Purple Sprouting Broccoli

I stopped for lunch at midday; broke off some leaves and broc heads and threw them all into a hot wok with sliced ginger, too much garlic and enough fresh chilli to make me cough.  Finished off in the wok with a splash of teriyaki sauce and Bob's Your Uncle.  A fast and fabulous lunch when you can't bear to be away from the garden on the first warm sunshiny day of the year.  

Really, this ought to be on the top shelf... hortiporn at its best.

On Sowing French Beans With Jon Bon

I find I crack through 24-pot trays far more efficiently when I've Jon Bon Jovi singing to me as the rain falls gently on the glass house. 

http://youtu.be/59NoqP02ZYM

 I filled 3" pots with B&Q's finest then push two beans per pot about half an inch into the compost.  Conventional horticultural advice always rattles on about double sowing then discarding the weaker of the two.  I think that's a bit miserable, actually; if the seeds make the effort to grow the least we can do is plant the two together.  And let's face it, two bean seeds planted a few inches from your 8' bean stick isn't going to have any detrimental effect.

http://youtu.be/NvR60Wg9R7Q

Here's the laundry list;

Buerre de Rocquencourt - that's the yellow pod

Amethyst - that's the purple one

Cordon Bleu - the green one.  Oh, OK.

Time to Sow Carrots

I recently picked up some new clients, and already am completely in love with them. I make them want to be better gardeners and they make me want to be a better person.  It is a perfectly balanced relationship, except of course, that I'm gaining far more from the deal.  Together we are awakening their walled kitchen garden; and lawns (yes I know, lawns!); their glasshouse and their shrubbery.  I arrive in the morning and they make me toast on their Aga.  I think that's what clinched it; a walled garden and Aga toast.  They make it with that criss-cross grill thing, and when I scrape over the Lurpak it melts into the little squares.

Suitably breakfasted, we repair to their walled garden, where this week we sowed carrots into the raised brick beds.  We both like carrots, so pretty much emptied four packets into the deep black soil.  Pictures to follow.

Say it with me people; I really do lead the Life of Riley.

Trailing Geraniums in the Rain

I bought these geraniums early last summer for 25p each, wilting and half dead under the neglectful care of a major DIY chainstore.  No worries, for as my charming, witty and erudite readers know geraniums or more properly Pelargoniums, are South African natives and can thus withstand a bit of drought and heat.  

Pelargonium is a genus of some 200 species.  Commonly called geraniums, the true Geranium is a separate genus of related plants often called cranesbills.  Cranesbills are thorough repellent plants that make my life a misery with their appearance each spring where I thought I'd finally managed to dig them to destruction the previous autumn.  Not so much perennial as ever-bloody-lasting; once one arrives in your garden, it seeds itself wantonly until every part of your garden is infiltrated.

Most of the plants you'll see sold as garden geraniums are in fact pelargoniums, as opposed to true geraniums or cranesbills.  No matter, just look at these beauties, and the rejuvenating qualities of great compost, plenty of moisture and an adoring lady gardener. 

Pelargonium "Lavender"

Pelargonium "Red Star"

Pelargonium "Violet"

Now is the time to sow your Pelargonium seeds, usually 6 seeds in packet for 2.99£.  You can of course, wait to pick up the plug plants, also 2.99£ for 6, but sowing your own seeds is so much fun.  Ten days ago I sowed Mr Fothergill's Moulin Rouge, the classic signal red geraniums you'll see everywhere in France. Once the risk of frosts has passed, in sunny Derbyshire that usually means mid-May, I'll have them outside in large terracotta pots on the terraces, lining the steps in the kitchen garden and flanking the drive and the outhouses.  In late February my thoughts turn towards our house in France, and France, and St Malo, and I'm happy.

Sunset

The trick to a barbeque in early spring, is to plan ahead and get the thing lit mid-afternoon, piling the coals high.  Then when the sun starts to drop rapidly and the cold drops upon you harder than you thought possible after such a lovely day, you will have your steak and veg already sizzling.  Of course, I didn't plan this far ahead, but it was still lovely grilling in the dark.  Cold, but still lovely.  Not so much cold, actually, as bloody freezing.

