, then uncovered in the daytime, until it's finally time to get them planted out at the end of May.
That's the problem with this time of year. If we don't get our veggies started off, many of the more tropical stuff like chillies, aubergines, peppers, tomatoes, etc, won't have a sufficiently long season to produce good crops but the April temperatures are really unstable. This afternoon, my greenhouse was cheeringly warm, but tonight, frost is forecast, & it can nip the edges of soft exposed leaves
So it's currently all about protection for chilly veg here. I'm using bottle cloches on cold days, as they can easily be removed if the sun deigns to make an appearance........

......but at around 5pm (today with Albert Whiskers around my heels mithering for his dinner), I am still popping back out to the greenhouse to add an extra layer of protection.

And another thing about temperatures - my courgettes are being r-e-a-l-l-y slow this year. Again I think this is down to the cold nights. First signs of the soil surface breaking today, so I'll hopefully soon be adding nithering courgette plants to the rest of my chilly veg. 
Oh.....& because I achieved all three tasks on my list, I was able to add another three, so I also pricked out some antirrhinums & rudbeckia, and sowed a small trough of wasabi rocket.
Until next time,
Cheers all,
C x

Strawberry tower, rocket & the Evil Weevil!

Afternoon Campers!
I am feeling sooooo behind with my seasonal gardening tasks, especially on the veggie front. I have to make serious inroads  this week. Today's been a great start, as the sunshine, blossom & a virtuoso blackbird lured me outside by 9 a.m and I've finished my new strawberry tower. 

Well, in all honesty, 'tower' is stretching it a bit. It's more sort of Soviet-era municipal block, but it has hit both my targets a) It was easy....& b) It was free. I have grown strawberries for years in a plastic strawberry barrel which held two dozen plants................& the East Midlands collection of vine weevil larvae. Did you know that vine weevils don't even need one of each to breed? No wonder there's so many of the damn things. Every year's strawberry growing went something like this: Plant up barrel. Water & feed plants. Pick delicious but decidedly stingy crop of about 2 ramekins for each of us during fruiting season. Observe blackbird commando crawling under my carefully applied blackbird-proof netting to hoover remaining berries. Keep watering plants so as to pay froward the hopes of a better crop next year. Spot that plants are starting to look rather limp & tubercular. Investigate. Discover that the Evil Weevil has visited & the entire barrel is alive with its horrible little grubs....which is the only thing it's alive with, seeing as how any last vestiges of actual strawberry plants are now dead! 

OK, enough of this sorry process. Last year, I pegged down as many strawberry runners as possible so as to save some plants from Weevilly Armageddon. They almost all rooted & I transferred them to the greenhouse for overwintering while I pondered what container to use - preferably one that doesn't emit such welcoming vibes to horrid weevils. I had thought to purchase 4 large coloured plastic pots in in different sizes to stack & plant as a tower, but I didn't really want to buy yet more plastic, or indeed part with any cashola, so I decided to use some big plastic troughs which I usually use for salads.

I put crocks in the base of each trough & filled with a mixture of our home-made garden compost & bagged stuff, adding a good handful of chicken manure pellets to each one, and built up the troughs into a stable structure. A good dousing with the hose & they were ready to plant up. 

I've managed to fit 45 plants in here & will have netting at the ready against naughty beaks when the time comes. If properly fed & watered, these plants & compost should be good for 3 years, so I will research use of anti-vine weevil nematodes to make sure we're in with a chance. Our tame robin will be gutted as he loves weevil larvae, but he'll have to put up with peanut nibs same as everyone else!

Still thinking about moving forward on the veggies, I cut the last of our over-wintered rocket today. I always sow a crop in the greenhouse in the autumn, re-using a growbag. 

I've been cutting this rocket for several weeks & it's been a welcome addition to salads. I like the variety 'Wildfire', as it's easy & a nice spicy one, with quite large, lush leaves. The leaves are much smaller now, as it's time to bolt & set seed, so this is the last of it & a new growbag will be taking its place ready for this year's cucumbers.

No help in the garden from Albert Whiskers today. After yesterday's run-in with a staffie, he is nursing his sore paws, keeping his head down & staying out of trouble indoors. I think having such a narrow escape was a big shock for him. Doubtless he'll be back to lording it on our front wall, but at the moment he's showing little interest in venturing outside.

Hope some of you have managed to enjoy this lovely sunshine today,
Till next time,
C x

Free plants time!!

Hi Friends,
Well, even waking up with tonsils like razor blades (I surely cannot be lergyfied again?!), has not stopped me getting out into this fabulous Spring sunshine today. I've been round the whole garden with the wheelbarrow & 'grabber' collecting up detritus that had blown in, stray brassica collars, cane toppers, plant ties, etc, & generally having a damn good tidy-up. It reminded me a bit of being sent to litter-pick as a punishment for forgetting my PE kit at school. Actually, I always saw that as a result, as I much preferred picking up litter to the utter time-waste of pretending to play netball! It didn't do to try this too often though, or one could find oneself NOT on litter-picking, but instead, having to wear some hideous BO-impregnated PE outfit from the 'spare kit' box <shudders>.....

After a good tidy-up this morning, I got down to one of my favourite Spring jobs - Looking for FREE PLANTS!! As someone who used to spend really quite eye-watering amounts of money in garden centres across the East Midlands, these are now my favourite kind! And here is today's haul:

Theyr'e not all here, as I've already transplanted some, but in total, my free plant hunt yielded these self-seeded lovelies: 1 buddleja, 6 aquilegias, 1 alchemilla mollis, 4 primroses, 3 clumps of forget-me-nots, 2 mauve poppies (well, I think they will be mauve, but that's the beauty of the free plant hunt, they could be anything, including a new colour), 2 golden feverfew, 5 foxgloves, 2 tellima, 1 lemon balm & an oregano. Not bad for Round 1. There will be more as I continue to clear the rest of my big flower beds over the next couple of weeks.

I also have another 'treasure' this Spring. I have never been able to grow any hellebores except the native stinking kind (Hellebore foetida). While I quite like its lime green flowers among other early Spring colour, I get a bit of a grump on when I visit gardens for Snowdrop Walks & see all the other lovely hellebore varieties. In 2010, I tried for a final time. I bought a hellebore from the market stall of a local nurseryman. My thinking was that if it's been gown & raised here in the locality, it will do fine in my soil. Yeah, right! Here was the result of my clever thinking.....
2010 - Didn't flower, but the grower said it wouldn't the 1st year, so that was ok.
2011 - 3 leaves.
2012 - 2 leaves
2013 - 2 leaves
2014 - 2 leaves
Are you getting the picture?
2015 - Nothing!
2016 - 2 leaves
2017 - Oooooooooh! Look!!

Finally my patience (for 'patience', read lots of sweary moaning!) has been rewarded with 3 lovely dark red blooms. My photo doesn't really do them justice, but you get the idea. 
So that was today.......lots of planty freebies & at last, a non-stinking hellebore to enjoy.
Hope you're all enjoying at least a bit of this sunshine.
Till next time,
C x