My English cottage garden – December 2014

 

Hello everybody, I hope you enjoyed your Christmas. New Year still to come!

I am loving my Christmas present – a new shed! I’m so delighted with it, I could almost eat it, if you see what I mean.  It has been invaluable for putting the excess Christmas food in during the last week or so and the extra milk which I ordered over the Christmas period. The shed was put up a few weeks ago, but I wasn’t supposed to go inside it. I cheated! Still never mind, it didn’t spoil anything and now, every morning, I go up the path and peek inside to check on my geraniums, which are over-wintering in there. The baby ones, you’ve seen before, I keep indoors on the window sill but I don’t have enough window sills for all the others. At the last count there were over twenty of them!

The shed is going to look grand when the lilac bush comes into flower in the Spring and I will be popping back to show you when the buds are evident.

This is the view from the inside, from the door. Geraniums on the right and at the back?

Here’s a closer look:

Four chicken nest boxes! Yes, I’m going to get some more chickens in the Spring. I kept chickens before, for ten years from 1990 to 2000 when their housey fell to bits! Now it’s time to have another go, I feel. I miss my hens a lot and can’t wait to get some more.

Here are some more pics around the garden this week:

View from the inside of the shed looking out, south:

The woodpile:

The holly:

Pots of herbs by the back door. In the large pot are bluebells. I had to move them to make room for the new shed.

I think you can tell how excited I am, can’t you?

Have a lovely Sunday.

Oma

Taking care of the babies (propagating geraniums)

 

Back in August I took some geranium cuttings for next year. I usually take about twelve with one or two spares and I try to pick cuttings from the different colours so that I get a continuity. I currently have red, white, pink and peach. I am always on the look-out for that elusive blue, which hasn’t been invented yet (as far as I know).

The cuttings stayed outside until last week when I brought them in to keep them safe against the risk of frost damage. I put them on a window ledge. This one faces west, which is ideal because they get the evening sun but not all day sun. They all have well established roots now and every one has started flowering. You can see in the picture how they like to grow towards the sun. Each and every one is leaning towards the light and the sun.

So my babies are indoors now. I will water them once or twice a week until April when they will go back into the borders and make a colourful show. Yes, I could go and buy plug plants from the garden centre, but this way is just so much more fun!

The next stage is for me to bring in the medium sized plants, which were the babies last year. We have been promised frost! soon so I need to get on with it.

Oma

It’s pickle time at the cottage.

It’s pickle time at the cottage so I’m putting my cares and worries away for a little while to wallow in the smell of salted vegetables and vinegar. Yum!

We always make mustard pickle at this time of the year and I have to add here that this is really Jim’s forte. I am just a helper. The ingredients are mainly, shallot onions, cauliflower, marrow, runner beans, a little flour and mustard and vinegar. We use the ordinary sort of malt vinegar, not the one with spices in it, but that’s just a personal choice.

The vegetables have to be prepared and salted, then left overnight with a tea-towel over the top. This process extracts the excess moisture. In the morning, the vegetables are washed off and put in a large pan to cook. When cooked (imagine delicious smell), they are thickened with a flour paste mixture and then put into prepared jars for Christmas.

Here they are, all ready to give as gifts (just need the labels)  and to eat ourselves:

Now, isn’t that a nice way to spend an afternoon?

Oma

How do I prepare runner beans?

I’ve been asked many times how I prepare runner beans for the steamer and the table, so here is a little video showing the correct way to do it:

One thing I forgot to say on the video is ‘you need a sharp knife’.

Oma

Barbecuing in the rain!

Sorry about the quality of the picture. I haven’t mastered my I-phone camera yet!

Larry has been in England over a year now and is still very much enjoying his life here. Here he is barbecuing in the rain. Look how much weight he has lost since he’s been living in England! He is really slim now and looks much better for it. I have been quite strict with him because he admits to eating junk food when he was in America, living on his own. I don’t really know what junk food is. Food is food, right? However, I suppose it is obvious that some foods contain far too much sugar and fat for our health.

Next month we are going to the doctor’s for our annual check-up and it will be interesting to see how Larry’s blood tests come out. For the last few years he has been borderline diabetic and took tablets to readdress that. Here in England, the NHS (National Health Service) does not give preventative treatment for that condition so when L had his blood tests, obviously the results were good because he’d been taking the tablets. However, now he’s had a year without those tablets and only been eating the food I’ve been giving him, I’m keen to find out what the difference will be. Do you take any preventative medicines?

Actually, we have had a lovely summer but over the last week or so it turned cold. Now this week we are going to get a heatwave. Our weather certainly is changeable!

Oma

Propagating geraniums (pelargoniums) – My baby geraniums.

Here are this years baby geraniums. I usually propagate them in August, so that they have a good month or two to get going before I bring them indoors for the winter.  Once indoors, they will stay on the windowsill until April. It’s a long time and I have to nurture them. It’s worth doing because they will be perfect for the borders next summer.

