Lovely Sunday Morning

It's a beautiful day, sunny with a light, cooling breeze.

I was tying up tomatoes before breakfast. A nice job - easy, not too long, with a feeling of a job well done at the end of it.

I then picked autumn raspberries which I had with my breakfast sitting in a deck chair in the garden.

Saw what I think is a Gatekeeper butterfly, which I have never seen in the garden before.

Then off on my bike and picked blackberries, and it is still only 10.30 with the rest of the day to enjoy!

Asparagus pea: weird!

I got some asparagus pea seeds from the the Organic Gardening catalogue (though they weren't organic). Pretty red flowers and small, winged pods that are picked before they are more than 3 cm long.

Only half my row came up, but they survived the slugs, and I picked a handful today. Had them with onions, courgettes (from the garden), runner beans (first picking from the garden) and pasta as a chunky soup. Not impressed, don't think I'll bother again. Also used a stock cube, but rather salty.

Had it with sour dough bread from the new Organic Lea stall off the Leytonstone High Road. I am pleased that sour dough is getting easier to find.

Autumn autumn raspberries

The autumn crop off my autumn raspberries are just producing.

I had a large handful on my breakfast cereal this morning. 

Will have to fertilise them well next spring, having had two crops of them this year.

Vertical gardening in small spaces

Article on the Telegraph website - pity there weren't pictures with the links

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/plants/vegetables/8655257/Grow-your-own-edible-urban-jungle.html

Later: I've just been in and clicked on some of the links - not as useful as I had hoped, unfortunately!

Vertical gardening in small spaces

Article on the Telegraph website - pity there weren't pictures with the links

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/plants/vegetables/8655257/Grow-your-own-edible-urban-jungle.html

Vertical gardening in small spaces

Article on the Telegraph website - pity there weren't pictures with the links

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/plants/vegetables/8655257/Grow-your-own-edible-urban-jungle.html

focaccia bread

Yesterday I made focaccia bread using the recipe in August's Country Living magazine. It worked well, I was pleased with it.

I used white as the recipe instructed but plan to try half-and-half with wholemeal next time. I also used quick yeast instead of two risings. I would have had time for two risings yesterday, but if I make bread in the evening after work I don't, so the quick yeast is all I have in the larder cupboard.

blackberries and hammock

Years and years ago some friends and I would walk one of the chapters in a book "Green London Way". On the Wimbledon section of the walk we found a path lined by blackberries which, despite the numbers of people that must have passed by, weren't picked. We filled our lunch boxes.

How times change.

Lots and lots of people pick the blackberries on the path between the riding stable and the Leyton Marshes, and then over the hill to the car park by the cattle creep. I cycled up there this morning. As yesterday had been overcast and cool, I don't think many had been out picking, so easily able to fill my container. I made a crumble with them.

Sunny day today, and in the late afternoon had time to hook the hammock to the frame under the overhang of my neighbour's ash tree and have a little read and a little nap.

No window ledges for plants!

We're moving offices at work, Four departments all on one floor, mainly open plan. On Friday afternoon my computer and phone went upstairs and I went to have a look at the new space.

I haven't been able to understand why we are not being able to take plants with us.  Not that I have many - a african violet and an amaryllis, both inherited from departing staff. But the last 2 years I have sown my tomato seeds in a container on my office window ledge, then transferring the little seedlings into individual pots. I now see why - the secondary glazing means there are effectively no window ledges.

The conservatory is unheated. If I put them in the upstairs front room, which is south facing, there won't be any heat during the day, and on the evenings when I just have the wood burning stove on, none in the evenings either. I think it will be back to what's available at the DIY stores again.

gift of lettuce and cucumber

One of our trustees at work coming in for a finance meeting brought me two lettuces and one cucumber, fresh from his garden this morning.

I wouldn't by choice buy a sandwich with lots of lettuce in, but when I get a lovely fresh lettuce like this I spread margarine (I'm vegan so don't use butter) or hummus on two slices of bread, put on several lettuce leaves, squeeze the two slices together and enjoy my sandwich!

red currants

I had a large handful of red currants with my breakfast ceareal this morning.

