Up to my armpits in worm compost. Nice!!

Hello Friends,
Made the mistake of watching a snippet of lunchtime news today. Oh my days.....another Windsor baby & all the sycophancy & non-news nonsense that entails. Just need the toadying Nicholas Witchell to turn up outside Kensington Palace........give it 10 seconds......& yes, there he is! Then it's off to Oxford where the Windsors weren't, due to morning sickness, but let's go to Oxford anyway & deliver some more nonsense from there! I nearly choked on a grape when someone else was asked how the new Windsor might tackle being younger sibling to an heir to the throne. One suggestion was that he or she would probably choose to be 'patron of different charities'. Well, big wow & yippee doo! Glad I coughed up the licence fee for that cutting edge piece of insight, I can tell you! Here at the 'People & Cats Republic of Hagstones' we ill-wish no-one for the circumstances of their birth (excepting certain members of the current government, of course) but can the BBC not just make a news announcement about the pregnancy then leave it until there is any actual further real news? So my thoughts today are with all the pregnant women who have had to get up & go into work today despite horrible morning sickness, with those women who were too poorly being sick to make it to work but still had to struggle to get a GP's appointment this week, because they stand virtually zero chance of a home visit, & most of all, why the British public allows itself to be infantilised by this intrusive, sycophantic minutiae. It makes us a laughing stock, this obsession with a feudal system way past its sell-by date. Aaaaagh!! Makes me want to take off in a converted mobile library with the Big Hairy One & Albert Whiskers.

Well, after that (& I honestly only watched about 2 mins), I needed to throw myself into something productive & soul-cleansing, so pitched into sorting out the wormery. Yes, it's full-on glamour 24/7 here! I admit to being a bit of a compost obsessive. We have 4 of the big dalek compost bins, but I also like to use a worm composter because it provides a pretty constant supply (except in the depths of winter) of free liquid plant food, as well as easy to access trays of worm compost which is high quality & great for top-dressing precious plants & shrubs. There are various money-saving methods of building a wormery, but I use the Can o' Worms unit, which I bought from Wiggly Wigglers over a decade ago. I paid around £80 for it then, but have found it's required very little in the way of expenditure since then because free alternatives can be found for quite a few of the recommended maintenance supplies. Our worm composter consists of 3 stacking trays which fit onto a drainage base with a tap for draining off free plant food (often called 'worm tea!). The idea is that you fill the bottom one with kitchen vegetable scraps & the worms start chomping those. When you've filled the first layer, you add the next tier, then the third & by the time you have filled that one, chances are that the worms will have scoffed their way upwards & the bottom tray will contain lovely rich compost for you to scoop out & use.

This is the compost I removed today, from the bottom layer, destined for a climbing hydrangea that looks in need of a bit of TLC.

This is the next layer up. The worms are making great inroads into this, but you can see that there are still scraps to be eaten before it's ready to use......

......and this is the top layer. There's already a big 'advance party' of  Wigglers getting busy in this layer. So, having removed the compost from the bottom layer, that tray fits on top & becomes the 
new top layer, to which I add more kitchen scraps every 2 or 3 days. The idea is to keep tempting the worms upwards so if I know I'm going to start off a new layer, I collect a decent amount of scraps for this purpose. 

You can see they've got all sorts of goodies here: egg-box, a slightly furry slice of marrow, carrot peelings, a teabag, flour bags (a particular favourite!), runner bean trimmings, potato peelings, etc. They also eat cardboard (avoid the laminated type as you end up with stringy plastic film in the compost), small amounts of coffee grounds & newspaper and joy of joys, BANK STATEMENTS! Yes, whoever thought there was an ethical use for those? Just put them through the shredder, layer them into the trays & watch them become food for worms. A certain sense of karma about that, I always think.

