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...