Home Alone: Tomato Soup & The Orchard

30% was out for a good few hours in the middle of the day.  A village hall sub-committee meeting and a visit to the hairdressers had been scheduled. This meant that I was left to my own devices and I got busy.

In the morning I cooked up a double batch of tomato soup using the recent glut of tomatoes.  The recipe I use is loosely based on Delia Smith's Fresh Tomato Soup with Basil and Parmesan Croutons, but I have never bothered to add basil, or make croutons! I also can't be doing with vegetable stock when chicken stock tastes much better.

Here is my version, and apologies for the combination of AVPD and metric measurements ...

Ingredients:

• 1.4 kg (3 lbs) Fresh Ripe Tomatoes
• 1 pint of chicken stock
• 2 large onions finely chopped
• 2 fist sized potatoes, peeled and diced in to small cubes
• 3 tbsp of olive oil, if you can afford the stuff, have you seen the price recently? Sunflower or Rapeseed oils are fine. Please avoid generic vegetable oil *
• 4 or 5 cloves of garlic, peeled and crushed
• Salt and Black Pepper to season
• 200 ml of double cream

Method:

1. Pour the oil in to a heavy bottomed saucepan and place on a medium heat
2. Add the onion and potatoes and stir well. Continue to cook and stir over a medium heat for about fifteen minutes, until the vegetables have softened, but not browned. Do not short cut this step.
3. While the onion and potato are softening, roughly chop the tomatoes and make sure you don't loose their juice.
4. Add the tomatoes to the pot and cook for a few minutes
5. Add in the stock and garlic and then season to taste
6. Bring the contents to the boil, cover with a lid and simmer for 25 minutes
7. Remove from the heat, blend to a smooth consistency with a stick blender.
8. Stir in the cream

This recipe will make about three litres of soup and it will freeze really well.

The soup making occupied a good chunk of my morning and the afternoon saw me drag The Beast from the shed and head up to the orchard. 

I can report that this year's efforts with the brush cutters and lawn mower are bearing fruit and the orchard looks much better than it has in the preceding three years. Parts of it could definitely now be described as rough pasture rather than bomb site. The remaining parts are not yet at that pont, but the weeds are much reduced and the sparse growth of stinging nettles now peep above the grass rather than tower over my head.**

I spent a tiring couple of hours mowing and was delighted with the result. Each cut seems to require less effort and the nettle growth is greatly reduced. 

We will be having a chap in to dig out the ditches and install French drains in the next few weeks It is planned that he will use the soil to level out the remaining rough areas. I will then be able to sow some grass seed and look forward to a transformed space next year.

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* It will be Palm Oil and the palm oil plantations are horrific monocultures that take the place of Forests filled with orang-utans.

** This is not an exaggeration. Last year I was unable to attend to the orchard, due to a bad back. The nettles reached over 6' in height and covered 50% of the orchard.

Angus Young & the Spider

As I retired to bed last night I looked up at the ceiling and saw an enormous spider. Now I've seen some pretty large insects, including a Tarantula Hawk Wasp taking on a hand sized tarantula, but this one was colossal. I am certain it would win in a fight with a Mute Swan.

It was a fairly quiet day today. The morning was spent picking up supplies in Redditch and I am pretty sure that I saw Angus Young checking out the Back to School section in Tesco.

In the afternoon we were paid a visit by Dot and Buzzer and spent a pleasant couple of hours imbibing tea, eating cake and putting the world to rights.

My eyes are still dry and sore and I became very photosensitive as the day went on, so I limited my time outside the house. I did, however, take a quick look at the hive entrances and can report that pollen is being taken in by both colonies. This is a positive sign as pollen being brought in is indicative that brood are being raised ... ergo my queens are laying.

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The truth may have been slightly stretched here and there in this narrative.

And now the hard work begins

There was no time to bathe in the glow of yesterday's village show success, for today we had a mountain of produce to deal with.

Selecting near perfect, matched specimens for showing means that there is always a significant quantity of imperfect, unmatched specimens left over.  There is nothing wrong with these specimens other than slight defects in appearance. They have been tended over the past weeks and months with care and attention and there is no way that we would let quality produce go to waste.*

This morning we set to processing our harvest.

My first job was to prepare, blanch and open freeze the carrots.  I did a batch a couple of days ago and internet sources suggested that they should be blanched for three to five minutes. I followed this guidance, but have my doubts. I have a suspicion that this is way too long and will lead to soggy veg, so this morning I only blanched them for ninety seconds before chilling, drying and freezing.

With those out of the way, I pulled the beetroot from the fridge and put them on to boil. A pickling vinegar was prepared and by lunchtime I had a kilo of beetroot pickling in a jar. It'll be couple of weeks before we can sample it,  but I can't wait.

At this point I should mention that 30% was fully occupied picking and preparing beans and she also knocked up a rather good tomato soup.

The weather had cleared by the early afternoon, so I grabbed my smoker and headed up to the orchard to check on the bees.

The first colony inspected was nucleus #2. The one that was set up at the end of last week.  The young queen had been released from her cage, but there was so many bees that it was not possible to spot her on the combs. It was also difficult to see whether she had started laying yet, so I can not yet determine whether this has been successful. I transferred the frames and bees to a full sized brood box, added five frames of foundation and re-filled their feeder with syrup. Hopefully I will spot her, or young brood at next week's inspection.

The colony established from nucleus #1 was doing well. The queen was spotted easily and there was plenty of young brood. She has definitely settled in and started laying. Her attendant workers had also started to draw out the comb on the foundation in the brood box and some of it already held capped stores. Again I topped up the colony's feeder and hope the other colony looks like this in a week's time.

After inspecting the hives I headed back to the kitchen and made a batch of celeriac soup with the any other vegetable entry from yesterday's show. I can report that the soup was beautiful and that fresh celeriac has a much deeper aroma and flavour than those from the shop.

That pretty much sums up today's accomplishments, but there are still a lot of vegetables to be harvested. 30% and I are yet to agree on whether we will be pickling or making chutney from the rest of the beetroot.

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* The show entries get eaten too. They may have sat in the village hall for a few hours, but they're still fresher than anything on a supermarket shelf.

The Village Show

We woke to a drizzly, grey morning and, after a hasty breakfast, started our preparations for the village horticultural show.

30% set to baking a trio of cakes, as she would be a member of the team serving refreshments.  

I headed outside and started to pull carrots and lift beetroot in search of perfect specimens.  I then spent a good while sat at one of our water tanks, washing the roots before trimming their tops to the requisite 7.5 cm.  It was then a matter of sorting and comparing them to identify trios of closely matched roots.

By this time 30% had her cakes in the oven and was picking and selecting Tomatoes and French and Runner Beans. I moved on to cabbage, pumpkins and celeriac, before we assembled our produce and headed down to the village hall.

At this point I'll interrupt my narrative to mention that I do have a minor grievance with the Horticultural Society following an episode of rudeness that resulted in me resigning from my role as co-chair.* I therefore might have had a point** to prove at today's show.

Our entries were registered and displayed we headed home for lunch and left the Judges to ... well judge.

"In your face" Horti Club!

30% headed back to the hall well before me to perform her Tea Lady duties and shortly after her departure I received the above photo. It is fair to say that I was delighted that our Vegetable Collection in a Trug, Basket or Box had landed first prize.  Clearly the judges had recognised my abilities to produce an attractive and eye catching design.***

Overall we had a great day and landed three first prize cards, five seconds, three thirds and five Highly Commended awards.  We didn't achieve any silverware, but were placed in all of the Challenge categories.

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* I used to get paid quite handsomely to work with difficult, talentless and rude people. I am certainly not going to do it free, gratis in my retirement!

** That being, that I do know bit about growing and displaying vegetables, which are the key skills that the two arseholes on the committee lack.

*** Sarcasm!

Village Show - results

 Here's a summary of our performance at the Village show earlier today.

For reference all entries are made in 30%'s name for a couple of reasons. Firstly joint entries are not permitted and secondly there is a Challenge Cup for the most points scored by a female entrant. We stand more chance winning in this category than going up against "Fred" who wins the corresponding male category with ease every year.

First Prize

• Vegetable Collection in a Trug, Basket or Box
• Any Other Vegetable - Cabbage
• French Beans, 6 Pods

Second Prize

• 5 Plums, any variety - Damsons, bloom removed 
• 3 Carrots
• 3 Beetroot, any one round variety
• Longest Runner Bean
• Runner Beans, 6 pods

Third Prize

• 3 Carrots
• 3 Beetroot, any one round variety
• Runner Beans, 6 Pods

Highly Commended

• 5 Apples, any one cooking variety
• Any Other Vegetable - Celeriac
• A Specimen Succulent or Cactus
• Dish of Any Other Fruit - Figs
• 5 Plums, any variety - Damsons, bloom present

Silverware

• None this year, but
• 3rd in the most points earned in the fruit classes,
• 3rd in the most points earned in the vegetable class, and
• 2nd in the most points earned by a female competitor

Collecting and Gathering

A fairly short entry for today.

