In a Vase on Monday - After the rain: Sunshine

Cathy's blue and white arrangement may be your cup of tea, and they are other options too through the links from the rest of us who join her each week.  I am feeling much better now, and the sunshine today has brought some cheer. Despite much rescheduling and cancellations of outings, we shall carry on with our IAVOM.

Yesterday it started off very wet, constant slow rain was interspersed with much heavier showers. 

As we had our Sunday morning breakfast in the conservatory, a large wood pigeon came and sat in the bird bath. 

As each heavy burst of rain fell, it rolled over as if in a spa allowing each wing in turn to open and have a good wash.

Today I am starting to feel much better, and with the sunshine, enjoyed the garden, sitting to have our morning drink in the 'sitting circle'.  As we sat there I was deciding what to put together for today's Vase on Monday.

To celebrate the day of sunshine a yellow vase with the last of Narcissus Rip Van Winkle.  They are joined by some newly opening pale lemon Narcissus 'Pasdenom'.  The Arum Italicum has leaves with their tracery of silver to spare this spring, and a few stems from the Mahonia aquifolium 'Apollo' with some of its bronzy leaves complete the swiftly assembled vase.

I love birds......watching them in the garden.  Its not surprising that I have a few small bird artifacts.  This one is a whistle and a gift from my sister decades ago.

 Today I disturbed the largest of slows worm under the garden clippings at the foot of the wall.  Of course the garden tidy up in that area has been cancelled!  May the legless lizards scoff as many slugs as they can find.

Roasted red pepper and chili sauce with a little Red Leopard

Maybe I ought to rename this Red Leopard Sauce....

Since I first made Roasted Red Pepper and Chili Sauce, I have enjoyed it so much that this weekend I worked on my third batch, having run out completely.

During moments of boredom due to staying at home poorly, and excessive rain, I was looking at the possibility of growing Goji berries. I love trying to grow unusual things, that is on hole for the moment. 

What I do have in the garden, and had yet to try in the kitchen is some of  my Pseudowintera colorata Red Leopard.  For some time I have been considering using some this shrub also kinow as Mountain horopito or New Zealand Pepper Tree.  I had read that New Zealand chefs are rediscovering their native cuisine and adding this in chic restaurants.

Apparently you can use them in the way one uses bay leaves.  Having picked a few leaves, and had a chew on a fresh one I can describe it as having a sharp hot peppery taste, with an effect not unlike schechuan pepper adding a tingling taste. 

Two leaves of Pseudowintera bruised were added at the same time as the vinegar, and after half an hour when the mixture was passed through a thin sieve, these were removed.

Four small jars of 'Red Leopard Sauce'.

Six on Saturday - 14 March 2020

The Prop is keeping all our spirits up, and as we continue to appreciate some delights in our gardens..Do join us again this week:  there at the hub are links to other bloggers via the comments section.

It has been a strange week: I have been self isolating as I have some lurgy.  Which one?  Who knows?  There have been very few 'recorded' cases of the dreaded virus in Somerset, so it is totally unlikely, but as people are not tested, the real figures won't be known. I am not so bad that I need any medical or hospital intervention apart from help from the usual stuff one might have in a drawer: night nurse etc.  Can't remember last time I had a cold or flu or whatever! Some of the time I have been well enough to sit in the conservatory and in the last couple of days even venture out for the purpose of taking a picture or two, and yesterday even pruned a couple of bushes.  There has been time for thought, and for appreciation of my small garden, and leafing through books.

(1) Bird in the Hand?  I would rather have two in the bush, or many birds in the garden.

Watching the birds this week has been a joy.  I sit still, and yet some birds seem to feel the binoculars on them.  I daren't reach for the camera, preferring to watch their antics.  Coal tits, great tits, blue tits, long tail tits, gold crests, wrens, blackbirds, sparrows, dunnocks, robins, jays, a handsome male pheasant right up to the window of the conservatory, bl***y pigeons, magpies, jays in just one week! Feeding and some collecting nesting material, lots of splashing around int he bird bath, chasing each other and more.  We have daily visits from a bird of prey who perches in the trees over the wall, usually scattering the perching pigeons, but above one pigeon came to rest just above it!

(2) Corydalis Beth Evans is putting a wonderful show in the bed just an arms length from where I have been sitting in the conservatory.  I realised I showed this last week, but it is another clump, and they have cheered me up so much, they deserve to be mentioned for its 'medicinal properties'.