On Winter Gardening & Bone Idleness

One of my greatest failings is Bone Idleness.  That and a refusal to hire any woman who at interview blathers on about her addiction to chocolate and buying shoes.  I always collect my interviewees from reception; that way I can work the conversation round to these two deal breakers.  Never fails.  I've yet to recruit a female balloon head. 

I've loads of photos of my perfect, beautiful, wonderful kitchen garden, and stacks more of all the lovely places I've visited over the winter, including some corkers from Canterbury, (incidentally my New Favourite Place).  I just can't be bothered to catalogue, upload and add cheery dialogue to some much needed posts.  Some of my photos are simply breathtaking, especially those taken in the rain during November.  Since discovering both the zoom and the macro/super macro button on my camera, there's been no stopping me.  Now if I can only summon up the energy to download and work through my Photoshop disc, I'll be well away. 

I was over at Chatsworth  last year, and have some stunners from the kitchen garden there.  They call it a kitchen garden, but really its Horticultural Envy writ large.  What do you think?

Oh squeaky green brassicas, my heart belongs to you.

On Dreaming Of Runner Beans

On A Cold And Snowy Weekend In Canterbury

I hate, loathe and detest driving in icy conditions.  After only a few miles I feel sick from all the adrenalin.  I hate walking on icy pavements, too.  This probably has its roots in a childhood skiing accident.  I do, however, love paddling about in the snow as I have a pair of military-depth-tread boots reserved for just such occasions.  Suitably booted, I can trot about in the snow all day, although admittedly I do get a little twitchy when the sun starts to drop and I'm out in the middle of fields, etc.  We all know vampires don't exist but those films are so realistic, aren't they?

When the snow and ice begin to melt, I revert back to my tan leather boots, especially when walking at the seaside, where I have never before seen snow piled up on the beach.  Miracles and wonders. 

Seville Orange Marmalade

There are some terribly important rules to follow when making marmalade.  Here they are;

1. Do exactly as Delia instructs. 

Once you have made Delia's marmalades for a couple of seasons, you will then be in a position to use your own experience and then and only then are you allowed to make the following deviations from Delia's instructions;

2. Do not use pectin enriched sugar; complete waste of money. Your citrus is full of pectin, and if you have used frozen citrus, simply add the juice from an extra lemon.

3. Refuse to engage with the mind-numbingly tedium that is cutting off the citrus' pith. Pith removal must be abandoned, especially when making grapefruit marmalades.  Pith will all boil to nothing and release so much pectin you won't need the pectin sugar.
4. Pomelo or ugli fruit never set and produce a bland, flavourless mess.  What a waste of your life, especially if you stripped then shredded all that pith...

5. Just tie up the pips in the bit of muslin.

6. Boil the marmalade for 15 minutes only, do the frozen saucer test then turn off the marmalade pan and let it all settle.  Your marmalade will be softly set, especially if you've thrown in an extra lemon just for badness' sake.  There are few things as repellent at breakfast time as a boiled to buggery, firm-set marmalade, although runny boiled egg white comes a close second.  Makes me want to boke just thinking of that...

7. Replace a litre of water with a litre carton of clementine juice in your orange shred marmalade.  Also, consider adding a carton of mohito cocktail mix to your lime shred marmalade.  Oh yes.

Lingua di Fuoco; Borlotti Beans

 





 

Thanks Fiona & Danny

I picked up my next assignment last night, and as it's due in a fortnight I thought I'd set to and start this morning.  Of course, in true avoidance style, I then started going through my emails... which I haven't looked at since just before Christmas.  Thank you Fiona and Danny for your lovely New Year's card, which I can just about say arrived at the beginning of THIS month. 

Slacker Diaries, or what?