This morning 30% and I hitched the trailer to the Defender and headed beyond Powick* to collect the large hexagonal stone from the Architectural Antiques dealer.  Fortunately there was a chap on-hand to assist and we soon had it loaded on to the trailer and tied down securely.

Back at home it was a simple matter to tilt the trailer on its single axle and let the stone slide gently to the ground. In fact it took longer for us to decide where to stow it than to unload it on to a sack truck.

The main activity for the afternoon was to start preparations for the village horticultural show, which takes place tomorrow.

For the past two years 30% has been awarded the Challenge Cup for the most points awarded in the Fruit Classes.  We were hoping she could do the same again, so more than an hour was spent scouring our apple trees for sets of five perfectly matched cooking apples.  I now know why it is called a Challenge Cup because it was a bloody challenge to find perfect unblemished specimens. This year's weather has not been great for gardeners and our chosen fruit was nowhere near as impressive as previous years.

I just hope the judges are impressed by the bowl of figs and the beautiful damsons** that will be entered too.

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* There is a politically incorrect story about a member of my childhood scout troop (2nd Evesham & Bengeworth) that was nicknamed Powick. It's probably best if I leave it at that.

** Up until today I had always thought of damsons as terrible, sour little excuses for plums. However I finally realised that, for all that time,  I had been sampling them before they were ripe. The little beauties we picked today are packed with flavour and the perfect amount of sweetness.

Emergency Appointment

 My eyes have been incredibly uncomfortable after having the punctal plugs inserted on Monday. For the first couple of days I could actually feel the plug in my left eye when blinking. Fortunately that has now subsided but my eyes are very sore and itchy. It feels like someone has thrown the contents of a vacuum cleaner dust bag in my face.

I managed to get an emergency appointment at the eye clinic this afternoon and have been prescribed a course of steroids with a follow-up in a couple of weeks.

In other news, 30% returned from her trip to London and had a lovely time. I decided that fishing with painful inflamed eyes was not going to be fun, so we spent the evening together catching up on each others' news and planning our weekend.

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Post Script: 30% did eventually notice that I had installed the window bars on the garage, but only after I redirected her back to the spot where she had just collected the recycling bin ... She thinks they look fabulous.

Keeping busy

 My plan for this morning was to install more of the window bars, following on from yesterday's success.  Tools were gathered, measurements were taken and the first set of window bars was carefully lifted into position ... Fuck, that aint gonna work!

In short, the window bars have a decorative, central bar that features a section of wrought iron grape vine. Unfortunately that decorative feature winds around the bar and  makes contact with the window's central glazing bar. This means that some sort of modification will be needed to allow installation.  It looks like I am going to need to build spacers to bring the bars away from the window and buy some longer security screws.

It is starting to look like there is a modicum of truth in yesterday's prediction that I won't finish the job until 2038.

Mildly disappointed, I headed out to the veg patch and made a start on a slightly less impressive task.  I thinned out my carrot crop in preparation for blanching and freezing later in the day.  I was absolutely delighted with the carrots. Most of them are 8" - 10" in length and are lovely and straight. I must admit that I am tempted to put a bunch of them in the upcoming village horticultural show.

I hid the wonky one at the back!

Lunchtime saw the arrival of my most recent eBay purchase; a vintage Record spokeshave, and this set the agenda for the rest of the afternoon. 

A few years ago I acquired a rather nice, old draw hoe with a wide blade.  It is perfect for earthing up potatoes and such like. However, the only problem was that the handle had suffered the ravages of time and badly needed replacing.  I managed to find a suitable handle that flared out at the blade end,* but it would need a lot of work to get the hoe head to fit.

Most of the afternoon was spent shaving the handle down with my new/old tool and repeatedly trial fitting the head.  I thoroughly enjoyed myself and now have a lovely vintage, draw hoe that is likely to outlast me.

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* If you think about it, a hoe head needs to be fitted from the top end of the new handle, the end closest to the user, and be slid down the full length of the shaft down to the business end. The new handle should flare out at this end where the hoe head is seated.  If assembled in this fashion, each pull on the hoe, when in use, will further secure the hoe head against the flared end of the handle.  If you fit it the other way, it will come loose in use and will result in much swearing.

How long before she notices?

30% is spending a couple of days in London with one of her Frolleagues from her last job, so I have been left to my own devices at home.  Whilst she is taking in the delights of the capital I am left to enjoy my own company and attend to whatever task takes my fancy.

This morning I attended to an experiment that I set up back in July.  A bag of frozen celeriac was taken out of the freezer and the remainder of the ingredients for James Martin's cream of celeriac soup were assembled.  Forty minutes later I was blending in the cream and butter and can report that it is possible to successfully freeze celeriac.  I added it to the soup ingredients while still frozen and it worked brilliantly. I have my doubts about thawing it and roasting for example, but I declare my experiment a resounding success.

The only problem is that I have about twenty celeriac plants in the veg patch and am going to need a bigger freezer!

A lunchtime delivery by the DPD driver prompted my afternoon activity.*  There is a bit of a back story to this one, so please bear with me ... 

Our house has a large, subdivided outbuilding. The end furthest from the house is the garage then, working back towards the house, we have the garden store, the double carport, the workshop and finally the store room. Living out in the sticks security is a priority and on moving in we spent an absolute fortune on a set of nine keyed alike padlocks to secure these buildings.

We also commissioned a local metal fabricator to construct some window bars and these have sat leant against the wall in the carport since late 2021!

Well, today I finally got my shit together and installed the first of these window bars in the garage window. The previous owner had installed cobbled together an abomination comprising an undersized metal grill with half a dozen pieces of angle iron screwed in to fill in the gaps.  This complete fucking bodge of a job obviously irked me every time I looked at it, so I spent an hour or so fitting the new metal bars. They look really good, with a central wrought iron grape vine to slightly soften the look. On this occasion I used security screws rather than the easily removed pozidrive the previous owner thought suitable!

This was a job well done and, at this rate, I should get the remaining window bars installed by 2038!

Now to the title of today's Journal entry, the window bars have been installed right in front of the recycling bin and I am wondering how long it will take 30% to notice the difference?

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* Obviously this was once I had completed the mandatory two hour kip on the sofa

I have been as concise as possible

I Know, I know ... I've made all sorts of promises and commitments to maintain the Journal and, yet again, it is the best part of a week before I get my backside into gear and put virtual pen to paper.

I'd say I hope it's worth waiting for, but I am pretty sure that the mundane comings and goings here at home are probably not that enthralling.  Here is a concise account of the past few days.

Wednesday, 28th August, 2024

Despite having had three hours of sleep during the day on Tuesday, I slept like a log last night. However, I woke feeling irritable and out of sorts.

I did my best to get motivated in the garden and 30% and I transplanted some plants to the recently cleared area of the large herbaceous perennial bed at the rear of the house.

I also ended up being responsible for the blanching and freezing of a veritable mountain of runner beans that had been picked.

Thursday, 29th August, 2024

Over the past week I have been peering at my beetroot plants and have noticed that they appear to be developing quite reasonable sized roots.  The beet seed was planted on the 15th of July, so that was barely six weeks ago. 

I am surprised at how quickly they have grown with minimal care, other than a thinning two weeks after sowing. I pulled a root to see how they were doing and was quite amazed that they are certainly big enough* to be pickled as baby beets. I'll give them another week or two, but they'll be picked soon to let a little more light fall on my leek plants.

In the late morning Pete the Beekeeper turned up and we headed down the road to one of his apiaries to collect my second nucleus hive.  This was sited up in the orchard alongside nuc#1 and a new queen will be introduced in the next couple of days.

In the evening I headed over to Fladbury for an evening of fishing with B&B.  Bubbles caught an impressive Bream, but he wasn't enthused at all by this catch. The fish was unceremoniously returned to the water without even a quick picture as a momento.  Apparently he dislikes them as they give little fight once hooked and are easy to reel in.  I'd have been delighted to catch the fish as it was the only one any of us saw all evening!

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* Golfball sized

Friday, 30th August, 2024

Friday was a relatively quiet day, although it was a case of very cloud having a silver lining.  Mummy Sheila's freezer had been accidentally switched off and she presented us with two lovely joints of beef that had defrosted and needed cooking immediately.  30% placed them in the slow cooker on a bed of sliced onions and the kitchen has smelt heavenly all day.

