I might as well give up being a dick!

Well, you could have knocked me down with a feather as they used to say. I had to check my eyes twice when I went down to the plot on Sunday, for there on our little bench, was the tiniest cowboy just sitting there. No, I'm not seeing the little people, well yes, I suppose I am. I know he wasn't there on Friday he just moved in just like the creature who made the hole. There must be something inviting about our plot things just keep on turning up to our delight or not if they leave bones behind. Well all I can say is, 'howdy pardner', wherever you came from, you can join Pip. Now Pip is our newest member and he is there to keep an eye on the apples and plums. Why the name Pip? Yes you guessed we have great expectations in the fruit patch and Pip seemed just right for someone who will stand under an apple tree. At the rate we are gathering the ' odd folk' word must be getting around that there will be a party on our plot. I wonder who will turn up next? The Ladies Number One and a Half Detective is running out of clues so I give up...

Well, you could have knocked me down with a feather as they used to say. I had to check my eyes when I went down the plot on Sunday for there on our little bench was the tinest cowboy just sitting there. No, I'm not seeing the little people, well yes, I suppose I am I know he wasn't there on Friday he just moved in just like the creature who made the hole. There must be something inviting about our plot

Them Bones, them bones?

I am now opening The Number One and a Half Ladies Detective Agency because at the weekend that naughty tortoise we usually look after did a runner and we all had to get out there and look for him. You can imagine everybody looking under the bushes and running around as there was a reward of one hundred pounds mentioned by his desperate owner. Someone in the family had let the tortoise out to play unsupervised for half an hour and of course after being in for such a long winter, the sun being high in the sky, what was a poor tortie to do? Well he did.. he legged it round the corner of the house to the nearest bus stop and if he hadn't been found just in the nick of time I reckon he would have just caught the 604 to Birmingham. Of course the name of the tortie is Speedo. The owner claimed the £100.
I have decided to be a dick because of this adventure
coupled with the mystery we have going on down the plot....
A few weeks ago a tunnelled hole, not too large, appeared next to the spinach and onions. We gently covered it over hoping it was just an odd incident but to our dismay it got longer and a bit wider, too small for Mr. Fox, too big for the White Rabbit. We know it doesn't like spinach because that is still intact. What the hell? We are now logging clues daily. Not heavy enough to leave indented footprints. Obviously and thank goodness, not vegetarian as we have lettuce just coming up. Yesterday gave us another clue, macabre though, there were bones at the mouth of the tunnel, Yuk! We have been looking up various habitats for wild things and are non plussed unless it could be not your regular visitor, maybe a polecat or a mink, the hole is too big for a rat, mole, ferret or weasel. Hope the bones don't get any bigger or we may get worried, real worried!

Home is where the heart is...

A Des Res or three, that is what we have put in our mini woodland bit of the plot. Bri bought me three birdhouses for Valentine's Day and I have been waiting to get down there to put them up. Today was that day and I saw a robin giving them the eye while we were working. Julie has the most incredible bird feeding station on the next plot to us so between us they have a home and a local supermarket. I can't wait until our little apple and plum trees blossom, they will look a picture. Most of all though I hope some robin, bluetit or the like will move in. The blue bells amongst the strawberries are up and getting ready at the base of the trees and I know the lupins and iris and foxgloves will follow. Wow spring is a coming!!!! Watch this space...
P.S Thanks Julie for the tea and the sunflower seeds for the birds.

A Passsion for Perfection

There aren't many things that bug me, but bread making bugs me. But I want to get it right, I want it perfect. When I don't I quit and say never again. A few weeks ago I tried Larraine Pascale's method and used my dough hook - she owes me a food mixer, it burnt out the motor. Her dough was too hard, or was it ? my mixer was forty years old and I have to say almost family but it's gone now along with my aspirations of being a baker. Until, that is, Michel Roux persuaded me to have another go at it and so I'm off again this time by hand. I am writing this while it is proving and before the next knocking back. There, I'm mastering the language, if only the art of the perfect loaf was as easy... well I shall add my sun dried tomatoes to one half of the dough and keep the other half plain for jam and hope. Hope that this will be the one in my dreams, the perfect loaf, if not I won't give up, I can't!

