The preserving fest continues

Whilst still dutifully nibbling away at the horrible horrible job of painting the world's wibbliest wall, I have been trying to keep my sanity intact by setting myself a preserving 'task a day'.

Now the new super duper freezer has finally arrived, transferring all the stuff from the old chest freezer had reminded me about the 6 lb of redcurrants that have been lurking patiently, waiting to become Redcurrant Jelly - yum yum!

This was the rather Heath Robinson scene in the utility room on Wednesday evening...

 The Engineer was convinced my methods were foolhardy, and that the cats would put their paws in the bowl and we would wake up to cherry red footprint stains everywhere.

Fortunately he was wrong.  I did suspect that acidic redcurrant juice was probably not the tipple of choice of your average moggy!

Thursday saw the fun and games of the actual boiling and attempting to get a set...

 ...which took much longer than I had expected - again...like the raspberries...I started to worry that this might similarly be a consequence of the fruit having been frozen and defrosted (more water content? Not sure), and as when the raspberries set was finally achieved by the wrinkle test, once in the jars the set is much much firmer than I normally like for my jam, which is a shame as I do love a french style soft set.  So I was determined this should not happen with my precious redcurrant jelly.

So I took it off quite early, and then of course had the anxious wait until the jars cooled fully to see if I had been too keen and would have to tip it all back in the pan and boil up again.  It was worrying runny for a long while, and only this morning when I checked the jars by tipping them, did I discover with relief that a soft jelly set was indeed achieved! Phew.

I am proud to reveal, all labelled up, my first ever redcurrant jelly!

Another downside to having to spend all my spare moments painting the house wall, is that I can't play in the garden in this beautiful weather - grrrrr...

I remind myself endlessly while I am up my scary ladder slapping paint around, that actually, its probably too dry to do most of the things I need to do - in particular starting to move plants around and remodel the woodland border, plant up the corner bed at the bottom of the driveway, etc, which really does need the moisture of proper Autumn weather in the soil.

So to appease my gardening self I thought I would do a little check in on how the patio planters are looking at this tail end of the season:

I have been so pleased with how these plants have coped with this hot and dry summer season.  Really glad I chose the Gaura to put in here, it has flowered away pretty much none stop since June, only pausing briefly to drop a few buds when I have accidentally(!) allowed the barrel to get a bit too much drought stricken, and then bouncing back within 2 days of being watered to flowering fully again.

The sage looked fab until for an unknown reason, the middle died off.  But the outside seems fine now and the odd shoot is visible in the centre.  Perhaps I should take some emergency cuttings just in case its going to give up the ghost in the winter...

The bacopa and laurentia have pootled along admirably, and i haven't deadheaded them at all - I imagine I probably should have done, but life's too short for me for such a fiddly task with the miriad of small flowers they produce.  I don't mind deadheading the cosmos, that's much easier!  The dark cosmos did take a little longer to get off the starting blocks, but despite the dry weather, for the last 6 weeks it has been lovely.  I have no more seed in the packet of this one (it was Sarah Raven's Dark Cosmos Mix) so I'm going to try and save my own seed from this really good plant this year and see if it will germinate in March.  I don't know if this particular plant is Cosmos 'Rubenza' or Cosmos 'Dazzler', though I'm inclining towards the latter. It has certainly been fine in the large container of the barrel, and is a perfect height without any need at all for support.  Mary Keen apparently recommends trying to take cuttings to over winter, and then take more cuttings from the new growth off that plant in the spring, to try to avoid the inevitable disappointments in seed germination.  If I get the chance in between painting and desperately trying to plant out baby spring cabbage and perpetual spinach seedlings, I will give it a try...

Four thousand holes...

I know I've been suspiciously quiet here lately...but when your walls are undergoing life saving surgery and are looking like this at the end of the day:

...it is indeed enough to keep even me quiet!  My day for the last week has been punctuated by the sounds of the massive power drill and hammer and chisel which are gradually eating away at the rotten stone and mortar of this poorly wall.  And of course I am duty bound to provide regular supplies of refreshment! It certainly is dusty dry work for them, especially in the glorious weather we have been blessed with.

