Seeing red

I picked the redcurrants yesterday as they were already overripe. I am not usually one for measuring and boasting but this is the exception.

After sitting for over an hour with a fork stripping the currents off the strings and picking out the leaves, I have 1.8kg. For those of us who still think in old money that is just under 4 lbs.

They are now in the freezer and next time I have a spare hour of two I will make jam or jelly. Maybe raspberry and redcurrant jam.

I would have had quite a few raspberries but I ate tham as I was picking and felt a bit sick afterwards so that shows how many there were.

Feeling blue

What do you do when it is too hot to garden or go to the allotment, you are not a football fan and a very long extension lead is sitting redundant in the garage?

Fix it up to your shed of course.

I moved the sewing machine into the shed and sat happily for a couple of hours cutting and sewing until I made this. I had the blue blocks made already when I needed practice at making 'Pinwheels' and found a bit of lightweight denim that was a perfect shade to tie them all together.

Unfortunately, it seems that I can't count to 20 as I was one block short but the cunning person I am I came up with the idea of a plain blue block which I will embroider with my name and the date. A future heirloom!

Hopefully England will get through to the next round so that I can quilt and bind it.

The squirrel returns

He is back......

As Angel was asleep I got a chance to have a close up look at our squirrel. It is amazing to see how much red there is on him. I realise that he/she has been coming along the fence to get the bird nuts and there is a big hold chewed in the side of the feeder. Bless him/her.

Doing our bit for charity

We got an email earier this week to say that they were having a charity car boot sale at the gym attached to the hotel up the road and were looking for cars. Always wanting to do our bit for charity we took a slot.

It was very sad that she sent over 1,000 emails but there were only six of us selling. This is a first for us as we have never done a car boot sale before but the vultures pounced on us and started rooting through the boxes as we were getting them out of the car. It was quite scary. We did eventually get sorted out with a few pounds in our pockets already.

After donating our £5 to Asthma UK we still made £70 profit from the items we sold. This included three boxes of duck eggs which went within seconds of us putting them out. They were definately the hit of the day.

A very proud moment

It was a lovely surprise to find that Aaron and Brian had been very successful in the Hampshire County Amature Swimming Association Championships 2010.

Between them they have 23 mentions in the results table. I am a very proud sister and aunt.

Hampshire Masters 2010 results

Not so good news

One evening this week I met Maria as she was leaving the allotment with her bike basket full of garlic. It seemed very early to have dug it all, and as Maria is Italian and has had her allotment for over 20 years, I knew there must be something wrong.

She had white rot. This is disaster to garlic as it is OK to cut away the rotted bit and use straight away but it won't store over winter.

I decided to check mine as I had the same rust on the leave and I had the same problem. About 1/3 of the crop is affected so I dug it all so that I could hopefully save some of it.

There are about 60 heads of garlic so you can imagine how the car smelled on the journey home. I will hang it up to finish drying and the bulbs that are affected I will try to chop and pack in jars with olive oil to preserve them.

You might want to keep away from me for a few days and I will have to make sure I wear rubber gloves.

The first fruits

The red currents have responded to all the sunshine we have been having and turned red suddenly. I picked a whole box full so just need to get home and find a fork to strip them off the stems.

This lot should make a couple of jars of redcurrant jelly (not sure what other jelly it will make) which should be lovely with baked Camembert. It is making my mouth water thinking about it.

The trailer is finished

Nick has spent some time working on the trailer. He painted the wood to match the sheds, added mudguards and the cover. All the reflectors are not on the the wiring fully working.

I think it looks very smart.

Is somebody not pulling their weight

Pixie finally ventured off her nest today and it looks like she has rejoined the other ducks.

We had five eggs this morning, somebody always lays late so I check when I let them out - so that made six.

Late in the afternoon there was, what looked like, an egg in the grass on the lawn. It was a bit strange as the grass had been cut at the weekend. I found that it was actually a very tiny egg that one of the girls had deposited late in the day.

I can't imaging there is room for a yolk in there and we certainly wouldn't meet any sort of standard egg size gauge. Katy called and took away a box of eggs so here it is shown with yesterday usual six.

A close call

I was sitting dosing yesterday when I just happened to catch Angel out of the corner of my eye as she jumped up onto the stone planter. She had obviously spotted something but it took me a moment to realise what.

Thankfully my trusty camera is always at my side. I must move that plant though.

I am not sure who would have come off best in a fight.

Salad days

I am hoping that we will have plenty of salad for a while. The tubs at home are recoving from the pruning that the ducks gave them and we have a lovely lot of hearing lettuce at the allotment.

I cropped some to thin out and they are really tasty. Nick cleared a bed for me and it have also thinned out the green and red so have planted up another bed with good pigeon protection.













For a while it will be lettuce only as the cucumbers will to do a bit of growing before they are ready. There are two growing at once so I may make a rosette to award to the one that grows the fastest.

The tomatoes are too pathetic to even warrent a mention.

Update from the allotment

It is a while since we have been to the allotment but we managed a few hours at the weekend. The greatest success we are having this year is with fruit, which just tends to itself. Now that it is carpetted (work in progress) the moisture keeps in so the only watering is to the strawberries that are in the old duck ponds. The end that hasn't had carpet put down yet is being taken over by raspberry canes so we are going to have to do some selective cutting back

The goji berry is going mad and the Kiwi fruit have recovered from their frost and are growing up the posts but there is still no sign of fruit.






The red currents are turning red and the white currents are weighed down with fruit. I really do need to start using up the bags still left in the freezer so may have to turn them into jam.












... and what about them figs!

Broody duck

Emily has been missing from the garden crew in the last few days as she has gone broody and spends all day taking care of her eggs.

We couldn't leave the eggs for her to sit on so substituted them with the clay eggs that we bought earlier in the yeat to give them the hint of laying.

This is only the second time we have had a broody duck. The first was Emily the first year we had ducks and it lasted about two weeks so we are expecting the same from Emily.

The garden will be pleased as she is usually the ringleader if there is mischief about to happen.

Tom and Barbara junior

We had a trip to Kent at the weekend and a lovely surprise to see how well Matt and Rebecca had got on with establishing their allotment. They have put us to shame as they are harvesting peas and strawberries, have beans forming on their broadbeans and cabbages which look like show standard already.










They really do deserve the title of the Tom and Barbara of their generation.












To say this started as a spare bit of waste ground this time last year they have all done wonders to make a fantastic community project.