Tuesday 1 November 2016

Normality In November?!

Morning.

Here, I'm not sure how, we are in November. I decided to take couple of photos from the garden. What an Autumn day it was yesterday, glorious, not at all cold.




The boys are back to school for the last half of the term before Christmas. (At this point I have to admit we were singing the 12 Days Of Christmas in the car on the way back from collecting them on Saturday!)

We had our little Halloween celebration yesterday and the boys had carved their pumpkins, with a little help from Dad, on Sunday evening.

(Sorry, no time for PicMonkey; I know it would look better.)














The beetroot has been taken up!  



With a couple of inches of roots on each, my harvest weighed in at almost 3lbs. 




Not a great amount I know but I am really learning how things look in the patch space wise and I will plant twice as much next year. I have put them in storage in a box of my compost, don't have any sand left over from the rendering unfortunatley, but just for a little while as I don't have time to pickle it at the moment. The box will soon be able to to into the cellar store room with the onions. Harry can't wait; he LOVES beetroot!

Oh, have been meaning to say the following - 

- the garlic I'm growing is called Germidour and I planted two bulbs which had approximately 12 cloves on each I think

- the pak choi is a Green F1 Hybrid and I have planted around 20 seeds I think. Will see how they get on then might start off a few more,

Where was I? I dug over some of the veg patch after I took up the beetroot ready to put in the onions. Can't do anymore today as my back is really suffering - I can't often do two days on the trot. I showed a photo of the sets I had delivered but the vaireties are called Red Cross, red onions, Snowball, white and Tornado, brown. I'm not sure if I can get all the sets in the space I have so will have to see. Has anybody grown any of these vaieties? (I bought them together as they came together in a bundle.)

Oh, Jon found this in the shed; you normally put knives on it in a kitchen but it is just the ticket in the Poly House.

The foliage on the sweet potatoes is starting to die back quite a bit which is very exciting. I ordered some slips for next year but of course they won't arrive for a good while yet. I'll be interested to see how these harvest as they are just three in the growing bag given to me by Dawn.

Oh, this was the temperature in the Poly House yesterday and it said on the news this morning that Mid-Wales was 71 degrees yesterday - weather here was a-maze-ing yesterday, so warm and gorgeous, words fail me, really just a fab day. 



The ceiling and the one required wall in the cellar store room have been plastered and with any luck should be painted by the weekend as it is drying very well. We may use a lime paint on the stone work, not sure yet but we were left lots of it in the shed and it would save buying any more paint.


Look at the sign Jon made me!



If you need an explanation please feel free to ask as I don't think I have mentioned it in a previous post! I have spotted some reasonably priced gingham on the internet so will order that net week. I really miss having an indoor market like we used to visit before we move; nothing like that in Aber I'm afraid. I love Aberdashery but a bit expensive at times.

I have purchased a couple of things for the house/kitchen in readiness for Christmas. I needed a good piping bag so that I can decorate biscuits...



love Tala products.

I LOVED the honeycomb decorations last year but just didn't have quite enough....

There are four 12inch ones - two red and teo green - I have two smaller white ones to come along with two packs of LED lights; the battery run ones are fab as you can put them anywhere.

The Christmas cake in the oven and cooking a little quicker than in the gas oven; keeping a close eye on it as obviously the first time I have baked it in the Rayburn - wasn't confident enough with it last year!  I'll put it away until next week when it will be fed for the first time. I just use Gluvhein, is that how you spell it, but I may pop a bit of Jack Daniels in it as we have a bit left over from a family get together in the summer.


Well, I think that is quite enough of a ramble for the morning. I think I will go out and prune the rose bush around the front door today as it has finished flowering I think. It needs to be cut back so we don't get poked in the eye with a very sharp thorn!

Bye for now.

Lou.xx

6 comments:

  1. Love the prep room, I remember doing ducking apples when I was kid and doing it with mine :-)

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    1. Thanks! I put apples on string for them to eat from at a party we had a couple of years ago. I have to keep reminding myself that we are not out of the woods yet as once the cellar store room is done we also have to give the washer/drier, shoe stand, coat area a lick of paint, THEN all the stuff dumped in the craft room has to be sorted, too, but eventually we will be oragnised!

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  2. Love the doomsday prep room. We need a horse box trailer to move our food storage when we move next time. It is dotted all around the house so I am completely envious and watching with piqued interest of all the goings on with your Prep Room! I love it, such a good use of space. Why dont we build houses with cellars any more in the UK?

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  3. We are very grateful for the useable space and thank you Sol for taking an interest. Our last house had a cellar, too, but it was a house which was originally 2 back to back houses, the same next door with our neighbours. We had a few issues with that because it was more underground than this one but was a useable space to a degree. We found that people when looking at buying it they were worried about damp and stuff. It would possibly help with new houses being built so small these days if there were more cellars.

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  4. Lovely post and I too love the room. Your halloween looks exciting and the food so creative. I see you did the tangerines, I had some to do but forgot them!! Oops. I think that's a great amount of beetroot. I'm going to do hughs choc beetroot brownies...mmm. Hope your cake is fab, I am sure it will be x

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  5. Thanks chic. I wonder if Harry would like beetroot brownie as he loves choc brownie and beetroot!

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Thank you so much for finding the time to comment. I really appreciate it and will always try to reply.xx