In the afternoon our local watercolour artist and his wife arrived for an hour of damson picking in the garden. I was happy to help, as Stella's damson jam is beautiful, and we have been promised a jar or two.  The hour of fruit picking became most of the afternoon as we took a wander around the garden and had tea on the patio.  We may be seeing more artists in the near future as Stella thinks the corner of our orchard may provide some interesting views for the Dormston Doodlers to sketch.

Late in the afternoon TP arrived with his BMW prepped for his motorcycle tour to France and Spain.  His visit will be brief as we learnt that he will be leaving at five thirty tomorrow morning to make the eleven o'clock ferry from Dover.

Saturday, 31st August, 2024

Today was mostly taken up with gardening and beekeeping.  I watered the vegetable garden in the morning and then headed up to the orchard to check on nuc #1. 

It didn't take long to inspect the five frames in the nuc and I easily identified the queen with the green mark on her thorax. There had been no problems with her exit from the queen cage and she seemed happy wandering across the brood combs.

I had turned up prepared*, so the entire colony was transferred to a full sized brood box with an additional six frames of foundation.  I gave them a couple of litres of sugar syrup, hoping this will encore the young bees to draw out the foundation in to fresh comb.

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* I long ago learnt that when beekeeping you need to plan ahead and take absolutely everything you think you might need. There is nothing worse than being halfway through a colony inspection and needing an item of kit that is back in the beekeeping shed.  Today I took a brood box, a crown board, an open mesh floor and a roof just incase they were needed.

Sunday, 1st September, 2024

This morning 30% and I headed over to the Architectural Antiques dealer that we visited about a month ago.  30% had spotted a copper contained that she thought might be suitable for repurposing in to a water feature. 

On inspection we realised that the old washing copper could be used as the cistern for the water feature, but that very little of it would be on display.  It was a less than perfect solution so we decided to continue our search. It was a good job we did, as lent up against a wall behind another item was a large hexagonal stone. It is about 25" across and about 7" high and will be absolutely perfect for a millstone type of water feature.

Clearly I will be digging a large hole in the not too distant future!

In the afternoon 30%'s half sister paid us a visit with her rather complicated family.*  We had a pleasant afternoon chatting and drinking tea in the sunshine and I even managed to persuade boyfriend and stepson by marriage** Dan to help me position the new chicken house up in the orchard.

It was then a case of revolving doors as Bobbyn and Bubbles arrived as "D" and her clan left. We had a lovely evening sharing a Chinese takeaway courtesy of China Twon and B&B are the best of guests as they left relatively early allowing us to collapse and vegetate on the sofa for the remainder of the evening.

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*Seriously, DO NOT ask!

** I did say it was complicated!

Monday, 2nd September, 2024

This morning we did very little other than ensure lifestock was fed and watered and that all was well in the garden.

In the early afternoon we headed in to Worcester and I had punctal plugs inserted in an attempt to alleviate my dry eye condition.  All was well until the local anaesthetic wore off and I spent the evening feeling like I had had a bucket of sand thrown in my face.

We did also head over to Bromsgrove to pick up a drilled piece of slate that was very attractively priced on Facebook Marketplace.  This is likely to be incorporated in to the water feature at some point. 

Watch this space, but don't hold your breath.

Sample points on the UK Social Spectrum

I was up relatively early this morning and in time to wish TP farewell as he headed back home to Cardiff.  Apparently he has a final night shoot in London this evening before they spend a couple of days de-rigging in Cardiff.  He'll be back here on Friday before heading off for a motorcycle tour of France with a couple of his mates.

This morning I seemed to be channelling a secret suburban, middle class persona and spent a couple of hours pressure washing the patio.  I must confess that it was the perfect job for a completer/finisher like me and it does look quite splendid now I've finished. I do have one observation though, my jeans were soaking and splattered with shit at the end of it. I look nothing like the immaculately dressed* men in the pressure washing advertisements.

After lunch I had an extended snooze and then did very little for the rest of the afternoon. The only thing of significance was that I spent an hour in the sun stringing runner beans.

As the afternoon turned to evening I wheeled the R nineT from the garage and headed out to meet up with Buzzer and Dot.  We headed up to the Piston Club at Red Hill for their Tuesday evening bike meet and had a pleasant couple of hours catching up on each other's news. Unfortunately the evening's entertainment was a couple of Death Metal bands and they were fucking atrocious! There was only so much distorted screaming and badly played noise we could put up with before we decided an early night was probably the best choice.

I was back home by seven thirty and, after a light supper, I managed to spend another couple of hours asleep on the sofa.

As I wandered up the stairs to bed I thought "I'll never sleep tonight, after three hours of slumber during the day"

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* They're a bit "I'm just nipping out to put some petrol on the Volvo". I looked a bit more like " I've just woken up in a skip"!

Three in one

The past few days have had a domestic focus and are unlikely to be of much interest to the casual visitor. 

I will attempt a summary because this is my Journal, but I can't promise anything riveting. 

Saturday, 24th August, 2024

The morning was wet and windy and I spent the morning indoors attempting to look busy. The weather brightened in the afternoon and 30% and I headed over to Bromsgrove to pick up some terracotta plant pot saucers for the pots she bought on the fourteenth.

Despite the morning's soaking the lawns were reasonably dry on our return, so I wheeled the mower from the shed and spent the late afternoon mowing the back lawn and around the greenhouses.

Sunday, 25th August, 2024

Today was a case of one out and one in.  30% left in the early afternoon for a one night stay at Champneys Spa up in Leicestershire with her friend Michelle.  TP turned up later in the day to  stay a couple of nights having just wrapped up the Netflix fantasy drama that he has been working on for most of the last year.  Apparently the Wrap Party had a free bar, so it is fair to say that he was somewhat lacking in energy and joi de vivre today.

My morning was spent mowing the front lawn and I met up with Bubbles in the afternoon for a wander around the trade stands at the Evesham Angling Festival.  We picked up a few oddments of tackle and gave some thought to a day up on the Severn in search of Barbel or Pike.

Back at home I caught up with TP's news and then spent a lot of time stringing runner beans as 30% had picked a huge bagful before she departed for her Spa break. The runner beans were put to good use as TP and I dined on runner bean curry for supper.

Monday, 26th August, 2024

TP disappeared early for a day boating on the Avon with his mates.

I started the morning with a variety of domestic activities. French beans were blanched and frozen as was the remaining half of last night's curry.  The kitchen was tidied, but eventually I ran out of little jobs and had to bring myself to do a job that I was not looking forward to.

The afternoon began with a long kip before I headed out to the garden and watered the veg patch.

I can also report that the aforementioned patch is finally producing something other than beans and here are a couple of snaps of the latest harvest.

12 weeks from seed to harvest!

Seed planted mid June'24

30% returned rejuvenated from her mini break and we all dined on roast lamb with fresh veg from the garden.

Have we opened a petting zoo?

 Most of this morning seemed to have been taken up with Hobson's visit to the Vet. This is the second appointment this week to check on an infection in his right ear. Fortunately matters are improving and today's pencilled in sedation wasn't needed to examine his ear canal. We left with a large quantity of drugs and ointments and will be back next week for a further follow-up.

Our return trip included a stop off at Botany Bay Nursery for three bags of manure and a rare visit to the Village Shop for a couple of kilos of granulated sugar.  The former will be dug in to the garden at some point and the latter will be made up in to sugar syrup and fed to the nucleus colony of bees.

That took up most of the morning and what little spare time was left was used to clean and sterilise the incubator. It is now packed away, although I have a strange feeling that 30% will have us hatching again next Spring.

Shortly after lunch the first in a string of visitors arrived. It appeared that 30% had invited any of her family and friends with children to come and see the recently hatched chicks.

First through the gate was the ELF with her son, our nephew, Oswald. We had a wander around the garden, viewed the hatchlings and had coffee in the afternoon sun before waving them off. It then became a case of rise and repeat as the ELF was followed by H and her two lovely granddaughters and finally Ellie and sons; Thomas and Oscar arrived for a look around.

It was actually a lovely afternoon and, with one exception,* the children were a delight. I think it will be a good few years yet before I stand any chance of being a grandparent, but it was great fun to spend time with enquiring and enthusiastic youngsters.

The final noteworthy activity was the introduction of the new queen to the nucleus colony in the orchard. I didn't spend too long up there, but can report that there were plenty of bees in the nuc and all seems well. I now need to wait a week before I inspect again. I think young Thomas might be up for helping me with that little job.

