Early March pickings and promise in the Veg Patch

Weather a bit on the grey side yesterday, so I decided I needed to refresh my 'It is Spring really!' kitchen window display, which gives me something more cheerful to look at while washing the pots.

Narcissi Tete a tete, and an unknown variety of hellebore from the garden

There are alternative 'bouquets' coming out of the garden too, but equally as welcome!

Latest haul for tea from the Purple Sprouting broccoli patch

They always look such ungainly plants for me - in other people's gardens they look robust and handsome, but not here...fortunately the harvest looks fine and tastes lovely

One of my usual scraggy specimens of Purple sprouting strapped to its supporting post like a drunkard leaning on a lamppost...

The leeks are definitely on their last legs now, I really need to harvest what's reasonably edible in the next few days - a few have already developed their flowering stalks so I think I might leave them to flower as a treat for the early insects and perhaps try to collect my own leek seed as an experiment.

The chives are beautifully perky at least, cosseted underneath their little plastic cloche.  The first fresh herbs are so welcome in my lunchtime omelettes.

Last of the leeks!

This weekend I decided to take the mini polytunnel off the spring cabbages as they look to me like they should be able to withstand a bit of frost now.  Really I just had the tunnel on them to try and stop them being torn to shreds by the winter winds here when they seemed much more vulnerable a few months ago!  If my evil plan runs smoothly, then I hope I will be able to harvest from these after the purple sprouting and cavolo nero have given up and gone to flower...if it stays cool as it is at the moment I think I'm safe for a few more harvesting weeks from them, but of course if we have a sudden warm spell they will go whoosh...

August sown Spring Cabbage, intended for harvest as loose greens

Same decision for the Perpetual spinach that has been luxuriating under its little polytunnel all winter too - caught Cobweb the Cat sunbathing in there on top of them and suddenly realised how warm they were getting!  I don't want these to shoot to seed when I haven't even had a meal off them yet - some rain and a bit of chillyness should sort them out hopefully too.

I never actually got round to protecting the parsley with a little cloche - and just look at it! We have picked from this plant all winter and it is still providing fresh growth.  Again, it will probably jet into flower if a warm spell comes but I will definitely repeat last year's lesson - I didn't grow it from seed (I can never get the conditions right for it) but simply bought it in a pot from Lidl or Sainsburys for £1 and planted it in the bed.  Lot less hassle and worked a treat, as we can see...

Evie's chives and parsley plant, with autumn sown Perpetual Spinach behind

I promised smallholder friend Sue that I would investigate for her and try to identify these weird and wonderful iris which we found in her garden, and which are standing really well in her kitchen table vase.  I have never seen anything like them before but I was pretty certain they are some sort of iris.  Too tall for reticulata iris, but too early surely for sibirica types..although they are happily naturalised in her garden alongside the driveway which is also bordered by a stream, so i assumed a bog loving variety.

Iris tuberosa 

Well, how wrong can you be??? Turns out they are Hermodactylus tuberosus also known as Iris tuberosa or the Widow's iris, which hail from southern Europe and enjoy typically stony, hot dry locations with a good baking in the summer, like the bearded iris do.  Hmmm...plants can be weird can't they. I suppose the sun bounces off the driveway in the summer and bakes them, they are on the south facing side of the garden...and Sue says she thinks there may be quite a bit of old farmyard type spoil and general rubble dumped under the ground in that area.  But overall we are talking about a plot of land barely above the flood level on the moor!  Boggy and heavy are the usual words we use for her ground!!!

Either way, I have baggsied a bit of the clump when its the right time to fiddle with them, in late summer. Because they look very unusual and stunning in the vase at the moment.

4000 holes!

Well, maybe I exaggerate a little - not quite 4000 holes but 3 fairly sizeable Trial Pit holes dug on Tuesday for the structural engineer's delectation and delight on Wednesday do seem to have generated substantially more spoil than I thought they would...

Here we can at least be reassured that the kitchen (built 1969) does have proper foundations going down almost a metre on to proper concrete footings - hurray!

Kitchen north wall trial pit

 The second pit was in the lawn and so posed much less entertainment to our trusty builder chums, thankfully.  Unlike Trial Pit 3....

Lounge pillar corner West wall

This little baby proved somewhat more troublesome. After levering up the crazy paving stone slabs, builder Phil and I were greeted by the perturbing sight of lots of very solid concrete underneath the patio - an old path around the house, maybe?  Preliminary investigations involving cutting a 5 x 5 inch cube of the concrete cut using his trusty angle grinder thingy revealed that this 'path' or whatever it was is about 4-5 inches thick. This does not a happy builder make.

However, as the pillar corner is the most structurally suspicious it was crucial that this pit was dug here so teeth were gritted and major cutting work commenced....

