Travelling On

Karmacat

Morning! Okay, two fast walks done, and I'm off just now to do a council-run healthy walk, which is much slower but keeps me connected to the group.

I'm going great guns on the scanning, plus sorting the very old photos - many of them are over 100 years old now, they need special acid-free storage, I'm working out sizes of pockets I need.

The other thing that helps the property hold its value, and also provides me with ground to plant food crops, is gardening - the proper navvying type today, digging up perennial roots, since the ground is so soft from all this rain. My garden *will* be lurvely, front and back both

maddiemay

Karmacat wrote: »

Morning! Okay, two fast walks done, and I'm off just now to do a council-run healthy walk, which is much slower but keeps me connected to the group.

I'm going great guns on the scanning, plus sorting the very old photos - many of them are over 100 years old now, they need special acid-free storage, I'm working out sizes of pockets I need.

The other thing that helps the property hold its value, and also provides me with ground to plant food crops, is gardening - the proper navvying type today, digging up perennial roots, since the ground is so soft from all this rain. My garden *will* be lurvely, front and back both :)

You are doing great with your walking, I need to do more and will look into the short "healthy walks".

My garden will be lovely too:D I have almost finished the back, we have had some rain at last so hope to spend some time at the front now that the weeds should be more easily removable, DOH has been helping with brambles and all the dead leaves from next door's holly and magnolia trees, but I cannot trust him to weed:eek::eek:

Sun shining, need to shake a leg and get out there:D

themadvix

You sound like you're feeling much better today KC!

Thanks for the reminder - I'm tackling our (large and neglected) front garden in 10-minute chunks, but had forgotten to put it on my to-do list today

Karmacat

Hiya both

The front "garden" is a narrow strip, thats all, and I shall keep the roses, a big heather, the grape hyacinths, and the geums (I'll harvest the seedheads to grow as microgreens, I've discovered they're edible). I want perennials, useful to me or to bees, preferably both. I got out there with my garden fork straight away that I came back from the council walk, and its slow going - partly because there are so many roots of so many plants I don't want, and partly because on the edges of the clods I'm digging up, I can see worms - don't want to get rid of them!!! So I lay them elsewhere on the border, to encourage them to wriggle out of the clod the soil is so heavy I can't really pull the clod apart to release them, that'll just kill them. It's a very accessible piece of work, though, I'm happy to be doing it. And my neighbour will stop eyeing it in pain, maybe :rotfl:


Council run walk was useful for linking up: a woman I often chat with told me she goes foraging, and ended up inviting me along with her friend :j

themadvix

Ooh, the foraging sounds good! Exciting stuff! It sounds like you'r doing well with your gardening.... it keeps raining here, so I've not been out yet.

Karmacat

I did a proper amount of digging in the garden yesterday, plus once the quince have ripened, I'm going to give it a severe prune - it's generally not advised, but less than a foot of the narrow passage to the actual garden is still passable, so it has to happen. It's that, or get rid of it altogether. And I'll be able to cut back next door's ivy properly then, as well as having more sunlight reaching the ground I've just dug over (separate bed from the garden, so I'm thinking of mint.

I'm planning days out right now:
- a trip to a famous local arts and crafts village (garden centre nearby ).
- replacement trip to see my newest great-nephew.
- trip to see great-nephews numbers 3 and 4, also in London, hmmmm.

Must, must must finish writing a blogpost today ... it's just a review of a Matt Damon film, but it means faffing about with the remote control looking for the quotes I want :rotfl: its a hard life :rotfl:

[Deleted User]

Karmacat wrote: »

Council run walk was useful for linking up: a woman I often chat with told me she goes foraging, and ended up inviting me along with her friend :j

Love the idea of foraging:j. We have/had a book called Food For Free (I think that was the title) but I haven't seen it for ages:o. May have been sold/donated years ago but I'll see if I can find it packed away somewhere and find out some of the things it's safe to eat. Some plants look so inviting but it's always better to be safe than sorry;).

What do you forage for, apart from the blackberries that you often mention? We've had field mushrooms many a time, and samphire on the rare occasions we visit places where it can be found, plus the usual hedgerow berries of course. There must be so much else that would be edible, especially in a rural area away from polluted verges.

Karmacat

carbootcrazy wrote: »

Love the idea of foraging:j. We have/had a book called Food For Free (I think that was the title) but I haven't seen it for ages:o. May have been sold/donated years ago but I'll see if I can find it packed away somewhere and find out some of the things it's safe to eat. Some plants look so inviting but it's always better to be safe than sorry;).

I have the pocket version, CBC - its a brilliant book. I did hear somewhere that the information is a little bit out of date for some plants, but I don't know where, sorry. And I can't say how much I agree that research is needed - there's a hemlock that looks like parsley, that sort of thing. And I wouldn't touch fungi even with a book - only after a foraging course, at any event.


Please write your foraging experiences here

What do you forage for, apart from the blackberries that you often mention? We've had field mushrooms many a time, and samphire on the rare occasions we visit places where it can be found, plus the usual hedgerow berries of course. There must be so much else that would be edible, especially in a rural area away from polluted verges.

Respect for doing the fungi! I haven't done a huge amount just rosehips and crab apples with my brother, and plums, cherries, sweet chestnuts, elderflowers and elderberries. None of it regular, I guarantee you.


What I'd like to do is forage greenery, to help make my own pesto - hawthorn, beech, good king henry, blackberry leaves and nettles, plus greenery from my own garden - lemon balm, geum, chives, salad burnet, winter savory, garlic, rosemary, all sorts.



I just bought mint, and fennel, I'll keep the latter in a big container.


I'm working on it

earthgirl

Hope you are ok after a "proper amount of digging"?
I always feel quite sore.

[Deleted User]

Karmacat wrote: »

Respect for doing the fungi!...….

What I'd like to do is forage greenery, to help make my own pesto - hawthorn, beech, good king henry, blackberry leaves and nettles, plus greenery from my own garden - lemon balm, geum, chives, salad burnet, winter savory, garlic, rosemary, all sorts.

We don't 'do fungi' as such, the thought of iffy fungi scares me silly:eek:. These are just the big, flat regular field mushrooms that spring up in open fields when the weather and other conditions are right. Some years there are none, some autumns there re lots. Everyone picks and eats them, I guarantee they are 100% safe:rotfl:. They are identical to those big flat open mushrooms you see on market stalls all the time. OH once brought one home that was almost the size of a dinner plate:eek:


I'd like to get into picking and eating more 'greenery' too. Some of it looks so healthy it seems a shame to just ignore it. I expect if we were all starving we'd be eating anything and everything;)