Its amazing to look a few days later and see the lovely new good stones going in, like an enormous jigsaw puzzle:

There was an alarming moment when I realised that one of the holes was really really deep and dark...on peering in, I found to my shock that I was looking at the soot blackened bricks of the inside of the chimney! The back wall of the chimney stack here is only one stone thick!!! Admittedly it was one hell of a stone, but still, quite sobering.  And of course that would mean that the rainwater soaking the wall was also probably running down the inside of the chimney.

Apparently it is going to take around 4 weeks altogether to rescue her, this is what happens if a little maintenance problem is ignored wilfully for 10 years - be warned, people!

Meanwhile, I have not been resting on my laurels...

Heaven forbid! With the rest of the south facing facade of the house looking like this:

..with stone in almost as bad a condition as the wall having to be stitched, I could not rest back whilst this lovely dry sunny September weather screamed at me "Paint the wall NOW before the winter wet comes again and manages to get into this stonework and destroy it!!"

We knew we wouldn't sleep easy during the winter weather if this wall were still unprotected, the west facing and north facing walls will be repainted too, but this one was the worst of the lot.  It did look as if this one hadn't been repainted for over 15 years, a lot of the paint was simply worn off, whereas the other walls are much more pristine.

I knew it would be a nasty, fiddly job, as the stone surface is so wibbly wobbly and seriously flaky in places...it should have been done at my leisure earlier in the summer but of course there was no point until the sandblaster had finished making all that mess.  As it is, I am occasionally engulfed by a cloud of stone cutting dust but needs must - this period of good weather may be my last chance to get this stretch of wall protected.  I'll be happy to work on with the better walls as and when the weather is suitable, even if that means waiting until the Spring.  But this side is desperate!

Sadly as is often the case, I am not fully happy with the colour - I really wanted a softer, more sandier shade somewhere between the old shades of limewash cream and ochre yellow that I can see layers of attached to the stones under the more recent pale pink paint...but in the time available to choose the colour I just couldn't find that illusive perfect shade.  I had thought this one was a reasonable compromise, it's a Heritage range colour called 'Bathstone Beige' and on my tester board seemed duller, less forceful a shade than it has turned out to be on the wall...perhaps it will mature down a little.  If not, next time (!) I will definitely allow myself more than 3 days to find the right colour.

We were pleased with how well the wall tie came up after using the eco paint strip to remove the nasty flaking old pink paint.  It will look much better in proper dark metal paint, and protect it from rusting.

So, painting this wall is ongoing at the moment, I do as many hours as I can manage each day to fit around all my other chores.  Fingers crossed the weather keeps holding out x

Damson swirl ice cream unveiling!

It worked!

I don't actually know how long it took to set, as I only checked it once, about 2 hours after I made it and as it was only about half set then I didn't look again until pudding time tonight.

As with all home made ice creams it needed to be taken out of the freezer for 5 minutes before you try to scoop any out, as the set is really quite hard, but softens enough to scoop in a very short time.  I thought the texture, both to look at and to eat, was fantastic, especially considering that I didn't have to break up any ice crystals every few hours as you usually need to with a custard made base.  This was perfect, no ice crystals, a lovely creamy consistency and flavour, with the slightly sweet vanilla base cut through beautifully by the acidy fruitiness of the damson.

I intend to make my next batch (once this tub is finished) by swirling through the raspberry coulis which has been loitering in the freezer for far too long.  I think it will be an ideal use for it.

Here in the bowl, after scooping out, you get the lovely swirliness of the fruit patterning all the way through.  I could certainly get addicted to ice cream making by this method!

Well, back to considerations on the building works tomorrow.  And more log stacking! In this lovely dry weather I really ought to be wire brushing the front house wall in preparation for repainting those walls which haven't been sandblasted in order to protect them from the coming winter...but I'm struggling to choose the colour, and I still have all those apples to puree and Williams pears to bottle...

Caution! Preserving frenzy underway...

...and sweeping all before it!

Earlier this week (amid the chaos of the small fry starting at their new - 5 second commute - primary school) I opted to channel my frustrations at being cooped up inside in this glorious weather (thanks to my delightful photosensitive reaction courtesy of the Lyme's disease medication...) by making a start on the preserving marathon.

