The Perils of British Bathrooms

Our life in Landbeach has been an eventful experience in home ownership.
Most of TAT's readers will be aware of the ongoing and multivarious sagas relating to things that go wrong with this house.
We are grateful to report that none of this has pertained to the significant fabric or construction of the house itself. But just about everything else has ....well....given us a wealth of learning opportunities, shall we say.

And none more than the bathrooms.
Showers that leak - but we have never found the source, baths that leak for months and only let you know when the wall is wet in the room next door....tiles that fall off the wall, shower thermostats that are welded to the cold setting....loos that don't flush, or constantly slightly flush.
Oh, and the times we could have sung 'Oh dear, what can the matter be? One of our guests is stuck in the lavatory....' (Only once had to get the local handyman to get them out though.....)

Then there is the decor aspect - those lovely coloured bathroom suits that were so popular in the 70s....candy pink, avocado green, Mother-in-Law beige, and then our own dearly beloved aquamarine.

But now, prepare yourself for the most fearsome bathroom peril of them all.....     
that autumnal nightmare....          
            The Spider in the Bath

yes, that is a standard sized penny....

Sadly this one ruined the poetic nature of such a peril by being in the sink instead.They can climb drains, but they can't scale shiny porcelain bowls.

I am too much of a nature lover to flush her down the plug hole; besides, she would have blocked the drain. So, here is the patent bug-eyed bath spider removal technique:

'Here we go again...'

The nature experts say that spiders, like mice, just turn right around once they've been ejected, and find their way back into the house. Who knows how many times I've already chucked this one out? If it is the same one, she's eating well, as she gets bigger every time!

Apple Harvest

It has been an amazing Summer this year. With all the rain from last year making the foliage lush, and days of uninterrupted sunshine in late June and all of July, the apple harvest has been phenominal.
 Since we moved here two years ago, we have been systematically but conservatively pruning the overgrown fruit trees at the end of our very long garden.  We were not at all confident of the outcome....possibly reflected in the lone apple I put on this number plaque earlier in the year (Made at a potter friend's house)

The beehive is romanticised....perhaps one day Mark will make one for me like that.

However, our poor elderly Bramley trees were no exception to the national bounty.  Anna, Mark and I had a fun two hours picking them all.

Anna in her favourite habitat - up a tree.  I still need to prune for height, having done the untangling and removal of dead stuff the past two years.  I mean on the tree, of course....not Anna.

Mark kept a running total of weight - but we've forgotten what it all came to probably about 60lbs though.

 Sooty had fun pretending to be an apple. As Anna and Mark picked I chose the best ones to wrap up in newspaper for storage. I kept packing them around Sooty till he finally got the hint....

 

 

 

 

 

I blend in rather well, don't you think?

Even the little £3 Aldi Cox's Orange Pippin tree that I have had stuffed in a tomato pot for 3 years produced its first fruit - 18 lovely apples. And most delicious they were too.

Size was a little.....variable.

This year we need to hack back some of the overgrown shrubs around the 'Orchard' at the end to allow more light in to the trees.  I am hopeful that even the Victoria Plum will survive my ministrations and produce well next year - we had a few handfuls of scrumptious plams despite the tree looking most unhappy after a good haircut last autumn.

Pork Pate - Vegetarians Look Away Now!

I've often said that if I really knew what went into pate it wouldn't eat it.
Well, now I have made it from first principles and its yummy.
We picked up our half a happy pig from Hempsal's Farm last week. This time I was spared no realities - we got the lot. Head, bones (extracted), feet.....
The rest of the family stayed totally clear of the kitchen while all this was going on.....
And here is why:

Liver, trotters and half a head: the cheek is the best meat...though not much of it.

What to do with half a pig's head?

I reasearched a little here and there....considered boiling the head as for brawn (Head cheese to US readers - sounds a bit like toe cheese to me....) Somehow, having a head in the pot and watching the gums recede as it boiled did not appeal. Settled on using the meat for a variant on Delia Smith's Coarse Country Pate.


The first job was to remove the meat from its various hiding places.
So I whipped out my nice sharp Sabatier and investigated. I left the brain alone - it was a lot smaller than I expected.
The teeth could have done with better brushing and flossing - another reason to avoid boiling the whole head.

I did boil the trotters because the meat was encapsulated in very tough connective tissue. Also, it made AMAZING stock.  Would you believe that from 6 trotters (Not bad when I had only bought for only half a pig....) this was all the meat I could find:

Apparently trotter meat is delicious.

I had about 600g of liver, a few micrograms of trotter meat (!), about 400g head meat, so I added 400g unsmoked streaky bacon and a chunk of unspecified weight from the belly.

Blend it all up with 3 cloves of garlic, 20 juniper berries crushed, 20 black pepper corns crushed, and a dollop of trotter stock.

I pressed it into a loaf pan and some ramekins and baked them in a bain marie at low heat for 1.5 hours.

Out of the oven, covered with foil, and weighted down with whatever I had to hand that was heavy....tomato cans, pestle and mortar, bookstand etc.

