Horticulture Notes (3)

Having harvested the beans the OH was pleased to see the coffee plant in glorious flower once again.

And here is the annual photo of the mountain strawberry plant that we won in the Marengo Centre raffle several years ago. Still, to my amazement,  going strong, and in fact a lot more flowers appeared in the weeks after I took this photograph. 

 We could not make our annual visit to the local nursery on South Ronaldsay this year for obvious reasons, and so missed the chance to choose new bedding plants for our troughs and pots while scoffing home bakes and donating to the local lifeboat. It was a loss. That said they did put their plants on-line and offered a delivery service so the OH ordered a pile of plants and potted them up when they were delivered. I thought I had lots of photos of these, but it seems I was wrong. 

Here however is a very cheerful scarlet geranium which we bought when the garden centre in town was allowed to re-open. We expected there to be ravening hordes, but in fact it was pretty quiet. We've not made a habit of buying  bedding plants here because usually by the  time we remember and get there all the good stuff is long gone to the homes of proper gardeners who are much more on the ball about when to go and get stuff, but this time they place had loads of plants  and they were all healthy and sturdy looking.  Having splurged our budget on the home delivery from the other place sadly we had to restrain ourselves here, but then again  the other place had been very deficient in the geranium department so we splashed out  on this. I do like a nice bright red geranium. 

Fathers Day Fancies

The local hotel/restaurant/pub recently offered a choice of Fathers Day boxes for people to order; scones, puddings or fancies (fancies being small cakes/tray bakes of the sort you have with a High Tea, or morning coffee etc) 

In the spirit of supporting a devastated local economy (not to mention the thought of a selection of cakes I wouldn't have had to bake myself) I ordered a box of fancies for the OH and sent him off to pick it up yesterday.

And here it is

Since it has now been in the house for something over twenty four hours I have to say that it is no longer quite such a full box! Special shout out for the chocolate cupcakes wich were delicious and definitely my favourite so far. 

Beachcombing Treasures

Well not treasures exactly but a couple of unusual things.

I have a small collection of shells picked up from the beaches around here but I tend not to add to it, since there seems no point in taking things away from the beach, however pretty,  that are more or less exactly the same as the ones I already have. But a recent trip to the 3rd Barrier beach turned up some more unusual ones

First up a very small portion of shell; bright red with small white spots. The spots aren't raised and I have no idea what this might be from. I did wonder if it was a discarded false finger nail at first  but when we picked it up it was definitely a piece of shell. 

And then a large piece of sea urchin shell. This was half buried and we dug around it very carefully in case it was a real and intact urchin but it turned out to be just a partial shell. It's beautiful though; the photo doesn't do the colours justice. I wish I had some wool dyed to match as it would make a lovely subtle shawl. 

I Made A Card!

I see from the blog that the last time I made a card was in January 2019, although I was full of good intentions then about making more. Intentions which needless to say weren't fulfilled. 

I needed to make a card to send to someone and yesterday I just happened to fall over, metaphorically speaking,  the leftovers of a card making kit that have been lying about on a shelf on my desk for a long time and I thought 'I could probably do something with those if I put my mind to it. 

So I did. I took the card and the textured paper, added a bit of shiny card, some paper flowers and a small fabric butterfly and called it done. It's not amazingly ambitious but I was pleased with how it turned out.

I did realise while looking for some little flowers to put on it that really I have a lot of bits for cards that I will never use and when I've finished my latest clearing crusade (the selves in the back hall)  I must turn my attention to thinning out supplies. I'm sure there must be local schools/playgroups or something that could use the stuff.  

Baking Subscription May

Since they sent the shopping list for the fresh ingredients for the June box earlier this week I thought it was probably time I buckled down and did May's baking. This month it was the cumbersomely named Carrot Cake Whoopie Pies . ( No, me neither ). Basically they were small carrot  cookies sandwiched together with cinnamon flavoured buttercream. They looked like this 

or at least that one did. And yes, that is the fancy pants new china we finally got around to unwrapping  few weeks ago and yes I have managed to find somewhere to put the old stuff and make myself room on the kitchen bench to actually bake again. 

So I am no longer a cake piping virgin since you had to pipe the mixture onto cake trays to bake the cookies. It was fine; they are twice as big as they are supposed to be, but the way I see it that's a  good thing, because you can have one and feel virtuous, whereas if they were half the size you'd need two and then you'd feel guilty about having seconds. I was not quite so carried away by enthusiasm for this new found skill (although to call it a skill with reference to my attempts is over egging the pudding more than somewhat) that I did the second lot which was piping the butter cream into the cookies to sandwich them together. No-one was going to see it and the weight of the top cookie was going to flatten it anyway. I reverted to a teaspoon and my trusty palette knife for that. I did my own chocolate drizzling rather than get the OH to do it for me like he did last time chocolate drizzling was required. I regret to note that I am not nearly as good at drizzling chocolate as he is, and that fact might well have something to do with the fact that you're getting a picture of one, rather than the whole batch. 