Close up pillar corner West wall

Eventually we were able to see the base of the wall here - but yet more concrete about a foot out from the wall! Even harder this time, and discovered to be over the (blissfully no longer in service) old clay drain which used to run from round the corner from the old kitchen.  A bit paranoid that the remaining old cast iron gutter downpipe might still discharge via this one, I tested it with a watering can full of water and thankfully it did not appear here! Whew. Well, one nagging old doubt answered - the old drain is disused and so even if still present under the 'new' kitchen, is not functional at all.

Of course in the process of delving deeper into this hole we also started getting answers to some other nagging old doubts....The corner pillar sits on a sizeable old stone 'pad stone' (just visible as the more grey lump of stone in the upper right hand of the hole) which then simply sits on the clay.

Alongside this old pad stone we can see the 1969 slab of 4 inch concrete sitting on 4-5 inches of hardcore...sitting on the clay.  No foundations here then.  Hmmm...structural engineer explained that this is why the inside is cracking - the differential movement between the 60s concrete sitting on the clay and the undatedable pad stone sitting on the clay.  And by god, what clay it is!  I knew the soil was clay based in the garden - it's much heavier than the old Stone Cottage garden soil.  But all the flower and veg beds here have been worked and improved over at least 35 years if not longer and so to actually see the raw unadulterated orangey brown clayness under the lawn and here under the walls was quite surprising.  But at least we know now.  Information can only be a good thing, surely???

All in all, the outcomes discovered from the holes weren't too bad - the pillar corner will have to be strengthened substantially during the extension works, but we did expect that really.  Probably the whole of the old pillar will be removed along with the offending west wall end and completely renewed, so the engineer was not particularly concerned about the other cracking in the west wall - it's all being knocked out after all.  I'm trying to train myself to breathe a little easier about the whole thing.  We are doing the right thing, I know it.  We just need to brace ourselves to pay for it!

Today, (Saturday) we experienced the Law of Holes....what comes out, never EVER will all go back in!

Kitchen north wall pit 'refilled'

Lawn pit 'refilled' - with huge quantity of leftover clay spoil

So our collection of unusable rubble continues to grow.  More sacks gathering at the end of the drive hoping some helpful farmer might take them away for use in his muddy gateways?

In a desperate attempt to prevent A from simply dumping all the clay spoil on my precious compost heap, I spent a stressful hour with him marking out my new cut flower beds just using stakes, so that he could barrow the clay spoil over there and basically tip it on as the 'base' layer, to have much scrummier stuff piled on top at some later date, just like I did last spring with the new no-dig veg beds....well, it worked for the veg, so fingers crossed it will work for the flowers too.

However, I still get that frustrating feeling that I am continuously playing chess with piles of 'stuff' both inside the house and outside in the garden.

What's blooming today?

I treated myself to a little walk around the garden today, to make a record of what is flowering this sunny first week in March - as it's the first time in a while I've actually been able to walk around!

The little bed by the front gate has been looking very pretty for a few weeks already, with the snowdrops I put in in the autumn being joined by masses of my favourite purple crocuses which grandma must have planted and then forgot to tell me about.  This combination of the purple with the orange middle is really one of my all time favourites.  

I have had to pull up a fair number of little speedwell seedlings from here - I expect they were in the leafmould compost which I spread over the bed after planting the hydrangea 'annabelle' and tidying up generally back in the autumn.  The bergenias are doing well, though I would like them to bulk up more during this season and form more of a defined 'edging'.  The leaves have coloured beautifully in the cold temperatures, even though I have no idea of the variety, I am happy with how they look.  

There are also a great deal of celandine leaves making their appearance - again probably due to my own fault in weeding and forking over the whole area in the autumn I must have broken up and disturbed all the little bulbils and helped them spread around even more!  Whilst leaning on my fork contemplating this, Hil passed on her way home from the doctors and having discussed the situation we came the the conclusion that they are fairly cheerful in flower in spring, and then disappear underground conveniently afterwards - out of sight, out of mind - so I decided not to make my life more difficult by any foolhardy attempt to eradicate them here. I'll just enjoy them and welcome them as one of the few things that seems to thrive is this inhospitable patch under the beech tree!

Front gate patch in early March

Close up of my favourite crocuses!

 This week the blossom has appeared on the ornamental flowering cherry trees which line the driveway.  Having done a bit of the old internet research it seems most likely that these are Prunus cerasifera nigra, known as the 'Black Cherry Plum' or Purple leaved plum.  Funny, I always thought of them as flowering cherries, and last year we did have cherry like fruits dropping onto the driveway.  Leo tried to eat one and regretted it - I would have thought it a bad sign that the birds didn't want them!

Prunus cerasifera nigra just starting to open their blossom

Close up! Very pretty single flowers, very oriental looking

 Every time I look out of the bathroom window and see the huge red hips on the arch I thank my lucky stars I am not a tidy gardener!  If I had followed grandma's instructions to deadhead this to within an inch of its life then we would not have enjoyed this perfect display all autumn and winter.  Against a cool blue winter sky they are stunning and make me happy.