And here is the result:

I have sliced this up and frozen it now.

One member of the family couldn't wait to try the pate, so he jumped on the counter when no one was looking, knocked the weight off one of the ramekins, clawed back the foil and helped himself. I hope he had indigestion from all that pate - his breath was certainly rather garlicky, hence we identified the culprit after the event.

Who me?

We agree with him though - it was quite delicious on crusty bread with a cornichon.  Garlic breath all round.

And Even More Nettled...

My garden is full of nettles, but not all the stinging variety.
Here are some pics of a few of the huge variety of ornamental and "Dead" nettles scattered liberally around.
The bees love them, They fill spaces where little else would grow and cover bare earth to give a luscious feel even to the broken wall of my compost heap!

Just at their peak of flowers, which, for a humble nettle look remarkably exotic - almost orchid like.

These are already past best, but have provided a symphony of buzzing bumble and honey bees

This one is rather easy to confuse with the stinging variety. I'm not sure it would make such good soup! It gives a lovely understated highlight of white among the colours elsewhere.

I am the Egg Man...

I have been making a regular rendez-vous for clandestine exchanges with the Egg Man.

When we first moved to Cambridge area, we were delighted to spend a year as members of a Hempsal's Community Farm  (http://www.hempsalsfarm.com/).
We had a wonderful experience helping set the place up and enjoyed the fruits of our labours with half a pig (pre-butchered I am glad to say), masses of eggs, a CHristmas goose and veggies in season.

Once we moved to our own home and garden, we ran out of time to have so much involvement, but are now on the "Friends" list, which means we can visit and help, still opt for half a pig, and buy excess produce.

Can you see the odd one out?
It is a duck egg, and I have cleaned it up with the plan that I will turn it into a Fabergé style decorated shell when I have a spare moment. Ha!
 

Eggs have been flowing in abundance for them this year. Here is a photo of a box I received recently.

The others remain a little yucky to look at as it is best to clean them just before use to prevent bacteria travelling through the porous shell with the aid of water.

Blooming Bonanza! Part 2

We've had high winds here....I'm so glad I managed to photograph a few blossoms before they all blew off!

Cherry blossom and a rare blue sky!

Cox's apple blossom - the plan is to espalier this tree once I have excavated space to plant it!

Quince - this was a tangled mess under a shady window.  I've managed to tidy it up, with resulting reward...

One of my favourites: Dicentra, or "Bleeding hearts" dangling delicately over the fish pond

Dicentra flowers a little closer up. Aren't they lovely?

Flowering currant blossom. We didn't realize we had this until we removed a tonne of ivy and mahonia. Its a huge leggy shrub - I'll prune it a little more each year to nurse it back to full glory.

 

And last but not least, the Bramley apple blossom from the two large cooking apple trees at the "Wild' end of the garden.

So far it seems to have been a good year for apples, unlike last year's disaster year.

Our two Bramleys are rather precious, as they produce marvellous apples which we can chop and freeze for cooking, and they are great for climbing for Anna.
This photo does not do them justice....but they are looking so much better for two years careful and consistent pruning (Using your advice Paula! Thanks...)
They were so entangled and overgrown that there was no light to the limbs.
This winter I will cut the height down, having shrunk the branches and removed the cross growth. Should have perfect  trees then.
There is plenty of new growth coming, so I am happy!! I didn't kill them!

Blooming bonanza! part 1

The Garden seems to be marching into full spring action all of a sudden.
After all the cold and damp, a little sunshine has kicked it all into overdrive.

Here are a few of my favorite things to inspect daily in the wild garden at the end....

Comfrey - pretty, invasive, a favourite of bees, and great for making liquid plant food...

Stinging nettles - also an invasive weed, but I am cultivating my crops for tender young leaves which make the best soup. Recipe will follow soon...

Primulas - These are just past their best, but they have grown voluntarily under a Bramley apple tree in a little patch of dappled sunlight...

Bunny irony

My dear friend Anne gave me these little stone rabbits when we first told her we were moving back to the UK.  She thought they looked very "English Country Garden"-ish.

They do don't you think?

Here's the irony: we get loads of little grey rabbits in our garden - about the same size too- but they have all fallen victim to our cats, who mostly leave a little fur and the entrails as a present for us.

We were devastated at first, and of course tried to rescue the poor little things, but they died anyway.
Then before long, the cats had dispatched 50 rabbits, at which point we realized there might have been rather a lot of them out there....

Our neighbours have been thrilled, since the bunnies would eat all their home produce, and for the past two seasons they have not had a problem.
Well, I guess it saves on cat food.....

By the way, Anne, there is the peony you sent me in the back ground....it is looking very healthy!

Hive Mentality

Last Saturday was Hive making day.
It was like being at a rock concert - loud banging leaving your ears ringing, huddled up close to a load of other people!
I completed a bee-keeping course run by the Cambridge Bee Keeping Association this spring, and part of the course was a 101 on building a flat packed "National" hive at a nearby scout hut.  