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* Not even I am stupid enough to name the annoying child in the on-line edition of The Journal.

Today is brought to you by the letter B

 Yep, my Wednesday seemed to be dominated by activities beginning with the letter B.*

The first B was for beans.

This morning I settled down with a large basket of French and runner beans that had been harvested from the vegetable garden. It took me the best part of an hour to prepare the beans. The French beans were top 'n tailed and then cut in to 3" lengths. That was the easy part of the job. The runners needed to be stringed and sliced. It's a chore but worth while, as they are lovely fresh from the garden.

I then blanched the French beans before plunging them in to iced water. Once the had cooled they were patted dry in a tea towel before being open frozen on trays. They'll be bagged up tomorrow.

The prepared runners were placed in a bowl of cold water and refrigerated. We had located a recipe for Sri Lankan Runner Bean Curry** and it looked like it might be quite tasty.  It seems that, as I had suggested the recipe, I was on chef's duties,*** so I gathered the various ingredients and set to cooking dinner.

I have to report that the recipe was pretty straightforward and the outcome was absolutely delicious. I mostly adhered to the instructions, although I did slightly increase some of the spices and it certainly needed a teaspoon, or so, of salt adding to bring out the subtle interplay of flavourings. 

I will also admit that I left out the fresh coriander, but I hate the bloody stuff and no-one wants a curry that tastes of soap!

The other B was for bees.

Last Thursday Pete the Beekeeper called round to let me know that he had ordered some new queen bees and was going to prepare some nucleus colonies**** with them. One of these nucs would be for me.

He called round in the afternoon and we spent an hour or so in one of his apiaries assembling a couple of nucs. He then dropped me back at home with my nuc and a mated queen bee in a queen cage. The nuc was carefully placed on a hive stand up in the orchard and the queen was placed in a cool, dark drawer. I will introduce her to her new colony tomorrow.

After a disastrous 2023, from a beekeeping perspective, it is lovely to have bees back up in the orchard. I am hoping that we have a lovely, mild Autumn allowing the colonies to flourish and build up their stores in advance of the Winter. 

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* One of those "Bs" was the fucking bomb site I had to clear in the kitchen after 30% did some early morning baking for a coven Garden Party!

** Courtesy of the BBC Good Food website

*** I like to cook, but do so rarely.  The infrequency frustrates 30%, as apparently I am quite good at it.

**** There are whole articles written about nucleus colonies, but I will try to be brief. A nucleus colony is made by taking three frames of brood from an established colony. These brood frames contain young bees at various stages of development from eggs, larval stages, through to capped pupae that will shortly emerge an adult bees. A further two frames of honey are needed to sit on either side of the frames of brood. These frames are placed in small nucleus hive and young nurse bees are added. The important thing is that no queen is present. The nucleus colony is set up and left for a day or two before a new queen is introduced in a queen cage. The queen cage is sealed with a small plug of sugar candy and the nurse bees will release her in to the nuc by eating through the candy. Hopefully she will start laying within a week or so. Over time the new colony will increase in size and be transferred to a full size brood box.

Punctal Plugs

The title of today's Journal entry may be a little baffling, but give me a moment or two and all should become clear.

Since the beginning of the year I have suffered from dry eye.  It's not life threatening, but it is certainly unpleasant. The symptoms are extremely dry, itchy eyes. Periodically there is some improvement and then a flare up will happen and I am back to square one.  Rubbing the eyes brings no relief and, in fact, makes matters worse as it makes one's eyelids sore too.

Apparently this is an age thing and will not improve, so I have been using eyedrops* hourly and even more frequently when the symptoms flare up.  The past month or two have been quite miserable as the presence of pollen seems to aggravate the condition.

This morning saw me at the Ophthalmologist's** clinic for a review and I was in the consulting room for under five minutes.  I put my head in the examination frame and recited my recent symptoms, whilst the clinician peered through his optical thingumajig and occasionally grunted.

After a very few minutes he grunted a term that I eventually deciphered to be punctal plugs and escorted me to the reception desk. A few minutes after that I was booked in for a minor surgery clinic on the second of September.

Punctal plugs are small silicone rubber plugs that are inserted into the tear duct and they function by slowing the rate at which tears drain from the eyes. This should, with continuing use of eye drops, greatly improve the condition.

I was actually hoping for a Borg ocular implant, and 30% muttered something about a body like Seven of Nine ... it's probably best if we leave that narrative there.

In other news, a total of twelve chicks have hatched. Five are olive egg layers and the other seven are Crested Cream Legbars.  Adding in the five that hatched early, that gives a total of seventeen chicks and a hatch rate of 85%. That is a great result from our little incubator.

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* These have ranged from steroidal, antihistamine and plain old lubricating with the mature ladies favourite added ingredient; hyaluronic acid.

** Here's an observation about Ophthalmologists. None of them appear to be great conversationalists. Perhaps there is something about sitting in a darkened room and staring closely in to another person's eyes that inhibits conversation.  I'm not expecting flirting or an enquiry about my hobbies, but all of them appear to be monosyllabic and getting any information about my condition has been like getting blood from a stone.

And Yet More Chicks

We are one day away from the due date for our latest batch of incubating eggs. I've already had a minor moan about the five that hatched prematurely about ten days ago, but the expectation is that the eggs should hatch over the next couple of days.

I was greeted by four fluffy Legbar chicks when I checked the incubator this morning and a further four hatched throughout the day. It is encouraging to note that almost all of the chicks appear to be pullets, with only one showing the paler colouring of a cockerel. At this rate I might even summon up a modicum of forgiveness for the chap that sold me the batch of eggs.

The increase in our poultry flock guided my activities for today. I needed to tidy and clear one of the outhouses as it will soon be home to three separate brooders, one for each of the batches of hatched chicks.

The outbuilding in question is know as "the storeroom" which is badman speak for "where I keep my beekeeping equipment and every other fucker uses as a dumping ground for shit that should really be thrown away". 

This task took most of the day and was punctuated by a variety of curses, especially at the point when 30% decided to add to the clutter with a dog cage that doesn't even belong to us.

I finally reached a point where I could see improvement and retired to the house for a rest. I was quite relieved when Bobbyn sent a WhatsApp to advise that she was held up at work and wouldn't be walking this evening.

Back at it

 After achieving nothing beyond a personal best at sleeping yesterday, 30% and I were definitely back in the saddle today.

After the morning rounds of poultry and plant care we headed over to Redditch to collect some chicken feed. We then headed over to Church Hill to pick up some angling gear* that 30% spotted for sale on Facebook Marketplace.  Actually locating the premises was beyond the navigation capabilities of 30%'s Seat and Google Maps, but we eventually found the house with the assistance of a local chap.**

With the nets collected we headed home and lunched before heading out in to the garden.  

My afternoon was spent digging out a very large clump of yellow loosestrife.  The plant has been allowed to run riot in the herbaceous perennial bed and it is time for it to go. After an hour I was left with two or three square yards of very dry clay soil and it took another couple of hours to clear the weeds, remove the rhizomes and break up the clods of earth.  I am going to need to dig a serious amount of horse shit in to that soil before we consider replanting.***

30% assisted by volunteering for one of her favourite jobs ... a bonfire. She claims she was working hard, but I think she was having a riot of a time burning anything she could gather hands on.

At one point she wanted to set fire to a little, old shed that is home to various poultry related items.

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* Three landing nets and two telescopic landing net poles for twenty quid ... Bargain!

** His directions were followed by this caveat "I haven't lived here that long, so don't blame me if I'm wrong. The house numbering here is absolutely crazy"!

*** There is a fabulous Bronze Fennel at the edge of the bed. 30% planted it a couple of years ago and it is magnificent, standing 5' high. We planned to move it to a more appropriate location at the back of the border until I googled "transplanting fennel". Apparently they hate being disturbed, so I am going to need a plan B.

Written off

 It is fair to say that Sunday needed to be regarded as a write off.

Yesterday evening B and I consumed three bottles of red wine and then worked our way through three quarters of a bottle of Glenmorangie. Lord knows what 30% and H drank, but my dear wife did admit to being a little ill before she went to sleep.

So, a late night and a vast quantity of booze meant that we all had a leisurely breakfast out on the Patio before B&H headed off for another party!  I have no clue how they managed that because 30% and I went back to bed and I didn't surface until three in the afternoon. 

I spent the remainder of the day in a dressing gown and the only thing worthy of mention was that I did ensure that all livestock was fed and watered.

Two in one

 This is another two days in one Journal entry.  My days seem quite full at the moment and finding time to make a Journal entry can be challenging.