How To Propagate Mistletoe: Part 2

As we have already discussed, mistletoe is so easy to propagate we can safely leave it to the birds.  Or, armed with Marigolds, we can squish the berries into youngish branches of apple trees and hawthorn hedges.  And wait until next year to see if the seeds have sprouted.

Christmas Day

Helena & Najm

"Like me, you were late coming.  The shepherds were here long before; even the cattle.  They had joined the chorus of angels before you were on your way.  For you the primordial discipline of the heavens was relaxed and a new defiant light blazed amid the disconcerted stars.

          How laboriously you came, taking sights and calculating, where the shepherds had run barefoot!  How odd you looked on the road, attended by what outlandish liveries, laden with such preposterous gifts!

          You came at length to the final stage of your pilgrimage and the great star stood still above you.  What did you do? You stopped to call on King Herod. Deadly exchange of compliments in which began that unended war of mobs and magistrates against the innocent!

          Yet you came, and were not turned away.  You too found room before the manger.  Your gifts were not needed, but they were accepted and put carefully away, for they were brought with love.  In that new order of charity that had just come to life, there was room for you, too.  You were not lower in the eyes of the holy family than the ox or the ass.

          You are my especial patrons, and patrons of all late-comers, of all who have a tedious journey to make to the truth, of all who are confused with knowledge and speculation, of all who through politeness make themselves partners in guilt, of all who stand in danger by reason of their talents.

          For His sake who did not reject your curious gifts, pray always for the learned, the oblique, the delicate.  Let them not be quite forgotten at the Throne of God when the simple come into their kingdom."

From Evelyn Waugh's Helena, a prayer made by the Empress to the Three Wise Men before finding the Holy Cross

Thanksgiving

"It seemed to Myop as she skipped lightly from hen house to pigpen to smokehouse that the days had never been as beautiful as these. The air held a keenness that made her nose twitch. The harvesting of the corn and cotton, peanuts and squash, made each day a golden surprise that caused excited little tremors to run up her jaws.

          "Myop carried a short, knobby stick. She struck out at random at chickens she liked, and worked out the beat of a song on the fence around the pigpen. She felt light and good in the warm sun. She was ten, and nothing existed for her but her song, the stick clutched in her dark brown hand, and the tat-de-ta-ta-ta of accompaniment.
          "Turning her back on the rusty boards of her family's sharecropper cabin, Myop walked along the fence ti it ran into the stream made by the spring.  Around the spring, where the family got drinking water, silver ferns and wild flowers grew.  Along the shallow banks pigs rooted.  Myop watched the tiny white bubbles disrupt the thin black scale of soil and the water that silently rose and slid away down the stream.
          "She has explored the woods behind the house many times. Often, in late autumn, her mother took her to gather nuts among the fallen leaves. Today she made her own path, bouncing this way and that way, vaguely keeping an eye out for snakes. She found, in addition to various common but pretty ferns and leaves, an armful of strange blue flowers with velvety ridges and a sweetsuds bush full of the brown, fragrant buds.
          "By twelve o'clock, her arms laden with sprigs of her findings, she was a mile or more from home. She had often been as far before, but the strangeness of the land made it not as pleasant as her usual haunts. It seemed gloomy in the little cove in which she found herself.  The air was damp, the silence close and deep.

          "Myop began to circle back to the house, back to the peacefulness of the morning. It was then that she stepped smack into his eyes. Her heel became lodged in the broken ridge between brow and nose, and she reached down quickly, unafraid, to free herself. It was only when she saw his naked grin that she gave a little yelp of surprise.

          "He had been a tall man. From feet to neck covered a long space. His head lay beside him. When she pushed back the leaves and layers of earth and debris Myop saw that he'd had large white teeth, all of them cracked or broken, long fingers, and very big bones. All his clothes had rotted away except some threads of blue denim from his overalls. The buckles of the overalls had turned green.

