Green & Country in the City 29 October

• Read in the Wren newsletter (Wren is a group for those with an interest in the history and plants and wildlife on Wanstead flats) that 3-corned leek can take over and is impossible to get rid of. So I will have to do my best to keep mine under control. Will try eating as much of it as I can. I am thinking of adding it to a nut butter - coconut oil, ground nuts, yeast extract and 3-cornered leek. Should be nice on toast!
• Planted out heather on Wednesday and today was planting tulips, including 3 sets of tulip bulbs that are supposed to naturalise. Supposed to plant tulips 20cm deep but I did them less than that and am hoping for the best.
• At work we had the first tasting of our kombucha which is made with a scoby (a symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast). It was ready on Tuesday but we waited til Friday as more of the team were in. It tasted of pickle water. It is supposed to be good for the digestion. It had grown another scoby. (The scoby is the team "pet" we got after our team away afternoon when we had time making tonics and teas with Rachel de Thample.)
• Condensation on the bathroom and bedroom window yesterday. My friend Tony said he had a frost in Chingford.
• There was a skip with some offcuts on the way home from Leyton station yesterday. Took a few pieces as I passed and went back for more. 
• Decanted black currant gin. One ordinary bottle and one little bottle.
• Hope to have time to make Christmas pudding liqueur with vodka, sugar spices, and dried fruit. It is supposed to be ready in a month. I will treat it like sloe gin and not decant for at least 3 months and then leave for at least 9 months more.

green and country in the city 20 October

• So we didn't get the forecast storm. I was at a Seasonal Alignment Day in Kew on Saturday and in Kew gardens in the afternoon. It was windy but not stormy so fine for walking round. Then very windy when I got up this morning, but wind had calmed a lot so I cycled off to kayaking. Wind died down some more and sun came out so an enjoyable paddle on the water.
• I got a white heather at the shop by Kew station. On my to-get list this year for some autumn food for insects.
• Plumber came for boiler maintenance on Wednesday. Afterwards put up thermal curtain which I had carefully sewn material on to one side. I had had to get rid of portiere rod as it had come out one side above the door and had replaced it with ordinary curtain rod. But new curtain too heavy and curtain hooks come out of curtain rings when I open door. Have taken off material (very quick - it had taken me ages to sew it on!) and will try just the thermal curtain and hope it is light enough. Not very attractive, but do need door curtain as I have wide door and panels are two panels wide and there is a gap. I had put some green sticky tape down the gaps, but it is not very attractive and keeps peeling at the edges.
• I always look to see what birds there are on the sports ground when I am waiting for the bus in the mornings. This autumn there have been a lot of what I think are herring gulls (right colouring but don't seem large enough - or is it my childhood memory that makes them seem large?). But the black-headed gulls hadn't been there until Friday when I saw two. 
• This autumn there have also been many more wood pigeons on the sports ground than usual(100-200 of them!). But rarely any feral pigeons. In the winter I don't see them on the sports ground in the mornings - but I do see them on roofs and pavements on the bus journey to the tube station. But in summer and autumn expect to see them on the sports ground, but most days none and only occasionally one or two. Not seen so many elsewhere either.
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Tonics and teas all in (half a) day's work

At work our team away days are half work and half play. As there was nothing we needed to work on that couldn't be done in the hourly fortnightly meeting, it was decided we would have half a day's play.

Although I really, really could have done with Tuesday afternoon at my computer trying to catch up on the backlog, I did enjoy our afternoon at the Skip Garden near Kings Cross.

We had a very nice vegetarian curry lunch followed by a session with Rachel de Thample based on her book "Tonics & teas". As well as chat and information, a chance to sample drinks, vegan cake and truffles, we made a flavoured vinegar (I made a sage, rosemary and thyme-flavoured one, all the herbs gathered from the Skip Garden) and a tea to drink (I did a basic elderflower and lemon but colleagues were making zen tea and women's balance tea amongst others). We also each had a copy of her book to take home.

I would recommend Rachel's book and attending any workshop of hers you can get to.

Sloe vodka

In my post last weekend I mentioned starting my sloe gin to the recipe that takes 2 1/2 years. Then I realised I should have used vodka!

I've put sugar in the jar and have been stirring that.

The weather has improved over the week, so today after a damp start it dried up nicely with some sunshine. I went to a park near Kingsbury in North East London. It was obviously once a farm with some hedges still surviving, only 15 minute walk from the tube station. There were plenty of sloes there and I quickly filled my tub.