The liquid plant food is easily accessible from a tap in the base. It needs draining off every so often & can be kept in a container for a week or two until you need it. A little goes a long way as the recommended dilution rate is 1:10, so that's a lot of watering cans. If you forget to drain it off, particularly if there's been a lot of rain, you risk rather a lot of wiggly drownings, I'm afraid :-(

We don't buy anything to add to our wormery. We used to buy a product called 'worm treat' but didn't really notice any different in their performance. We occasionally bought a bag of lime mix for use if the wormery got too acidic (when it can start attracting little flies) but have found that adding crushed eggshell seems to have a similar effect. We don't buy anything as 'worm bedding'. We did use the coir brick that came with the original kit, but have subsequently used shredded paper or a bit of extra newspaper if we've needed to add more warmth. For moisture mats, which fit on top of the highest tray so prevent the contents drying out, we just use tough cardboard circles cut from old boxes or packaging. That's all they need. So, from everyday waste, we end up with an ongoing supply of free useful stuff for the garden. The original kit did include a starter batch of the red composting worms, but I've never bought any additional supplies. If the population drops a bit low (in an extremely cold winter, for example), I just replenish them with new ones from our ordinary compost bins. I like to think it boosts the wiggly gene pool a bit too! The only thing I would add is that you do need to be non-squeamish about handling them. If you are even slightly phobic about worms or still have nightmares about some vile lad at school who used to stuff them down the back of your jumper, then this would definitely not be your best choice of project. I'm fine with them.......it's the sight of an 'eight-leg' that sends me screaming in the other direction!

Forgot to add August's additional garden wildlife in my last post. Only a few different species from July: Blue-tit, great-tit, red admiral butterfly, juvenile robin, large bluey-green dragon-fly. 

Hope this wasn't too 'wormy' for anyone, & that you're all out enjoying this beautiful late summer sunshine.

C x 

Grapes & wrath

Hello Friends,
Well, a nice thing to start off with, as I've started harvesting our grapes this week. People are always surprised when I say that I grow grapes here in the East Midlands, especially as our greenhouse is unheated. Actually, it isn't all that difficult. I think the proper way to do it is to plant the vine just outside, then cut a hole in a lower pane of greenhouse glass to train the vine inside so it is protected from frost, but the roots have free access to the soil & rain. I'd like to say I do it this Clever Trousers way, but my grape vine - a 'Black Hamburg', which I received as a 'new greenhouse' present in 2003 is in a pot. OK, it's a large pot....60cm diameter & 50cm tall. I planted it in ordinary multi-purpose compost mixed with out home-made garden compost & it hasn't been re-potted since then. Every year, it receives a top-dressing of garden compost in autumn & a layer of worm compost in spring. Apart from that, it just gets a dose of tomato feed or home-made comfrey liquid whenever I feed the greenhouse veg during summer. I'm sure there are whole tomes written about growing grapevines. I do take off any really silly little bunches to let the bigger ones thrive, & I occasionally snip off a few grapes if the bunch looks overcrowded, but only if I can be bothered. On the whole, the vine looks after itself, & withstood winter temperatures of minus 16 a couple of years ago. 

The grapes are not always as big as the supermarket ones which have been grown in hot countries, but they are sweet & juicy and it's really satisfying to be able to go out there & pick a bunch you've grown yourself.

So if you have access to an unheated greenhouse & haven't tried grapes, give them a go! It doesn't have to be expensive to buy a vine - I've even seen them on sale outside Aldi, with the bedding plants! One thing I haven't tried is making wine from them. None of them make it that far as I'm too fond of eating them!

