And now we go again...

redofromstart

I've only just put courgette seed in too, only done 3 cells which I may regret but last year grew three and  drowned in the revolting things. 

savingholmes

Love the photo. Your tour description sounds amazing. Lovely to see so many landmarks as you say in a single shot.

LadyWithAPlan

@redofromstart start picking them when they are young and tastier ! 

Plus they are good halves and grilled with cheese, passata , breadcrumbs on top .. 

Baileys_Babe

Courgettes make delicious chocolate cake

redofromstart

I do pick them at tiny sizes and feed them to Mr Redo who does like them - the only one of us who does. He doesn't like cake (I know, weird!)

Baileys_Babe

My nephew also doesn't like cake, so that is more for the rest of us 😄

badmemory

I confess to not being a lover of cake.  Well not unless it is seriously gooey.  Not even Xmas cake as I don't like marzipan.  When we were little my poor mother used to have to make one birthday cake with a smear of marzipan & a lot of icing & one cake (for my sister) with lots of marzipan & hardly any icing, within days of one another too.  I did used to eat a lot of meringues though in my later teens.  Never used to put an ounce on - how things change!

milann

Finally caught up. 

The photos are amazing.
You have been very busy in the garden. Sounds like hard work. It’ll be worth it when it’s finished though 👍

EssexHebridean

Morning all! Yep - courgettes are out. if we lose them, then so be it, but last time we grew them we lost them because they weren't established enough at the point we went on holiday (and so still needed watering, which of course they didn't get while we weren't about!) so we've gone back to the timing that always used to work for us (so our old allotment diary tells me!) and we'll see what happens! We've planted three at the moment - in the new bed (more on that shortly) and one is still in its pot on the garden table as it wasn't quite as advanced as the others were. I think I'm going to try that one planted into a bigger pot in fact - we're keen to know if that will realistically work as it will give added flexibility for the future. If we lose them then so be it - we'll try again! 

I'm almost hoping for a courgette glut - although I bet I won't be if we end up in one! I do use them a lot though so will be quite happy to get a decent crop. 

So - garden update then. Saturday and Sunday were entirely garden focused - 2 more tip runs got rid of all the loose rubble and some slabs/concrete chunks as well. The new bed was thoroughly dug over from end to end - twice. an absolute heap of stones and small chunks of concrete were yanked out as we went, and a LOT of compost was bought and tipped in, and dug in. On Sunday afternoon we headed to our favourite plant stuff and got the bag of manure, rhubarb and the sage we went for, plus a couple of sorrels, a thyme and a nemesia that we didn't!  The new bed now has the redcurrant (finally liberated from its pot) and the rhubarb at one end, with the sorrel and the thyme planted in to create edging. The three courgettes are at the other, and we are intending to use some of the middle at least for tatties although we know we're a bit late to the party on that! they would be ideal for breaking up the ground a bit though, and as we're planning on doing pink fir apples, they should just do their think and be ready for harvesting after the courgettes finish doing their thing.  We're really chuffed with it though - it feels like a massive step towards the productive garden that we want - the aim is that although it's relatively small, we will  make best use of it to help keep us fed! Other garden jobs including selecting and placing the rescued slabs that will create the extra bit of path at the end. We've got the first few in place and levelled (just with upturned turfs for now, we'll look at a more "formal" method later)

General MSE Stuff:
- While doing the tip run on Saturday MrEH spotted a couple of decent sized green-glazed ceramic pots in the rubble bin. He hiked them out, checked it was OK to take them, and hey presto, two more free pots for us! 
- Used accumulated nectar points to get £5 of a compost purchase on Saturday. 
- While in Sainsbugs getting compost we spotted that they had 300ml pots of cream reduced to 24p...we looked at each other and immediately said "butter!" - In the end we turned 8.5 pots of cream into the equivalent of  a bit over 5 packs of butter I think - so £2.04 spent, but the equivalent amount of butter would have been over £8 - so a bargain!  Another pot made a tub of ice cream (using frozen raspberries we already had) and the odd half pot made a rather delicious gooseberry fool which we very much enjoyed after tea on Sunday! 
- Also found reduced price cheese and falafels as well so that was a win!
- the remaining  defrosted gooseberries will get turned into individual crumbles for pudding this evening I think - I wouldn't usually do a pudding mid-week but as we have them to use, then why not..! 
- Meals this week are seat-of-the-pants as I've not done any form of meal plan. I am going to do the usual variation on couscous this evening I think, and we'll have omelettes tomorrow (bacon to use up after last night's liver, bacon and onions with mash and peas). Not sure about Thursday but I'm sure something will spring to mind!
- Used a few odds and ends up over the weekend too - a tub of sliced turkey made fab sandwiches for lunch with the final bit of ham on Saturday, I used up the remains of a bag of curly fries and the final wrap from the freezer along with some fish fingers for tea on Friday. 
- Managed to get right to the bottom of the washing basket with the whole lot getting dried outside over the weekend so that was a win!
- we're definitely seeing a drop in gas use now - heating's not come on in the evenings for a good few days now although the temperatures have dropped a bit today so it might be ending that run this evening! 
- Used a 20p off plus a members price on MrEH's milk in the co-op. 


Update on the nect@r prices thing by the way - the "on-shelf" prices work for me as intended, but the personalised ones still don't. 

I need to spend some time dealing with budget things either at lunchtime or this evening - the CC needs some attention not least for food spending over the last two weekends, I've not even totted up what was spent this week as yet! I'm still resisting the urge to transfer the money over for the new lens as I want to leave it earning interest for as long as possible!

On the subject of the lens - I'm delighted with it! Ended up spending all day Friday up in Lincolnshire, and half the day yesterday as well as there was interesting stuff going on. It did mean I had to put £10 extra diesel in yesterday afternoon to make sure I could get to work this morning, but that's come from personal spends. Very pleased with the results anyway - Friday was mostly Reds with a bonus A400M, and yesterday was Typhoon in the morning and a cheeky bonus bit of Reds before I headed back. 

 

jwil

Fantastic photos!