Dirty Stop Out!!

Am away in Riga at the moment.... back soon! And yes, I am taking lots of photographs.

Come for a Pizza!

My daughter invited my over for a meal on Saturday night - a meal with a difference. She had build an oven outside and used it to cook pizzas, so she wondered if I would like to try it too. Wow, that's a treat I would not turn down, almost as good as my bucket barbeque - in fact I think it's better!!

She dug out the clay from her garden which is near this lake, then she built the oven over a pile of sand.





Mum and some babies - we thought they were cute!






This is Livvy putting a loaf of bread into the oven..











Here's one of the pizzas, they were small so we made several. (And yes, they are now sitting well on my hips!) They were delicious and took very little time to cook - in fact almost exactly the time it took to eat half of one and wet our lips with some wine!









To finish, we needed a walk around the lake at sunset - almost as good as the Kariba dam!!




Just as we were almost home, we saw this funny sight -

Some weeds will grow anywhere! (The hedge it is growing through is about 4 feet high.)

I will write about our Sunday adventures later.

Grrr! I hate sorting out piles of paperwork which should have been done ........ago!!!

All day!! That's what it has taken - well apart from a little shopping outing to buy a bin, the tap and the gravel for the second wormery. I shall set it up tomorrow and start it off with a little bucket of worms and compost from the present wormery. Then I shall add the new bokashi compost to it. So exciting!! (Yes, so sad too....!) Oh and I tried a new recipe - broad bean frittata. It was yummy, so yummy I have nibbled at it all afternoon and finished it! (Looks a slightly strange colour in the photo)




However, I have cleared from left to right of the desk top, filed all my statements etc and filled in all forms - oh no, I lie, there's one more to do....

Only when that is done will I pour myself a good stiff gin and tonic as a reward. I can almost hear my mother chuntering that if I had done all this as soon as I received the papers, then today would not have been so awful. I hate it when she is so right - even retrospectively!!

Done it!

Most people run marathons, I feel I have weeded a gardenathon... my lengthy trips away have encouraged the weeds to grow abundantly in the garden, so it has been a busy time sorting it out. Luckily I have finished it before the real season starts, so I can also sit down and read a book sometimes during the day without listening to the weeds getting closer and closer. (The person who first told the story of the princess sleeping in the tower which became totally overgrown, must have been a gardener!) Now I must train myself to do a section a day with the hoe so that 'they' don't have a second crop and take over again!

It looks like my sister's pruning of the pear tree was successful, there are some fruit on the tree this year, not many, but enough to give it a reprieve from the chop. The quince has set well so I am looking forward to a good crop this year, lots of quince cheese and paste I think. (OOH and vodka...) All the other fruit trees have set some fruits so I must now water them, especially the cherries as they do not like getting too dry.

Tonight's little job is to make sleeping bags for the tomato and basil plants that I have planted out in pots, I am sure they will help them to grow better. I just love freshly picked tomatoes to eat. This morning I managed to pick a little handful of alpine strawberries from the garden for my breakfast, the first fruit of the season.

Tonight's supper is going to be stuffed puffball, with quincemeat pies for pudding. Oh its no wonder I don't lose weight!

Update on the bumblebees' 'des res'

The Bumblebee Conservation Trust were pleased to know about the nest in my compost heap!! There, what an extremely pleasing achievement in life - to know that there are areas of the garden which wildlife likes and chooses to live in.

However, I was not too pleased with the local hornet coming into my kitchen - she did not receive such a welcome, and is no more although she is beautiful!

OK Boss.

You know you're not in control of your life when a bloomin' robin tells you what to do!! This morning I walked out for the first inspection of overnight slug damage when the robin few down to the last compost bin and tapped it with its beak as if to tell me to get on with emptying it. Hah!

Ever obedient, I have spent a lot of the day doing just that until a few minutes ago and one more toad later, when I realised that there is a bumble bees' nest in the compost. So now I am going to find out how long they last in a season, and then cover over the bin so that they don't suffer any more disturbance!

So much for the independent woman then!

Nurture Nature?

Just outside the porch I am growing an evergreen clematis which is rampant and it provides cover for birds and insects, sometimes even a wasp's nest. This year a robin has decided to build a nest in it. Since the eggs were laid I have been stalked by the adult birds, gently at first, but now - well!

At any sign of digging in the garden I have a bird scuttling around my feet, or perching on the fork handle, which is slightly alarming when you don't know it's there and reach out for it. This last week the adult pair are obviously feeding their young as they are in and out of the clematis frequently. I have also come to the stage where the compost needs spreading, and they seem to regard this work as their natural food supply, I have almost trodden on them several times, covered them with compost lots of times and generally got in their way! As you can imagine I don't take this quietly, so I chatter away to them and we are becoming good friends.

Then yesterday a toad revealed itself in the heap I was digging out and he did not want to move, so I started a conversation with him too. The robin came to look and there was a very funny situation where I had managed to move the toad to the new compost heap but he was not a happy to be moved and squiggled to the top of the bin looking as if he was contemplating the suicidal leap out onto the path. I shouted at him not to do it, the robin looked me and then at him and we both just waited for the jump!! And in all fairness he stayed there, so I put the spade just below him and he jumped onto that, then I transferred him back to the old heap which was obviously home and was now full of green weeds ready to rot down. The robin watched all of this, then rooted around for some more grubs and flew off to feed the babies.

Gardening can be sociable, exhausting, fulfilling etc, but I have never had some many diversions in a digging session! This afternoon I have the last bin to dig out, I wonder if there will be another toad incident?

The spotted flycatchers are back in the area but not nesting in the niche at the end of the house, pity - I could have done a Springwatch video!!