That's the grapes.....now for the WRATH!! Yesterday, being a Very Useful Engine, I texted the Big Hairy half of the relationship to warn him that if he came straight down the garden when he got home from work to be sure to avoid the enormous heap of cat poo left on our lawn. To make absolutely sure he didn't have a horrible evening cleaning a disgusting mess off his shiny size 11s, I even mentioned it again when he phoned me about something, & made sure he knew it was right next to the stepping stone path where it would be very easy to walk in. That's how I am, you see. Thoughtful. To say this was 'stealth poo' would be a misnomer. Nothing 'stealth' about this. This was a feline with a grudge, completely blatant......a positive Silbury Hill of poo. How I wish now with hindsight that I'd cleared it up. I didn't feel too lively yesterday though, & cleaning up cat poo did not feature anywhere on my list of preferred tasks.......which is how I found myself a few hours later standing in the greenhouse thinking that the neighbours' dog kennel was smelling particularly ripe, when I thought .......'NOOOOOOO!!!!!!!'........but yes, I had. And if there's anything worse than treading in poo, it's not realising you have trodden in poo so that you spread it around & have more of the bloody stuff to clear up! So instead of my lovely afternoon of gardening today, that's what I've had to do! Even with a Jeyes fluid solution at 3 times its usual strength, I still had to wear gardening gloves, then wash them, & I still can't guarantee I won't throw them in the bin tomorrow. I don't have OCD. I have CCWSS. ("Can't cope with sh*tty shoes" disorder). My shoes have been disinfected 4 times despite only one shoe being affected. They have been quarantined down the shed until I decide they are allowed in. I can tell you that if it had been dog poo, I would have thown them in the bin, as happened some years ago with a pair of new trainers. Really, straight in the bin! I bought them when I mistakenly thought I might enjoy taking up badminton. As soon as the aforementioned dog-based cotamination occurred, I took them off, threw them in the nearest bin & drove home in my socks. That marked the end of badminton for me.....not just that I'd have to buy new trainers, but that none of my badminton opponents happened to share my view that 10 mins of jumping around followed by 50 mins sitting on the sidelines with a diet coke & a Bounty bar was a worthwhile use of an hour's court booking fee!
So what a waste of an afternoon! I was so utterly mad. Still don't know who the culprit was. I'd like to think it was more likely to be Ginger, Tabby White-Paws, BGF, the Tabster, 'Ungry Blackie or any of the other neighbourhood mogs, but I have to say that Albert Whiskers did have a particularly smug look about him yesterday morning, so he is definitely not yet in the clear......

.....and now I must go & do something for dinner which involves aubergines. Tomorrow will have to be another picking & cooking day, I think.
Hope everyone's having a good week,
C x

Garden envy & a challenge accomplished!

Hello Friends,
Hope you are all coming to the end of August with body & soul together. I've had a serious case of 'Garden Envy' this week, as we've been on a couple of trips out & seen some beautiful late colour in the borders, something which is sadly lacking at home. I still have some things flowering: Japanese anemone, Geranium 'Rozeanne', penstemens, verbena bonariensis, cosmos, calendula, etc, but our garden looks at its best in May & June, when all my cottage garden favourites are flowering, & it's a slow decline from there until Autumn......sort of shabby-chic....without any of the 'chic'.

Easton Walled Gardens (near Grantham, Lincs) had some beautiful hot colours on display, like this sunflower, & the dahlias (I'm not usually a huge fan) were looking great too.

We also had a fantastic day up at RHS Harlow Carr in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, & it was a similar story. Fab colourful beds which made me feel so envious now that my own borders are all but over. I used to have some eye-popping achilleas & echinaceas but they have sadly been lost to the Mollusc Army.




I mean, just look at this! I'm assuming it's some sort of fancypants sunflower, & I shall be tracking it down to have a go at growing some for next year. Could you ever be miserable while looking at such a bloom? Luckily the big hairy half of the relationship had his camera, so took lots of pictures to inspire me. 

The high summer borders at RHS Harlow Carr are simply packed with plants, many of which are repeated several times, so it looks very casual, as though it 'just happened'.

Well, I decided I'd really like more late summer flowering plants in my own borders, so this week, I've come up with a plan. I'm going to walk around the garden & spike every bare boring patch with a yoghurt pot on top of a skewer. Then I'll remember where I need a zing of colour. I'm hoping I can start this by dividing up what I have & growing from seed, so as to avoid a '££££-Signs at Dawn' scenario at the garden centre!