I have 2 red currant bushes in my garden, both in their second year. Although only feet away from each other, alongside the western fence, there has been very different results.  One has had its leaves badly eaten and has had no fruit.  The other leaves are fine, and I got the large handful of currants - disappointing though that that's the entire crop!

small gardens

Back to my usual gripe about writers and broadcasters on gardening not understanding about small gardens.

In the Permaculture magazine which arrived yesterday there is an article on "How Britain can feed itself".

It says the "average" size of a British garden is 190m2 (2000ft2). Leaving aside the possibility that large gardens of several acres haven't scewed* the figures, what a mean average usually shows it the half-way mark - so probably about half of British gardens are smaller than this.

My garden of 1080ft2 is just over half this "average" size and most people I know living nearby have gardens of under half the size of my garden.

And of course, the problem with small urban gardens is that only a small proportion of them get enough sun to grow food!

*I've just tried to look up this word to check the spelling, but can't find it so have obviously spelt it completely wrong. I also used the word in my letter (on similar lines to this post) to the magazine. Oh dear!

Blackberries

Yesterday kayaking on the bit of the old River Lea between Tottenham and Waltham Forest, where usually only us paddlers go, there were masses of blackberries which we were eating as we sat in our boats. Because of the rain they were rather sodden - but that didn't affect the taste!

This morning I decided to risk the heavy showers that are forecast and went out on my bike. There were lots of blackberries on my route, particularly because in yesterday's rain there would have been few people picking them. They seemed dry and if I was wanting to bottle them I would have risked it - but I am planning to stew them instead.

Neals Yard Remedies Cook Brew and Blend your own Herbs

Today I had the second of two classes at the City Lit on "Declutter your life". Got rid of a carrier bag-full in the bin, the chance of another to the charity shop, but it has not had as much effect as I had wanted. Hopefully things will work through and more will go!

Rather than go to the scrum outside Holborn tube station, the nearest, in the rush hour, I walked to Oxford Circus, popping into Neals Yard on the way to get some vervain. Dangerous shop for my purse! Ended up also getting an expensive moisturiser (though big reduction) and a book "Cook Brew and Blend your Own Herbs".

Lovely, clear pictures of the herbs, giving parts used, main constituents, actions, how to use, how to source and cautions, recipe choosers by 10 common health concerns, then recipes for healing from the inside and then the outside.

Lovely book! And it will hopefully replace an old Marks & Spencers herb book I have kept as it had the best herb pictures in.

Blackberries, mystery bird and first cucumber

I made a detour on the way back from kayaking to pick blackberries. I take a left fork under the railway bridge where fewer people go, but it must be a little shaded there as not so many ripe ones as out beside the made-up path on the way there. But I got enough for a crumble - large juicy ones.

On my way there, cycling past the Leyton Marshes, I saw a small reddish brown bird with a ruffled crest. My first thought was "yellow hammer". I haven't seen those since a child in Cornwall when they would be high up on the telephone wires, so it was by their song I'd recognise them: "little bit of bread and noooo cheese". This might sound strange to those who have never heard it, but it is what they sing!

I've just looked in my Collins Bird Guide, and yellowhammers have yellow heads and underparts, and the reddish brown is just at the bottom of their backs. According to the book the male cirl bunting has a crest as well, but also quite a bit of yellow, and "in Britain now confined to handful of coastal sites in SW England", so unlikely to be in NE London! The rustic bunting has more brown, but books says it breeds in swampy spruce or pine forest with birch, willow or other deciduous trees or in dense, waterlogged deciduous forest. I'm still searching the Collins Bird Guide as I type this and have found the indigo bunting. That looks my best bet, but "rare vagrant in Europe including in British Isles". 

So "mystery bunting" it is then

Picked my first (indoor) cucumber.

Decluttering: sword in the works

I am going to a two-afternoon course at the City Lit on decluttering my life, in the hope of picking up momentum in my attempts to make space in my home and not store so much.

My main stumbling blocks are not wanting to waste anything, and it might come in useful one day.

On Monday I had my first session at the City Lit. On Tuesday a colleague asked whether I had a sword at home*. I did - a wooden one from doing sword-form at tai chi 15+ years ago. So I've lent it to him to use as a prop.