This year I took slips, two from each colour, red, white, pink and peach. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that they will all take. I don’t use hormone rooting powder. It really is not necessary for these accommodating little plants. They root very easily; you just have to make sure that you take the cutting properly to avoid die back. (see my previous post, link below).

  I’m still on the look-out for a blue one! No luck yet.

Yesterday and the day before were very rainy here in my part of England and the little pots were up to their necks in water. That’s not a good thing because the roots will rot, so I brought them indoors just for one day to dry them out. I think they appreciated it.

The next step will be to bring in the plants which were last year’s babies and pot them up in larger pots ready to store indoors in a frost free environment (my back room).

If you want to read more about how I do it, you can click here and check out last year’s post, which goes into a bit more detail.

Oma

My English Garden – August 2014 – rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb

 

It’s been a very good year for rhubarb in my English garden this year. Above is a picture of some stalks I picked the other day, and was glad to give away because there is only so much rhubarb you can eat as a family!

The leaves were gigantic as well. Here I am holding up two of them. They look like umbrellas, don’t they.

 

It has also been a very good year for runner beans:

and we have been eating them for a couple of weeks now. They are really a colder weather crop and so long as they get plenty of water, they always seem to do just fine. I prepare them as I was taught when I was small.  My mother was very particular about the cutting process and I had to get them just right. The thinner the better. Later on when I got married, I bought a bean slicer, but it never did such a good job. Now I buy a new knife every summer and use it for the first time when the first beans come in from the garden. That way I get the best cut, just so long as it’s not my fingers!!!

We have lots of tomatoes, but they are not ripening very fast.  We need more sunshine, please?

Lots of people have been clicking on a post I did last year about propagating geraniums.  I’ll tell you how this year’s babies are doing next time.

I greet you from a very rainy England 🙂

Oma

We have a visitor.

 

I stop by in front of a pond,
listening to the humble frogs’ songs.
The melody tells of tales,
as I listen, the whole story unveiled.

There’s a story of a boy and his dream,
frivolous, helpless, and all that he seems.
There’s a story of a boy and his shoes,
the path and the destination he is to choose.
There’s a story of a boy and his book,
poems, stories, and all things you can look.
There’s a story of a boy and his hope,
for the Time’s willing, for a while it stops.
There’s a story of a boy and a pond,
tears, smiles, and hopes he lives on.
There’s a story of a frogs’ symphony,
flowing is a memory of the melody and me..

So I am here for the song that they sing,
in this old pond there’s a hope that I cling.
I shall care of nothing more else,
nothing, but myself and this once, childhood place..

poem from PoemHunter.com

 

 

We have a new pond in the cottage garden.  Larry has worked very hard this summer, digging a large hole in the dirt and putting in this delightful addition to our surroundings. Already we have had a lot of activity from the wildlife.

Have a wonderful Sunday everyone.

 

Oma

 

My English Garden in June – Roses

 

June is the month for roses and I’m pleased to say that the roses in my garden are doing well. I did have a plague of green fly descend upon the bushes, but a little spray took care of that. I use a washing up detergent diluted in water to remove the little blighters. There weren’t many ladybirds around so I thought I’d better deal with it myself. The rose bush above is in its third year and is doing very well. There are more flowers on it this year and the blooms are larger.

New to the garden is the red climber in the next picture. It’s doing well. I won’t prune it this Autumn. I’ll let it do its thing. I did buy two, but sadly the other one has died. I planted that one out the front on a north facing wall so that may have something to do with it.

Roses are quite easy plants to grow and they seem to thrive in most conditions. I find it fascinating how each bush is different and some do better one year than another.

Here are the others.

 

Oma

My English Garden in June 2014

These daisies come up every year and sometimes are just a little too prolific, but I like things I can get a lot of so I put up! with the profusion. Can you see the bee on one of the flowers?  Last year it was hover flies and I got stung twice on the arm on two separate occasions. I’m hoping that won’t happen again this year because I’m allergic to stings and bites and suffer miserably.

Here is the hanging basket just outside my back door. The nasturtiums aren’t flowering yet, but they will be soon I think. Just as soon as we get some sunshine.

On Sunday last, Larry cooked a tasty barbecue. We had steak and lamb chops. Next time I fancy doing kebabs of some sort so here he is making an addition to the grill to cook kebabs on. Does anyone have any good recipes for kebabs? I’m new to barbecues and could do with some help please.

Jim’s runner beans are all up, even the ones in the pots. Last year was a disaster to start with and he had to replant the lot. Then in the second coming (so to speak), they did so well that he had the best year for runner beans ever.

Here the ferns and in front the tomatoe plants. To the right is our camellia.

We had lots of beautiful clematis flowers this year. This one is called ‘The President’.

Last year I took care to spread around lots of the white nigella plants. We are rewarded this summer with some lovely specimens.  Common name is ‘Love in a mist’. So romantic, don’t you think?

The sweet williams are just starting to flower.

and we have lots of bright red poppies.

Lots of joy in the garden isn’t there.

Oma