A big achievement (for me) this week has been ticking another thing off my '50 things' list.....& guess what it was? Yes, shock horror, I actually managed to walk 5 miles WITHOUT MOANING!! I was actually more worried about achieving the 'not moaning' bit than the 5 miles. There were rules about what constituted a moan, i.e aching legs, whining for caffiene, complaining about it being boring, being out of breath, etc, so I decided to have a few subjects in my mind which I could use to work off some vitriol if I needed a moan. These were The Government, particularly Eric Pickles, as I knew he'd be worthy of at least a mile of hatchet job (can you imagine the mess?), the Very Weaselly Grant Shapps (with apologies to actual weasels everywhere),  & the Monarchy (was sure I could get a circuit of Clumber Park out of that one). So I was all prepared, but the oddest thing happened! I didn't need to moan at all because I quite enjoyed it! We saw teenage goslings, moorhens, chaffinches, great-tits & dragonflies. The weather stayed dry & I burned off 520 calories (which I was lucky enough to replenish afterwards with a large coffee & piece of coffee & walnut cake! Feel inspired to tick off a few more things now.

The vegetables keep coming. I've made piccalilli today, a big kilner jar to put away for 'December C-word' & some smaller jars for the pantry. 

I've also baked some jammy buns today (just for the joy of cooking something which doesn't involve veggies!). Hands up who can remember cooking these at school?

They are so simple & quick to make. I've tweaked the recipe over the years, so this is how I make them now:
Jammy Buns
12oz self-raising flour
4oz butter
4 oz caster sugar
1 egg
2-3 tbsp milk
1 tsp almond extract
Jam (I like to use my home-made plum)

Pre-heat the oven to Gas 5. Sieve the flour & rub in the butter till it's crumby. Stir in the sugar. beat up the egg with the milk & almond extract, & mix into the dry ingredients. Flour your hands & bring it together into a soft ball before divvying up into 12 blobs. Shape each blob into a ball & put on a greased (preferably lined) baking sheet. Now make a hole with your thumb & dollop a teaspoon of jam into it. Bake for about 20 mins. 

There's no finesse about these. You wouldn't make them if Paul Hollywood was coming over for coffee. They are proper comfort food home baking. Get a cafetiere made & eat one warm from the oven. Did you like it? Best to have a 2nd one just to make sure. They keep in a tin for a few days & are a nice portable addition to a packed lunch. I suspect the Big Hairy One could probably eat his bodyweight in these.......so as you can see, I only made 6 this time!

While we've been busy with day trips, dealing with the veggie onslaught, pickling, baking & walking 5 miles, the other resident of The People & Cats Republic has been spending a goodly amount of his time thus:

Going by the available evidence (a seriously squashed area of the leek bed, various piles of fur spread around the lawn & 4 new scratches on his nose), I think he may be out most of the night letting the local moggies know he means business. He's also met the neighbours. They said they called him to 'see if he was friendly', & he marched straight in through the french windows, helped himself to a chair & spent the whole afternoon!  I warned them about not leaving food where he can reach it. Albert Whiskers is the sort of cat who'd say 'Hey mate, look over there' then he'd have your pork chop while you were looking. He is, however, proof that these older ex-street cats can be rehabilitated into the most lovely (& very amusing) pets. He's the 3rd ex-stray we have owned. If anyone out there is considering adopting a cat, do consider one of these big older boys. They might have a few issues to begin with, but once they get their paws under the table, they don't look back!

Have a great weekend,
C x

And still they come......

Hello Friends,
I wish I had another topic for you today instead of more adventures with vegetables. I tell you, it's like The Good Life in this house. Don't be surprised if you hear that I'm building a generator out of old lawnmower parts & sticky backed plastic, or indeed weaving scratchy green suits from homespun nettles! Actually, if I start going down that road, do intervene.....I will need stopping for my own good!

It's been all about courgettes recently. I've been putting them on top of spicy hot home-made pizzas, slipping them into curries, roasting them & tossing into bulghur wheat salads, bunging them in stir-fries, but sill they come! Courgette chutney isn't really one of my favourites, so I decided to pickle some. Found a couple of recipes I liked & concocted a mash-up of the two. It seems to have worked really well & will be good with BBQs, pulled pork, etc.

 
The other big croppers waiting in the wings to strike are our apples & pears. The winds this week have resulted in a lot of early windfall apples, which I've made into apple sauce for the freezer, & am half-way into making another bucketful into apple & mint jelly.

