Scarecrow Witch and other chitchat

It's been a funny sort of day, the kind where I have been on the go all day, but don't seem to have achieved much, but on reflection I have tidied bedrooms, done the laundry, did the food shopping, collected leaves (for leaf mould) and did an hour at the allotment, then came home and cooked a meal. So I guess I did achieve something after all.!!

I decided to get into the spirit of Halloween by dressing 'Rosie' the scarecrow up as a witch. She is seen from the road as my plot is at the front of the allotment site. Lot's of people notice her especially children, so I thought it would be fun to dress her up a bit. Next year I'll make more of an effort and get some glow in the dark stuff, that should cause a stir - spooky !!! at night.

These 'Art Shade' calendulas are still flowering on even after the couple of frosts we have had and look so cheerful on the plot, there are even a couple of sunflowers still going strong behind them, and together they look stunning.

At last I have a new lottie neighbour to take over the long neglected plot next to mine. The plot should really have been split into two smaller plots, even our warden mentioned this to the council official who came to look at it. All of us plot holders think this too as we have seen people struggle to maintain this very large plot.
But in their wisdom ??? they still gave it out to this poor man to work on his own. He has said it is too big for him, but didn't want to turn it down as he's been on the waiting list for a long time. I have to say he is amazing, he dug all you can see in this photo in a week and only a few hours here and there each time he came up.

I planted these cabbages ages ago, in fact just days away from the last planting time recommended on the packet. They don't seem to want to grow. I am going to let them take their chances out in the big world and plant them outside under cover and hopefully I will be eating them come next spring. They are 'April' and 'Wheelers Imperial' both tasty cabbages with good solid hearts.

HAVE A LOVELY WEEK-END.

Pumpkin and Ginger Curd - made at last !

Well I got around to making the curd at last. I made the pumpkin puree yesterday and put it in the fridge and then made the curd today.

I used two medium squashes to make the puree, the recipe calls for butternut squash, but says any pumpkin or squash can be used. I cut the squashes into halves, removed the seeds and surrounding seed flesh then put the halves cut side down on the tray and baked them for
35-40 Min's until the flesh was soft. I then let them cool enough to handle and scooped the flesh out , put it in a blender and pureed it until thick and smooth. I made enough to make the curd and have some to make a pumpkin pie as well.

The finished Puree

The bottled Pumpkin and Ginger Curd
( it looks a bit like 'piccalilli' doesn't it ? )

I didn't like the texture of the curd, it has a curdled look, but it could be that you have to add the zest of a whole lemon and a whole orange and I may not have grated it finely enough, so maybe that's what has caused the texture.

However, I thought I had better taste and test it before posting details of it, and I have to say it is lovely. I added it to some plain yogurt and the ginger and the citrus flavours went really well with it.

When mixed with the yogurt it took on a custard colour, Mmmmm

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Small chillies which are very hot, that I grew lot's of and I'm now drying them. They are very small that's a small saucer they are on, just to give you an idea of the size.

Chillies (Pyramid) hot little devils !

This photo is of the Delphinium in my garden it has amazingly decided to grow and flower again after I had cut it right back to the ground a month or so ago, it's a lot smaller than it was earlier in the year, but still a welcome sight. It just shows how mild the weather is at the moment.

Delphinium defying the weather.

NeiNei's Blog

I want to share a blog link with you. I came across this blog by 'bloghopping' as I'm sure we all do at times. Nei (short for Stephanie) is a young woman who has survived a near fatal plane crash and has gone through major surgery and has been left with terrible scarring to her face and body. I think her beauty still shines through and she is a remarkable young woman who makes me feel humble and ashamed of ever moaning about trivial things (not that it ever stops us moaning , it's human nature I suppose !) Even more amazing is that Nei's blog is a happy bog and her humour comes through her writing instead of 'why me' she is glad to be alive to see her family grow.

There is a button on my side bar with NeiNei's name on it, ( Blue button saying 'I read NeiNei' underneath the Renee award) click and you will go straight there. She has some awesome photo's of her life and family.
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On another note I managed to dodge the rain today and get a fair amount of work done on the allotment, with Austin's help ! he collected two large pop up gardening bags of leaves for me, whilst I lugged cow poo in wheelbarrow loads to mulch around my lovely raspberries, which incidentally I am still harvesting albeit small amounts now, all going in the freezer to add to the big bag in there for my raspberry curd. Yum !

We are off to play with the grandchildren tomorrow for a few days, so that's it for gardening and allotment's !! until next week , I have to plant my garlic yet and dig and manure a trench ready to plant my asparagus in for next year.

Have a lovely week-end.

Lovely Free leaf mould.

Well the weather here wasn't too bad today, we had some drizzly rainy spells but they didn't last long so I was able to get up to the allotment to do a couple of jobs .

I looked on our local 'Freecycle' website and someone was offering 30 box plants that they had pulled up from their front garden which once formed a hedge. I went along and collected only six as they were larger than I imagined, some up to 2 feet wide and 2-3 feet high. We (Austin helped me) planted them along our boundary border on the allotment, so I now have a full grown box hedge, some parts are a bit bare but hopefully will grown again. The roots are very good and I added blood, fish and bone, plus manure to the planting holes, which should help them settle in and grow in their new home.

We then emptied the leaf mould bins that we had put all the leaves in from last Autumn and it was the most amazing lovely black crumbly stuff you have ever seen. It has made an enormous green garden bag of the lovely leaf mould. It should have been watered a bit more often during the summer, as there were some leaves that hadn't rotted enough nearer to the top, so I will leave it all in the bag for a bit longer. I also have two sackfuls at home in the garden which are doing well.

