Winter Photographic Scavenger Hunt #5 and final entry

Unfortunately the health got the better of me and I haven't quite managed to finish the challenge but here are my final three entries for the Bracelet of Days Winter Photographic Scavenger Hunt. It's been a fun way to spend the last few months and so huge thanks go to Eileen for thinking it all up. If you follow THIS LINK then you will find out more about the hunt and see the other entries I have made since December. There should have been 20 pictures in total but I have managed just 17. Eileen usually posts a link page up so we can see what other people have managed - I'll post the link up when it appears.

13. An instruction
These and a collection of metal tubes and plastic linkies eventually became a small set of shelves for our seedlings with only little bit of swearing added for good measure!

Just add common sense!

Ta da! (Good job J was about)

16. A measurement
A small plastic dibber that has seen several years of use and will see many, many more. It's marked in both centimetres and inches to help sow seeds to the right depth. I cropped the photo so you could the measurements more clearly but otherwise the photo is un-doctored!

20. A form of communication
Whilst I was at my poorliest last year these lovely little postcards would pop through the door from one of my friends. Such a simple, gentle way of letting me know that she was thinking of me - even when she was going through some tough times herself. A lot to be said for a simple postcard! Thank you my friend.

Being home taking baby steps

Been home a few days now, the wonderful NHS are sending in a community nurse team 3 times a day to administer antibiotics and keep an eye on dressings, temperatures etc. It's a service I'd never even heard of and is already speeding up my recovery compared with the last attack I had of this infection back in October. They are truly wonderful, as are J and my Mum. Yet again her visit here has been interrupted by an "episode" but she's taken it in her stride, kept going with the washing, tea making, keeping family in the loop and keeping an eye on me, reminding me when she thinks I've been on my feet too long (usually about 20 minutes before my body will choose to do the same!) and being the bloody wonderful human being she always has been. Tomorrow is Mother's Day here in the UK - planned trip out isn't going to be able to happen now, but we'll do it later on when this bleeping infection is beaten and the keel is restored to even. Thanks Mum.

J has juggled work, chores, hospital visits, long train journeys, early starts and late finishes, and also being a bloody wonderful human being - I'm lucky to have several in my life! Thank you my love. He's off up the allotment today to put the potatoes in as the chits on the Homeguard were getting so long we had visions of the marching off up the road on their own - it's safe to say they really want to grow!

Yesterday I managed a bit of a potter around the garden, visiting with seedlings and seeing what has bloomed in the last week and what is showing promise for the next month or so. We have some beautiful violets, wallflowers, muscari and cowslips all now in full flow and the bulb pots around the front are looking wonderful. My evening photography skills need a bit of work - and my hand might not have been as steady as I would have liked but below are some snaps from dusk yesterday. All being well we'll be pricking out some tagetes and petunias later and thinking about sowing some herbs too. Soil and plants are as usual helping with those baby steps back to me.  Bye for now Txx

Muscari and wallflowers on "waterbutt corner"

Cowslips on the edge of our "no-mow" area

Tulips and geraniums - promise of colour to come

Chives re-emerging - might need to weed the pot a bit

Soft blue in the rosemary hedge

Unintentional interruption in the blogging area

Sorry for brief disappearance. Pictures and ponderings will return as soon as I can but back in hospital for a short while, at least I hope its a short while...
Talk to you later xxx

Seed Week

Thanks to, Sara Venn, one of the wonderful gardeners I follow on Twitter I discovered that today is the start of Seed Week - a promotional week launched by new-to-me organisation The Gaia Foundation - It's designed to raise awareness of the importance of bio-diversity in food crops, support small-scale organic seed growers and encourage you to save your own seed that is adapted to local conditions. The campaign has it's own website under the project name Seed Sovereignty and is packed with information.

