Why I shouldn't be allowed to multi task

Aren't clouds amazing!

Its been an eventful day here at the garden in a number of ways.

Coco and I have spent most of the day outside cutting grass, harvesting veggies and planting our melons out under cloches as it's turned rather cold here, well I've been planting Coco has been unplanting.

Right from the day I bought the seeds cheap in Focus, I thought you will have a lot to contend with my little beauties and I didn't expect much from them at all. I was pleased that they had even germinated.

Now if they produce anything it will be amazing, they have all been planted at least twice some three times.

Who ate the runners?

Sunday is roast day and we were very proud to have produced Potatoes, Carrots, Peas and Purple Curly Kale to have with it.

There is certainly a sense of achievement in harvesting, preparing, cooking and eating your own stuff.

We should have had Runner Beans as well but they sort of got eaten on the way back to the kitchen, didn't they Coco?

Now, to make our lives easier Nanny Southwellski has prepared a monthly menu for us so we know what we are having every day and it's brilliant! So today was roast chicken (not one of ours) with veggies.

As it was a beautiful day we decided that it would be best cooked on the BBQ using the spit and we would have it with salad and new potatoes. I balanced the chicken on the spit beautifully, turned on the burners, put the lid down and went to prepare Coco's dinner. She normally eats with us but time was ticking on etc etc so she had something else.

While she was eating I thought I'd make a loaf of bread and a cake (cake for the ofsted man!) and watch Coco and cook the chicken. Easy peasy!

To make it more of a challenge,  I took Coco for her bath (she had finished eating).

Chicken cooking, bread proving and all the ingredients ready for the cake, Coco in bath, marvellous!

Nanny Southwellski came and took over after how long I'm not really sure but Coco was turning prune like.

I walked into the kitchen to see smoke billowing from the BBQ. I went out, turned the burner off and lifted the lid to find the chicken on fire! I had been calm up until then.

Anyone in Hockwold waiting to see the Olympic torch pass through was not disappointed as it was on our deck and I was carrying it!

I like mine well done please.

In fact what I was doing was running around waving the flaming chicken on a spit about to extinguish the flames. It worked a treat.

The chicken however was slightly singed but it was only skin deep and I have to say it was delicious.  This is the second one we have done on the spit and it certainly stays moist and tasty

Lunch tomorrow - sorted!

The cake turned out a treat, but then Delia is a Goddess even if she does support Norwich City she has never let me down.

The Dough for the bread I divided between two loaf tins and then realised I had only made enough dough for one, Doh!

So I scooped it out and kneaded it again stuck it into one tin and it's turned out great.

Now all we have to do is get by the Ofsted man and it's on with the summer holidays!

And this is relaxing??!!??

I've read all the books and Coco and I have had long conversations about gardening and if it really is relaxing.

Now Coco will probably tell you that her idea of gardening is having a ride in the wheelbarrow, trying a freshly picked carrot or peas straight from the pod or having a go on her swing or a chill out with Uncle Luke in the hammock.

Uncle Luke is back from Aberystwyth for a few weeks, he is studying Genetics, poker and alcohol at University there. We are all very proud of him and probably don't tell him enough but then that's what parents, especially Dads do. 

Uncle Luke

Great Grandpa Southwellski would always tell me how well my brother Colin was doing and tell Colin how well I was doing and it was only after Great Grandpa Southwellski passed away that Colin and I spoke about it and realised that he was equally proud of us both. 

So Luke if you read this I am proud of you and all that you are doing and Coco has a very cool and chilled Uncle, even if you are a tad untidy!

Anyway is gardening relaxing?

The argument against.

I have developed a very individual war dance for when the dogs and cats stray onto the veggie plot, it would strike fear into Cochise himself.  

And when it rains from absolutely nowhere just as I am watering the peas which I stupidly placed as far away from the tap as I could and have to carry a watering can to them because the hose isn't long enough I go a decent shade of puce!

Monty

When my parsnip seeds on a strip (that are impossible to sow on a windy day and I resemble a gymnast doing a ribbon dance) only germinate every 6th seed I tend to feel a bit miffed.

Or when Monty creeps up behind me and barks just as I am removing that trickily placed side shoot just below my very first tomato of the season, which I have called Trevor by the way.



 The argument for.

Nanny Southwellski and Monty all smiles!