I haven't used that sword  for all those years, and now it has come in useful!

* He thought to ask me as I used to do archery, so was associated in his mind with weapons. (All my archery gear was sent to someone who was working with an archery club in Uganda.)

Elderflower champagne getting its fizz

I started drinking my elderflower champagne 2 weeks after making it, when the "cork" gave only the tiniest of pops. It was very nice, but no fizz.

Yesterday's bottle now has a slight fizz, and with 5 more bottles to go, I am hoping they will get fizzier and fizzier.

The danger of fizzy is why I left plenty of space in the bottles!

Late one evening in my teens there was a loud bang coming from a cupboard in the kitchen. It was opened to find bottles swimming in elderflower champagne as 2 bottles had exploded, with the break coming just above the bases, so at first we couldn't see which bottles the champagne had come from. The whole  family, some already in pyjamas, were then slowly easing off the tops (my mother used the old fashioned wire-topped cider bottles) so we could decant some into another bottle, leaving more space at the top.

It happened to me too, at the flat where I used to live; and I left the flat with a tiny piece of green glass still stuck in the spare bedroom ceiling!

Alan Titchmarsh and a small urban garden

Caught up with Friday's episode of "Love your Garden" on itvplayer yesterday - the episode on a small urban garden. This time Alan actually mentioned the size of the garden - 20 metres, so about the same size as mine. Only mention of shade was when Alan was putting a seddum roof on a shed beside a neighbour's tree which was on the north side.

The vegetable patch looked like a real vegetable patch rather than an attractive pottager which us ordinary mortals can't achieve in real life.

Also the vegetable growing on a small balcony (8 ft x 4 ft) was interesting. No shade problems, but I can't complain it wasn't small!!! Chinese cabbage in 8 weeks - I will have to look out for seeds of that next year.

He did say there was no excuse not to get peat free compost. They rarely sell it in DIY stores round here - getting 20 litre bags I can lift is a problem all of it's own!

And lovage mentioned again - hope to try that next year as well!

First courgette

When I was watering the pots this morning I spotted a small courgette on one of my 3 courgette plants and thought, in a few days time I'll be eating my first homegrown courgette. Then, this evening, when I was doing my big weekly water of the veg, I saw on the other side of the plant a courgette ready for cutting. I have just had it with some left-over spaghetti sauce. Yum!

Usually when it is dry I water both pots and veg. I have just started experimenting with leaving the veg for a week after proper rain before I water, and then give a really good dose (2 cans per sq metre). Rain forecast on Acuweather for Tuesday, but otherwise would try to hold off watering until the weekend.

Though I used a rose when watering the asparagus peas they were knocked over a bit - hope this is not an open invitation to every slug in the neighbourhood!

lavender & blackberries

I've just picked the lavender on the small bush in the front garden, leaving the new buds.

This year I need to refill some old lavender bags whose scent has completely gone.

Cycling this morning saw a few ripe blackberries on the bushes by the marshes - should be able to pick next weekend, and I've got out my plastic container to put in my saddlebag so I don't forget it.

blackcurrants and (2) gooseberries

Though I have 3 bushes in their second year, not a large crop. So, this afternoon, I picked and ate the berries straight off the bush! I also picked and ate the only 2 gooseberries on the gooseberry bush.

The blackcurrants particularly nice!

present of ash logs

I came home yesterday to a small pile of fresh ash logs behind the wheelie bin. These are from Linda, a neighbour a few doors down. Some need sawing into 2 so they fit in my stove, but there's a good evening's worth of burning there - and ash is the best wood, and can be burnt fresh rather than waiting for it to season for 2 years.

I am having problems finding a supplier of a load of logs. The supplier for the first winter I had my stove, who I think got the wood from Eastern Europe, disappeared from the telephone book. Last year I had a tree surgeon deliver a load of logs. He was very put out to find a terraced house with a tiny front garden, and no drive to dump the logs in. Though I helped him unload, and it didn't take us very long at all, this year he's not keen, but will ring me if he is in the area. Which is unlikely to coincide with time I can take off work!

Therefore I am relying on Len's offcuts (he's a carpenter living 3 doors up) and bits and pieces like this ash.