Get a grip woman!

beanielou

So wish I was nearer 😂

foxgloves

@Suffolk_lass - Yep! That's what our vegetable basket has looked like most of this summer! 
F

badmemory

Courgettes go in almost everything in this house.  Spag curry chilli soup any casserole.  Haven't tried fritters yet but if ever I am short of something to do I know where to go.  If I could grow those & onions & peppers I would save myself a fortune.  I would also really like to grow mushrooms again as I used to.  Nothing like a button mushroom larger than the size of a side plate that actually tastes & looks just like a button mushroom.  But nowhere to do that now.  Isn't it funny the things you miss are actually nothing like the things you think you will miss.

Suffolk_lass

Shh! One of the men in the village always asserts that he doesn't like courgettes. However, I dropped one of my courgette & lemon cakes off to him and his wife to try and he liked it ("What are the yellow bits?" he said. "I think they are lemon" she replied). Anyway, today's dessert for the village lunch was some of last year's plums and apples (bottled) and a double sized courgette and lemon cake as the sponge topping. "That was really lovely!" he told me. "If there's any leftovers, please can we have two bits for dessert tomorrow?" So they did. I am leaving it to her to tell him, if she chooses to.

Suffolk_lass

Saturday I popped to the sale of stuff in the neighbouring village church and came away with 6 things for a fiver:

1. A cross-stitch pattern book for my friend
2. A book of old English Verse for DH (he loves it - the oldest are virtually German (which he is fluent in)
3. The Elizabeth David French Country Cooking book. It is not a collector's edition, but is £4 on WOB
4. A small plastic drawer unit for bibs and bobs
5. 2 Tablespoons
6. 8 postcards of their church

The books were 3 for £1. I insisted they take £2, the other things were £2.50, but I gave them £3. Very happy with these.

Saturday afternoon we hitched up the trailer to go and collect some scaffold bits, bought on FB, leaving just enough time for us both to shower and a rudimentary vacuum before our first visitors arrived. Together, we came third in the local quiz (we were in danger of winning with only the table rounds to go  ) - not something in the plan! and DH and I came home after sharing a bottle of red wine. Not a regular quantity any more. Back in the spendy days we might have had a second and lost Sunday. Not any more!

I was up at 04.50 and had to go back to bed for a couple of hours from 09.00. I brought home the chicken in my box supper and we can share that tonight. I will probably curry the chicken and see what the last of last year's butternuts is like. Apart from being big, that is. 

Anyway, got my act together and I cleared all the nettles around the greenhouse, cleared all the courgette and pumpkins except a tromboncino and one butternut, to see if the small fruits swell any more. I also weeded the onion bed ready to transfer the strawberries for winter before planting out my garlic. I started to weed the asparagus bed but much of it is creeping wood sorrel and I fear it has got established now. Finally, as I wandered back to put my fork away I pruned the magnolia. We microwaved the leftover cottage pie and then had a rice pudding I made when it looked like we had too much milk.

With the planned scaffold purchase, the bric a brac, and the quiz night (including a dog sitter) , it was a spendy, but rare, weekend. I have yet to order the bulbs I want. I think we should prepare their destination first.

Suffolk_lass

I took myself off to a local garden centre and picked up some twine pea netting for next year, some tete-a-tete (15cm) narcissi for a bowl, a pack of bulb fibre, some cream fragranced hyacinths and declined to buy their sad looking violas. I went for some purple pansies too, and a pack of Purple Sensation Alliums (I blame you @foxgloves!). I got the pansies and the silver foliage (resisted the 3 for £10 offers and bought 1x6 of each). A BOGOF of mixed alliums as insurance, I went to the normally more expensive local place next, and picked up their last pack of PS Alliums. I have what I need for two winter bowls now and the forecast of 70% chance of rain on Friday is when they will be planted up.

We spent the afternoon digging out the strawberries we bought this year (still a second bed to go) and I have a bucket of strawberries to plant or move to the greenhouse, en-route to the cold frames (dependent on roots).

We cleared a load more oxalis corniculata (creeping wood sorrel ) and I noted there was a lot in the root system of the strawberries. It really is a pernicious little strangler, gradually spreading in my garden. I hate it. The seeds pop like busy lizzies, the top growth creeps with pink and brown stems and it sends down deep tap roots wherever there is a flower clump. Like bindweed and ground elder, any root matter left becomes new plants. It gradually strangles and takes over.

Our quiz night supper (mine) leftover chicken made two generous portions of chicken jalfrezi and I cooked white rice (very unusual). I have minced beef I bought fresh that will be padded with a few red lentils and lots of vegetables to make a courgette filling and a pasta bake, and a chicken, quietly defrosting for a midweek roast, for Wednesday.

I am collecting an oak farm gate that we can secure the front from the back garden with on Wednesday, having spotted it on Faceache. One step closer to being able to let dog off his lead in our unfenced garden.

A no spend day is planned, continuing to use some of what we have already.

foxgloves

Agree that oxalis c is a real pest. We originally only had it in the front courtyard, where I think it arrived via the soil around a plant Mum gave me years ago from her garden. It kept coming up between paving blocks. Having the courtyard re-paved last year seems to have got it under control, but this week, I've spotted 2 clumps of it in the veggie plot so must teach Mr F a new weed which he always needs to remove if he sees it.
I also have plans to plant up containers this week.....perhaps tomorrow morning as looks like a rainy afternoon forecast for watering the new bulbs & plants in the effort-free way.
F

beanielou

You have been a busy bee! 

EssexHebridean

Well thank you - that is another plant identified! I knew the thing there were a couple of clumps of in our front garden were some sort of oxalis, but not which sort. Noted also re how invasive it is - but also that it's edible, so at least we will be able to make some form of use of the stuff when pulling it out! (And also - anything for disposal will go in the brown bin, not the compost!) 

Busy times with you! 

Suffolk_lass

Oh good @EssexHebridean ! I've just posted over on @foxgloves thread about the destruction of one of our raised beds that removing it has caused!

Annoyingly the oak gate was just too big (tall, not long) to fit in the car, it fitted diagonally but would not go over or inside the wheel arch, so we ended up going there and back again (in hobbit style  ), with the trailer this time! Our good fortune that they did not want to reuse a perfectly good oak gate and bought a pair of pre-treated black gates. I resisted the urge to peer at the black gates to see if they were softwood or hardwood, but I have my suspicions! 

In the meantime we also spotted a pair of old wrought iron gates and secured these for £20 each and the chap then offered us the hinge posts for £5 each. These two will go at the back of the garden, where the gaps in the hedge are.

We still need some fencing to stop our small boy (dog, for new readers, not child) sneaking under the hedge to next door, or chasing rabbits into the field behind (visions of small boy doing this, now in my head!). I can get on with prepping these (wire brush and hammerite on the metal items, wash with a bristle brush and paint with a preservative on the gate). We also need a pair of gate posts and some hinges and a latch as the seller removed these when they changed over.