Of course I took along my trusty woodwork expert (and his tools), thinking:
"We should be done in no time - how hard can this be?"
Ha ha. Well, not so bad if you have an expert hive maker, an expert woodworker and access to tea and coffee....but it still took 5 hours!!!

First we had to pick up the basic kit which was tidily stacked into a hive lid.

It looks a bit weird in this photo - but this is a stack of lids all containing pieces of flat pack.

 The first job was to take out all the pieces and sand off the splinters.  Mark was much faster at than me of course....so I swanned about taking pics!

And here he is drilling pilot holes. There was a very specific way to put it all together, and the reasons became apparent as we went on....mostly we got it right first time!

First assembly was the Brood box where my future queen will lay her off-spring, and her workers will store honey and pollen to feed and nurture them.  It is all glue and nails. Mark was itching to get some screws into it, but he had to be good and do as he was told.

just proving I am handy with a drill too...

Here is the finished hive safely stored in the garage awaiting paint job.
We had to assemble one wax frame too, as nothing is obvious from the kit!

The pressure is then on to finish the rest of the frames - 11 for the brood box, and 11 each for the 'Supers" where my honey harvest will be stored. When a swarm is sighted, it's a question of dropping everything and getting it home, so I have to be ready...

MJ and me finishing up the frames. It went so much quicker with a production line!

Meanwhile Mark got busy with the paintbrush and wood preservative.
We decided against the traditional white paint job, as this is not a pretty traditional hive.
It is all about function and economy....so the paint job had to match!

Now all I need is a custom made stand to keep it off the ground, and...bees!!

Paper pots with occupants!

Here they are....my babies are growing!

So far, globe artichokes (to the left) and courgettes have burst their way through.
The Patty Pan Squash are creating pimples on the surface, ready to burst with green any moment.
I never tire of seeing the first signs of life!

Newspaper pots in action

Here are the pots all full of compost, with a seed or two in each one, and watered in.
(See previous post in case you missed the significance of newspaper pots to my life!)

They are sitting in the greenhouse catching warm rays and missing out on the incessant wind that is whipping away the cobwebs of winter in literal and metaphorical fashion!

Today I planted courgette (zucchini) patty pan squash, marrow, artichoke, basil, coleus (decorative not edible!) and a few sunflower seeds from last year's sunflowers.

I am trying my hand at a Mendelian experiment.
Last year I had white sunflower seeds from a sunflower I had grown the previuos year.
I planted only a small number of seeds, and the result was one white and one  black - seeded sunflower head.
I assume this means the black seeds are a recessive gene.
So, this year I am planting equal amounts of black and white seeds (4 pots of three seeds each) in pots to see if the ratio of black to white resulting confirms my theory.
Should have half black and hlaf white form the white seeds and only black from the black ones if my hypothesis is correct.
Watch this space!

We are floored

Flawed and floored....

This past weekend Mark had a seroius case of getting the DIY bit between his teeth, and our last bastion of major house chaos was tackled.
The Study.
No lead piping, no Professor Plum, just...
The Study.
Here is a picture of it before we had building work last year....study is this side of the arch, Anna's bedroom on the other side.

This is the 'After' picture showing the same view, but with a new dividing wall and doorway...

And looking from the hall through that new doorway, you get the full impact of what we found under the pink stripey wallpaper....

Lovely, isn't it?  Sadly there is no 'Before' picture showing the accumulated junk that was in there - it took us 1/2 a day to rehouse it all before we started to fill and skim the walls....sand (cough cough), refill, skim and sand again (cough again)...paint, refill the bits we missed....etc.etc. etc.

Then we began flooring with the leftovers from the hall and kitchen. Here is the very last hole to be floored:

after 500 sq m of flooring that gap was very significant to us!!! 

Here is Mark ceremonially placing the final board...(We are left with just 8 boards - not bad efficiency!)

  

Does he look pleased with himself,?

Here lies Pharoah Crowbar...

It was an exhausting weekend, but we now have a functional study....which I am sitting in to type this. It is serene and clean, and we love it.
Next job is to make endless book shelves so all our boxes of school books etc. can come down from the attic. Ah! The anticipation of being able to find things again after a year of being flummoxed!

"There'll be snow in August..."

Imelda Staunton in Nanny McPhee. Was that ever a good movie?!
Snow in  August had better be impossible, but snow in April may be on the cards it seems.
For those not living in the UK, the thing that was wrong from the past post was the photo of snow in the garden.....when there should be nice spring sunshine. 
How is a would-be self-sufficiency freak to get self-sufficient if she can't bear to go outside to plant veggie seeds???
 Still, Mark and I took some very nice spring-flowers-in-the-snow pics:

Plum Blossom....not sure there will be many plums this year...

Poor little daffodils - their faces were right on the ground, buried.  

Not exactly a flower, but it does have a stalk growing out of the ground...

Spot the problem picture...

Thought I would put a few pretty pics on the blog showing some scenes taken in and around our garden.
One of them is not how it should be....any guesses which one?