Eggstra special

My ultimate fantasy in food is a perfectly cooked soft boiled egg. Simple as it is I just love them. It has taken me a very long time to do the egg justice, but after seeing the Julie and Julia movie I got out the Art of Mastering French Cooking by Julia Childs and first thing I learned was how to boil the most perfect egg. I thought after all my experience in the kitchen I should know this but did it her way just to see. It was perfection. We had bought some very large eggs from Amerton Farm,( near Salt) fresh as a daisy, we know this because we were looking at the hens that laid them across the courtyard. The timing is crucial apparently, no egg timers - just know the size of the egg and lower it into salted boiling water (the salt in the water was a tip my grandmother taught me, it stops them cracking) then time them. Six mins for very large, five and a half for standard and five for ordinary smallish ones. Then run them under cold water to set the whites. Well mine came out just like you see in the ads and the yolk was a wonderful deep golden yellow mmmmm' lovely stuff. I'm going to try some more of her ways of doing things. I was impressed and I may move on to the French stuff too. I won't be doing 365 recipes in one year though, like the girl in the movie, she must have been crazy. I'm not crazy?

Lost...Where?

Now everyone that knows us will understand when I say we got lost yet again, but NOT when I say on the way to Nuneaton. A small trip we planned would take twenty minutes took us two hours. We enjoyed seeing the red tractor in the cornfield the first couple of times but then we panicked - yes - lost in the countryside. No signs, no one to ask, here we were again! We carried on as you do and eventually found a Post office cum village store. Hope restored. "Where are we?" the reply "Not sure all the roads around here are very long but if you keep on the one straight out of the village and don't give up you'll be somewhere". O.k! I half expected her to have a meat cleaver behind her back and direct us to the mincing machine but we made it out o.k. Down the very, very long road to somewhere and found we were going to the Astley Farm Book Barn just where we wanted to be. WOW! We're getting much better at this lost and found stuff. However, next day we did get lost inside Dobbies.

The Darling Buds of Summer

My teeny weeny little garden has produced flowers with all its might this year. Each geranium has nine glorious heads on them, the yellow begonias are non stop, my bucopa has spread everywhere, my wild purple geraniums have bloomed like never before, the coniasta is covered with tiny buds waiting to burst open into tiny pink flowers, our viola have the prettiest faces ever. My window boxes are spilling over, the honeysuckle is filling the air with perfume and I have just added, for a bit of whimsy, a black eyed susan to match our yellow door and to creep up the wall as my seven foot square garden seems to be running out of space. It may be pocket sized, but I do love it so.

Goosegogs Galore!

My arms are cut to ribbons today, but I don't care because I harvested 21 pound of gooseberries from my two tiny bushes yesterday and put them in my new found fruit collecting basket. It was well worth battling with the thorns. All of them are sound, big fat goosesgogs. My problem now is, what am I going to do with them all? We have shared with our neighbours half of them which still leaves 10 and a half pounds to make giant crumbles? enormous cobblers? invite everybody I know round for a gooseberry fool, plus strangers. or simply jam some, freeze some and cook some. What's a harvester/gatherer to do? What a lovely problem to have.

A Quacking Afternoon

Since Sunday it has been all excitement over in Kenilworth. The duck brood behind the flower pot started hatching and within hours eight little ducklings had emerged ready to take their first dip. They waddled off much to Lesley and Angela's horror down to the brook and didn't come back. But, the next morning another duck arrived with nine ducklings headed straight to the other ducks nest and took it over. Since then she has stayed and we were invited over yesterday afternoon to see them. What a really, really wonderful sight to see them dipping in and out of all of John's pools and each one having a different personality. The brave one that run off, the one that hurled itself off the bank straight into the water, the shy one who waited until Mom went into the water and called it. It was a truly delightful summer afternoon in that garden watching their antics. Then, just before we left, Mom brought the whole brood up to the top of the garden to see what we were doing. Nobody over in Kenilworth has had any sleep this week though they have all been on duck watch.

Speechless - well almost!