Need to gird my loins though - I will need to prune this climber in the next few weeks so the hips will be gone.  I must admit I am surprised the birds haven't eaten them though.

This is what she looked like on 18th May 2014

This was the rose that grandma planted on this arch for our wedding,  especially to match the fabric of our bridesmaids' dresses - and for once she was on the nail!  A lot of the other pink roses in the garden are not to my taste (and shhhh...don't tell anyone but I have already taken several out and 'lost' them) often being too much lipstick pink or salmon-orange crimson.  This one however is just right, a velvety dusky deep rose.  I found a label in grandma's box for a rose called 'Climbing Galway Bay' but I don't know if this is the one or not.  But I do know that it surprised me and I like it.  It was flowering from May onwards all the way through to the autumn.

A fitting ornament for the 'entrance' archway into the back garden - lovely dusky pink climbing rose

 The primroses have only begun to peep out this last 2 or 3 days - these are the earliest by the garage side door and probably the most sheltered and warm.  There will be lots more appearing along the driveway bank underneath the flowering cherries in the coming weeks.

Dainty self sown primroses

 The Iris reticulata clumps have been popping up reliably for a few weeks now in the woodland border - I must must must make some proper markers for them so that I don't dig them up by mistake later!! (Adds to increasingly long to-do list...)

Pale blue Iris reticulata - possibly 'Harmony' or similar?

Stunning and mysterious looking dark purple Iris reticulata possibly 'Purple Gem' or similar?

 Hellebores in this garden definitely require a concerted effort to improve their performance - after all, the conditions in the woodland border are ideal, I just don't think they are being used to their full advantage.  The dark purple variety which i know can look gorgeous, as I had a clump of them from here in my old shady front garden - but here seem to be languishing.  I left my old clump behind thinking that there would be enough here already - regretting this now!  My pretty paler freckled pink hellebores I did dig up and bring, but they are still in there pots by the greenhouse, waiting for the 'grand plan' to be formulated before they are given their permanent positions...There are a couple of clumps of this old toughie, which I think it might be useful to bulk out and increase their sense of presence. Also they feel like they ought to be a useful bombproof candidate for edging the more difficult shady areas under the big trees like the walnut and horse chestnut.

Its not Helleborus foetidus as the leaves are not sharply divided enough...Looks more like the Corsican hellebore to me 'Helleborus argutifolius' which should flower February-April, three lobed grey green spiny leaves.  Apparently it should enjoy full sun or partial shade, is evergreen and ideal for making an architectural statement in a mixed or shrub border...sorted then, really! I just need to remember to cut out the flowered stem to the base once the flowering is over, and then it should send out lovely fresh evergreen regrowth to flower again next winter/spring.  I will also have a thorough hunt around for any seedlings to pot on and spread about as it is supposed to seed readily but not enjoy being divided.

Helleborus argutifolius in the woodland border

 Well, the winner of the Camellia race is definitely this not-so-shy-and-retiring-type!  This is the camellia that lives underneath the magnolia tree, which I have contemplated removing.  But my heart is gradually being softened by it's winning ways....It seems healthy with no chlorosis (unlike most of the other poor camellias grandma was so fond of shoe horning in everywhere...), glossy evergreen foliage which I must remind myself is really very useful  - I know I don't currently have enough evergreen stuff in the garden, especially the circle bed, which is after all, the main view from the lounge and kitchen windows in the winter.  My concern was that she is very crimson red (but at least with no hint of salmon or orange) and so might clash with the magnolia when it is out?  However, in spring I'm often grateful for any colour I can get after the winter.  She should also at least sit happily with the bright and brash scarlets, purples and oranges I tend to veer towards for my tulips and wallflowers...Can you hear me convincing myself???!  I worried that she was a dreadful partner next to my precious beloved Rose 'Gertrude Jekyll' who is right behind...and actually if truth be said it is Gertrude who is in the wrong place really.  But I'm terrified to try and move her in case I lose her.  Is it just me or do camellia just not belong with roses?  Hopefully though the camellia will no longer be in flower when Gertrude begins to warm up her operatic muscles...I can't remember back to last May-June if they were out at the same time.  We shall monitor closely...

As yet unidentified Camellia, under the magnolia tree

 Of course, I could not resist a quick stroke of the magnolia buds while I was in the vicinity...

Furry fat buds on the Magnolia just waiting for their moment!

 And look what has appeared after I cleared away all the dead crocosmia leaves by Gertrude's feet! (This crocosmia - not flowering so no idea what colour - is another target to be rehomed somewhere more appropriate).  Sunshine in a plant...

Magic clump of sunshine yellow crocus amidst the crocosmia clump

This feels like it has been quite a useful exercise for me to ponder on things and remind me to put markers in before these treasures disappear below ground again! I may try to have a similar wander around the veg patch if the weather stays friendly.

xxx

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.