I've boiled up the fruit & mint sprigs, added the cider vinegar & it's currently dripping through the jellybag, ready for jamming tomorrow. I completely love the word 'jellybag'. It's totally wasted on a humble piece of muslin. Perhaps it should be recategorized as a personal name? You know, for those parents looking for something that bit unusual? I will make a box of my whisky truffles for any of my friends prepared to name their child 'Jellybag' - & no, you can't just pretend so as to get the truffles!

Well, I'd love to say that my jellybaggery this morning has made impressive inroads into the apple crop, but it would be a fib or the first order. Let me show you our tree:

Almost scarily full of apples, & that's only about a quarter of the tree. I couldn't fit it all in the picture. Apple chutney, apple & ginger chutney, apple muffins......recipes are stacking up ready for the onslaught. And when the apples are under control, look at these........

....loads of lovely pears! Pear chutney, Pear & cinnamon cake.......pickled pears maybe? Though I'm the only person who eats them.....but I could successfully offload a few jars onto my Dad, who is usefully for me at this time of year, a food hoover in the same league as Albert Whiskers! We have a greengage tree too, which only crops when it feels like it. This year, it felt like it, but thankfully I've already dealt with those - 13 jars of scrummy jam packed away into the pantry,

Albert Whiskers continues to get his paws well & truly under the table. I find cat body language fascinating. Let's face it, it isn't usually all that subtle, but previous cats we have owned have managed a little more nuanced approach than Albert Whiskers.

 A brief guide to Albert Whiskers' body language:

* Gluing himself to human leg = Where's my food?
* Licking elbows = Where's my food?
* Jumping onto laptop keyboard & meowing into human's face = Where's my food?
* Bouncing on bed attempting to extract reclining human with actual claws = Where's my food?
* Grabbing human's foot with both sets of front paws while applying teeth = Where's my food?
* Lying in a long sausage across the front door at his big hairy human's home time = She hasn't given me my dinner. P.S Where's my food?
* Staring long & hard at the BBQ while purring like a helicopter = There seems to be an awful lot on there for just the two of you. Where's my food?
* Following human around the house & garden keeping distance below 30cm at all times while emitting increasingly desperate vocal barrage = You have two minutes to fill my bowl before I phone Ban Ki-moon to demand an emergency air drop of food aid parcels over Farndon (Call yourself a cat lover....bloody disgraceful)
Yep, this boy loves his food! I think he may have survived some of his time as a stray by begging scraps at kitchen windows. It's very noticeable that if he's outside when I open a window, he stops what he's doing & races to the window meowing. Old habits die hard. He does this even if he's just snarfed an entire pouch of fish stink with a hefty biscuit chaser. 

He's cute though!
Till next time......Oh, & I gather I may have 'been organised' into doing my '5 miles without moaning' walking challenge by then, so it'll either be a result & a tick on my '50 things' list, or I will have moaned spectacularly & will have had to set another date for it. 
Thanks for all the positive comments I've had about my blog via Facebook, etc. It's had well over 1000 views now, so there are obviously a few people out there who enjoy (or are grimly fascinated or perhaps choosing to self-stultify on a weekly basis) the whole cat/vegetables thing.
C x

The 'exercise dodging' gene

Hello Friends,
Well, since last time, I've been picking a lot more of this.....

and getting to grips with a vast amount of these......

and I'm kind of both looking forward to & dreading the apple crop coming in, as it looks huge this year, so I'm gathering my recipes for jellies, chutneys, cakes, brown sauce, muffins, stuffings......anything I can make & store away in our pantry & freezer. Never mind winter & emergencies, I'll soon have enough to see us through a Martian attack! I've also thought more about trying to increase my fitness levels, which are better than they've ever been since losing lots of weight, but quickly start to decline if I stop!