After all that, they aren't  really to our taste, although we like them enough to eat them all I daresay. I thought I might make some nice fruit scones tomorrow though. 

TV Watching in Lockdown

It's a long time since I had a rant about the television, and I'm not going to rant now. I said a few days ago that I hadn't managed to find the time to watch box sets, even though at the start of this it seemed like a golden opportunity to start watching and then culling our DVD collection. However I've still only managed Studio 60 and the first 90 minutes of Jewel in the Crown, nether of which were charity shop candidates so obviously that's a project that's not happening! 

Anyway, to the tv. There's not a lot of new drama about, but there's some other stuff. Plenty of property porn, where people buy houses in the UK (Location Location). or abroad (A Place in the Sun) or decide not to buy anywhere new at home or abroad but just improve what they've got (Renovate Don't Relocate, Your Home Made Perfect). Your Home Made Perfect has to be my current favourite, where people with 'non-functioning houses' and usually quite hunungous amounts of money get to choose between two architects who come up with solutions to their problems. The two architects are terrbly practical ,slightly Mumsy Laura, who to be fair the home owners usually go for, and mad Irishman Robert who has a bun, ear-rings a lovely accent and an inexplicable fondness for bench seating built of concrete. The gimmick is that the homeownes get to see both architect's schemes in VR before deciding which to choose. Personally if I had a non functioning house and a humungous amount of money I would nearly always choose Robert but you need to be brave. It's good fun though. I still enjoy Location Location,  but I'm a bit off APITS, basically because ten minutes in I usually remember that I have seen it before. I am 100% convinced that I could give a five minute presentation on the Olive Press in Oliva, so often have people on the show been dragged off to see, and be told, about it. 

Apart from the property shows there's The Great British Sewing Bee, bits of which get sillier every year. What is the point of trying to get people to make 'wearable garments' from a selection of plastic laundry bags? Those things are naff as laundry bags, let alone when they've been ripped up, re-cobbled together and presented as something wildly creative that no-one would be seen dead in. I've also found this year that most of the contestants, as well as the presenter, get on my nerves, but that could be a side effect of lockdown. And I still love watching them choose their fabrics, tussle with their machines and then create something wonderful. 

Some things bear almost endless repeats and Victoria Wood's Dinnerladies is one of them. I've really enjoyed watching the reruns of this. Is it the greatest British sit-com ever written? Must be in the top ten. Something else I'm watching as a catch up, which I avoided like the plague when it was on 'properly' is Doc Martin. Some channel is showing double episodes of this on Friday evenings right  from the beginning and I am enjoying them very much. Yes it's pure escapism but somehow, lovable if slightly odd characters, beautiful scenery, sunshine and the knowledge that however bad something is, it will all turn out right in the end makes for perfect lockdown viewing. I avoided it before because I was definitely not a fan of either of its leads, Martin Clunes and Caroline Catz, but in fact they are both very good in this and maybe my prejudice against them is wearing away. 

One drama series that did get its new season onto the box was The A Word, the fourth season of which finished last evening. It sounds downbeat, following as it does the trials and tribulations, as well as the occasional joys, of a family living with an autistic son, and I don't know why I started to watch it. But I'm glad I did because as well as lovely scenery (see above) and a fantastic ensemble cast, it's positive and heart warming and however awful things sometimes get, at bottom it's about  a group of people all trying to do the right thing in sometimes challenging circumstanes. That makes it sound very worthy but its also very funny and my Tuesday evenings will be slightly bereft now that the latest series s over. 

So there you have it. TV in Lockdown. Dire but with Bright Spots. 

100 Books to Read Poster Number 12

Yup, The Hound of the Baskervilles. I read all the Sherlock Holmes stories when I was at school including this one and never really felt much compulsion to revisit any of them, but there it was on the poster, and as it happens I have a rather beautiful illustrated and annotated edition of it given to me by my brother in law some years ago. So I hauled it out of the bookshelf and gave it a go. 

Obviously when I was at school quite a lot of the unpleasant nineteenth century world view contained within it (such as attitudes to women and the working class and Empire) passed me by and I suspect that my reading of it then was therefore  more enjoyable. Also knowing the end does rather spoil the suspense. 

That said there were some nice moments in this, notably when CD is describing either the natural world such as Dartmoor, or the weather. He can be a better writer than I suspected he was. My major reaction though was WHAT DID THE DOG DO TO DESERVE THAT? My sympathies were with the dog, and the butler and his wife, and the rest of them frankly I found extremely unpleasant. 

And as it instilled in me no wish to revisit the Holmes canon in any shape or form,  I'll record this as a slightly- qualified Miss, and move on. 

Macaroons!

The OH bakes occasionally, when the mood takes him and I let him near the baking oven. He'd been muttering for a while about trying some macaroons and last week he finally got  around to making some. 

Herewith the photographic evidence

They were a bit of  a disappointment to him to be honest. When he added the hot sugar syrup to his beaten egg whites all the air came out of them. So the mixture ended up difficult to pipe and they came out as quite large but flat discs rather than the super little puffed up circles they are meant to be.  