Let's face it, History has it's own lessons to teach about the dangers of concentrating all our food production on a single species or even worse a single variety of a species  - potato blight was one of the causes of the devastation the wracked Ireland in the 1880s Famine and less devastating to us but not to the communities that rely on the income, we are now being told that banana supplies could be under threat as all commercial supplies are from a single species which is vulnerable to a fungal disease. We also never know when an old or native strain will prove the saviour of a crop we desperately need or a creature we really prize without the obvious joy they bring just by existing for their own sake.

I've written before about the joys of the Heritage Seed Library and the important work it does in preserving a range of old or unusual varieties but there are also lots of smaller companies and organisations that produce organically grown seed in relatively small quantities, of varieties that are suited to the climate and growing conditions in their environs - I've used Real Seeds before and no doubt will do so again - good quality seed in reasonable quantities and they not only encourage you to grow out part of your crop and save the seed for future use, they also explain how to do it. There are other companies out there too so please check out The Gaia Foundation's page on seed suppliers for a lower impact supplier near you.

We really enjoy saving our own seed especially beans, peas and flowers - we've got healthy hollyhocks growing in the back garden from seed saved from a plant that grew a few years ago in the front garden, our Kew Blue and Blue Lake beans come from crops saved over the years and the peas that I've set outside to start hardening off this morning were saved by a friend and promise to have beautiful purple pods. Oh and we've also got home-saved Chard, Kale, Leek and Sweetcorn waiting to be sown.

"Barry's" purple podded peas - a sweet surprise in a super tall pea

Will they come true from seed?

Home-saved ruby chard for early salads

 Enjoy your week.

Flat surface shortage begins

We seem to be hitting peak seedlings a bit earlier than normal this year due to my adventures with propagating the houseplants. There may be some tough decisions ahead as we ought to prioritise food crops and cutting flowers rather than succulents but then again I can always get creative with the living room sideboard and dressing table top I suppose!

Succulent babies emerging at last

For now we have peas, lentils and chickpeas that have all germinated and shot up very quickly. These will soon be hardened off outside ready for planting up the allotment in a couple of weeks time:

Purple podded and Jeyes peas, Italian lentils and chick peas.

We'll then start some more peas off and a few beans of various sorts for a succession of cropping. In theory they could be planted directly into the allotment bed but as we have plenty of wildlife on the plot including voles we tend to lose too many that way! 

The echiums and pansies have also coped well with their transplanting into bigger pots and we'll need to harden those off soon as well as I need room for cosmos, sunflowers and lots of other lovely cutting flowers too. 

Echium blue bedder - a new annual for us this year

Even the kitchen table garden and the bathroom window ledge are getting in on the act this year.

Aloes and Boblets thriving in the kitchen

Indoor azalea - happier now that it's in the right compost and a moist environment!

Meanwhile the outdoor shelves are filling up rather well too...

parsnips, brussels, caulis, herbs, flowers....

Happiness is a sprouting seed tray!!

Mellow music for a wet afternoon

Today has been an odd one with two appointments a couple of hours apart and really foul windy wet weather so once I was finally in for the day and had dried out a bit I settled down to have a doze in my chair and a play with Prime Music - it suggests tracks to try and so I stumbled across two new to me artists that I thought I'd share with you. Moody, mellow with a bit of edge and lyrics that behove more than one hearing - I'll definitely be back for more.

Daughter - According to Wikipedia an "Indie folk" band from North London that has been around since 2010...

Bear's Den - Again Wikipedia came up trumps - another London band that's been around since 2012...

And then Lucy Rose popped up in the list - Surrey born with her first album released in 2012 according to the oracle...

Off to see what else I can stumble upon....

Monday's musings

Brightening the day with flowers from the garden

'Twas a really weird afternoon yesterday with brilliant sunshine, really heavy rain, high winds, huge flakes of really soggy snow and then a pretty sunset so what was there to do but bury my head into the wonderful The Girl in the tower, this is really living up to the promise of the first book in the trilogy and I only have about a third of it left - it's one of those that you want to keep reading to find out what is going on but at the same time I really don't want it to end - good job the third part is sitting on the shelf just waiting for me!