Now, I've mentioned before that if I don't get my exercise session done early in the morning, I tend to talk myself out of it. This exercise dodging would typically take the form of excuses i.e "I've already walked to & from the shed twice" or "I sweated through an exhausting 10 minutes of 'wiggly string' with Albert Whiskers AND I've got the ironing to do" or even "Oh, hang on, I've just walked to the post box" as though the calorie burn from these activities will equal a proper energetic 30 -50 min exercise session. We do have quite a long garden, but it's 130'......not the brisk 2 miles minimum walk I need to do 3-5 times a week. At No. 16 on my '50 things I want to do before my next birthday' list is 'Walk 5 miles without moaning'. Hmmm. It doesn't sound like much, & I'm sure some of you are wondering why I don't just sign up to one of the shorter charity walks. Therein lies the problem. I have the Exercise Dodging Gene. I would honestly rather just donate to the charity than do the walk, & neither am I a lover of 'organised fun'....unless I'm doing the organising!

So, instead of prancing around to cod Latino sounds on my exercise DVD this morning, I decided to start getting into training for my 5 miles by doing circuits of the local park. I can walk around 3.5 miles tops, then the tedium sets in & I want coffee, preferably with cake. I think I did walk over 4 miles once, years ago, but only by accident because the map reader forgot to bring the map.....it certainly wasn't 5, & I moaned.....a lot (though in my defence, endless just-ploughed Wiltshire fields after a week of incessant rain isn't my idea of pleasure) I set off for Circuit 1 of the park, pedometer clicking away nicely. Reach the point where I can choose either the longer or shorter route. Hmmm. I feel the Exercise Dodging gene start to wriggle a bit. There are not many folk about, & being a life-long magnet for the '3Ws' (weirdos, waifs & winos), I select the shorter route. I wonder about climbing the civil war earthwork for extra thigh-work, but decide on the more decorous option of walking across the (wimp's) bridge instead. Then I get distracted by the wild flowers growing up there. Look! Harebells! One of my favourites & not a common sight these days. I lose my walking pace completely by stopping to admire them......

 .........& then by waiting for a rather peculiar dog to go past. By now, a group of post-natal Mums has arrived with a fitness trainer. They are doing circuits too, but they're RUNNING! By the wailing coming from the buggies, some of these women have probably only given birth a few weeks ago, yet they are are actually running & doing core muscle work......in public! I pick up my pace, down towards the river, back up past the coffee shop.......Oooooh, coffee shop, don't mind if I do, no cake, just some caffiene. Most pleasant. Suddenly, cup in hand, I don't feel much like doing another circuit. I check my pedometer. HOW MANY? I give it a solid bang on the table. This adds on precisely ONE step......not the 2,000 I hoped were missing. 0.75 miles. PATHETIC!! The E D Gene kicks in with 'But you're planting out 5 gazanias later, you'll be lifting the tomato basket & you're bound to need a few trips to the shed'. I almost head for the car, but then I notice that the post-natal Mums are doing squats. Actual SQUATS, for goodness sake!! They have pushed out babies, some may have had to undergo some rather personal needlework......    but here they are, doing squats while I'm trying to worm out of some extremely  undemanding walking. I do another circuit. Shamed into it by the Mums & buggies! My attempt to walk 5 miles without moaning will take place at Clumber Park, date to be decided. The Big Hairy One has announced that he is coming with me to make sure I don't cheat.......or moan! 

OK, so I know I only walked 1.5 miles today & that was poor even by my standards, but I now present to you Albert Whiskers' incredible contribution to world fitness today. I got home to find he hadn't moved off the sofa. He managed the 4 metres to the kitchen, fortified himself with whatever fishy gunk was on the menu this morning, then heaved his exhausted body to the cat flap. A long sit down to regain his strength, then he made it another 4 metres onto the bark chips before settling down for his Really Long Snooze. If cats wore pedometers, I swear there would be days that struggled to come in at 25 steps!

So I've been a bit moany this time, haven't I? But will commit RIGHT NOW to doing my exercise DVD first thing tomorrow.......before I find myself wondering if collecting a bucket of windfall apples is likely to be anywhere near an equivalent calorie burn!

Have a good few days everyone.....perhaps the sunshine will return at the weekend, once the last bits of this hurricane have passed over :-)
Till next time,
C x

Harvest time & freedom for Albert Whiskers!