Like the OH and myself, they improved with age, and tasted nicely of almond. They weren't macaroons, but they were things not totally unlike macaroons, and I daresay he will have another go one of these days. 

And maybe we will order some real ones from Betty's of Harrogate for my birthday, if we remember. 

Lock Down Knitting: A Big Thing

So last year I signed up for the 2019 Debbie Abrahams Mystery Blanket because it started in February and I thought my Ph. D. would be all done and dusted by then and a long term creative project would be just what the doctor ordered and there would be no problem keeping up with the monthly  instalments, because after all what else would I have to do? . Well I think we all know how that went. With all the bells and whistles the Ph. D. was not finished in fact until  August by which time I was well behind with the blanket and deep into family stuff, and once that was all over then there was the Christmas knitting, and trips away and all manner of stuff. 

So why then did I sign up for the 2020 Mystery Blanket? Well for all the reasons really that I signed up for the one in 2019. I wanted to know if, all other things being equal, I could actually keep up and finish the blanket within the allotted time. 

And so far so good. I have managed the squares for March April and May all in their correct months, and have done two of the five squares for June which, given that it's only 6th today, I feel is good progress for this month.

I have photos of the March and April squares. 

And as there are 12 there must be a couple of May ones in there as well. Obviously it's a Sand and Sea theme. I'm hoping I can keep up and get this finished on schedule in November at which point I will go back to the 2019 one and finish it. Well that's the plan. 

There is no part of any plan that includes me signing up for 2021!

Horticulture Notes (2)

Sometime last year the local shop had a few cacti for sale. It was a bit of a random thing, they don't normally stock them, and they didn't look like the healthiest specimens in the world but the OH bought one to see if he could do anything with it and has been nurturing it ever since. 

I have not been nurturing it as I am famously impervious to the charm of house plants and look upon them as window sill clutterers and mess makers (dropped leaves and water over spill etc). It's one of the many ways in which we differ.  

Anyway on Tuesday when he was watering the cacti he said 'I think that cactus I bought at the local shop might be about to flower you know!' and I said something soothing and congratulatory in reply without looking up from a tricky piece of knitting and promptly forgot all about it. 

Until the next day when he happened to glance at the window sill and said 'Oh Wow' and 'It flowered' and various other excited things and, lo and behold, it had. It had produced a large and very beautiful flower. 

A Bit of a Moan about Cardboard.

Remember the other day when I got all excited about the Phase 1 lock down easing, and one of the things I was most excited about was the re-opening of the local recycling centre. This was mainly because the prospect of ridding ourselves of the accumulated cardboard was sending me quite giddy. 

Pictures of the cardboard mountain.... not only a fire hazard but making access to the back door very difficult too.

Well Orkney Islands Council duly announced some recycling centre re-opening. They re-opened two, both in Kirkwall, and both for garden rubbish only. Oh, very well done OIC. Not. 

I was cross. I think cross might be understating my reaction slightly. In fact I was so cross that I insisted we topped up our normal rubbish bin with cardboard, not that there was room for much since rubbish collections were among the first things to be cut and are therefore less frequent than normal. I didn't feel at all guilty - see comments above re fire hazard. I know lots of people never bother to take their cardboard to the tip, just add it to their normal bin and that's what we'll continue to do until it's all gone or the council re-open our local tip and let us take the cardboard there again, whichever comes first. Just at present it feels like hell might freeze over before either of those other two things happen, but I'm sure that's just my annoyance talking there! 

Another Two Bite the Dust!

Calming activity continues to meet up with the great declutter as I do a few more jigsaws. My need to do them has abated over the last few days which I take to be a good sign of decreased anxiety levels but two recently completed ones are bound for the library/charity shop, when they re-open and start accepting donations. 

First up is this one

which turned out to be one of those puzzles that it's really fun to do the first time only

Next up is this one which I've had for years but this was only the second time I've done it.

It's a lovely picture when it's finished but my word, it's a difficult one to do. A major problem is the similarity of so much of the design, and closely related to that pieces of the same size and shape which look as though they are in the correct place but actually aren't. Frustration city. 

And this one following I am still in two minds about

It's very pretty but sorting out the pieces is a total pain, since so many of the colours are so close. So it may get a reprieve. Or it may not. 

Horticulture Notes (1)

Earlier in the year there was a post about the OH's coffee plant which was displaying lots of blossom and producing fruit as well. It has done this in the past, well last year, but there wasn't a lot of fruit and he just left it alone. This year we've moved tings along. (That's a royal we, by the way. Generally I don't do plant/garden stuff)

So a few days ago he harvested the fruit. It's called cherries apparently.

The next stage is to get the beans out.

You can apparently do all sorts of exciting things with the discarded outer layer, including eating it raw. He tried. I don't think he would recommend it, but possibly it's just an acquired taste.  

And then you dry the beans.

He tells me that he's now on to the next stage which is dehusking the dried beans and it will apparently take 'forever'. I'll keep you posted.