Monday morning

 After the wind and storms of last week all seems peaceful in the garden today. Everything is growing fast now as you can see from my wild flower bed (above) which has shot up from nothing in the last few weeks. At some point I will post a list of some of the species in the bed with photo's but I need to spend a few hours working out whats there. I also need to start recording some of the insects visiting the flowers. I am so pleased with the decision to create it partly driven by our unwillingness to do anything to tackle the moles that were ruining the tatty bit of lawn we had, not to forget the damage the dogs were doing trying to dig them up :-)


The climbing rose (Bobby James)has taken over my potting shed, if you look closely below you can just make out the side window through the foliage. This monster was planted about 8 yrs ago and is massive, it does however look  amazing once it breaks into flower which should be in the next few weeks.

 

Meanwhile in the Alpine house this stunning carnation (Duchess of Roxburgh) is in flower. I grow several old greenhouse carnations but this is one of my favourites.

 

This lovely rose ' That's Jazz' is also in bloom, I planted this one in memory of one of our cats, Jazz who we lost a while back. I am really pleased with it and I think of him every time I see it.

 

Blow the wind southerly

Well yesterday was exciting we had a strong southerly wind sweeping across the garden with the occasional very strong gust (or gussock as they are known in these parts) realy moving the trees around.

Elsewhere in the garden this clematis is in flower hiding under a huge climbing rose (Bobby James) which has completely engulfed my potting shed. I can't remember which clematis it is, in fact I don't actually remember planting it.

Although it was windy it was quite mild with the occasional smither of rain, so I planted out 5 tomato plants I had bought for 20p each from a stall outside a house in the next village. I have given up growing them under glass as we have been plagued by blight for the last few years. I have put these in the herb garden quite spaced out so hopefully a good airflow around them will keep the fungus at bay.

  

And in the alpine house this alpine aster Aster alpinus 'Golith'
is in flower.

 

It's a lovely little plant only a couple of inches high.

 

June is upon us

 Today is is the first day of summer according to the Met Office which is why we needed hot water bottles last night. Luckily my greenhouse heater is permanently set to kick in at 10 c to keep my orchids happy.

Rose 'Darcy Bussell'

 One of my favourite roses is in bloom 'Darcy Bussell' not only is it stunning looking but also has a lovely scent.

The herb garden has taken off in the last couple of weeks. Yes I know there is a leek in the foreground going into seed but I like the flowers and I also collect the seed for this years crop.

 I realised after some prompting from a fellow blogger that it has been an awfully long time since last updated this blog, no excuses I am just lazy. Anyway it does mean I have lots to talk about.

 

over the last couple of years I have been remodeling the garden to become more wildlife friendly and a more relaxing place to sit and relax.

 To achieve this I have created a wildflower area of approximately 100 sq feet. This has taken a lot of management (ironic that!) as in the first year it was dominated by thistles which in turn self seeded, this has resulted in a lot of weeding this spring to reduce the number.

 

As you can see I have placed various benches an seats around the garden, as the bed grows up these become more isolated in their own little spaces.

The aim is that if sit on a bench you will be almost hidden from the others, this worked last year with the 8 ft high thistles but hopefully the effect will be more gentle this year.

I'm back

Well its been a while, but I am back thanks to a prod from Lucy C on one of my other blogs. Anyway I thought a quick post to show you a little of what I have been up to in the garden. I got fed up last year with growing the usual stuff in the greenhouse so I decided to convert it into an alpine house the photos below some of the highlights so far. I will post more details soon...promise!

View of alpine bed

As you will have noticed I haven't been updating this blog recently.

I do have a new blog at:

http://willowsprints.blogspot.co.uk/

Please join me there

Gary

Experiments in Charcuterie pt 1

I was listening to the food programme on radio 4 a week or so back when they did a review of home curing and smoking. Now like a lot of people I thought this was some mystical art done by specialists, however this is not the case, it is in fact very easy. In the last couple of years I have been making all our bread, we produce our own eggs (well the hens do!) I have even made my own butter (something else that's so simple) so now it's time to make bacon.

The ingredients are just equal quantities of soft brown sugar and sea salt (not table salt) I used about 300 g's of each and a piece of belly pork


Massage the pork in the mix, working it into folds in the meat.


Once the mix has been well worked in place the meat in a container or a sealed bag.


You then place the container in the fridge. This is our beer fridge in the bar/studio in the garden so it is out of the way of Sharron who is vegetarian and doesn't like the idea of seeing my experiment every time see gets the milk out!

You now leave the meat in the fridge for about a week, but you have to massage it every day. I will post the next stage next week.

The other thing I want to try is smoking meat/fish so over the next week or so I will put together what I need to do this and share it with you.