Hello Friends,
Our veggie crops are really rolling in now, & if I'm not outside watering them, I'm inside picking, chopping & cooking them. I love this time of year. I have a really strong drive to cook or preserve lovely things to stash away in the pantry for the winter months. This is nature's bounty harvested this morning: 1.3 kg runner beans, 1.8 kg rhubarb, 2 kg tomatoes, 1 kg aubergines, 300g big shiny green jalopeno peppers (1 of those lush lovelies sliced onto a rather nice home made pizza tonight), a couple of courgettes & another cupful of blackberries from the rogue bramble poking through from next door & heading for a blackberry & apple sponge pudding :-)

I sat on the courtyard deciding what to do with it all & thought I may as well fetch the little bean gizmo & make a start on slicing those. It was quite a pleasant job, planning ahead what I was going to do with the tomatoes, thinking about our camping holiday to Northumbria next year.....all very peaceful until for some inexplicable reason, I started thinking about Boris Johnson standing as an MP, which rather shattered my tranquil thoughts & led to a more violent wielding of the bean slicer. I doubt he'll have much appeal north of Watford.......his appeal at The People & Cats Republic is off the scale......the bottom end that is, of the minus numbers. Hideous individual.......I don't mean the weird hair, that is what it is, & for all we know, there may be a chronic comb-shortage in London....I mean the scarily neo-liberal politics. Anyway, pretty soon, my beans looked like this.......

.........and I decamped to the kitchen. Beans blanched & frozen , ditto rhubarb (lots of crumbles there!), aubergine curry made & frozen. I've only recently discovered this recipe. Instead of using sliced aubergines, they are roasted in foil for an hour, then the flesh is scooped out & chopped before being added to the curry, making it really thick & rich. Made a batch of bread dough while deciding what to do with the tomato glut. I bloody love gluts! I've already made one of our favourites, a smoky tomato chutney.

It always looks a bit watery in the cauldron, but you just need to keep the faith, put some good music on, & it cooks down into a dark red, sticky loveliness which, with the smoked paprika, is a little bit different. 

The Big Hairy One would eat this on everything, so I think I will have to make another batch, as I only make it this time of year from our own tomato crop (food miles = approx 95 feet!). I turned the rest of today's tomatoes into Carluccio's basic pasta sauce. It's so easy, just fresh tomatoes (skinned & de-seeded), an onion, garlic, a little olive oil & some basil. After 40 mins, just zizz it up in the pan or in a liquidiser if you particularly enjoy having to clean up after that piece of equipment. So, 6 portions of that made too, & zero space left in the freezer. Hmmm. Shall get the BHO onto that on the grounds that it'll be like 'Tetris!' I'd quite like a chest freezer in the garage.......if we had a garage. We did have one once. It was horrible. The BHO & his Dad hit it with 7lb sledgehammers until it fell down. 

Albert Whiskers is so enjoying being a normal cat. He was allowed outside for the first time on Sunday. He didn't require any cat flap training.....& I should add that some of our cats have had to have Cat Flap Training Level 1 AND Level 2 (That tricky Level 2 is 'Coming Back In', in case you're wondering).

Anyway, he had a top day. We weren't sure how reliable he'd be at returning home, having been a stray, so we decided to have a BBQ to help lure him back, as he's a shocking pig, but when he saw the chicken & pork going onto the griddle, he thought it was his dinner anyway.......(in fact, we only just stopped him helping himself straight from the BBQ), so no problems with him going off a-wandering. He's mostly stayed in our garden this week. I think he likes to make sure he's always in earshot of the tin opener.

He's had two fights this week, one resulting in an injury, but he wasn't blameless. Valuable life lessons need to be learned here on not piling into cats who are bigger & imminently skankier than oneself!

Oh well, the battle against the tomato hoards will doubtless continue tomorrow, & as soon as I get on top of those, the greengages will be ready, followed by what looks like the biggest apple crop we've ever had. If you're watching East Midlands Today & there's a woman's hand sticking up tragically out of a giant mountain of fruit & veg while solemn music plays, that'll be me!
Till next time,
C x

July's garden wildlife - this month's assorted squigglers & wigglers.

