THE FRUITS OF OUR LABOURS

This is my first strawberry - what a whopper - enough for three of us to share!
For dinner tonight we ate the first of our "first early" potatoes.
We have been working on our allotment for nine months now, all through the freezing cold winter, putting up fences and digging out beds. Planting, weeding and watering. Lukey has built the most wonderful shed, which I will post the photos another day.

Lets hope there is plenty more to come!

Garden Visit

Today I went on an outing with The Lawford Horticultural Society to visit Beth Chatto's Garden in Elmstead Market. http://www.bethchatto.co.uk
This was my favourite plant in the garden, Frittilaria Persica. It had lovely grey green leaves and purple bell like flowers. I looked for it in the nursery but couldn't find one.


Her are some of the group looking in the pond. We all wandered around the gardens and looked around the nursery, carefully choosing our favourite plants to take home. After we had lunch in the cafe.
This plant was massive, I don't know what it was called, some sort of lily.
This is a similar one growing by the pond
And here am I standing on a bridge by a small stream.
The gardens were lovely, all the beds were covered with ground cover with other plants growing through, very little weeding is needed. It was full of spring flowers, not just bulbs but others like the frittilia and hellebores. I would like to visit again in the summer and see the difference.

A Perfect Weekend

My Weekend started on Friday afternoon! I spent the afternoon in goggles and mask making soap! Later had a lovely skype chat with Alice, watched Gardener's World and did some knitting.

I made garlic and rosemary foccacia and some biscuits on Saturday morning, before walking to the market. Greek salad and the bread for lunch followed by sorting out my greenhouse and potting up lots of seedlings. Had a lovely chat on the phone with my sister. A bit more knitting in the evening! Steven and Jared did some car maintenance - sorted out the problem with the central locking.
Sunday I did lots more gardening, made some soup and flapjacks. Sorted out some wine, racked 3 jars and started off some more. Steven continued to build the shed for the allotment, he has cut, painted with preserve and labeled each piece of wood, ready to take up there and assemble.
I cleared the pond, did a bit of dredging and look what I found! A Newt! I looked him up and think that he is just a common one!
And on Sunday Evening we went dancing! What fun!

I was given a present on Saturday. Yes, a wheelbarrow!!It was put to use straight away on the allotment.
I have been busy knitting dish cloths. I have joined in the Kris Knits "KNIT ALONG" http://krisknits.blogspot.com/ Each month she is posting the knitting pattern for a themed dishcloth. Every few days she posts some more rows, you don't know what it is going to be until you have knitted it. The white one above is a snowman, January's cloth.
This one is February cloth, Love birds?
This is the waffle dishcloth from Homespun Living http://homespunliving.blogspot.com A bit different from the others but more chunky.

Meat balls

Yesterday I went to the butchers and had a good stock up. The butchers is a few miles away so when I go I buy a lot and freeze it, but I have now found it better to prepare some of the meat before freezing as it saves time when you are in a hurry. I bought some mince, which I have turned into meatballs.





I mix up the mince with breadcrumbs, onion, pepper and some dried herbs and shape them into little balls. I open freeze them and then store them in the freezer. When we want meatballs for dinner I just pop out how many we need, defrost and cook them.

Tonight these will be cooked in gravy and served with mashed potatoes and cabbage.

Allotment progress

Last weekend we installed the compost bin, the front and lid were added later. The banana skin was the first item in the bin!


Planting potatoes. Have had fleece on this bed for weeks, planted my first Early's and covered them up with fleece again.
How long should the "chit" be? Mum thinks at least an inch, others say 1/2 inch is fine, as I am impatient I have planted these with about 1/2 inch. Should be ready to eat in 8 - 10 weeks.

CUP CAKES AND BABIES

My friend at work is expecting a baby next month. I have been busy knitting for her and have just finished this set of a hat, cardy and mittens.

I made cupcakes for Beth's last meeting before she goes off on maternity leave. I saw these "baby" paper cases in Hamburg when I went out for the Christmas markets. They have ducks, dummies and nappy pins on them. I got blue and pink baby sugar decorations form http://www.almondart.com/ This cake decorating shop is based in Clacton and does mail order.

The "blue" cupcakes were lemon with lemon icing and the "pink" were strawberry, made with jam stirred through and vanilla icing.

Alice let me borrow the cup cake stand that she had for Christmas and they looked quite beautiful and tasted very nice.