So let's start with Friday. It was a beautiful morning so I did something that I haven't done for many years. I dug out my camera and took a few photos of the vegetable garden. It has occupied much of my time in the past few months and I felt I would like a record of how it looks now we have finally started to take a crop.

The raised beds featuring carrots,
Spring onions, leeks & beetroot

cabbages & runner beans

In the afternoon I set a few salmon steaks to marinade in the fridge overnight, as B&H are coming over for dinner on Saturday.

In the evening we both did something else that we haven't done for years too. We wandered down to the local Pub with the dogs for an early evening drink. This unusual activity was instigated by a local couple that we often meet when out dog walking. Basically it transpires that they used to be semi-professional singers and someone had twisted their arms to put on an outdoor show in the pub beer garden.

Six o'clock saw us seated at one of the many picnic tables outside the pub with D&P serenading an enthusiastic audience of locals.  Music was provided using backing tracks and they were really good. we stayed and listened for a couple of hours and only departed because our stomachs were rumbling.

By the time we left they had people up and dancing and we could hear them continuing to belt out pop classics as we wandered down the lane towards home.

Saturday morning saw further culinary activities as I attempted to make a chocolate mousse. I don't know what I produced, but it certainly wasn't a mousse.  30% deemed it beautiful and rich, but it was incredibly heavy and I really wasn't happy about proffering it as a dessert. A review of the recipe and a forensic search of the internet suggests that adding alcohol to 85% cocoa dark chocolate may have been one of the issues making it so dense.

The annoying thing is that I am certain I made a mousse using the same recipe twenty years ago and it was amazing. 

Anyway, I put my frustrations behind me and we headed out to the Heart of England Forest to view a sculpture exhibition in the gardens. It was a fund raising event to enable the charitable trust to further extend their reforestation and habitat regeneration activities.

We had a pleasant morning strolling through the gardens viewing sixty statues on the themes of Heroes & Villains.  If I am honest, I found most of the statues quite uninspiring. They definitely did not have the appearance of a collection that had been assembled and curated with care and knowledge over an extended period.  Instead they tended to look more like they had been purchased from a catalogue or had been bought as a job lot.  I will say that the Minotaur and the Rhinoceros were quite splendid, but most of the others were meh!

I will, however, reaffirm that we had a lovely stroll with the dogs in a very pleasant garden setting.

The afternoon saw a mass tidy up of the house before B&H and their daughter arrived for what turned out to be an hysterical and very boozy evening. They are delightful company and one of the key decisions from the evening was that 30% needs to get us another narrow boating break booked in the Spring of 2025.

A little bit of everything

This morning 30% and I headed over towards Evesham to visit The Valley.* 30% had purchased some large terracotta pots yesterday and a few more were needed to complete her patio planting vision.**

Well, one thing led to another and the quick trip to The Valley took most of the morning. By the time we left we had consumed coffee and purchased plant pots, new pillows and three new sweatshirts from Fatface. It's a good job we brought the Defender as the shopping didn't stop there.

On our way home we stopped off at Golls Nursery. 30% bought a couple of Nasturtium plants and a rather splendid Melianthus major. She also picked up a pink Scabious ... I'm starting to think that she may have a plant addiction!

The afternoon was spent pottering in the garden and included visits by Mummy Sheila and Beekeeper Pete. 

Pete is a local, semi-professional beekeeper and he has been a great mentor to me over the past few years. He had offered to fix me up with a new colony, as I had lost all of my bees last year.  Today's news was that he has ordered some new queens and plans to create some nucleus colonies next Thursday.  It looks like I'll be spending the afternoon with him helping him create the nucs.

As afternoon faded in to evening, the rain started.  I headed over to Fladbury in the optimistic hope that the rain would stop and I could have a pleasant evening fishing. The rain did eventually stop, but not before me and my kit were totally soaked. I stood on the bank for about an hour before I tired of a) being soggy, b) no fish action and c) chapter three of a fourteen volume of work based around the comings and going of the local Volkswagen Dealer's workshop ... Christ, Bubbles and Ben can be tedious when they get together! I am certain it is not intentional, they just don't realise that a conversational subject that is easy and natural to them is fucking irrelevant and meaningless to me.

I was home by nine and settled on the sofa with 30% for an evening in front of the television.

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* Evesham's out of town shopping experience frequented by the elderly, the irritable and the spatially unaware. These three qualities are often combined in a single human being, usually to be found blocking aisles or just stopping directly in front of me for no bloody reason at all!

** It features lollipop olive trees and grasses. I'm sure it will look lovely, provided that I get my own way and am allowed to replace a couple of rather straggly Hebes.

More Chicks!

I woke this morning to find that the overnight rain had turned to drizzle. It is definitely not August weather!

I performed my early morning check of the three Crested Cream Legbar chicks and the incubator and find another pair of chicks have hatched.* I am impressed by the resilience of these birds and the fact that they can withstand a twenty four hour interruption to their incubation, but the sale of partially incubated eggs further reinforces my disappointment with the vendor.

I spent most of the morning bringing The Journal back up to date after our internet outage.  The afternoon saw an improvement in the weather and I ventured out to the veg patch with a spade and hoe.

The second crop spuds that I planted at the end of July needed to be earthed up.  So forty minutes were spent creating a miniature version of a First World War trench line ... with added potato plants.  If hostilities ever break out with the moles in the orchard, I realised that this is the perfect defensive position to hold back their initial attack.

I just need to be aware that they might try a flanking manoeuvre and launch an assault using the cover of the herbaceous perennial border.

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* A pullet and another cockerel

Normal Service is Restored

Rumours of my demise are just that ...  rumours.  Basically an internet outage has limited my access to The Journal, hence no entries for the past few days.  I'll accept that I could have used my phone, but I prefer a full size screen and keyboard for generating this waffle and nonsense.

Right, enough of the excuses, it's time for a relatively brief summary of the past five days.

Friday, 9th August, 2024

Earlier in the week Ben reached out to me and asked if I fancied shooting a few clays today. If I'm honest, I didn't really. My shooting has been very poor recently and I've found the experience increasingly frustrating. However, the fact that the youngster wanted to spend this morning in my company was a friendly gesture, so I did the decent thing. We spent the morning at Wedgenock, near Warwick and were rewarded with a fine sunny day. The targets were challenging for both of us, but my heart wasn't really in it. I think I'll give my gun a good clean and put it away for a while until my enthusiasm returns.

The afternoon was spent in the garden watering as the dry weather continues. Everything in the veg patch is growing vigorously and it now takes a couple of hundred litres each day to keep it all lush and green.

Saturday, 10th August, 2024

Today we bundled ourselves and the four dogs* in to the Defender and headed West to Cardiff to spend the day with TP.

We had a lovely time, although his walk planning may need a little work.  He lives right at the edge of Rhiwbina and it is a short but steep walk to the woods and Castell Coch. The distance and incline would have been acceptable, but the weather was hot, very humid and it was also raining. By the time we reached the woodland cafe that he had selected for lunch; we were boiling in our own sweat and knackered.

Fortunately the rain abated and the walk back was quite pleasant, especially as it was mostly downhill.

The remainder of the afternoon was spent drinking coffee, diagnosing a minor problem with his motorcycle and then noticing a nail protruding from his rear tyre. I tried to get him to see the positive side of this by pointing out that it was better to notice it in his garage, than have a flat tyre fifty miles away from home ... I'm not sure that he was convinced by this perspective.

As I said, we had a lovely day and, hopefully, we will get to spend a couple of days with him in the not too distant future.

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* Our house guest Lupin remains in residence

Sunday, 11th August, 2024

One of the first things I do each day is to check that the chicks all have fresh food and water and that the incubator is running correctly.  I performed my incubator check this morning and was amazed to see a fluffy little chick staggering around amongst the incubating eggs.

This was not supposed to happen. I only set the eggs on 31st July and hens eggs have a twenty one day incubation period. This egg has hatched after 12 days.  This is not some avian development miracle.** This is a poultry management clusterfuck. Fundamentally the idiot that sold me the eggs hasn't got a clue what he is doing and has given me a batch of eggs that included some that have been underneath a broody hen for about 10 days.

The more I think about this, the more I am dismayed. The breeder clearly isn't checking his birds properly and has just had a rummage around in the coop and thought "these eggs'll do". I certainly wouldn't want to  eat any of his eggs based on this experience.

What is worse, I am now likely to have two batches of chicks to rear separately.  It will not be possible to raise them all in the same brooder as the older chicks will bully the younger ones mercilessly. Normally chicks will hatch over a two to three day period. If the age range is much more than that they will need to be raised separately.