In the past, in the old garden, I always enjoyed a spot of jam making, though it was mainly the hugely prolific blackcurrant bush that provided my bounty, handy considering that Blackcurrant Jam is my absolute favourite!  Sadly the blackcurrant bush here is not so bountiful - perhaps it may improve once a little of its enthusiastic redcurrant bush overload competition has been reduced, but just in case it doesn't, my lovely smallholding friend Sue has given me a rooted sucker from her ridiculously fruitful blackcurrant bush, all nicely potted up and ready to plant this Autumn - what an angel.

Of course I also made marmalade in January, but somehow, because you purchase the ingrediants and plan carefully for its transformation, it doesn't seem like quite such a 'war against waste' that the current situation does...for at the moment, I am feeling marginally overwhelmed by the fruit that is literally throwing itself at me from this garden!

The Blaisdon culinary plums have been flinging themselves off the tree for 2 weeks now (early), the smallest pear tree (which grandma has recently revealed to be a Williams pear) has just overnight become ready to harvest, so I had to do it quick as the jackdaws were already starting to nab a few (early again), the big cooker apple which is our swing tree is throwing windfalls about with gay abandon, making up for the sorry showing of the 'young' cooker which seemed to have suffered serious aphid damage in the late spring/early summer shortly before the young fruits were battered by the freak Glastonbury Festival hailstorm.  Of course we are also picking blackberries like crazy from the hedgerows and I also recently was invited to help myself to as many damsons as I liked from kind Sue's marvelous hedge's around her orchard.

Add to all this the mountains of raspberries, redcurrants and gooseberries in the freezer which is now becoming a little pressured since the demise 2 weekends ago of my ageing fridge freezer, until the new freezer arrives and you can surely sense my mounting preserving panic!!!

So I started by freeing up a bit of freezer space by making raspberry jam last Sunday, lovely, but took an age to reach a set - I wondered if this might be to do with the fruit having been frozen?  Defrosted fruit somehow always seems to have a higher water content, but even using jam sugar I had to test 5 times and boil probably for an extra 15 minutes.  The ultimate result of this of course was more evaporation and less jam in the end - only 5 jars when it should have made at least 6.

Next on the hit list was the plums, or half of them at least.  Now I find plum jam very sweet - too sickly sweet really - so I had a brainwave and decided to do half and half Blaisdon plum and wild damson jam! A triumph, the damsons certainly gave a depth and sharpness while the sweetness of the Blaisdons meant that I didn't need to add so much sugar as you normally do for damson jam.

I was contemplating moving on to start processing the apples into batches of apple sauce to freeze (and I might trial bottled apple sauce this year too, to see if it keeps well), when grandma kindly pointed out the rapidly ripening figs...most of which are too high to reach and the birds and wasps usually get there first...but we managed this wee haul:

Now I'm not one for fig jam, I love them baked with honey and served with greek yogurt, but as I seem to be the only one who will eat them, this looked a little too much for my digestive system to deal with!

So I opted for a foray into Nigella and found this recipe for figs preserved in rum, which sounded up my street, especially as the recommendation is to let them 'brew' for 4 months at least, taking us nicely up to Christmas and therefore present giving potential!

So here are the finished bottles (alongside my jars of Plum and Damson Jam awaiting labelling).  I was amazed at how they shrunk down - 2.5kg of large figs fitted, with rum syrup, into 3 800ml bottles.  Nigella's recipe had 1 kg of figs filling a 1 litre jar, however she used whole small black figs, whereas I had no choice but to cut mine into halves and quarters or they wouldn't have fit into my jars!  So I presume they lost a fair bit of volume by evaporation during the 1.5 hours cooking time.   The proof of whether my experiment has worked will be awaited in December...

Today the last 300g of the wild damsons was made into damson puree to stir into 'Easy Ice Cream', basically a tin of condensed milk whipped thick with a large tub of double cream...finished photo will hopefully follow tomorrow as this evening it wasn't fully set enough in the freezer to justify sampling. A treat for after Sunday tea, then.

