The Saga Continues

Holiday Snaps - Day 2 - Sunday 

The men went to Silverstone to watch the Superbikes Grand Prix.  They said they had a good time but there is no photographic evidence to share.  They brought back flags, supplied by one of the sponsors of the races and autographed posters of some of the riders and bikes.

The ladies went to Oxford, by car to an out-of-town Park and Ride car park, then by bus to the town centre.  We ate at a small café.  We wandered round the Botanic Gardens.  We spent some time in the Ashmolean Museum ..... attached to the University of Oxford, antiquities collections range from Paleolithic to Victorian, from Egypt to Britain .....  www.ashmolean.org

Looking at the autumn border - it was quite sunny for a while.

Ducks resting on the edge of one of the water features.

Even Botanic Gardens have weeds!

Where else but Oxford?

The return journey - back at the Park and Ride car park.

A holiday in pictures

Just a few of the hundreds of photos taken during the recent visit of the Goertzens to the UK. 

Holiday Snaps - Day 1 - Saturday 

Our visitors arrived at Heathrow and after we had travelled back to Mollington near to Banbury we went for a meal at the National Herb Centre - then we walked around the fields that are part of the Centre.

A view from the top of the hill.

                                        

 A good day for taking photographs - Bernice at the ready. 

We started at the top of the hill.

                                                            It was a long way down.                    

      Time to rest in the summerhouse at the bottom of the hill before the return journey.

 And the Sun shone all day.....

The National Herb Centre

Life is returning to normal after the much anticipated visit of our son and his wife and her parents to the UK, on their way to a holiday in Spain.

After they had flown out from Gatwick  to Madrid we still had two days of holiday left so we decided to make the most of it by travelling around the Cotswolds.

During the last day we visited the National Herb Centre which was only a couple of miles from the house we stayed in and we enjoyed scones and a pot of tea.  We’d visited twice with our visitors, on the first and last day of their stay. 

Although it was almost time for their café to close we were not hurried and we chatted with the waitress as she cleared away from our meal.  Round the walls of the café are watercolours and photographs (for sale) and we had admired the paintings since our first visit when we viewing the holiday house to see if it suited our purposes.

We told the waitress how much I had liked the painting of the periwinkles which was no longer on the wall, and wished we had bought it when we first saw it a few weeks ago. 

It turns out that she was the artist and that the painting had not been sold but taken down to make room for another of her watercolours.  She was able to fetch the painting from another part of the building and we bought it straight away.  I told her that I specially liked the painting because the same flowers were growing in my garden and that I had grown them from a cutting from my  mother’s garden many years ago – she likewise had them in her garden from her mother’s garden.  Periwinkles are very much a cottage garden plant and a favourite in such gardens.

I don’t know who was more pleased – the waitress-artist for making a sale – or us for obtaining the painting that we thought was no longer available.  It will bring back happy memories of the holiday.

Upgrading the Homestead.

Our front door has a very small letterbox – for years postmen have battled with delivering our mail and many ignore the ‘do not bend’ pleas on the envelopes, so we end up with creased and crumpled mail.  We’ve trained our regular postman.  He rings the doorbell to deliver the mail that won’t easily fit – but for this to be successful, we have to be at home!

At last we have solved the problem.  We’ve bought a metal post-box that can be fitted to the outside of the house and the opening is big enough to take most of our letters without them being folded.  It will even take the free newspapers that are delivered on a weekly basis.

Frank has fitted the box level with the door letterbox by the side of the front door. 

                                                       

 

It looks smart and works well – no damaged post so far – but we miss the sound of the letters dropping on the doormat in the hall.

A tale of woe.

The Potato Harvest

Since the inauguration of the veg patch I have planted potatoes and had a good return at harvest time.  This year ‘proper’ seed potatoes were purchased from a reputable garden centre and were planted in the correct season so I had high hopes.

Now potatoes love water but this season’s rainy spells have been too much, even for potatoes.  The tops of the plant die down when the crop is ready for lifting but the tops started to die down too early.  On close examination it looked like there was a problem and I thought they were suffering from blight – the sort that devastated the potato harvests in Ireland during the Great Famine in the 1840s.  

Looking to the internet for advice the recommendation was to cut off the foliage before the spores could get into the soil and then into the tubers.  The tops were removed and leaving the crop alone for three weeks (to allow the blight spores on the surface to die) the tubers were dug out. 

