All aboard the No 42

I had a great surprise when I got home from a week away to find that the shed at home was almost finished. All that is left to do is the glazing in the window. It looks lovely now especially as the colour that we chose matches the roof. It also looks much less like a bus shelter than it did before it was painted.

Update for August

The building of the shed has started. Nick and Matt laid the base exactly to measure wit6h a nice little patio outside the door and window. When I say started, I mean that the bit are laid all over the lawn and painted. I am not sure which has the most paint on it, the shed or the lawn!





The beans that I planted for drying are ready to shell and I was surprised to find that I had one plant of 'Ying Ylang' kidney beans. I am going to keep them to sow next year and hopefully increase my supply year on year. They look fantastic.




A selection of other beans are 'Butter Beans' 'Bellotta Beans' and what ever you call the beans that come from dwarf french beans. I have also shelled some runner beans that had got too big and they tasted great as well. At this stage it is OK to cook them as they are but I have a load that I am hanging to dry and store to use over the winter.


These do look good hanging in the kitchen especially as the pods are so different. They will lose their colour as they dry and I am a bit worried that the beans will start dropping all over the kitchen floor but I will overcome that problem if it happens.






We don't seem to have as good a crop of onions as last year but it has been very dry and they do like a lot of water. I realise that I don't have anywhere to store then as the beans have taken all the room on the bottom of the wine rack where the onions hung last year. I have asked Nick to make a rack to hang over the kitchen table but I think it is fairly low on the list of jobs that I keep adding, and the shed has priority.


The elephant garlic looks fantastic and I am saving a couple to plant for more next year. It has a really mild flavour, more like leeks than garlic (that reminds me, I must photograph the leeks to show you next time).



In my mission to be organic and to save my own seed, I have gone a bit mad and am even saving seed from the passion flower that is fruiting like made in the garden. Unfortunately the fruit seem to be more seed that fruit so I really don't fancy eating them altough they do look lovely.



Another one of my missions is to make more of the hedgerows and our hedge at Churchill Way includes the hazel that I cut for bean poles and elder. So, having missed the elderflowers, I couldn't miss the change of the berries. After wine last year, I decided that 2007 was the year of the chutney - elderberry chutney that is. Surprisingly it is not a very strong taste and in my opinion ideal for cold meats. I will be circulating jars shortly for the taste test.


Back to the shed, or rather the bus stop. I think the telegraph pole is what gives it its name.






Now an update from the bowls green. I was in the final of the novice singles against Lyn. At this point of the game, we had completed 10 ends and she was beating me 9 points to 3 and the game is the first to 21 points. I now have the reputation as the come-back queen as it got to the point where she needed 1 point to win and I needed five. I got one, then another one and then three - so you can work out who won. Another cup to match those of last year.

I came a very close second in the ladies pairs and a not very close second in the ladies two woods singles but at least I get runners up medals for them.

Remember the giant apple. It has grown so big that it looks as though it is bigger than Nick's head. He was determined not to pick it except one day last week we arrived at the allotment to find that it had harvested itself and was sitting on the ground.

The fruits of our labour

We’ve started to really enjoy the fruits of our labour now so I thought it was time for another update from the Little London Garden:

We’ve started getting a lot of fruit from our forest of cucumber plants so we’ve made some chutney (with some apples from our tree), relish and pickled cucumbers to get rid of some of it.



We’ve also had some beetroot so now have a couple of jars picked for our lunches:



We came home from visiting Mummy and Nick this weekend to find that all of our tomatoes have been struck down with blight after the rains so, not wanting to lose all of our hard work, we picked all of the green tomatoes. As you can see, we had quite a few:


We’ve made 8 jars of green tomato chutney, which was delicious last year, but haven’t even dented the pile so I’ve found some recipes for Green Tomato Ketchup, Tomato Chilli Sauce and Green Tomato Tarte Tatin. We’ve got through 3 bottles of vinegar this week so need to get to the shops to stock up before we start are big green tomato cook-off.

We’ve also been making the most of Mummy and Nick’s produce wherever we could. When we were in Basingstoke at the weekend I made 4 jars of the now famous Runner Bean Chtuney, which is just delicious! As you can see, we’re building up quite a stock pile of preserves for Christmas presents:







Matt has also been busy baking, he’s made a Plum Custard Tart and a Red Onion and Goats Cheese tart, both of which were delicious:










We had some pastry left over so I made a vegetable quiche, seen here with some home grown salad, Matt’s homemade bread and some home grown borlotti bean salad – which we made from a recipe from Jamie Oliver:

Borlotti Bean Salad

Boil how ever many fresh borlotti beans you can get with half a potato, half a tomato and a whole bulb of garlic for about 40 minutes. When they are all soft, drain ¾ of the water off and mush the potato, tomato and garlic into a rough paste. Add this paste back to the pan with the beans and the left over water. Slosh in some good olive oil and vinegar (I used white wine vinegar) and some fresh herbs (I added parsley and chives) and serve.

Besides the food that we’ve been getting plenty of, we have also still been getting plenty of visits from our menagerie of wildlife. The squirrel was hanging of the bird feeder this morning along with some sparrows and last week we had 3 foxes in the garden – we think they are Geraldine, her older cub from the spring, and a younger cub (who is very energetic!). Here are Geraldine and her eldest asleep under the apple tree (you wouldn’t believe we lived in London would you?!):