If you go down to the lottie today be sure of a big surprise just like we had .... with a little help from our friends down at the lottie we are now so proud to be joining such good company as Haydn, Julie, Fran, Eileen, Chris and Reg and to say we have won shared first place for Best Half Plot. We haven't done it alone. We have had some of Julie and Chris's beans, Reg gave us some fine baby red cabbage seedlings, Tony and Alan always make the path between us look better, Mike and Jason gave us advice when we were getting started with our tomatoes, Lionel helped by telling us when to put out our peas when we were nervous because of the weather, my brother Terry helped us lay a path which was given to us by our friends Pam and Paul and our friend Sarah gave us some cucumber plants. Barry's advice will be sadly missed by us. We have never had a garden, so have never grown food before coming to the Hill. Boy! Are we glad that we came here, the kindness, help and cheerfulness is never ending. It certainly makes you try all the harder each year when all those around you are working away. Although we are ecstatic about being "best" we won't run around the plot with our tee shirts over our heads - promise!

Lucky Finds

This week I found myself at a counter buying a pair of 1920's style cushions "Soleil" and "Hotel De La Plage", which is really unusual for me as I always shop to a list but I fell in love with these two cushions and greed took over! I needed them, I wanted them, I had to have them for my bench. They were a find in the Cancer Research shop so I didn't really feel guilty. I was only just passing on my way to the St Giles book shop where I found a book for my cousins, who have been lucky again this year to find the return of members of the family of ducks they raised last year. Alas, they aren't any brighter though for she laid her first eggs in the flower border - they went! Now, a second clutch very close to the house behind Lesley's flower pots. Maybe she'll be luckier there. The book I found for them was Jemima Puddleduck who was also daft as a brush. Another find down the lottie was what seems like a ton of strawberries all sound, large,red, ripe, plump and juicy. Now that is a find!!
P.S. I do love my cushions, they make me feel happy and as if I am on holiday.
P.P.S As I was sitting on the bench with my new cushions I overheard a father saying " It's really hot today" and his little boy answered, "not as hot as the Equator" and then proceeded to tell his dad why, in minute detail. When I looked up the child was all of six - amazing what they find out these days.

It's Been A Funny Old Week.. First Up..

The Great Escape...

We have had a real mixture of stuff going on this week. It started quiet and usual enough with just looking after Ziggy, Henry and Ferret for two of our neighbours, but we had the added fortune of also looking after two expensive African tortoise - they only eat dark green leaves, which had all gone, zero, zilch in the fridge. Fortunately with the weekend rain we had plenty of spinach down at the plot – o.k, so I overplanted – see I knew it would come in handy I told Bri. When we got back, Bri told me they had gone AWOL. Yes, two small tortoises in a glass tank had gone missing. We spent an hour looking for them.They don't come when you call 'em. One we found almost straight away heading towards the stairs the other took almost an hour to find and after we had searched under the floorboards which were up, we eventually found him wedged behind the tank up against the skirting board on his side. Still alive but very hungry .We were amazed at how they had escaped, but Tom, (Henry Ferret’s and tortoises Dad) has the heating lamp in the way so that the door doesn’t close by two inches. So, the bigger one, must have made the opening bigger and planned the Great Escape. Well, all’s well that ends well they say but we are going to keep an even closer eye on those two!

It’s Magic!...

Sunday brought us a wonderful visit from our Great Niece, just two years old, little Issie , everything in her eyes at the moment is magic. She found an old stick and a thimble put them together and made a magic wand. She went upstairs and found a little book that when opened plays music, “Magic!” she cried in delight. A ball which lights up and changes colours. “Wow!” more magic. A pop- up book of the Three Bears, Ooooh, magic! It really makes you look at things with new eyes, the way Issie is discovering things, for the first time. Knowing she was coming again later in the week, we scoured the shops for a pair of fairy wings and a real magic wand which she loves, but she still hasn’t forgotten the stick and thimble and she hasn’t let go of the new found torch either.

Not so Magic!...

Was the next item this week. We all returned from lunch and our visit to the swings later in the week and our niece, Jay, exclaimed, ‘should there be a puddle on the floor there?’Our cupboard seemed to have sprung a leak. Great stuff, however, not to panic until we opened the cupboard and it sounded as if the wind was blowing. It turned out to be fine spraying water. The copper pipe to the water main had a very small hole in it. We are so blessed to know Steve, our plumber of thirty something years who was with us within in an hour and had fixed it by the time Issie had painted a page in her new magic colouring book, the just add water kind, We had plenty of that!!

