i never promised you a rose garden

This weekend has been a complete emotional roller coaster on the gardening front- who'd have thought this gentle hobby, usually associated with pensioners could be full of such high-drama?!

Steve went down to the allotment this morning only to find that those blinking rabbits (or maybe roe deer?) have indeed chomped their way through our plug plants, just as I had predicted. All the broccoli and nearly all the caulis are gone. We nipped back up to the garden centre to buy some more, only to find they had sold out. I am completely gutted, as I was dreaming of home grown cauliflower cheese. I have bought some cauli seeds and lots of nylon netting to cover the kale and cabbages that are left, but I still feel like a little piece of my heart is broken.

After sulking for most of the afternoon about losing our veg, I was suddenly filled with excitement again, when I managed to secure three cold frames on Freecycle. These little beauties will keep the frost off and hopefully keep us in veg all winter. What a stroke of luck!


Further cheer was to be found in discovering the tomato plants have a covering of tiny fruits, and with all the sunshine we've been having I'm hopeful that they will ripen nicely. I'm just praying that the dreaded tomato blight doesn't come our way.


What flower could lift one's mood more than the humble sunflower- just look at how they're coming along. Such a contrast from when they were planted out just five weeks ago.


And most joyous of all, after all the disappointment with the flat elderflower champagne earlier in the week, I am thrilled to report the bubbles are back!

"So smile for a while and let's be jolly,
Love shouldn't be so melancholy..."

un-bubbly

I'm in a sulk.

My elderflower champagne hasn't turned out at all as I had hoped.


After turning my lovely clean bathroom into a brewery for the evening- spending several hours scrubbing labels off wine bottles and then bobbing them about in Milton fluid in the bath, I couldn't get the stupid swing-tops to work and ended up cutting my finger in the process.


I had to make do with the few screw-top bottles I had and was then forced to tip the rest of the champagne away, which was heart-breaking after having lovingly gazed at it brewing away all week.


The seven bottles of fizz that I am left with, don't seem very fizzy at all. The brew was fizzing earlier on in the week, and fizzed a bit when I poured it through the muslin, but now is as flat as a pancake. Is that normal, or should it be brimming with bubbles already?


Oh well, on a more cheerful note, my sister in law designed me these wonderful labels for the bottles, so at least it will look pretty if nothing else.

Proof that one can't be a domestic goddess all the time...

champagne superthrifty

It's been a hectic week work-wise, so have had little time to keep up to date with blogging. The garden produce is really starting to come in thick and fast and we have harvested something for our evening meal every day this week. We've enjoyed side salads made up of our various green leaves, our spinach has been used in porcini mushroom risotto, baked gnocchi and chicken curry, we've snacked on the first strawberries and later I will be using our first courgettes to make some delicious pakoras.

Today marks the start of our community Ecoweek and this afternoon we went along to the allotment open day to have a nose at what people were growing and pick up some tips. We have been on the waiting list for an allotment since we moved here last July, and are not too hopeful of getting one any time soon, which is disappointing as the allotments are about a minute's walk from our cottage.


Cue much excitement when I got chatting to two lovely ladies up at the allotments who ended up offering to share their enormous allotment with us, until we are allotted one of our own! They've only just been given it themselves, and it's heavily overgrown, but they've marked us off a sizable space down the end to use as we so wish! Once we've dug up the weeds and grass I'm not really sure what to do with it, as it's too late for sowing seeds really- I'm going to look into ordering a job-lot of vegetable plug plants from somewhere and I fancy using a decent strip as a cutting garden too.


This afternoon, Flora and I gathered a big bag of elderflowers and set about making our first batch of elderflower champagne. It's now upstairs in our bedroom, hopefully fermenting nicely, ready for us to bottle it in a few days' time.


I've been collecting wine bottles from friends and neighbours to contain our home brew and I've bought some swing-top stoppers to cork it.


My father used to make elderflower champagne when I was a child and I'm told that his own version was used to toast my Christening, so I do hope ours turns out as well as his!

If you're at a loose end tomorrow, don't forget it's Open Farm Sunday where working farms all over the UK are opening their doors for fresh air and fun, as well as a chance to see where our food comes from. We're off to Pennyhooks Farm which is promising loads of country pursuits with the added bonus of a craft fair.

I must go because I'm running out of time to finish off some more gift socks!