The is a balls up and one that I will have to do my best to manage. By the end of the day another chick had hatched and, as they are auto sexing,*** I now know that I have a cockerel and a pullet.

The late morning was spent catching up with Bubbles' news from the Edinburgh Tattoo. We spent a good hour nattering and drinking coffee before he headed off with Lupin.

In the early afternoon 30% and I headed out to the other side of Stratford to collect some reclaimed Victorian border edging stones. Our initial plan is to use them in the veg patch to retain the bark chips around the raised beds, but I need to do some measuring first to make sure I have enough.

Once back at home, we hit the garden and divided the beautiful blue Iris from the perennial bed and the large potted Agapanthus.  These were dead headed and replanted in  the area that we cleared about a week ago.

The weather remains beautiful and the local farmer started to harvest the field of wheat alongside the cottage. The stupid fucker managed to hit the overhead wire providing our broadband service, tearing it free from the telegraph pole.****

Fortunately the BT fault recording service was effective; an engineer was promised for Tuesday and an EE 4G mini hub has been promptly dispatched.

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** The surprising thing about this is that the incubation has been interrupted for at least 24 hours and the eggs were washed in egg disinfectant before they were placed in my incubator. Despite this the buggers have still hatched. To quote Dr Malcom, "life finds a way".

*** The chicks of some poultry breeds have different colouration, depending on sex at the point of hatching. This has been exploited by commercial hatcheries producing laying birds. There is no profit in rearing the cockerels, as they are no good for eating.

**** The pig ignorant bastard couldn't even be bothered to apologise and seemed to be of the opinion that BT had got the cable too low over his field.  This is despite the fact that he has managed to avoid it in the preceding three years ... What a Prick!

Monday, 12th August, 2024

A check of the incubator this morning found a third fluffy chick pottering around. We now have two pullets and a cockerel. All being well, we should have a couple of layers from this incubation cock-up.

The early arrival of the Legbar chicks meant that I had some Poutry management to perform, so the morning was spent setting up a larger brooder in one of the outbuildings. The older chicks were moved to it and this freed up space in the smaller brooder for the premature hatchlings.  All three chicks are doing well and will be moved over to the brooder about twenty four hours after hatching.

The day was incredibly hot, so I spent the afternoon sat in the shade of a parasol preparing runner and French beans for blanching and freezing. It was too bloody hot to do much else!

Tuesday, 13th August, 2024

This morning saw the chap from Openreach arrive nice and early to replace the broken fibre cable.  The repair took most of the morning and, hopefully, the new cable will be out of reach of Farmer Dick's combine harvester!

The Legbar chicks were moved to the brooder and then we applied ourselves in the garden. 

Our morning was spent watering as the hot dry spell continues. A lot of the crops in the veg patch need plenty of water so a good hour or two was spent lugging water from the butts.  I like the fact that we can irrigate with our own well water and are not reliant on Severn Trent to grow our vegetables.

We then headed over to Goll's Nursery to pick up some leek plants (var. Bleu de Solaise) and scout out some fresh colour for the herbaceous perennial bed.

It'll come as no surprise that my afternoon was spent puddling in the leek plants and the late afternoon saw a walk around the Three Miler with Bobbyn and the dogs.

I appreciate that this has been a bit of a rambling, brain dump, but at least I'm up to date ... I think!

Rain stopped play

My plan for today was to finish weeding the vegetable garden and spread some bark chips around the raised beds. The bark would serve as a mulch against the weeds and also be a barrier between footwear and wet soil.

Right! I had a plan! However the chicks needed their brooder cleaning and various other little jobs* needed to be attended to before I finally hit the veg patch.

By mid-morning I was on my knees weeding and making reasonable progress. Within a couple of hours the rain started to fall, and it appears that I am, most definitely, a fair weather gardener. There is no bloody way that I am going to be on my hands and knees in the mud in the pouring rain. I'll happily work in the greenhouse when it's soggy and I'll even put a coat on and prune in a shower, but hand weeding in a downpour ... no way!

Having lost my gardening mojo for the day I headed indoors and spent some time preparing, blanching and freezing a couple of batches of beans** from the garden. 

The veg patch remains unfinished, but a little progress was made and there's always tomorrow.

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* Tomato plants to tie up and a shelf that needed to be taken down in the larger of the greenhouses ... apparently it was interfering with the Marmande tomatoes

** French & Runner Beans. They are beautiful cooked fresh from the garden and they also freeze really well.

An Advent Calendar for the older generation

 All oral medicines should be chocolate coated or, at least, be flavoured and textured like jelly beans.  The reasoning behind this decree will follow shortly, but first the news of the day.

30% was out early this morning. She had a day planned with the extended coven.* They had a Group Rover ticket for the Gloucestershire and Warwickshire Railway and planned to harass and bemuse the inhabitants of Broadway, Toddington, Winchcombe and Cheltenham at various points throughout the day.

I was left  home alone and finally got my arse in to gear to attend to the rather weedy vegetable plot. There is no way that I can make hand weeding a 15' x 35' plot interesting, so I will simply state that it consumed the day. I can also report that my knees were bloody sore by the time I shuffled back in to the house.

Now it's time to turn to flavoured medication. 

I have reached an age where I need to take a daily pill or two.** These are nothing concerning; vitamins, antihistamines and a couple related to being a type 1 diabetic. However, I do need to remember to take the damned things and I generally have far more exciting things to think about other than "have I taken my pills this morning?"

30% came to the rescue and purchased me one of those dosette boxes. For the younger generations, a dosette box is a clear plastic box with seven separate lidded compartments. Each compartment is annotated with the day of the week. One places their medications in the appropriate compartment and can, at a glance, see if they have taken them.

Basically it is like an advent calendar for old people. Hence, my original premise that all oral medication should be a tasty treat ... I think you will find that it is the law that advent calendars must contain a tasty morsel behind each of the doors!

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* The local Women's Institute

** Christ! Writing this makes me seem really old. I don't feel old, so let's settle with mature or more accurately immature.

Not much to see here

 Today was one of those days when I didn't seem to do much, but I was busy all day.

At this point there is an interjection from 30% "The two hour kip this afternoon was you being busy, was it?".  This criticism is a little harsh, as she also had a mega nap.

In brief, I had blood tests down at the local surgery first thing and the dogs were taken to, and collected from, the Groomers at each end of the day.

I've already mentioned the extended early afternoon sleep, so that warrants no more page space. I also dug some rotted manure and bone meal in to the herbaceous border that I cleared yesterday. Continuing on the subject of gardening, the second crop potatoes, that were planted ten days ago, have shoots showing above ground. They will need to be earthed up tomorrow ... and there is also a massive amount of weeding needed in the veg patch.

I also picked a couple of portions of French beans, which were prepped, blanched and frozen within an hour of picking. This is the first time that we have grown French beans and I'm really impressed with the vigour of the plants and the quantity of beautiful, long, slender pods. If they taste half as good as they look we will be in for a treat.

An extended spell of watering took place as we have had no significant rainfall for quite some time. We must be getting this right as everything in the vegetable garden is flourishing ... including the bloody weeds.

We went exploring

 Another walk this morning and, this time, 30% set the route.

I tend to be quite unimaginative in my walking* and tend to plod around the Three Miler with the sole aim of getting the dogs walked and myself exercised. 30%, on the other hand, is far more adventurous and will explore the lanes and paths. She will often return and recount her walk and I won't have a clue where she has been.

Well, today we turned left out of the cottage and walked to the top of the low rise. We left the road and took the footpath along the crest of the hill.  She then directed us through a spinney and three or four interconnected paddocks. It was a lovely walk, but there is a "but". 

I learnt that my good lady is absolutely brilliant at finding new walks but she has no bloody sense of direction. Our walk became an out 'n back because it wasn't possible to loop back via the bridle path as she had originally planned. As we reached the aforementioned spinney 30% attempted to direct us down a non-existent path, despite me pointing to the route indicated by our footprints left in the grass no more than forty minutes earlier.

Our afternoon was spent working on the large bed of herbaceous perennials in the back garden. One end of the bed was dominated by a huge clump of Day Lillies (Hemerocallis) and they desperately needed to be cleared to make room for other plants.

It took most of the afternoon to clear the two or three square yards of plants, dig over the soil and do my best to remove the roots and rhizomes.** The next step will be to refresh the soil in the bed with rotted manure, compost and bonemeal, before planting our Agapanthus and Iris.

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* We think this might be a consequence of my working life. I would find an hour to get the dogs walked, but would generally need to get back to my desk fairly promptly. This became an ingrained habit and I did the same walk, knowing how long it would take.  Clearly, I now need to break this habit.