Tomorrow hopefully I will have the energy to turn my attention towards making a start on the apple puree and probably bottling the remainder of the Williams pears before they over-ripen.

It's been all go here, I can tell you...

Never mind that it was Saturday, that sacred day for car washing, and ignoring the fact that the remains of Hurricane Bertha were hurtling rapidly towards us bringing unknown weather....

Saturday was the day we created the great dustcloud!

Neil the sandblaster worked singlehandedly and pretty much solid for 10 hours, stopping only briefly for the odd cup of coffee. I don't know if he ate (I did offer him our homemade minestrone soup at one point, fearing he might fall off the scaffolding from hunger, but he refused merrily and carried on blasting) and if he stopped for a sneaky wee in the bushes he was amazingly quick.

It all seemed very exciting for the first few hours, until we all realised we couldn't see anything and the dust was started to creep into the 2 end rooms and the porch despite all our and the builder's best efforts to seal everything up beforehand.  I think the children may have got fed up of me screaming "Don't open that door!" whenever one of them walked in the vague direction of the downstairs loo.

Actually I think we escaped pretty well - for the first 6 hours or so we could still play in the garden as the dust blew the other way over the driveway and the carpark, and we became accustomed to the high pitched vibrating whine of the machine. Later, as Neil moved around to the front we had to batten down the hatches and stay indoors as the dustcloud swirled around the garden.

And then suddenly, it was finished!

It's weird, I was so worried about what might lie beneath - and it looks almost like it matches the 'new' porch building!

We now have what looks just like 3 inches of Lyme Regis beach on the drive...

Some pretty entertaining holes between stones leading right into the wall, which are probably already attracting the attention of birds and insects looking for a des res for the winter

Celebrations atop the scaffolding when we discover that the stone wall is, thank heavens, in a reasonable enough state to be able to be left bare stone (once raked out and repointed) so that it can breathe away happily to itself in the future

This is as far as we decided to remove along the footpath wall - the rest of the wall isn't as bad at all as the end gable, and will just need a good wire brushing to remove flaky paint before a fresh coat is applied.  Besides, now we're mortgage free, we couldn't see the point of having to remortgage to fund total sandblasting on walls which seem to be behaving themselves fine.

As always with old houses, there were some entertaining (!) discoveries as the paint came off - 1 or 2 (or even 3) random cables which don't seem to be connected to anything at all but were still attached to the wall..., 4 concrete 'lintels' which don't seem to relate to any visible former filled in window or doorway...and cement fillet topping the buttress which has curiously been applied ON TOP of the paint in the past, and then painted over! Hey ho.

So far so good.

But now the builder is starting to twitch nervously as he notices me looking longingly at the scraggy bit of wall on the other side of the porch...He's concerned that it might not be so pretty under the paint and random render here.  As we discovered when lifting L's carpet to paint his room, the old inglenook room window has a replacement concrete lintel, and the wall between the two windows may have sagged before the lintel was replaced and probably had to be patched.  Given the fact that the 'pointing' here appears to have been drawn on by someone's finger, he's likely not far wrong:

There could indeed be any sort of mess of materials under here.

Just next to this is the awful craggy render line where the old boiler house used to abut the main wall:

He persuaded me to leave it (for now - cue evil cackle of laughter), as the wall here doesn't appear to be struggling under the painted surface...and to be honest we couldn't afford it anyway!

But I might be tempted to have a go at it with a chisel when we turn our attentions to prepping the outside walls for repainting here once the mess of repointing the newly cleaned wall is finished....

Well, I'm off to carry on dust removal inside the house xxx

Things that go bump in the night!

Well, in the evening anyway....I met this not-so-little fella whilst I was doing a spot of post-bedtime weeding in the circle bed.

He is huge! About as long as my palm and as thick as my thumb, and a pretty fast mover I can tell you.  I got the fright of my life.

Elephant Hawk Moth caterpillar found in the circle bed

Following research, it seems he was on his way between the fuchsia bushes as apparently that's what he eats.

I was a bit mean and put him back in the woodland border instead as I didn't really want to spear him accidentally with the garden fork and the light levels were dropping quite a bit.

Trying to show how long he is!
Apparently he will turn into a pretty pink moth so girly you wouldn't believe...

