Chiffon pink and purple velvet

I may not have made it to the Chelsea Flower Show last week but I have been enjoying a 'gold medal' display at my local iris field!

A question for you...

What do a teaspoon, potato curry and a five pence piece have in common?

They all turned up in my compost heap yesterday! Well, strictly speaking the potatoes were not curried when I found them. The thin skinned, firm fleshed, tiny new potatoes were growing happily from a potato discarded months ago. Was it cruel to curry them? I guess mint and a knob of butter might have been sufficient. 

Too late, and anyway they were just the inspiration I needed for dinner. I’d had a long day in the garden. I’d planted out my sweetcorn, celeriac and celery, dug over some compacted soil, sown some more salad and potted up some more tomatoes (why did I sow so many?), culled barrow loads of weeds and now I needed comfort food!

..and a scattering of fresh coriander.

P.S. I am not the only one who has been taking advantage of a serendipitous dinner. A fox has been cruising past lately, picking up his supper 'to go'. Just four chickens left and my heart in my mouth every time I take the register at night!

May diary

Tues.
Sunny and blustery. The ground beneath the wisteria is strewn with petals, brutally torn from their elegant racemes. I feel the same disappointment as that of a child whose carefully threaded beads have slid, unstoppable, off their string.

Weds.
There have been a couple of blackbirds on the lawn all day. Dad is run ragged, dashing to and fro scooping up beakfuls of food. Baby, who is as big as daddy, unabashed, sits and squawks, waiting for the next morsel. Mum’s keeping well out of it!

Thurs. 
Ah, what a gentle and soothing timbre; rain falling on my studio roof. Rain falling on the garden. Rain filling up the pond and water butt. Gentle, caring droplets, dancing around my seedlings encouraging them to sing. 
There’s a tap-tap-tap on my window. I can see the tail feathers of a long-tailed tit but its scraping beak is blocked from my view. A quick look outside and I can see it’s pulling spider egg cocoons from the window frame to build its nest. Spider silk and moss most perfectly crocheted together.

Fri.
Galloping romping May. Boundless greens yelping from the hedgerows. Daubed with towering chestnut blooms and spattered with dizzy cow-parsley.

Last Chance Hotel

This time last year I took pity on a handful of my mother's limp, discarded cauliflower seedlings. I tucked them up in my veg patch… and largely ignored them.

I had not anticipated how much cauliflower we would be eating, tonight, tomorrow, the next day and the next day and….. 

'Out with the old, in with the new'

We’ve just got a new pig!

Which has got me thinking about the highlights of the old pig.... so before I pare our final delicious slivers of air dried ham here’s a snapshot.

Six months ago I was faced with 'pig' laid out before me on the kitchen table, head, shoulders, loin, legs, trotters, everything, the possibilities were endless… sausages, bacon, chorizo, brawn, ham...

Dealing with a pig requires a ton of salt, a sharp knife, an uncomfortably chilly working environment and for hams and chorizo, a frustrating wait of several months. 

I found the whole process definitely lacks the finger-lickin’ bliss that goes hand in glove with an afternoon cocooned in a warm kitchen whipping up sticky cakes. But frankly I’d swap a constant supply of air dried ham for an iced bun any day. 

I simply followed Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s guidance and it couldn’t have been easier. 

Very approximately... debone a hind leg, leaving just the knuckle protruding- easier than than you think with a really sharp knife. Rub inside and out with salt then resurrect your needlework skills with a nice bit of blanket stitch to sow up the joint. (Sadly not as photogenic as an iced bun!)

Completely cover the ham in a box of salt, weight the lid and leave in a cool place for a couple of weeks to cure.

Wash and dry the ham, rub all over with vinegar then wrap tightly in muslin.

Hang in a cool, well ventilated place for a few months until it is firm but not rock hard. Mine swung from the garage rafters, (encased in chicken wire as a deterrent to vermin and hungry cats and only moderately impeding access to the bicycles, ouch).

The only mistake I made was to do one leg not two.... but I can rectify that this year!

P.S. If you're wondering what happened to that box full of salt, it makes a very good weedkiller, more on that later.

25th April 2014

April 25th 1777  "The titlark rises, & sings sweetly in its descent. The Ring-dove hangs on its wings, & toys in the air.' Gilbert White

A wise old gardener would tell you with an intake of breath and a knowing shake of the head that it’s customary to sow maincrop potatoes by Easter. 
Well, as Easter is a moveable feast that lets me off the hook slightly, but yes, I promise I will plant mine today. If I’m looking for excuses, I’d say that I’d been been waiting, hoping for a good downpour so that I could feasibly ease my fork into our heavy clay soil. 

The rain came. Finally. 

I’m loitering in the vegetable garden, triumphant! I’ve just planted all my potatoes, to the centuries old accompaniment of all good gardening…

...a pair of inseperable collared doves chatting gently in the birch tree and a hovering skylark, quivering and trilling, transcending the tuneless crow and it’s stupid caw.

Happy Easter

OK it's Easter, time to give Mary a big clue.

Yesterday I’d just laid another secret egg when I spotted her on her ‘coffee walkabout’. She was loitering under the Indian bean tree, her gaze scouring the banks of the pond. Little did she realise, she was barely five paces from where I was sitting, smirking. 

So I slipped noncholantly off my eggs, ducked through the tangle of sedge and then shoulders back, strode across the lawn to join the gang.

Mary spotted me instantly…. I'm not very camouflaged against green! She retraced my steps and started to poke around in the undergrowth. She was getting warmer...

and warmer...

 and warmer...

and warmer!

Her prize?

The best kind of Easter Egg ever!

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.