Jobs Between The Showers.

Hello.

How are you all doing? Not too bad here; there have been some and will be more changes to the coronavirus restrictions regarding lockdown here in Wales. However, as a family we are not rushing out to the shops or anywhere else any time soon - staying home and staying safe is still our motto - but our boys will each be attending school one day a week from the beginning of July. We are confident that both of their schools are putting in place the necessary precautions needed to keep them safe; I'll be taking them to school myself, leaving more space for children who may need to travel by bus - I am lucky that I can do this sort of thing because I don't go out to work.

This week was my monthly trip to the wholesalers which we do along with a weekly shop and deliveries now and again from a local butcher, mainly for their gorgeous sausages. We're now fully supplied with flour of all sorts, plus we have plenty of other dry goods like rice, oats and pasta in stock.

I like the big tins of beans and chopped toms we get as with the boys being home they are great for lunches, adding to pasta dishes etc. ,with these basic items we'd never starve!

The weather has been quite wet at times this week so Wednesday was also a day for baking - chocolate and marshmallow biscuits (winging that one as didn't have all the ingredients normally used in the recipe!), cheese scones and almond pound cake with a little dried fruit. I always kid myself that this will keep my three men going through the week but I think the biscuits were gone by Thursday afternoon but I still have one cake in the freezer and three of the scones. Not too shabby. 

I also managed to do some more papercrafting on my junk journal which I'm absolutely loving. I'm gradually getting pages completed but still have around ten to do; here are a couple of pages I particularly like from this week.

So to outside. This is the polytunnel at the start of the week but as you all know things change very quickly.

The butternut squash in the far right corner has turned into a monster, I have the first tomato fruit - a ciuor di bue - along with the peas getting lots of pods now and the kale is doing brilliantly

Today the rain has been on and off since about 10am, but yesterday was a great day and I was able to get lots done outside. I didn't really do that much outside this last week as it has been so wet, but warm, too, so this weekend has been great as yesterday was lovely and today I did manage to get a couple of things done between the showers one of which was sowing more khol rabi. 

Yesterday consisted of planting more dwarf peas but outside this time and some peppers in the polytunnel; I used some old drink bottles as mini cloches for those as well as the one aubergine plant I am nurturing! They seem to be having a positive effect already.

I did other little jobs like pinching out the tomatoes, potting up a sunflower and also doing another round of sowing swede, not a good result from the last one so hope this one works.

I noticed that my broccoli is now too tall for the frame I had covering it and I've spotted pesky cabbage white butterflies. Therefore I have created a slightly Heath Robinson-esque protection effort until my delivery of butterfly netting arrives middle of next week, thank goodness. I'm determined not to lose this or the caulis and cabbage. Talking of cabbage, the bed where they will eventually go still has quite a lot of onions in it but I took a couple out up yesterday as they hadtheir little gone-to-seed hats on; I took a few other things into the house from the garden - soooo love having lots of salad and herbs.

A few weeks ago I put a load of nettles with some water and today was the big day to sieve them and bottle up the goodness. Here it is after going through the sieve... 

and the sludge went into one of the compost bins. 

I now have six four pint bottles of feed which I can use on the tomatoes, leeks, brassicas, courgettes and cucumbers. Very pleased with my efforts.

The sheep were put into the flock this morning from the garden which means I can now leave the polytunnel door open without the netting, if I choose to, but I can also have things outside like the cabbages and PSB before them are planted out. 

Ok, today is Fathers' Day and I have the fixings to do on a coffee and walnut cake for the man of the moment. We'll be enjoying it with a brew whilst watching a film in a little while; we are done outside for jobs today even though the weather has cheered up a bit.  

Hope you enjoyed my ramblings and that you have a good rest of the weekend. 

Bye for now. 

Lou.xx