Shade tolerant woodland border ideas from Dunster Castle Gardens

Having decided that, come the damper Autumn weather, I will force myself to tackle the 'elephant in the room' of the scary woodland border revamp (before allowing myself to get distracted by fiddling with the 'easier' parts of the garden), I have been thinking more and more about this area and keeping my mind and eyes open for inspiration.

Today I took the children for a day out to Dunster Castle on the West Somerset coast, actually our main purpose was to see the sheepdog display but of course I couldn't miss out on a leisurely stroll through the amazing gardens and the obligatory cream tea at the water mill....

I love the sub-tropical planting up near the top of the garden, which is sheltered in its own micro climate and so the planting is full of agapanthus, salvias, red hot pokers and crocosmias.  But today my eye was focussing on the many many stretches of shady, woodland floor planting, so I thought I might take a few notes to remind me later for my planning.

Lovely berries on this Hypericum, which looked fab with the fern fronds growing up through

Asplenium scolopendrium, together with what might be a Dryopteris of some sort? and I was surprised at how attractive the Spotted Laurel looked - perhaps it was a different variety to the more garish one we have by the school car park wall? or just less brightly spotted because its in the shade?  Must research further...

Delightful hydrangea with white and limey green flowerheads on at the same time

I have always liked this delicate dangly pale pink fuchsia ever since I first saw one at Heligan in Cornwall

Noting the useful contrast in texture between the fern and the pale pink hydrangea

Just to prove to myself that shade can be colourful in summer as well as spring!

Shame the camera didn't really manage to capture the deep velvety carmine rose pink of this lovely dark hydrangea - thankfully labelled by those thoughtful NT gardeners! Hydrangea macrophylla 'Rotschwanz'. It would make an interesting element of variety amid the usual paler shades of the hydrangeas

That trusty stalwart Euonymous Emerald Gaiety (I think) doing an excellent ground cover job whilst at the same time adding some lightness and contrast

Here's that chi chi spotted laurel again...I must discover what its called

Another pretty hydrangea with a pleasingly more airy growth habit

A shot to remind me that I liked the idea of creating a relaxed log branch edge to my 'path' through the back of the border for maintenance - but could this idea also possibly be helpful in 'edging' the border itself to help stop the lawn encroaching into the border? Or am I really going to have to resign myself to edging all the way along with shears every time the lawn is mowed?

Well, lots to think about and ponder on.  It's probably a good job that my gardening hands are effectively tied by the children off school at the moment.  Or I might be dangerously tempted to start wading in and brandishing my fork about in the border now - which would be disastrous as its way too dry to move plants about and expect them to survive! And I really do realise that planning, planning, planning, is the only way to deal with this particular 'elephant'! xxx

Delia casts an enquiring gaze on proceedings...

"Excuse me...there doesn't seem to be a great deal of work going on round here!"

That quizzical look was enough to goad me into action again on the diary writing front.  Admittedly there hasn't been much to report, because as soon as I arrived back from Sheffield (dad now slowly on the mend, though it looks like it will be quite a long recovery time from his head injury), I came down with the most awful viral throat infection - not good on my last full child-free week before the summer holidays!!!

So I was forced to take it extremely easy - not that it was difficult, I was basically incapable of doing anything other than lying down and groaning in between school runs and 'essential maintenance' jobs (eg cooking the tea).  And with the searing heat outside as well, I kept forgetting that I had a searing temperature and then would suddenly realised why I was in a cold sweat all the time...

But it seems to have been the best thing to do, as by Sunday I started to feel distinctly improved - enough to have a wander around our village open gardens (and well enough to do my stint clearing tea trays at the 'Open Gardens cafe', sadly!)

Our scarecrow entry for the competition survived the storms a few nights before the judging:

Meet Minimus Gladiatorius Catcottimus - the smallest gladiator in Catcott

I don't think we won (in fact, I've no idea which scarecrow did win, or how to find out!) but the children were very proud of him, and he wasn't too bad for a first go, once we'd sorted out the initial knock-kneed problem.