          "Myop gazed around the spot with interest. Very near where she'd stepped into the head was a wild pink rose. As she picked it to add to her bundle she noticed a raised mound, a ring, around the rose's root. It was the rotted remains of a noose, a bit of shredding plowline, now blending benignly into the soil. Around an overhanging limb of a great spreading oak clung another piece. Frayed, rotted, bleached, and frazzled - barely there - but spinning restlessly in the breeze.  Myop laid down her flowers.

And the summer was over."

The Flowers, Alice Walker

In Love and Trouble

Hosta Bressingham Blue

Early to mid summer.  The following were taken mid to late November.  Autumnal decay at its most beautiful.

Remembrance Sunday 2011

The National Memorial Arboretum Staffordshire

How To Propagate Mistletoe

I've gone down a size in jeans.  I'm telling you this only because I've just had to go and change into my M&S 15£ black exercise trackies as sitting here catching up with my favourite blogs was edging over into the pervy side of painful.  I rather like wearing a snug pair of jeans as Christmas approaches; keeps my hands off the snacky, nibbly loveliness that's starting to appear when eating out.  "I just thought I'd try a few recipes before the big day, you don't mind do you?" is starting to become a regular feature of midweek suppers and weekend lunches with friends.  And mostly it is a gastronomic trial run.  A couple of wretches will try to pull off their usual one-up-manship nonsense, but we'll give them short shrift... will they never learn?

Some time in late winter 2009 (January or February 2009) I scrubbed the mistletoe into the branches of a couple of my least favourite apple trees.  There is a tremendous lot of nonsense written about propagating mistletoe, none of which your garden birds have bothered to read and if a bird-sized brain can do this, so can we.

Essentially you must try and buy English mistletoe, but don't worry if your provider can't tell you where it was grown; in all likelihood it will be French and just as good.  It's just always lovely to try and have a go propagating British natives.

Take your mistletoe berries (which will be a bit withered and dead-looking by February) and push the black seeds inside the white berries into the bark of apple trees in your garden.  Hawthorns are also good host trees.  Try and pick a youngish tree, as the bark tends to be a bit thinner and thus easier for the seeds to penetrate.  Then just leave them alone and forget about them.  With any luck, a year later you'll have a few tiny leaves just like the ones below.

These pictures were taken in January 2011.  I'll take some more this weekend and add them to this post.

I loathe that Hebe.  I don't know why I keep it.

Friday Five: Ireland

"I was raised in an Irish-American home in Detroit where assimilation was the uppermost priority. The price of assimilation and respectability was amnesia. Although my great-grandparents were victims of the Great Hunger of the 1840's, even though I was named Thomas Emmet Hayden IV after the radical Irish nationalist exile Thomas Emmet, my inheritance was to be disinherited. My parents knew nothing of this past, or nothing worth passing on."
Tom Hayden

Moone Cross Co Kildare, picture credits unknown

"Could he not find in his heart the generosity to acknowledge that there is a small nation that stood alone not for one year or two, but for several hundred years against aggression; that endured spoliations, famines, massacres in endless succession; that was clubbed many times into insensibility, but that each time on returning [to] consciousness took up the fight anew; a small nation that could never be got to accept defeat and has never surrendered her soul?”

De Valera, on VE Day May 8, 1945, responding in a radio speech to criticism by Churchill of Ireland’s neutrality in WWII

"I tell you this - early this morning I signed my death warrant."
Michael Collins, after signing the treaty on December 6, 1921 with England creating the Irish Free State as a dominion within the British Commonwealth

"No person knows better than you do that the domination of England is the sole and blighting curse of this country. It is the incubus that sits on our energies, stops the pulsation of the nation’s heart and leaves to Ireland not gay vitality but horrid the convulsions of a troubled dream."

Daniel O'Connell (1775-1847), in an 1831 letter to Bishop Doyle

"Ireland, thou friend of my country in my country's most friendless days, much injured, much enduring land, accept this poor tribute from one who esteems thy worth, and mourns thy desolation."

George Washington, speaking of Ireland's support for America during the revolution

Sean O'Casey says it best: "Every action of our lives touches on some chord that will vibrate in eternity."