Hello Friends,
As you know, I've been keeping a log of all the wildlife I've spotted in our garden this month. July hasn't overwhelmed us with different species, but of course, there are bound to be all sorts of wildlife shennaigans going on as soon as I put my list away & come indoors. I've not forgotten one of the Big Annual Bird Counts we did. The only feathered visitors to our garden during our selected hour were the usual suspects (though very welcome, of course!) then within 10 minutes of finishing it, a goldcrest alighted on a climber right outside the conservatory window & sat there for ages.....laughing at us, I'm sure! We are very much aware that different species visit us at different times of year. We see the most varied bird life during the winter months, whereas pond life seems most active in spring. I intend to keep putting additional species seen onto our list so that by the end of June 2015, we will have a complete record for a whole year.

Our garden wildlife at 'Hagstones' - July 2014
Butterflies: Small white, Large white, Small tortoiseshell, Meadow brown, Gatekeeper, Brimstone, Peacock, Comma, Ringlet.

This month, gatekeepers & peacocks (pictured) have been the most prolific butterflies in our garden. We haven't spotted any red admirals in our garden at all this year, which is very unusual.

Moths: Elephant hawk moth, Angle-shades moth & several tiny micro-moths which I'm unable to identify. This little orange & black stripy chap is a cinnabar moth caterpillar.

The caterpillar plant food is apparently the ragwort group, but he was tucking into our ligularia.

Birds: Swifts (nesting in our eaves again this year, hurray!!), Sparrows (ditto), Starlings, Blackbirds, Thrushes, Wood pigeons, Collared doves, Coal tit.

This is quite a low species count for us, but I think there is probably a decent amount of food around & the birds which visit our garden during winter aren't needing to put in an appearance. We've seen juvenile thrushes, starlings, sparrows & wood pigeons too, so good to know they have bred successfully. Usually, thrushes only visit in an icy winter or drought, so it was such a nice surprise to see that we now not only see them regularly, but that they have clearly nested nearby.

Other insects & assorted squigglers: Greenbottle, bluebottle (both of which are quite attractive when outside on plants & not indoors making a nuisance of themselves), 2 types of hoverfly (Episyrphus balteatus & Scaeva pyrastri, I think), common wasp, cranefly, dragonfly (medium sized reddish brown) 7-spot ladybird, 22-spot ladybird (beige with black spots), ladybird larvae (hoovering aphids, yay!), green shield bug, green aphids, black aphids, earwigs, woodlice, centipedes, earthworms & red composting worms, common garden snail, snail (Cepea nemoralis? Hundreds of the things, anyway, but doing sterling work feeding the aforementioned thrush family), keel slugs, bloody massive brown & orange frilly slugs (probably not their correct zoological name!)

Bees: (I like bees too much to list them under 'Assorted squigglers') Garden bumble bee, bufftail bumble bee, honeybee. Surprisingly, we haven't seen our usual summer leaf-cutting bees yet, & as the leaves on the witch hazel are intact, they either didn't visit us during July or have decided to pick on a new plant!

Pond: Frogs, froglets, tadpoles, pond skaters, lesser water boatman, whirligig beetle, titchy leeches, pond snails. 

Mammals: Hedgehog. No sign of our bats yet, this year. 

I'm sure there are hundreds more little wiggly chaps out there just dying for a place on my list, but these are the species we've seen in July & I've really enjoyed doing a bit of pond dipping & just taking the time to walk around looking for signs of life. Must remember to check the buddlejas at night during August, as I know we have a great variety of moths out there.

And while I've been enjoying life in the garden hunting for critters, our own big furred critter has continued to count the hours until Going Outside Day. He wasn't able to have his booster jabs yesterday (bit of a saga) but should get them tomorrow, so we're hoping he will still be able to go out this weekend. In the meantime, he's been spending his time like this:

And this:

And with quite a lot of this:

Until next time,

C x

P.S. I mustn't forget to credit the Big Hairy One with the beautiful peacock butterfly photo, plus the bumble bee & frog.