All ready to pot on

The morning was a little more productive mind - potting on and pricking out the seedlings that have been germinating in the back bedroom for the last few weeks. So we now have little pots of pansies, violas, welsh onions and big pots of sweet peas all ready to grow on.

Today has been a similar mix of chores and chilling - lots of sorting out upstairs as Mum is due for a visit at the end of the week and her bed was buried under a mountain of stuff! There's a bit less rubbish in there now but more to do before she gets a cosy night's sleep.

Violets emerging

By the time I'd done with chores for the day I couldn't resist a quick potter outside in the sunshine (boy is it chilly today!) - the violets are starting to appear now and the odd cowslip is sending up bud stalks just as the crocuses are starting to go over, so the wheel turns again. I couldn't resist bringing a few flowers indoors so a mug of hellebores, large daffodils and little tête-a-têtes has joined the re-potted peace lily and other bits and bob on the living room sideboard.

Now where did I put that book.....

.

Experimenting in the kitchen again

Usually super ripe bananas get made into simple banana cake or bread but this weekend I fancied trying something different and, as I had some little bars of dark chocolate in the larder, I thought I'd play with the recipe a bit. 2 smallish but very ripe fruits and 2 mini bars of Green and Blacks 70% cocoa dark organic chocolate that was a bit past it's best before date became Squidgy Chocolate Banana Cupcakes.

Straight from the oven

Squidgy Chocolate Banana Cupcakes

4oz Self-Raising Flour

2oz Cocoa

5oz sugar

6oz margarine

3 eggs

2 ripe bananas

approx 1.5 -2 oz of chocolate chopped into small pieces (or chocolate chips would work)

Place all ingredients except the chocolate into a food processor and whiz until thoroughly mixed together.

Add in the chipped chocolate and pulse for about 30 seconds - just enough to combine the chips into the mixture without breaking them up anymore.

Spoon the mixture into 12 large cupcake cases - I use and re-use silicone cases to reduce waste - it works out about 1 large tablespoon per case.

Bake on Gas Mark 4 for about 25 minutes but keep an eye on - when skewer comes out clean they are cooked.

Serve warm with vanilla ice-cream or leave to cool for a delicious cake that is almost brownie-like in texture.

Garden therapy

It's a bit of a "meh" day today - weather is grey, blustery and a tad chillier than of late and I'm feeling a little sorry for myself - nothing major just one of those days -  so thought I'd have a quick potter down the garden to see what the plants thought of the day and put some food out for the birds. Only 5 or 10 minutes because it really was chilly but even that was enough to brighten the morning inside. In a bid to spread the joy this is what is flowering this morning:

Over-wintered wall-flowers on the verge of opening

Last year's baby daffodils and a few grape hyacinths

The pot may be broken but the daffies are still pretty

King of the Striped living up to it's name

And to add to the joy a little male black-cap popped out of the hedge to drink from the crocks bucket!

Therapy complete :)

Repairing and re-purposing rather than discarding and replacing

One of the most important aspects of any low-impact lifestyle is to ensure that you minimise the amount of things that find their way to landfill sites especially when they are made of metals or plastics as they just sit there and form a blight on our landscapes, put our wildlife, watercourses and atmosphere at risk and cause untold damage that future generations will have to deal with.

So what happens when things in this house get damaged or break?

Birds don't care that feeder has shrunk

Well I suppose I'm lucky in that J has really great repair skills and the patience of a saint when it comes to watching you-tube videos and reading around about anything he doesn't already know how to fix - about the only thing he won't touch is significant plumbing and gas related stuff. So my little LED kitchen and garden lights have had their cables repaired and spliced several times to extend their life, garden tools are regularly sharpened and taken apart and re-assembled if they get stiff or the springs rebel - this keeps them useful and safe. My collapsed-into-the-pond-because-the-pole-rusted bird feeder was cleaned up, the rusty end cut off,the post re-fettled and it's now back in the garden, albeit a bit shorter but still useful and far enough off the ground that the birds are safe from the cats.
He also shares his skills at repair cafés when he gets the chance - these are another great thing put on by Transition Loughborough and many such groups around the country so if you do have something you can't fix then it might be worth hunting up your local Repair Café. On one occasion one of the other volunteers repaired a hole in his knitted jumper whilst he was busy sharpening and re-fettling a load of secateurs so they are a great place to share skills too.

