Red Jam

Fire up the oven, sieve out the weevils, bring on the baking!

The Last of the BroadBeans

Radishes and Dwarf Green Beans

The 'Bob and Mary' dwarf green beans have started producing pods before 'Magpie' despite being sown 5 weeks later.

The Milan Purple Tops are redolent of the illustrated plates of roots and tubers in the 'Album Vilmorin. Les Plantes potagères (1850–1895)'. This book, reprinted by Taschen, ISBN 978-3-8365-3599-1,is another favourite of ours that is pulled out and perused to while away winter.

First Courgettes

Of Muck and Men

Today we visited the beam engine house of the Crossness Pumping Station, part of the sewerage system built by Sir Joseph Bazalgette to rid London of The Great Stink.

The Octagon

Prince Consort

We were inawed by the size and weight of the rotative beam engines and by the ingenuity of the Victorians.

We were amused by the wry humour of the capitals; nothing like syrup of figs to clear a system of blockages :)

Out of muck grows abundance ;) We admired the fecund details of the wrought and cast ironwork.

A Pandemonium of Parrots

Eeeek it's the parakeets.

Today was the first day that we've ever seen Ring-necked parakeets in our hood. It's usually the starveling starlings that strip the neighbouring 28ft 'crab apple' of its bounty. They've been scouting the tree but not yet shown any interest in the demolishing the fruit as it is perhaps not yet ripe enough.

The parakeets were gorging with intent, we wondered if they are able to stomach less ripe fruit due to their indigenous diet. We spotted six birds... we hope they leave some fruit for the starvelings.

Tubby Tabby's New Frenemy

Blossom and Blooms

Angelica Jam

We trimmed back the angelica in an attempt to thwart the leaf miners. The trimmings were too fragrant to compost so we made a little time capsule pot of jam. We followed Jekka McVicar's recipe.

Something to put away for winter when there will be time to experiment with it.

Sweet American Pie

Inspired by a recipe recently posted on Diary of a Tomato we made this sweet Rhubarb Buttermilk Pie for our Sunday brunch.

The sweetness of the custardy, buttermilk filling offsets the tart rhubarb perfectly. We left out the ginger for a more trad rhubarb and custard flavour and used light muscovado sugar for the Amish no-roll pie crust. This was the perfect pie to put together on a Saturday evening as the ingredients are measured out in cups and the pie assembled with little mess and few utensils.

Our Victoria Rhubarb is perhaps a little less attractive in an open top pie. We need to work a bit more on our presentation: we needed to be a bit more stingy on the rhubarb and to be honest our pie could have done with perhaps 5min less baking but we were distracted by the England v Italy, World Cup match.

The First of the Broad Beans

Our Sussex trug was made by the folks at The Truggery.

Elderflower Cordial

♥ Our annual batch of elderflower cordial.♥

We discovered Richard Mabey's book 'Food For Free' many years before this blog; it is the inspiration for a number of our seasonal forays that have become tradition, good times lived, good times to live. This 2012 edition, ISBN 978-0-00-743847-1, is filled with beautiful macro, micro moments of the countryside. We loved paging through this book in the gloom of winter in anticipation of the sap rising.

Big Black Beetle

We spotted this beastie whilst out this evening watering the raised beds.

This is a lesser stag beetle, Dorcus parrallelopipedus. It is about 30mm long. We are hoping its presence is down to the log pile we've been building at the bottom of the garden these past couple of years. However, our book tells us these beetles take to the wing in summer so it could have flown in from anywhere.

*note to selves - carry a coin in your pockets to establish scale

Prepping for Salad Days

A summer project we've planned for this year is to make provision for growing salads. We may have something cat and pigeon proof ready in time for a late salad crop. Prompted by a Fennel & Fern post on how to make chive blossom vinegar we remembered the bookmarks in our copy of 'Preserves' by Pam Corbin, a River Cottage Handbook, ISBN 978-0-7475-9532-8. This little book is the concise, complete reference that has taught us how to make jams, cordials, preserves and to scald our jam muslins.

Where the Wild Things Grow

A gift from a friendly neighbour of geum, Mrs Bradshaw and 2 healthy allotment cukes to replace our woefully withered Agnes plants (what did we do wrong?), thank goodness for greenfingered friends :)

Walthamstow Wild Cat in the clover (trifolium 'Dragon's Blood').

Our pet weed - Plantago major. We've refrained from weeding out this fine specimen of a Greater Plantain because it has all the qualities of a Dürer watercolour.

The lychnis coronaria alba next to the insect hotel is out in flower.

Now that we've got a little more sunlight into the garden we've been able to start experimenting with plants, this green and peaceful spot is planted with Artic Summer Mullein (verbascum bombyciferum), Cow Parsley (anthriscus sylvestris 'ravenswing'), bronze fennel, ligularia przewalskii 'Golden Ray', sweet woodruff.

The Bee's Knees

We find ourselves thumbing through this book by Michael Chinery, ISBN 978-0-00-717966-4, on a regular basis; it's helped us solve numerous entomological mysteries.

Rhubarb, rhubarb

 

 

Edit: We didn't follow any particular recipe for this cordial.

We try to add as little water as possible when softening the rhubarb so not to dilute it. We test the rhubarb with a fork when softening it and take it off the heat immediately as we don't like to let it stew. We leave the pulp to strain in a jam muslin overnight(remember to scald the muslin in boiling water). We're stingy on the sugar when making the syrup so that the rhubarb flavour is very raw. We add the juice of a couple of lemons for a more rounded tang. We don't add citric acid as this makes the cordial too sharp; we make it in small batches so we don't need to add preservatives in addition to the sugar. We keep the cordial in the fridge, though we use it up very quickly.

Hope this helps :)