The shoes were all large - much better than the ones on Leyton Marshes. Does this show the extra rain that West London gets.

I'll be pricking the sloes tonight, putting in a jar and then filling the jar with vodka.

Green and country in the city 17 September

It's been 3 weeks since my last post as I haven't done much with a green and country theme.

• I have been sewing some new material on to the thermal lining for my door curtain. I won't put it up yet. I have someone painting the outside of the house and he will need to get a ladder through, so thought best to wait till he has finished. And then I need a wood delivery and the boiler maintenance. (My hall is very cluttered, even without the bicycle!)
• 2nd September there were primroses out in my garden.
• Unexpected evening home Monday 4 September so I cut down tree parsley. It was 7 feet tall and 3 ft wide so taking up a lot of room, and I preferred the swiss chard leaves so only using the tree parsley leaves out of a sense of duty.
• A colleague had frost on the cars near where she lived in Essex on Friday morning (15 September. My beans are over, courgettes almost over and tomatoes getting blight, so not as worried as I would be some years. (Last year the tomatoes were very late so a frost about now would have meant losing half the crop.)
• Pulled my carrots yesterday - all 8 of them!
• Picked sloes yesterday. None by the path by the old Essex filter beds so only had those on the thicket on the east side of Leyton marches. Only those sloes on the south east corner had berries. The ones in easy reach by the path were very small (surprising considering the amount of rain we have had) but the ones to the south were bigger though I had to put my hand  into the thicket to reach them. Luckily only mildly scratched! They were damp so I spread them on kitchen towel in flan dishes and kept turning them. Today I pricked them all and put them in a kilner-style jar and poured vodka on them. I have to leave this for 6 months, decant and then wait for 2 years. I made some last year but it will be another 18 months before I know whether this method is worth the wait!
• Yesterday I went to two houses open as part of the Walthamstow Green Homes. 
• Yesterday I also went to the Repair Café in Leytonstone about a vintage office chair I have whose seat I have broken by standing on it. I didn't take the chair as it is heavy and not on casters. I am to email a picture of it to Nostalji Home Design so she can she whether she can do anything. However I have tried downloading the pictures from my phone, the first time on my new computer and it doesn't work - I press to download on to the PC on my camera but nothing pops up on the computer screen! Probably a simple solution to those in the know but I am an analogue girl in a digital world (words of a country music song).

Green and country in the city 20 August

• Asked a guy putting up a screen around lift that is going to be worked on if I could have the two little bits of wood he had just sawn off for my wood burning stove. I was overheard by his foreman/boss who has said he will bring in the wood they have - sawn up as well. I have said I had to get this home on the tube so hope ne doesn't bring in too much at once. Especially as I haven't got room under for storage as I have lost property from a recent big event under my desk (and a load more to come).
• Got a yard of thickish pine from skip on way to girls club, a 5ft length of skirting propped up against a wall down the road, and several bits out of a skip on my way home from the shops yesterday. And I've got them all sawn up!
• Day off this week, weather better tan forecast so did Parkland Walk from Highgate to Finsbury Park. Got a small totem mug from the RSPCA shop in Highgate which makes my 10th Totem item.
• Luckily I resisted temptation to get hare cushion from a catalogue for my bed, even though golden yellow background, as I already had one and two would mean it would be in danger of becoming a collection. In a week I've seen 2 other hare cushions, so good thing I nipped it in the bud!
• Posted an order to Sarah Raven - tulips (scented and they naturalise), Iceland poppies, anemones a self seeding camassia and a daisy (9-months flowering and it self-seeds). As just over £40 I will get some free tulip bulbs I won't have room for, so will have to find them a good home.
• Rain Thursday night. Friday morning out picking autumn raspberries for breakfast and catching snails late home to bed and found a frog sitting on the huge pile of stuff too tough for the compost heap behind the shed.

Green and country in the city 6 August

• Picked surviving plums - 6. But that's 6 more than I've had before!
• Two catalogues, both autumn ones but with large Christmas sections. (What's that to do with Green and country in the city? Well, it's a seasonal marker!)
• When we arrive at the canoe club on a Sunday this summer there is usually two swans with 6 cygnets. We have been watching them grow. They are now nearly as big as their parents. Today there were only 5 cygnets. Sad the brood survived when they were small and vulnerable and lost one when nearly full grown.
• Saw a comma in the garden - first for some weeks. Also a gate-keeper, a red admiral and a cabbage white. Also a moth but it was on a leaf by the fence so I could only see its underside.