Not my favourite job but...

On a more day to day basis, socks get darned, holes in clothes get stitched and when they can't be stitched anymore they get turned into cloths, rags for DIY projects and nice soft plant ties and then eventually shredded for compost. If it's a small hand stitching job I can manage but when it comes to machine stitching - that skill eludes me - I always seem to let the machine run away with me, the thread runs out or breaks or gets ridiculously tangled and then I get frustrated, lose patience and give up.

Favourite mug to water pot

Whilst my practical repairing skills are somewhat limited I'm quite good at finding new uses for things that might otherwise be thrown out - so a mug with a broken-into-a-dozen-pieces handle has become a water pot for painting, jars with non-standard tops become elastic band holders, tea-light containers, pencil pots and containers to root cuttings in, chipped plates become mixing palettes for paints, epoxy resin or putty or even saucers for plant pots and,when turned upside-down, they prevent outside plants sitting in water over the winter saving money on plant pot feet and extending the life of many Mediterranean herbs that don't like to sit in the winter wet. Finally, when that life is over, they are likely to become drainage crocks for plant pots.

Many other things can have a life beyond their original purpose - even those designed to be single use like yogurt pots, mushroom cartons and fruit punnets can go on to be used for seed trays, pot holders and containers for collecting homegrown fruit and veg before eventually ending up in the recycling stream via your council collection if you are in an area like mine or your local recycling centre if not. We try to remember that even recycling uses up resources that re-purposing would save so do our best to think about what we can do with our waste before we leave it up to others to take away but I know that there are many areas that we could improve on and keep looking for new ones.

Want cake, easy cake

Some days just demand cake - wet, blustery, grey, meh kind of days are always lifted by the addition of home-baked treats. The go to staple cake here is a fruit loaf - simple, quick to put together and easily adapted to whatever you happen to have to hand. I think this recipe started off in one of my Mum's original cook books as I remember her making them when we were kids - Mum and Dad fostered and Mum also day-minded little ones, so there were always lots of kids in and out of the house and there was no way they were going to be buying things in when they could be made inexpensively and in quantities. I remember coming home after school to kitchen surfaces covered in cooling trays, with sweet and savoury pasties - jam; apple; bacon and onion, cheese and potato - whatever was left over, needed using up or there was only a little bit of, so pasties or pies made them go further, then some weeks there were fairy cakes (when did they stop being fairy cakes and start being cupcakes?), jam tarts (often two or three coloured to use up the end of jars), marble cakes - basic quick and easy sponge with jam or fruit puree stirred through or two batches of cake batter in the same pan which looked brilliant when sliced and then loaf cakes -fruit loaf - warm spicy and fragrant has long been my favourite a real comfort food that has much to do with the way it makes the whole house smell as it does to the taste - although that's pretty good too!
Looking at the measurements I obviously metricated it at one point or other (probably for school!)

Fruit Loaf Cake

Grease and Line a 2lb loaf tin and set the oven to Gas mark 4/180c/350F

125g margarine or butter chopped in small pieces
200ml milk (I use soya or cashew)
175g dried fruit (this weekend's was 2/3 sultanas, 1/3 apple)
175g sugar (this weekend's was demerara)

225g plain flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 teaspoon mixed spice (mine was heaped!)

