Catching up

Well that is another weekend over and done with. Saturday was a lovely fine day, however I was sitting behind my stall at a craft fair. I made a couple of sales and whilst there I managed to make another hat, and a pair of bed slippers.

Sunday was a very wet day so not a lot got done we had a bit of a lazy day. Me and Jay took the dogs for a walk over the local golf course as it had started to dry up and the sun was trying to peek through, but half way round the course the heavens decided to open up and it poured down so we had to make a mad dash back to the car.

We came home dried off and settled down to watch a dvd and enjoyed a bottle of bubbly with some yummy dips and nibbles, in my opinion a perfect day.

After spending over an hour sorting out the monthly menu and doing the monthly food shopping and wading through piles of washing I managed to get an hour or so out in the garden late this afternoon. I cleaned out the girls whilst they ran around the garden ferreting for grubs. I pulled up all the weeds that had emerged down the side entrance to the garden. As the girls were not ready to go back in the run I emptied out the pumpkin and squash plants from the raised bed.

The garden is looking rather untidy and the vegetable patch needs doing, if the weather is fine tomorrow I am making that my job of the day otherwise it will be pottering about doing housework. I felt good to be out in the garden earlier I do so miss gardening during these wet miserable winter months. The front garden is also in desperate need of a little TLC.

The pumpkins and squashes are now sitting on the windowsill upstairs there is a slight tinge of orange and yellow coming through, hopefully another couple of weeks and they will be ready to use.

I have also been busy sorting out and cleaning the display cabinet, it took several hours to clean and to get the glass and mirrors to shine and get rid of the smears, white vinegar with water was my cleaning product of choice and newspaper. I hope it is not going to need that much cleaning for a while. I waxed all the wood and gave it a good buffing with a soft cloth.  I have put a few things in it, but most of my nice bits and pieces are still packaged up in the loft since we moved in over nine years ago. I will get Jay to fetch them down when he goes up to get the Christmas decorations down, blimey it's creeping up!

We had homemeade meatloaf, vegetable chilli and rice for dinner tonight. I was a bit heavy handed with the chilli but it did warm us up on this cold night. The recipe for the meatloaf is on the recipe page along with many other great tasting economical dishes.


I hope you have enjoyed reading, until next time x

Funky Fungus

It has been wet and miserable today, thankfully there was a break in the rain this afternoon so I took the dogs for a nice walk in the woods.

If you remember last week I mentioned that I had taken some photos of all the different fungus that is growing, well I took my camera today and took some photos on that as I can easily upload them to the laptop.

There were lots of different types yet I know the names of none, but I do love how these brighten up the dark dank floors of the woods.

Unfortunately there were better ones last week but lots of the fungus has now gone or been damaged. I did however manage to put my arm on a stinging nettle which stung like a pig and is still tingling now as you can imagine a few choice words were spoken!

I made some yummy pumpkin soup and will be attempting to make some pumpkin jam later with the pumpkins purchased from Tesco quite a bargain, two large pumpkins for £3.00! Mine is still looking rather green.

It will soon be time for the knocks to start at the door, I have a tub of sweets ready and waiting along with Ben and his broken foot and a rather scary mask, I just hope he does not frighten the kids too much.

I received an email earlier in the week from the marketing team at Aldi's the food stores. I had won a £50.00 shopping voucher in their prize draw. I was most pleased, it will come in handy for the extra food shopping for Christmas.

And finally it has been nine weeks since my last cigarette. I still get the urge to want one but I have managed to resist, I wish everyone who is trying to give up the best of luck keep going, it does get easier.

Well that is it from me for now, until next time x

Making decisions

It has been a roller coaster of a week! I have been trying to keep myself busy but it has proven quite difficult as I can't seem to settle down to anything. Trying to sit at the computer to write has proved an impossible task, hence why there has been a lack of postings from me. So please bear with me as I struggle to sort myself out.

At this time of year there is not much going on in the garden, most of the vegetable plot is empty and has already been dug over. I just need to add some compost and cover the ground up until spring. The large raised bed has five scrawny swedes sitting in it, the caterpillars ate all the stalks and there does not look like there is much of a root. However I shall leave them in as there is still plenty of growing time for them and they are not in the way.

Last year I decided to grow some vegetables over winter, it was not much of a success so I will not bother with it this year. I will however be growing some garlic but I have not decided which variety to grow yet.

I have decided that this is in fact a pumpkin, it is the same variety that I grew last year however it does look a lot different. If it does not start to change colour then Perhaps I will change my mind yet again!

As you can see these are my butternut squash, there are several on the plant and the plant is spreading far and wide. It is in the small raised bed and has spread up onto the decking. Last year they got to the size in the photo then promptly fell off. Fingers crossed I will get at least one to grow to full size.

This is a courgette plant that has finally decided to produce something, not sure what variety this is as they look different to the ones I had earlier off one of the other plants that was grown from the same seed packet. They were black beauty which is a slender green courgette. I'll keep you posted on the outcome if it does not drop off!

I had quite a few tomatoes turn red and I have made a couple of batches of tomato sauce to use with pasta ect. which have been frozen for later use. I had a look earlier and there should be enough to make another batch by the weekend.

I made more soup again this week. We had bean and cabbage soup which has all gone and yesterday I made some more creamy courgette and potato. I have also been making cakes which the boys have thoroughly enjoyed and they did not hang about for long! You can find a host of recipes on the recipe page.

The girls are being rather vocal at the moment, they are waiting to have their mad chaotic time running round the garden, whilst I clean out the coop. Egg production is still down. I am convinced it is the rhubarb as they girls will not leave it alone. They make a beeline for it as soon as they are out of the gate. I have netting round it but the little dears jump so they can still get it!

I hope you have enjoyed following me through the gardening/growing year. I have gone of topic at times but then that is only natural. I titled this post making decisions, when I first started this blog my intentions were to keep it to gardening, however I have so many different interests that it would be impossible to maintain several blogs for each topic.

Soooooooo I am not sure of what to do, any suggestions would be gratefully received. Well that is it from me for today, until next time x