(3) Pittosporum tenuifolium 'Tom Thumb' is darkening up nicely in the spring sunshine.  It is feeling at home now, and will prove in time to be a useful little shrub in just the right place.  I am particularly fond of this one, as it is growing from a cutting, which rooted from a fine little specimen which I had planted in my previous gravel garden. For now it is surrounded by low lying creeping thymes

(4) Just how does a Rosemary fair after a good prune?  This Rosemary has been in this spot for less than three years and has more than paid back not only to the bees and bumblebess, but also as flavouring in the kitchen, as well as 'greenery' in my Vase on Monday.  Another season will see it outgrow it spot, and is rather 'unpleasant' in its shape.  Already its successor, a good plant started as a cutting is flourishing in the front 'mediterranean' garden.  There cats may well mark it, so this spring I shall be starting some back garden successors.  As soon as those prove to have taken, this old plant will most probably be grubbed out.

(5) Green curtains of Kenilworth Ivy through which the wren loves to search for it food.  Soon it will be covered in so many little flowers, mostly insignificant, but I shall enjoy observing which insects visit them.  When the cemetery people made an awful bodge of repairing the wall in 2017, its bare uneven poorly dressed stone seemed to be so much of bone of contention.  To think that a few of the seeds had remained and so quickly have recolonized the sunny side, is a wonder of nature.

This plant has an unusual method of propagation. The flower stalk is initially positively phototropic and moves towards the light. After fertilisation, it becomes negatively phototropic and moves away from the light. This results in seed being pushed into dark crevices of rock walls, where it is more likely to germinate.  

(6) Persicaria Red Dragon has some fine looking red shoots thickening out and on the blocks reading for its spring sprint.....

Hopefully over the next few days I shall continue to improve....we have Matthew Biggs coming to the gardening club!

Six on Saturday - 7 March 2020

I'm posting late in the day, but the advantage is I get to read amusing comments on the Props page.  He is truly in the propagation mode this week!

(1)Lettuce grown in outer space was on the news this week, following an article in New Scientist saying it was as nutritious at lettuce grown on earth.  They do have an advantage as I doubt whether they took up slugs, for anything other than maybe some experiments rather than to graze on its leaves.  I hadn't chosen the same variety: Red Romaine which they had selected as it germinates easily.

Down on the surface of Earth, a few varieties were sown up and are starting to emerge this morning  in less than a week.  Lettuces Catalogna Cerbiatta, New Red Fire and Royal Oak x 5 modules each.

To complement the lettuce , some modules have been sown up with Coriander Calypso, calendula and dill.  I love a salad, I really do, but Mr S used to be a reluctant partaker.  That changed last year when I started to buy mixed bags of leaves grown within walking distance.  As the year passed I started to add edibles from the garden such as nasturtium leaves, dill, etc. He is now 'on board'.

(2) Rocket: another space related connection!  Last year my son shared a bulk packet of rocket seed for  picking your own leaves from a pot.  As the light is getting better, I have sown a tray and seeds are just bursting into life.

More Veg that is what I want to grow this year, but still in my little patch, with maybe a few pretty leafy things tucked into the borders.  I came across www.moreveg.co.uk  just as I was looking for a paticular variety of lettuce, and was delighted to find a company selling small amounts of seed of rather interesting edibles.

(3) Alliums

Allium schoenoprasum aka chives border the small 'potager' and have been providing a few leaves for the past couple of weeks.  From now on there will be an abundance!

Allium schubertii close by the gravel area are up and a quick peer down into the centre shows that the buds are poised and ready to rocket up into flower.

(4) Corydalis Beth Evans

Two years ago I bought my first little pot of Corydalis Beth Evans.  Last autumn I put the corms out of its pot and planted four small groups.  They have bulked up very well, and will be a spring special in the garden for many years to come.  Once it has flowered and seeded, it will die down and melt into the ground, making room for all the other emerging summer plants.

(5) Brunnera macrophylla 'Jack Frost' has survived the winter, it is on the 'dark side' and its silver veined leaves and blue flowers lighten the spot nicely.

(6) Emerging leaves

Tulipa Sprengeri Trotters Form

Will this be the year these flower, or will I need to wait another year?  This and several other clumps around the garden are at about this same stage.

The Acer's newly unfurling buds against a fence green with the tell tale of a wet winter, growing daily.

Plant and shrub cuttings lie along the base of the wall, and with a covering of winter worn wind blown leaves offer shelter for small creatures during the winter, attracting slow-worms  and many forms of small garden wildlife.   This week the blackbird has been collecting long strands of old Phuopsis stylosa and bleached leaves and stems for her nest, and the jays continue to look for long fallen acorns.

Baking when you are bored

So the weather is gloomy and cold, and just to cheer myself up, indulged in a little sweet playdough.  The recipe is from Bake with Jack.   These are Malted Cinnamon Buns, but with the bits sifted out of the malted flour.