** I have a strong suspicion that I will be removing plantlets for years to come!

Mostly Mowing

This morning 30% and I took an early morning walk over the rise and down the lane towards the bridge. It is probably little more than a mile and a half, but the dogs loved it, tearing along the verges and sniffing the scents from the nocturnal wildlife.

By the time we got back home, the dew had lifted and it became clear what the remainder of my day would look like.

The shed was unlocked, the lawn mower was wheeled out and that was it. I spent the rest of the day mowing the lawns. The garden looks pretty good at the moment and a neatly clipped lawn really finishes it off.

A casual observer might note that there are a few strange clumps of uncut grass on the front lawn and on the verges in front of the cottage.  The reason for these unmown tufts is that they are where the cowslips grow. I love these delightful little flowers and do my best to encourage them.  Although the flowers bloom very early in the year, their seeds do not mature until late July or even early August. Hence the plants need to be left uncut until now, several months after their petals have dropped.

Well, August has finally arrived and I have checked the now scruffy tufts. The cowslip seeds are mature and many of the plants have already shed their seeds.  I was now able to mow the lawns without having to skirt around the tufts .... Avoiding the tufts a pain in the arse, but, I think, worth it to see the cowslips again next Spring.

A guest arrives

Yesterday evening 30% was perusing Facebook Marketplace and asked if I needed a workbench.  Before proceeding with this narrative I need to clarify a couple of points.  

1. I have two matching workbenches in the workshop and a dinky little carpenter's bench in the garage.* I am also about to build a potting bench for 30% in the shed. 
2. This is a redundant question, of course I need another workbench.

I took a look at the advertisement and saw a rather nice engineer's bench with what looked like a Record vice bolted to the top. It is fair to say that within thirty minutes the bench had been viewed, hands had been shaken and we had arranged for me to pick it up this morning.

So, the trailer was hitched to the Defender and it was a short journey to the other side of the village to collect the bench. It really needs a new ply work surface, but the clincher was the No 24 Record Engineers bench vice with quick release mechanism. The bench and vice set us back £120, but the discontinued vice model sells second-hand for upward of £150. They are a fantastic piece of kit and I am extremely chuffed to have finally got my hand on one.**

Most of this morning was spent clearing a space and moving the bench in to the garage ... Christ, it was heavy!

In the afternoon I headed over to Childswickham and met up with Bubbles and Ben for a round of clay shooting.  I wish I hadn't bothered. The course was a nightmare and I shot appallingly.  To make matters worse Bubbles had agreed to combine a shooting lesson with our round.  The tuition was a significant interruption and the delays just added to the frustration of a very poor shoot.

I followed Bubbles home, as we will be having a guest for the next few days. Bubbles and Bobbyn are off to Edinburgh for the Tattoo and we have been asked to look after their senior terrier; Lupin.*** She is a delightful little dog and is sat on my lap, demanding affection, as I write this.

It was a matter of minutes to bundle her luggage in to the Defender and we were soon heading back to the cottage. Lupin knows our house and three dogs really well and it is a recurring joke that, upon arrival, she just treats the place like her own home. 

She settled in without any fuss and has spent the evening curled up on her bed, the sofa, the other dogs' beds, our laps ... in fact anywhere she likes!

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* In need of some refurbishment

** I have perused engineers vices on the internet for a couple of years, but have been put off by the price of a good one and poor reviews of the cheap ones.

*** They have a house sitter taking care of the other two dogs, but felt that looking after three would be "too much for them". We are also well aware that when all three of the terrors are together they have a tendency to scrap, and I mean SCRAP!

Faery Beefs

Today's first mission was to head in to Alcester and pick up my new specs. A trip that should have taken no more than an hour ended up consuming the entire morning and included massively prolonged conversations in a bakery and the jewellers ... I'll leave it to you to work out which one of us was in desperate need of extended, but pointless conversation ... if you need a clue, it wasn't me!

Anyway, we eventually arrived home and were chatting in the sun, when a thought occurred to me ... what do faeries actually eat?

I mulled this over and thought that maintaining flight with those tiny wings must required one hell of a calorific input ... thoughts of hummingbirds did come to mind and I wondered whether dewdrops sweetened with nectar was the favoured faery juice?  This train of thought continued and I started to cogitate on the dietary preferences of faery folk. Pollen bread and mushroom based foodstuffs seemed like possible faery comestibles, but, after a long, hard day flying around granting wishes,* I'll wager that they really fancy a burger.  There is already literary evidence of faeries stealing milk from cows, so we know the little devils aren't vegan.  The references to theft also suggest that they are far from "pure and fair" and, clearly, no strangers to mortal transgressions.

I think it's a short stretch from nicking milk to vegging out on a comfy toadstool sofa with a dirty burger grasped between faery fingers.

The next question is where do the faery folk get the beef for the burgers?  One might be tempted to assume that they steal it in the same way as they do the milk. However, a moments thought highlights the weakness of this theory.  A faery attempting to dispatch and butcher a bullock of killing weight is probably the equivalent of humans whaling.**

I'm pretty sure that people would start to notice missing cattle, or dead beasts with little nibbles taken from the finest cuts, because there is no way that the faeries would be able to consume, or cache, an entire Bos taurus carcass. 

My research has identified that the faery folk actually have their own cattle or Faery Beefs. These are somewhere between a pigeon and a duck in size and look exactly like a miniature cow apart from sporting a fine pair of wings.  They can be a pest in parts of the country when huge flocks of them descend on, and devastate, young crops of wheat and barley.

They also make a dreadful mess if they crap on your car when they are flying over.

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* or exchanging milk teeth for coins of the realm

** Mind you, a crew of faeries manning a steam punk, flying abattoir ship does have a certain visual appeal

"On Trend" in the garden?

 Over the past few days we have cleared a neglected border alongside one of the outbuildings and have been left with a dry, narrow bed. The soil is very shallow and impoverished, so it badly needs to be improved and, if possible, made deeper.

Our plan was to add edging that would enable us to increase the depth of the soil, but none of the options available from local establishments were particularly attractive. We did, however, notice that galvanised metal, particularly corrugated, galvanised metal seems to be very popular at the moment. Many of the garden centres and nurseries are displaying vast arrays of galvanised metal containers, both new and vintage.

This must have tweaked something in my subconscious as I remembered that we had a few small sheets of galvanised, corrugated iron sheeting up in the orchard.

I grabbed one, and after a couple of measurements I realised that, if I cut it in to 8" wide strips, they would be perfect to form an edge to the border. They would also allow us to add compost and manure, raising the soil level, improving both the soil quality and its moisture retaining ability.

After twenty minutes with an angle grinder the 24" by 30" sheet was cut in to four strips and I was ready to try out my design.

It worked beautifully. The strips of corrugated iron don't reduce the width of the bed and they interlock, making them simple to install and tie together. The corrugations also add rigidity, so we will be able to add compost and manure, increasing the soil depth without fear of the edging collapsing.

The edging looks great alongside the brickwork and I am feeling quite pleased with my low cost, up cycling solution.

Everything is growing beautifully

We were both up before six this morning and, after an early breakfast, we got started with the day's activities.

Mission #1 was to give the hatching eggs a good clean in egg sanitiser before placing them in the incubator and starting off the next twenty one day incubation cycle.  I then continued in the poultry vein, cleaning out the brooder and ensured that our first batch of chicks had plenty of food and clean water.

I then headed out to the orchard where 30% had applied herself to weeding the pumpkin patch. In the past couple of months the pumpkin plants have run riot. After a slow start they suddenly put on a growth spurt and the six plants have now completely taken over the old poultry run and are pushing out vigorous shoots across the grass. Pumpkin fruits are starting to form on the vines and the largest of which is close to eight inches in diameter.

We spent a good couple of hours placing tiles under each of the young fruits to lift them clear of the damp earth and reduce the risk of rot. We also cleared the remaining debris from the now demolished chicken house. This old shed appeared to have been built on a foundation of railway sleepers, loose bricks and whatever else came to hand. I swear I even extracted an enamel dish and a baking cooling rack from the ground this morning.

With the another part of the orchard decontaminated, we lunched and then headed in to the afternoon.  30% "headed" straight to bed for a nap, and I wandered over to the computer and attempted to find inspiration for yesterday's Journal entry.

After taking it easy during the heat of the day, we wandered back out to the garden. I thinned the beetroot seedlings to ten centimetre spacings and then mowed a strip in the orchard, where 30% wanted to clear and prune. After a few minutes of this, we both decided that it was far too hot for manual labour and, instead, decided to head off in search of edging for the small bed we cleared on Monday.