The scaffolding appeared at last very late on Friday afternoon (accompanied by a reasonably grumpy scaffolder and more cheerful assistant, I think him in charge felt he should have knocked off by that point but had possibly had had a flea in his ear by my builder...)

L is still temporarily in the end bedroom at the moment - naturally the decorating of his room hasn't made much progress with everything else getting in the way, so much for the 'get it finished before the summer hols start' optimism.  Now he thinks that he has a personal balcony, and has to be firmly reminded not to play on the scaffolding at all.  The cats think its great though, a private lookout post and sunbathing spot!

Finally managed to get into the garden to make a start on my backlog of jobs....

Half the onions harvested and set to re-dry after being doused by the torrential rain on Thursday night...

Supposedly being guarded by Cobweb - with his eyes shut, it seems!

Quite possibly the hugest tomates I've ever grown.  These are Brandywine, and I do hope they make it as far as ripening so I can see if the taste is as good as reputation would suggest...unfortunately I've had a smattering of blossom end rot affecting the other plants - could it be the super hot, and unshaded greenhouse? Or could it be the reliance upon husbandly watering services whilst I was away/ill....? Just saying...

The bees are going silly over this patch of borage in E's little garden... it has unfortunately flopped over the other path so I have to go the long way round or chance stepping over it and upsetting said bees.

More gardening likely tomorrow, I will try to get some more photos, as well as a Treehouse Construction Update! xxx

Golden wedding anniversary celebrations - slightly derailed...

I had decided to treat my lovely mum and dad for their Golden Wedding anniversary (and dad's birthday) with a reminder of Somerset and all it's glories by sending them a Kitchen Table Posy of English cut flowers from the amazingly talented ladies at Common Farm Flowers.

I was a little disappointed that I wouldn't get to see the actual bunch itself, as they basically cut, arrange and send what is ready and lovely that day, although I knew the general feel would be relaxed and 'country flowers' style, there would be no way of knowing what different types of flowers and foliage would actually go into creating it.  Mum's getting better with her mobile phone achievements but I did think that trying to get her to send me a photo message might stretch her a bit too much!

As it turned out, I ended up being here when they were delivered...due to dad having a 'turn' of undiagnosed nature in the supermarket cafe, blacking out and collapsing, Delboy Trotter style, straight backwards and ending up in hospital with a fractured skull and severe concussion.  Thus resulting in an extremely late solo dash up the jolly old M5 and M1 for me to Sheffield last night, arriving shortly after 1am, to give mum a hand with sorting him out.

The flowers arrived promptly at 8am - poor unsuspecting delivery man, delivering to a household full of extremely bleary eyed inhabitants, who had completely forgotten all about the 'special occasion' for which they had been ordered...oh well, the stuff of life I suppose! 

But they are so beautiful, and the scent! It has lifted our day completely to pass by and see this thing of delight on the table.  As the day has gone on and the patient dramatically improved, we have appreciated them more and more.

It obviously takes more than a bash on the head to fell an ex-Royal Marine Commando...no medical explanation has been found for his random collapse but a heartfelt gratefulness for the thoughtfulness, swift action and care shown by the Asda staff at the Handsworth store as well as the professionalism, as always, of the ambulance service xxx

One room down...

...only 10 more to go!

Well, E is back in her own newly pea green room and very happy about it, so I thought it might be wise to take a few snaps for posterity before it gets any more untidy.

Hmm... pictures still need to be hung (as opposed to balanced on the tops of shelves!)

Still waiting for her chosen fabric to be delivered before I can make the blind, so the old curtains had to go back up for now

Her 'desk corner' is still in progress - she would like a long deep shelf (like mummy's in the office) above the desk running along the white wall.  But Daddy has to finish the treehouse first (and rather urgently - only 12 more sleeps until the school holidays start...argggghhhh)

As is always the way, there are still a few things (some larger than others) that need to be sourced or finished, like a nice white cupboard for the overflow clothes which now don't fit in her drawers...

And the decorating circus is already rolling on to L's wee room as its new target:

Its so small it was almost impossible to photograph! But the fillering and sanding is well underway, so I predict ceiling painting may indeed be imminent.  Will I get it finished before the holidays start? I hope so...

But for now I need one of these:

xxx