Easter egg hunt

Hello, I’m Hulanicki. I’m one of Mary’s chickens... a Silver Spangled Hamburg bantam seeing as you asked. 

I've made up this really good game for the Easter holidays. It's called an ‘egg hunt’! 

All the other hens in my gang are a bit middle-aged and indoctrinated so it wouldn’t occur to them to lay anywhere other than the hen house. But I’m a teenager in chicken years, so I’m going through my rebellious stage, obviously, duuh.

For over a week now I’ve been hiding my eggs and I’m waiting to see how long it will take Mary to find them! 

They’re all in one place so it shouldn’t be that hard should it? 

What I do, is sneak away when the cockerel has his back turned, make a dash for a secluded clump of sedge by the pond and pop another egg out. 

Hah, it’s driving Mary mad! 

She twigged immediately that my eggs were missing from the coop because my eggs are a   glossy white, while everyone else lays dingy brown ones.

I’ve been watching her. Every time she stops for a coffee she’ll have a wander round the garden. And I know she’s not just checking on her precious vegetables because she’s busy poking her nose under bushes, peering behind hedges and ferreting around at the back of the borders. I even caught her shouting at the crows, accusing them of stealing my eggs from the henhouse. 

I’ll let you know when she’s found them!

London Book Fair

Just off to visit the London Book Fair where my Farmer's Market image will be displayed… poster size!

So if you need some fresh and juicy illustrations for a new cookbook, per chance, come and say hello on The Artworks stand. 

Keeping pace...

'All good work is done the way ants do things: Little by little' Lafcadio Hearn

potted on tomato Red Cherry and Gardener's Delight

planted onion sets and shallots in individual cells in the greenhouse

sowed Butternut Squash, courgette Napoli and summer squash Tromboncino

aubergines have almost germinated… couldn't resist poking the soil for evidence

planted out Little Gem lettuce seedlings under cloche

picked salad leaves from the greenhouse for lunch…

…and enjoyed a cup of tea in the sun under the flowering Cherry Plum

Pottering at the weekend

'Most operations may be performed with common gloves. 

Thus, no gardener need have hands like bear's paws.'

J.C.Loudon Encyclopaedia of Gardening 1871

Saturday. Spent a few hours digging over the vegetable garden, stopping just in time to prevent blisters swelling on my reddened palms. Time for something more sedate. 

The greenhouse became my solace, it was still warm, while outside the temperature began to fall. Sitting on an up-turned flower pot I pressed tiny seeds onto damp compost.

In March the list is endless... celery, peas, cucumber, leeks, lettuce, pak choy, sweet pea, rudbeckia, sunflower... but germination is satisfyingly quick.

Tomatoes and cabbage already need potting on. Minute verbena seedlings, no bigger than a pinhead, are just visible. Rooted perennial cuttings are waiting to be planted out, as are my seed potatoes which have all got strong little shoots. 

I’m immersed in a world of promise.

Second day of Spring

'These butterflies in twos and threes,

That flit about in wind and sun -

see how they add their flowers to flowers,

And blossom where a plant has none.'

W.H. Davies

Reasons to be cheerful!

What a difference a week of sunshine makes.

 An old barn wall takes on the intricate patina of an elephant's flank,

and knapped flints glint like rough hewn gemstones.

With my nose as close to the ground as that of the ginger 'stray' I've been spellbound

 by the dazzling pageant of spring flowers, in all their magnificent and miniature brilliance!

I can't find enough superlatives!

'M' is for Mezzetta

A few months ago I was commissioned to paint a "peck of pickled peppers"

Just recently, I savoured a sunny Saturday sowing some seeds, so….

…in time, here's hoping I'll be harvesting heaps of habaneros!

'P' is for potatoes

"Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes and prism, are all very good words for the lips."

Charles Dickens

Living in Victorian Britain, Dickens would have eaten a very well balanced diet consisting largely of local and seasonal organic fruit and vegetables. 

Funny, how despite the progress of the intervening years we’re now busy striving for those same ideals.

I am imagining Dickens mulling over the onomatopoeia of ‘potatoes’ while I toss up which seed potatoes to buy this year. 

Sarah Raven’s potato trial results are a great starting point as I ponder early, mid and late, and boil, mash and bake.

And then there are some varieties.. like Belle de Fontenay, that simply sound so mellifluent that I'm sure Dickens would have been seduced too!

Happy Valentine's Day

Pairs…

Two wrens engaged in chatter,
wintersweet and flowering cherry, 
bloom...
despite driving wind wedded to rain.

The perfect omelette

"I break some good eggs into a bowl, I beat them well, I put in a good piece of butter in the pan. I throw the eggs into it and I shake it constantly. I am happy, monsieur, if this recipe pleases you." Madame Poularde as quoted by Elizabeth David in “An Omelette and a Glass of Wine”

Now that the days are lengthening ever so slightly, the chickens have all started to lay again and I am relishing a simply cooked omelette... made with “good” eggs.

I love everything about an egg; nature's most perfect package. I turn each porcelain orb in my hand on the way back from the hen house, enjoying its unique shape and colour, speckle and lustre. Here's what I find.

Fig 1.
Nifty is a small, nearly white hen who lays an enormous nearly white egg. 
Biggest egg to date... 100 grams!

Fig 2.
Saffy favours a deep, coppery-brown burnished shell. 

Fig 3.
Darcy, the matriarch at 6 years old, (and the only surviving hen from our original four) leads by example and still lays a lightly speckled egg most days. 

Fig 4.
Little Hulanicki, hardly the size of a pigeon, lays a surprisingly large, pure white egg. Young and slim she struts around around in sixties style monochrome. I had been struggling for a name for her until I read Barbara Hulanicki's brilliant autobiography, 'From A to Biba'. The first Biba stores all had black and white chequerboard floors. Problem solved!

Fig 5.
Weighing in at a mere 12 grams I’ve no idea who laid this teeny egg. A phenomenon  called "fairy" egg, it didn’t have a yolk and was probably the result of a reproductive cycle getting slowly into gear. Not much good for the omelette.

Fig 6.

Binky lays a small roundish egg. She is a creature of habit with a passion for industrial architecture. She shuns the country-style nest box in the hen house and runs the length of the garden to lay under the oil tank. And the later I let the chickens out in the morning the faster she runs!

Who'd have thought egg collecting could be so much fun?

February

Anyone else inspired by the sunny weekend to sort out all those old seed tags ready for some early sowings?