The bed is shallow, narrow,  dry and its soil is impoverished. We would like to install edging that would allow us to increase the depth of soil, but everything we looked at either wouldn't work or looked bloody awful.  In the end I decided that I might be able to do something innovative in a rustic fashion with some corrugated iron that is kicking around in the orchard ... I will either be feeling smug or bloody frustrated, depending on how that pans out.

In other gardening news; the tomato crop has now started to ripen and we have tasted the first of the Bloody Butcher fruits. They are tasty enough, but not as good as Alicante in either flavour or vigour. I can also report that the Spring cabbage seedlings have already started to shoot, barely four days after planting ... not bad for seeds that passed their expiry date three months ago.

To wash or not to wash?

 Today I seemed to be mostly collecting fertile eggs.

In the morning 30% and I headed over to Stratford-upon-Avon and whizzed around the supermarket before heading across town and on to Snitterfield.  Our destination was the Domestic Fowl Trust, where we were supposed to collect twenty Crested Cream Legbar hatching eggs.

Unfortunately, the laying birds had not read the order properly and there were only fifteen eggs available ... and many of those were pretty grubby. The chap at the Trust was very decent about this and halved the price of the eggs. He also threw in a good few kilos of medicated chick crumb, so it would be churlish to be anything other than complimentary. 

As we headed home I pointed out that we would have five spare spots in our incubator and we might as well try to fill them.  The man at the Trust had mentioned Newland Poultry over towards Malvern, so I gave them a call.

It is getting towards the end of the poultry breeding season as the parent birds will soon start their moult, but Newland Poutry managed to scrape together half a dozen "Olive Eggers" for me to pick up later in the day. Olive Eggers are a cross breed from Marans and Crested Cream Legbar parent birds. They will, as the name suggests, lay olive green eggs once they mature.

Having collected the eggs, I left them to settle overnight, planning to start the incubation tomorrow. However, as mentioned earlier, the Legbar eggs were pretty dirty and, obviously, the incubator is the perfect environment for bacteria to grow. Should I wash the eggs, or not?

An internet search followed and left me none the wiser. Some sources state that washing the eggs in a proprietary egg disinfectant solution is the way forward. Others say that it damages the egg's protective cuticle and is the action of a madman.*

In the end I decided that the eggs would be washed before incubation. It'll be interesting to see how thing pan out in twenty one or two days time.

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* Many years ago I recall collecting a Minorca egg from a very muddy run. The egg was literally plastered with mud and other chicken run filth. I clearly remember that I incubated the egg and it hatched successfully, and I am pretty certain that I would have washed it first.

Cleaning & Tidying

 The chicks are doing really well and first job of the day is to check that they are OK before refreshing the newspaper lining of the brooder and ensuring they have clean water* and plenty of chick crumb.

After cleaning the chicks' brooder, I attended to the cleaning and sterilisation of the incubator. This was timely as 30% has arranged to collect a batch of Crested Cream Legbar eggs tomorrow morning.  I was amazed at how grubby the incubator was considering the chicks were only in it for less than sixty hours. Every surface was covered with a fine dusting of down and the base was littered with shell fragments and chick faeces. 

As I washed and sterilised the components my thoughts turned to an acquaintance of ours, who is an incubation addict.  She will set batch after batch of eggs without ever cleaning her incubators. I often wonder what her hatch rates are and whether her chicks are impacted by being hatched in such an environment?**

Cleaning and reassembling the incubator took most of the morning and the afternoon was fairly leisurely. 30% and I cleared a small, shallow border alongside one of the outbuildings. Until this afternoon it was planted with a scruffy rose that refused to flower, a poorly fruiting raspberry and several Stinking Iris plants.

Our plan is to plant a couple of Lupins in the bed, but, having cleared it, I wonder whether Lavender might be better suited.  The bed has very shallow soil and is also very dry.

Whatever we plant there, it will need a lot of care and attention until it is established and possibly beyond.

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* The chicks may be precocious, meaning that they require no parental care, but this precociousness seems to be combined with an innate ability to crap in any food or water container less that five minutes after it has been refreshed.

** Mind You, it can get pretty rank under a broody hen! That is definitely NOT a sterile environment and naturally hatched chicks seem to do OK.

Guests

 We don't see M&M that often, but when we do it is always great fun.

After our last get-together in Winchcombe, we had arranged for M&M and Nova* to come over for lunch and a leisurely afternoon.

That day had finally arrived and the weather was absolutely perfect for al fresco dining. 30% spent the morning preparing a huge feast of salads, cheeses, charcuterie and nibbles, whilst I spent a couple of hours mowing the orchard.

M&M arrive around one o'clock and we had a wonderful afternoon out on the patio laughing, eating and drinking.  

They are a little overprotective of Nova, but she is their "first baby" and we'll allow them their  new parent insecurities. 

Hobson was an angel and played beautifully with her. Dog #4 came out had a sniff and a bit of a play before returning to her bed and staying out of sight for the rest of the day. As for Whiffler, he did feel the need to show that he was top dog and did attempt to hump Nova a few times. This did cause a few concerned dashes across the garden to protect her innocence.

We could see that it was a dominance behaviour, mostly to show Hobson who was boss, unfortunately M&M were worried that Nova would be defiled.

Oh well, hopefully they will relax more as she gets older.

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* Their six month old Labrador pup

Hailes & Gardening.

Saturday was another busy one!

I was out of the house before eight thirty and headed over to Evesham to collect Bubbles.  We then drove over to Hailes and had a splendid morning clay shooting.  The weather was absolutely glorious and it is one of the most attractive shooting grounds that I have ever visited.  From the stand at the top of the hill there are splendid views north west across beautiful countryside towards Dumbleton and beyond.

I had a couple of appalling stands, but, overall, was reasonably pleased with how I shot. My score was 52/96.*

Clay shooting consumed the morning and first task of the afternoon was to plant a row of second crop potatoes.** I've not planted spuds so late in the year and it'll be interesting to see how they perform. If the packaging is to be believed we will be able to have Charlotte new potatoes with our Christmas Lunch.

30% and I then headed out towards Powick. We have set our hearts on a water feature comprising a mill stone with a bubbling little fountain at its centre. 30% had found a local Architectural Antiques dealer with a potential stone and we were off to check it out.  When we found the dealer we were surprised to see that it was a house that we had viewed about four or five years ago when we first put The Pile on the market. At that time we rejected the house because it was very close to a busy road and this time we rejected the mill stone because it was cast concrete, rather than the real thing ... the search continues.

Back at home I returned to the greenhouse and planted some Durham Early Spring cabbage in seedling plug trays. These will be grown on, transplanted in to pots and will be planted out in the veg patch later in the year.  They will spend the Winter under cloches and should provide some lovely Spring greens by February.

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* The Hailes shoot is twelve stands with eight clays at each.

** Maris Peer and Charlotte varieties. Ten seed potatoes of each. The Maris Peer were planted at the end of the row closest to the path through the veg patch.

Chick Update

It is time for the results of our recent incubation. We set twenty eggs on the Fourth of July. Ten were from Cuckoo Marans and the other ten were from Norfolk Grey chickens.

The eggs were due to hatch on Thursday 25th, but the first chick, a cuckoo Maran made its appearance on Wednesday.

By Thursday morning a couple more had hatched and the end of day total was five.

Friday was a busy day at the Game Fair, but we checked the eggs before we left, and ten were cheeping and staggering around the incubator. 

On our return we checked again and no more had hatched. As we were now a day over the normal twenty one day incubation, we decided it was time to open up the incubator and take a look. We also transferred the hatched chicks to a Brooder pen, providing food, water and an electric hen to keep them warm

One further egg had pipped, but the other nine were still intact. I float tested* these and none seemed show any indications of containing a hatching chick.  All of the eggs were returned to the incubator.

On Saturday morning no further eggs had pipped. The one egg that had pipped had cracked further but the chick was struggling. 30% stepped in and assisted the hatch. The youngster was left to dry off and recover from the exertions of hatching.

By Sunday we transferred the last check to the Brooder pen and turned off the incubator. The final total was eleven chicks; six Norfolk Greys and five Cuckoo Marans.  A fifty five percent hatch rate isn't great, but it could have been a lot worse. Now we need to wait a few weeks to see how many pullets we have.

Oh, and 30% is already scouring the internet for another batch of fertile eggs!

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* Float testing: If a hatching, but not yet pipped, egg is floated in warm water, the movement of the chick stirring inside the egg will jiggle the floating egg. No jiggling suggests that the egg is either infertile or the chick is dead in shell.