Have Another Piece of Cake, Vicar....

...or in my case Terry. If I know anything about my brother and Bri, it is they just love cake and this week I seem to have baked up a storm. I have started on last Christmas’s stash of books and I can’t put down Cherry Cake and Ginger Beer by Jane Brocket . it is chapter after chapter about children’s feasts in literature and at the end of each chapter there is a recipe. It is a nostalgic dream. So far I have made and had fully sampled, almond macaroons, coconut buns with coconut butter icing and a real solid fruit cake which have all been approved. I am only a third of the way through and each chapter seems to send me back into the kitchen. If there is one sure thing about this book it can seriously damage a diet.

Salad Days...

On a lighter note my dear friend Sarah on Monday brought me plants with dear little cucumbers and even dearer little gherkins on them and a black chilli too which are good for my diet so we all rushed down the plot and popped them in the poly tunnel for safe growing. Mike Hubball gave me lots of information and tips on growing tomatoes when we met him for which we are very grateful. If they grow half as big as he says they will, we should be eating our own grown tomatoes this year for the first time with our lettuce, radish, cucumbers and beetroot. Before the rains came we planted our leeks wondering if they were going to get enough water. Yes they did!

Dick Barton, Special Agent...

Friday night at the Aldridge Youth Theatre, the Circle Players gave us a slice of nostalgia with their performance of Dick Barton Special Agent. Based on the old radio serial (before television) this was a comedy spoof which involved the audience flag waving, booing the villain and cheering the hero. The cast and the audience did a grand job and we all went home happy, including Sarah, Plum and me

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Saturday at Last...

This means we got to go to the lottie again and catch up with this weeks goings on. Alan ran in the Fun Run, Tony got some good deals when out shopping, Julie was bizzzzy photographing varieties of bees, we all did some weeding after the rains and had a moan about them, Mike helped me yet again with my tomatoes in the polytunnel which have most definitely run amok, typical, last year I couldn't even get them started. But I have a plan... At least we were able to bring back about a thousand radish, a big Lollo Rosso and Cos Lettuce, some strawberries and rhubarb and another bag of spinach for those tearaway tortoise. I am making a 'mmmm rhubarb crumble this afternoon and a rhubarb and ginger jelly... will this toil ever stop I hope not It's magic!...

Mellow Yellow

Today, whilst we were out for a jolly, we came across the cutest little bird house that we couldn't resist buying even though it was on the plain side. I saw the potential, brought it home and painted yellow flowers on it. Bri saw the perfect bee for '21Bee' which we also bought which meant we needed a new sign for the plot. So I painted yellow flowers on one of those as well. So, between us, we got something for the top and the bottom. Couldn't leave out the middle, so we found a little bee for the bee and herb garden sign. We passed on the gnomes even though there wasn't a shortage of them. We got carried away with all the yellow and bought a yellow butterfly for the shed and a sunflower door stop and some yellow mimulus as well for our other hanging basket. With all this yellow we will probably need sunglasses!

Another Fine Mess?

I have decided I should never sit for even a few minutes doing nothing down the plot because I will always come up with yet another strange idea. Yesterday's was 'let's make a leafy canopy over the patio bit to give us shade on blisteringly hot days', I know we only get one or two but you can't risk it! I also have a sudden passion for brown rustic string since the bunting caper. So I got Bri to heave me up on the bench so I could tie string into the opposite bushes to our posts above the bench and then I can train the Mile a Minute vine across to the other side and Voila! a leafy roof, dappled sunlight, pretty.. yeah! Well we shall see what we shall see. The Mile a Minute has already grown a foot since we left yesterday afternoon so I reckon my the end of this week maybe.... In reality I shall probably need a machete as I have read horror stories on wikipedia about this vine overnight such as it starting in York County, Pennsylvania crosssing the state line and going on for another 300 miles. Whoops! Bri says " that sounds like another fine mess you've got me into".