The Impossible...

...to dream that for just five minutes you could, say, start a new quilt, read a bit, listen to music is an impossible dream in our house it seems. Molly and her gang keep up a procession of wants and needs and chair stealing. On cold grey days the lot of them think our house is a playground cum doss house. While I just love them to feel ‘at home’, this week has been more of a nightmare, however, I am still dreaming of those five wonderful uninterrupted minutes. I have plans afoot. I plan to use all my scrap materials and make a quilt that costs nothing. Well virtually nothing, as I have already dashed out for border materials and cotton to help it along, but nothing is ever free. It will at least give me more space to stash new fat quarters which will inevitably come back with me from the next Quilt Fair of which I am also dreaming of. I can see in my minds eye, the wild flowers in the hedgerows along the lanes bathed in sunshine on the way to the Three Counties Showground in May. Oooh, I’ve just had my five minutes and it’s gone, here comes Molly followed by Henry and I expect Ferret is around the corner, damn I missed my turn!

New Year Baby

I sowed a seed Christmas week when we had Butternut squash risotto I just couldn't wait until May, guess what, it germinated alongside my money plant cutting as happy as Larry, which is what I have called it. What to do next, will it grow on the windowsill until May or am I expecting too much? I do hope it will grow into a strong and healthy plant it is just the right variety of squash we love to roast ohhh nooo it's my New Year Baby, I don't think I could eat it now it's got a name. I can most definitely eat my soda bread though. I made it this morning no fuss hardly any time taken, it is Nigel Slater's recipe for a Lazy Loaf I hope it tastes good with our veggie soup that I made with all the veg that needed using up while they were still fresh., mmmmm.

Well Wishers

Bri and I would like to wish everyone who has been poorly over Christmas, which is almost everyone, a speedy recovery and of course to everyone of us, A VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR xxx

I Want to Know...

...just like Davy in Ann of Green Gables I have a 'I want to know' mentality. In this instance I just had to find out why my granny and my great granny and probably my great, great granny always had a piece of pork pie for breakfast on Christmas morning. I just got this snippet of family gossip from my Auntie Mary when doing more research on the family tree and she gave me a jar of the very old family recipe, (no not whisky) but a jar of wonderful piccalilli, which I had with my slice of Christmas morning pork pie. One has to do their bit, don't you know when it comes to keeping up tradition.
Well, I have found out that it is eaten because no one had time to cook a breakfast on Christmas morning. In Melton Mowbray they had pork pie in medieval times because there was no turkey. In Nottingham, D.H. Lawrence had it for his breakfast. It all seems a tradition coming from Staffordshire, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire, or in my case, Shropshire. Well now I know!!. If there is anyone out there that knows more please tell me...

Ray Mears, eat your heart out

Christmas being Christmas means you get surprises. I for one had something unusual from Bri. Although, if you know me, perhaps not. It was the Worlds smallest whittling kit, but I have BIG plans for it. I have watched what you can do when abandoned in a wood in the snow and the bears are coming. You make a hatchet from the nearest branch, plus writing paper to send a note home, a bowl for the berries and of course, for fun, a fancy spoon with carving on the handle. So I am ready for the doing of. Armed with my new knife to go along with the knowledge, I thought I may have a go at a canoe. If I can carve a pumpkin, I can carve anything, give me a tree trunk and let me at it.
Molly had a lovely surprise too. It was a laser light thingy and she has been chasing the spot it makes and having a fine old time.
Bri's surprise was the book he thought he was getting turned into one he had never heard of on the way through the post, magic eh? I bet a lot of people got those kind of surprises this year, it was the snow to blame of course, not the post office...