 








Oh dear – the quantity was fine but the quality was not good. The potatoes were not mushy like I expected but were covered with scab to varying degrees – perhaps it wasn’t blight after all. Back to the internet – the potatoes don’t look pretty but they are edible!

A New Venture

 Considering that the British Summer has been rather wet and cold the gardening has produced some successes.

Better late than never the strawberries ripened and they ripened over such a small spell of time that I gave some to a neighbour and the less beautiful specimens were turned into microwave jam – it was so runny that I liquidised it into strawberry sauce and now I am going to use it up with other fruits to make crumbles.

The peas and beans have enjoyed the rain so there are plenty to put in the freezer – just need to blanch them first – I shall use RM’s technique of using freezer packs, the sort you use in cool boxes to keep the picnic food safe – to cool them quickly.  It looks easier than making up ice cubes.

And the new project – another patch of lawn is going to be sacrificed to make a herb garden – like when the veg patch was created, we are killing off the grass and weeds by blocking out the light. The new patch will be dedicated to growing the herbs that are currently in pots on the patio.  The trouble with pots is they like to be watered frequently or the plants wilt.  Even in this years very wet season there have been several spells of a few days of hot dry weather so the plants in pots have suffered. 
At the moment all there is to see is a patch of lawn covered with black plastic, weighted down with bricks to stop it lifting, or even blowing way!
 

The rectangular planter has some of this year’s strawberry plants and a healthy amount of runners to plant up in the veg patch over the winter and hopefully become next years supply of strawberry plants.
 

  

                                       

Garden performance

I'm just glad that F didn't have a camera to hand!
On Sunday afternoon there was a break in the dismal weather so I decided I would rake over the last part of the veg patch and sow the green manure seeds, Lupinus Angustifolius according to the back of the packet.  Because the ground was so wet I decided to wear my wellingtons.  I raked the ground smooth and marked out the rows, making a hole to plant each seed - very methodical.  All was going well and I had nearly finished the job when I went to the narrow path between the veg patch and the raised beds to reach the last few planting holes. I put one foot on some bricks at the edge of the patch and the bricks moved.  I overbalanced  and ended up sitting on the rhubarb - as my arms flew out to try and keep my balance I dismantled the edge of the netting frame that is around the strawberries to keep them safe from the birds and most spectacularly, the packet of seeds emptied itself, seeds flying off in all directions.
Frank was sitting at the other end of the garden and he came to the rescue - I wasn't hurt at all - but we ended up picking the rhubarb that had been broken by my fall and rearranging the netting frame and most time-consuming of all picking up as many of the seeds as we could find.
I am expecting green manure to spring up all over that part of the garden!

Rain, rain, go away

This week has had such a mix of weather. 
On Tuesday it was a summer's day and daughter and I spent a couple of hours walking round a nearby nature reserve.  Because it's still term-time it was very quiet and we sat and ate ice cream while watching a family of mallards - no noise to scare them away. We had to walk past a couple of swans who had decided to stand in the middle of a path.  Adult mute swans are large, especially noticeable when you are a couple of steps away from them, but B said we were safe as they did not have cygnets  to protect. Later on we watched a heron catching his dinner - he was very wary of us and kept his distance.
On Wednesday it was summer again and in the evening I was able to garden.  I managed to finish digging the veg patch so was looking forward to sowing the last seeds for this year, but today the rain has returned with a vengeance. 
The water butts are overflowing, the strawberries are still green and the next dry day is about a week away.
I'll just have to take up housework!!

Long time no post -and the weather

Well it's been six months almost since I put anything on the blog - life's been busy but now I have completed my course work and the exam for my latest OU course I really have no reason not to put something together for the blog.
The UK summer is dismal so far - torrential rain and much cooler than normal temperatures  - it suits the weeds in the garden but means that the veg patch is more neglected than it should be.  One success - I picked the first ripe strawberry today - F and I will feast on it tonight.  There are lots of green strawberries waiting to ripen but they need a good spell of sunshine before they are ready to be harvested.  I might have to search out some recipes for unripe strawberries if the weather doesn't improve soon. Are there such recipes?
It certainly wasn't very kind for the Queen's Jubilee Celebrations but it didn't stop the crowds turning out to cheer.  Hopefully the weather will be better before the Olympics and that we shall enjoy an Indian Summer in October.