{this moment}

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savour and remember.
 

sprouting for girls

I have a convert!

the plot thickens..

Today Flora and I popped down to our tiny little square of borrowed allotment to collect some tools. I knew it would be scarily weedy as it must be a couple of months since we gave up on it, after all my brassicas were attacked by rabbits/deer and we got offered Pear Tree Cottage garden. However, we were stunned and delighted to see some cabbages and cauliflowers had survived after all- here they are poking through the forest of weeds...

 

Last time I saw them there was just a tiny little nibbled stalk left- I never expected them to bounce back, especially after totally neglecting them! So I grabbed a fork and lifted them up (note my trusty dm boots that I have had since I was 15!)...

and re-planted them at Pear Tree Cottage...

I do hope they like their new home- my mouth is already watering for cauliflower cheese!

I'm really pleased with the progress we have made at Pear Tree Cottage- after so much hard work clearing and digging, it finally feels like we've got somewhere! As well as the brassicas, I've also planted a rhubarb crown this week and my dad manged to rescue the apple tree that had fallen over and was growing along the ground! We're now going to put the finishing touches to the beds, divide them with some more recycled paving slabs and then cover them up for the winter.

It looks very different from when we took it on a few months back, this picture was taken at about the same place as the one above. I just cannot wait until the Spring when we can sow some seeds. I hope those pumpkin seeds I bought at the food festival grow as big as these beauties I spotted on a neighbouring allotment...

Today I also got started on Flora's Princess Leia costume- can you guess what I made the buns out of?

a pair of Totes slipper socks that I picked up in a charity shop for £1!

 

Happy weekend everyone- hope this heatwave we were promised appears tomorrow!

strange fruit

Of all the plants I have this year the two I had the least faith in producing fruit were my cucumber plant and peppers. But this week I have watched in amazement as these very plants have come up trumps, with fruit that actually looks like it's going to be perfectly edible.

The cucumbers are growing thick and fast- one will be ready to pick very soon, and there are about six others not far behind.


And I have a pepper! Granted, it's only one solitary rather small pepper (probably not much to shout about when I have been nurturing two pepper plants since April) but a pepper, none the less.

I have also sown the last of my peas to eat as pea-shoot salad..

and am watching the sprout plants getting very large, but a little nibbled by the hatchling cabbage-white caterpillars I keep having to remove from the underside of the leaves.


I hope they don't eat them all- I am looking forward to home grown sprouts on Christmas day!

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

PS we have a very exciting new gardening venture in its early stages of planning- news about this will follow tomorrow......

shake your money-maker

I haven't yet mastered the skill of staggering produce and we've had a bit of a hungry couple of weeks. All the lovely peas have finished and died away and our courgette plants were looking a bit sad in their pots, with their fruits all going a bit yellow and squashy at one end, so we've planted them down at the allotment instead in the hope that the extra root space will give them a new lease of life.

Not everything is going wrong though- my cucumber plant, which had been badly scorched back in May's heat wave, has really picked back up again over the last two weeks and now has its first flower. I'm religiously watering it at least twice a day in the desperate hope that we might have a home-grown cucumber soon.


The 'Money Maker' tomatoes are looking pretty good too- I have been picking up all sorts of tips to help them along and have been loyally pinching out the side-shoots and gently shaking the plants at dusk to pollinate them. Hopefully my hard work and slightly eccentric behaviour is going to pay off.


I've spotted our first runner bean- it looks a bit stringy at the moment, so I'm hoping it will fatten up as it grows.


Some of the runner bean plants aren't looking so happy. I keep removing these funny little black bugs off the underside of the leaves.


Just look at the beautiful purple flowers on the dwarf beans though, who'd have thought so many brilliant colours would appear in a vegetable garden.


I'm looking forward to more vivid hues when the rainbow chard shoots up over the coming weeks- even the seedlings look pretty!

seeds of change

and so it all begins. Having moved in to our home in July last year, it was mainly too late to get going with any proper gardening. So this year I've been itching to get out in the fresh air and sow some seeds. We rent our little cottage, so can't change too much of the actual lay-out, but we have been really lucky and it's set out quite nicely already (sage green wood stain excepted) but has been looking rather bare with just deck and turf. My gardening year began a couple of weeks ago by doing something with an unloved bare border that is in a rather shady spot. I decided to use it to create the illusion of a bit more space and dug the top-soil, covered with a weed barrier and then cut holes in it to fill with some shrubs (above top right). I got some groovy ornamental grasses (3 for £10 at B&Q) and then covered it over with some decorative fine pebbles. I like the stony brightness of it all, definitely cheers up a previously dingy corner.

This week we've built a raised bed and today (in between April showers) I filled it up with compost and organic chicken poo pellets and sewed our first seeds of the year. So far I've sewn peas, sprouts, spinach, carrots and lamb's lettuce. I am only going to do one row of sprouts because I'm the only one of us who likes them, and I'm only really growing them for Christmas!

Finally, just to add a little Purl to the Flora, I thought I'd add a sneak preview of the baby-knitting stockpile I've just begun- I have a whopping 5 friends' babies due this Summer, so I needed to get cracking! It really is Spring- new plants and new little lives all to make their first appearances very soon...