When Coco and I get up in the morning and let the chooks out and the birds are singing, the sun is shining and all the veggies are standing proud and glistening with early morning dew it makes me stand and look and feel good.

When Monty and Nanny Southwellski smile in unison it makes me feel warm inside and when Coco points at the carrots and peas and says 'This' as only she can, it makes the carrots taste so much sweeter. 

Trevor

 

And when our plants that we have nurtured from tiny seeds, battled to protect them from the chooks, dogs, cats and birds, watered religiously day in day out, talked to sung to and encouraged from the very start, when they start to produce the hard work is forgotten.

We have called our first tomato (left) Trevor for no reason other than it begins with 'T'.  Trevor is an Italian plum tomato who will end up in a pasta sauce of some sort.  You won't feel a thing Trevor.

Pea processing Southwellski style!

We harvested our first peas today, expecting a heavy crop we took our largest trailer (right) down to the peas and commenced picking.

Coco quickly took charge of quality control marking each suitable pea with a tooth mark, just to let me know that she had checked them all you know.

We seemed to have about twice as many pod shells as we did peas, I suspect I will trace the missing peas in tomorrows first nappy!

Our potatoes are the sweetest new potatoes you could wish to eat with just a hint of our home grown mint added at the end of cooking they are divine and the hard work in the cold of digging the plot, planting and then replanting after the chooks had dug in a fashion Time Team would have been proud of, being hit by a late frost which took them almost back to the ground, all that seems a dim and distant memory and well worth the effort.

So I guess I have answered my own question really, the fruits of Coco and my labours are more than enough to make us forget the stress and toil we have gone through to get here.

Yes, gardening is relaxing!

Its been a long time.......

since I was last here, Mr B dying has hit us all really hard and still we have a few moments where its still too sad for words. 

But in the garden life has continued be it plants or weeds and they are all growing at an alarming pace, especially now we have had some rain. Its odd that as a gardener I can irrigate my plot yet in some parts of Norfolk farmers aren't allowed to take water from the rivers and drains and yet we still use clean, drinking quality water to flush toilets.

We have had the best of the strawberries on the plot although the plants in the forest garden seem to be a bit behind and are just fruiting. We have noticed that in the forest garden the strawberry plants have grown taller and the fruit is larger than those in the cultivated plot.
 

Jarvis keeping watch

So much so that they have become a target for the blackbirds, I don't like to use a lot of netting in the garden in case the brids get tangled up in it although I do use it around the peas to give support and protect them.

Luckily we have our own security patrols, see left, in the shape of Jarvis and KC our two cats. They tend to be a better deterrent than netting or any of the flappy things I tie across the plot.

Brutus - as handsome as ever!

Brutus is doing well, his flock now numbers 8 since we lost a couple of hens to natural causes.

The eggs are still coming, but predicting how many we will get each day is a bit like picking the lottery numbers.  There were three today so the chooks have had a stern warning and been told if production doesn't go up there will be redundancies!

We have given the chooks a much larger run, they can wander about quite freely and in perfect safety.  I think this may be the reason the eggs production has dropped.  They get nosing about their run and forget why they are there!

Gooseberries

Cherries

Our fruit trees and bushes are looking good,
we have loads of cherries on the old tree and gooseberries on the old bush in the main garden.

The new gooseberry bushes are a little choked up by grass at the moment but its on my list.

White grapevine

We also have 4 grape vines planted in the plot and these have taken really well and throwing out lots of new growth so posts and wires will be needed pretty soon. 

We have two red grapes and two white so we will have to see how productive they are before we launch 'Chateau Southwellsi' on the wine loving public. 

Peas - the first pods!

Our peas that we started in the potting shed way back in March are now producing their first pods, we have planted some more seeds and these are now peeping through and will hopefully continue the crop for a few weeks.

We will plant another set of seeds in about three to four weeks time.

We have done repeated sowings with a number of crops by way of an experiment to see if we can gauge when we have stuff ready so that we don't get it all at once.

Radish

We learnt from experience with the lettuces not to sow too many at once as we had a whole row go to waste (although the chooks would disagree) because we couldn't eat them fast enough.

The same thing with the radishes.  I am the only one who really likes them but I just can't eat that many and I was pleased to give some away tonight to friends who visited.

I hope to get into the plot tomorrow and do some serious weeding and thinning out but we'll see what the weather has planned first.