1 beaten egg

Put fat, milk, fruit and sugar into large saucepan and heat GENTLY until fat has melted and sugar dissolved.
Cool slightly ( I usually leave it for at least 20 minutes in a cool room and stir it frequently to speed this bit up - nothing worse than scrambled egg when you wanted cake!).
Beat in the flour, spice, baking powder and bicarb until well combined, then mix in the egg until that is also combined. BREATHE IN - the smell will put a smile on your face!
Pour into the tin, tap to level and get any air bubbles out and then bake for approx an hour. It's done when your skewer/knife comes out clean.

This weekend mine did in 50 minutes and I had to put a piece of foil over the top after about 30 so it didn't catch too much on the top - you could be organised and pop it on at the start but you'll have to remember to take it off about half way through and leave plenty of room for a rise - I prefer popping it on once I know the cake has risen and the crust formed.

Allow to cool enough to be able to slice! - it is really tasty warm, if it survives a couple of days it makes a great tea-bread with a spot of butter or nut butter spread on it and if it survives to go slightly dry then pop in microwave for 30 seconds and serve with custard or cram or ice-cream (but really - how did it last?)

Variations - all apple and cinnamon is delicious, sultanas, raisins and chopped apricot is lovely especially with just a tad of extra nutmeg, just sultanas and raisins works great too. I have even chopped in leftover glace cherries and bits of dried pineapple if they need using up. I have some home-made prunes here so may try those the next time. I haven't tried pear but I bet that would be nice with ginger and muscovado sugar......mmm anyone got a glut of pears they have dried?

No pictures for this one - it didn't last long enough!

Picture post - Spring starting to Sprout

Saturday 2nd March - a quick check on our plot

Nodding daffodils just opening

Crab apple budding

New growth from the Feverfew 

Female Hairy footed flower bee making use of the dead-nettle

Hairy Footed Flower Bee Landing

Loaded up and flying off to the next one

Spiky gooseberries sprouting

Stubborn strawberries keep coming back in the path area!

Alkanet new growth - wild but kept for compost and mulch

On broad beans and plastic pots

Yesterday was the allotment's turn for some attention before Storm Freya landed and made all outside work inadvisable for a couple of days.

Slightly cloudy but still unseasonably mild we popped up to deliver more card ready to lay as new beds and to plant out the first sowing of Aquadulce Claudia broad beans. These have been growing on in a covered propagator in the back garden for the last month or so. The aim was to get them growing just enough to make them unattractive for the mice and voles but not so big that they were leggy and hard to transplant. The plan seems to have worked and we ended up with about 20 healthy little plants that are now in their new home. We've covered them in an old plastic tunnel just to give them a bit of protection from the expected heavy rains and the pigeons/pheasants/deer etc that all like to nibble on fresh green growth.  The cardboard is for creating more potato beds - you can just see the first early bed in the second and third photo below - card on top of a roughly weeded bed with manure and compost on top in the no-dig style that works well for us.

Make do row spacer!

All planted out

Safe from the pigeons-we hope

Plastic pots ready for re-use

Eagle-eyed folk will notice plastic still being used here despite our low-impact ethos - all the pots and plastic tunnels we use are ones we have had for many years and will continue to use until they fall apart and then if necessary we'll buy new non-plastic or, in the case of pots, more likely use second-hand plastic ones. Despite the hype and all the adverts for brand new eco-friendly this, that and the other I think it's far better to use what you have and keep them out of land-fill for as long as possible rather than ditch all your perfectly serviceable long-life plastic and replace with brand new non-plastic items. However, a caveat if you will, if something is breaking up please make sure you gather as many of the bits as possible and put them in the bin rather than let them fall into the soil and create a hazard for the wildlife. If you are starting from scratch and really need to buy something, then yes please go for a more earth friendly option but bear in mind if the plastic pots are already out there, lurking in your shed or even your granny's shed then they will be out there for several human life-times so it's best to use, then hand down or pass along, things that already exist rather than use yet more of the Earth's precious resources creating new things. Oh and when it's empty the chicken manure tub you can see in the picture makes a great kitchen compost caddy as it's lightweight but strong and the lid seals nice and tightly to keep any smells at bay...