I collected two more bagfuls of leaves the other day and intend to collect more over then next few weeks. There are masses of leaves all over to housing estate which the allotment backs onto, lovely free leaf compost.

It's hard to imagine that this pile of leaves will turn into the lovely stuff below.

Lovely free leaf mould.

The curd that never got made !!

I was very disappointed this evening as I had gathered everything I needed to make some pumpkin and ginger curd, but although the pumpkin (pictured) looks ripe enough and sounded hollow when tapped (supposedly a sure sign it's ripe !!) when I cut it open to roast it it was quite green looking near the skin. I de-seeded it and got the pumpkin cut into quarters anyway, and proceeded to bake it until the flesh was soft, but it really didn't look good and had a greenish tinge, SO into the bin it went and no curd got made today. I'm hoping the other pumpkins are ripe enough. I would love to know why this one wasn't.



Some chillies have dried for winter use. I have lots more drying, they look so colourful.

Rain Rain go away

It's been a terrible day weather wise here. It's rained all day and I had lofty plans to dig up some of my dahlia's and store the tubers and spread some more manure on the allotment beds, but all my good intentions went out of the window.

I don't mind the rain, in fact it makes the soil easier to work,( when the rain stops of course!) but the dark and dreary skies I hate, they put me in a bad mood because I can't do what I really want to do.

I did some photo printing instead. I love using my digital SLR camera, I never thought I would ever say that as I was a real Film enthusiast and swore never to go digital. Anyway I love digital now, but, hate that I have all the photo's ( hundreds) on my external hard-drive and hardly ever have any proper copies around like in the good old days of FILM. So today I was printing some of my favourite photo's of the family to put into a large cream frame I bought from Ikea recently. It's a big enough frame to get quite a few in, a kind of rogues gallery of the family ! I never got it finished though, I was in that kind of mood where I couldn't finish any one job, and kept flitting from one thing to another. Ah well there's always tomorrow and hopefully some more sunshine.

Remember the poppy seeds 'fruit punch' I mentioned in a recent post ? I planted the seeds, all 50 (average 50 seeds the packet said) about 3 weeks ago, and only about 17 have germinated. I don't think that's a very good average, and I didn't expect them all to germinate, but I thought perhaps over half! anyway I have e-mailed Thompson & Morgan about it and I'm awaiting a reply.

That's about it for today. One last thing before I finish this post ! if you like nice handmade crafts (and who doesn't ?) have a peek at Pam's (from Hortensia) new blog and where she is going to sell her 'wares' from here is the link :

http://www.hortensiadesigns.blogspot.com/ Pam has only just set it up, so more things will be added later on.

Have you visited Kella's Jewellery and craft blog ? she has some lovely things as well.:-
http://kellascreativewishes.blogspot.com/

Did you watch Doc Martin this week ?

If you did watch this weeks episode of Doc Martin, you may recall him diagnosing a woman of having Lyme Disease from a tic bite. You are probably wandering where this is all leading too ! Well it's because Joanne, from Joanne's Cottage Garden has been campaigning to enlighten the general public about Lyme Disease, having contracted it herself and being very ill for many years before being properly diagnosed with it. So I was delighted for her that it was in the plot of this weeks episode, I only hope she managed to see it. For more info, visit Joanne's blog.

I had never heard of Lyme's before reading about it on Joanne's blog. I now think it's really important that the public are aware of the dangers of a tic bite, especially dog owners, ( and walkers) as walking the dog in the countryside and through fields is one of the common places to get a tic bite. If more people know about it and the symptoms there will be less people that will have to suffer as Joanne and thousands like her do because their doctor doesn't pick up on it. Doc Martin has a huge following so that is quite a few people going to be aware of it now.

Good friends are a blessing. And also very handy !!

I had help on the plot today from a very good friend David (thanks David) I have been desperate to empty two VERY large builders bags that we filled with all sorts of rubbish when we first took on the plot in February 2008. We had put earth, weeds, grass, in fact almost everything we dug up as we were clearing the plot. I fully intended that it would one day go to the council tip, but a month or so ago we opened the bags and couldn't believe out luck! all the rubbish had rotted down into lovely crumbly soil. So with the help of David (Austin was out of action with a very sore arm having had a flu jab yesterday) we set to and emptied the two very large bags shoveling the soil onto the beds, making sure it was all really weed free.

We then levelled the area were the bags had been and put our two compost bins there. The area is now tidy and the compost bins are at the far end of the plot, instead of dotted around and are now less unsightly. David is the sort of friend everyone needs, he sorts out my PC problems as well if I can't sort it and in return we have him over for dinner and share a bottle of wine, my way of saying thank you, and I love cooking for friends.

I also had a delivery of a HUGE mountain of cow manure, a full truck load which I am sharing with my daughter and another plot holder. Oh and I almost forgot to mention that David also dug me a trench to bed five breeze blocks into, so I could level out a very sloping large area, so we worked very hard, lost track of time completely and only stopped for one cup of tea.

David in action, I caught him unaware I had my camera with me. I did however tell him and said I would post the photo here.

These tiny little plants (below) are Oriental Poppy seedlings 'Fruit Punch' . The packet says it contains a delicious mixture of Vibrant shades of red, hot pinks, bright oranges and the often elusive plum shades. Knowing my luck the plum shades wont show up in my packet !!! They can be sown either Feb-June or September - October, so I decided to sow them now as I will have too many other seeds to sow in the New Year. When they are big enough to pot on I have to overwinter them in a cold frame or in my case a cold greenhouse. I can't wait to see them grow. The macro setting has made the compost look like Boulder's.

My creative mood has stayed with me and I have made some more cards including a start on the Christmas ones. All very simple and uncomplicated, but it's a start on my return to my 'Other hobbies' all abandoned when I took on allotment life.