Wild garlic found - woo hoo!

The last few days have been really busy and I've not had time to do any diary entries, but I must just mention today's exciting ( for me) find.

I took IH to the airport late this afternoon and on my way back I took a diversion as I hit rush hour traffic, so glad I did, as I found a massive stand of wild garlic by the road side. It was so massive that someone had been along and strimmed it back, so fortunately I had all my gardening stuff in the car, and got the fork and spade out and dug up some big clumps. Just so pleased, I shall hopefully get it all planted and processed tomorrow.

I shall blitz all the top growth in the blender and then freeze it in ice cube trays, and plant all the bulb area. Just need to decide where to plant it.

Lily Beetle Drive

And the quest begins. Today whilst gardening for a lady, we spotted Lily beetles on her crown imperials!

I've been casually checking for the beetles over the past couple of weeks, but after seeing this, it's the first thing I did when I got home this evening, and sure enough there was one little bugger on one of my Turks Hat Lilies. I've squished in now, but will be on the look out now, they are horrid things, their babies cover themselves with their own poo, to disguise themselves, they look a bit like bird droppings and you don't realise until it's too late that they've eaten your whole plant. The adult beetle is very easy to see, it's a really bright red, they next one I see I will photograph and add to this entry. You have to be quite stealthy when you're hunting them, as if you shake the plant in anyway before you are ready, they drop off on to the floor and lie on their backs, which camouflages them. The hunt is on! 

Troughs finally planted up

I finally got the troughs planted up on Thursday, well all bar one, which I finished yesterday, I have put them out this morning as it's supposed to be a fine day and I'd like to keep a record on here of how they progress.

Sunday in the garden

Today I am enjoying my own garden for most of the day, I have a couple of people coming to collect some of my glut of tomato seedlings, so need to prick out a few more. 

I've been round this morning pulling up all the cow parsley that springs up under the oak trees, that's another good thing about all the rain we've had, the soil is nice and wet so I can get the whole root up with things like that with just a good sharp yank. 

I have sweetcorn to plant, as well as a few nasturtiums and sweet Williams for one of my customers.

This plant here is an unusual thing, it was very popular a few years ago, as new on the market, I bought seeds and planted it and since then it pops up all over the garden. I rather like it although it is a little ungainly. Cerinthe.

I noticed this morning while doing my lily beetle patrol that I have another Iris almost out, this is deep maroony purple one, not sure of its name, it's quite small but has the most gorgeous thick beards. If it comes out further as the day goes on, I'll take a picture, it will be nice to look back later in the year and make a note of things like this.

Head cold

Woke up on Thursday morning with the sniffles and can't work out where I've picked this cold up from, it's progressed now to a full head cold with blocked sinuses and neuralgia as well as the drippy nose. 

I was up at 5.30 this morning, unheard of for me, and did contemplate getting up as I was wide awake,   My nose was running and I didn't understand why my pillow wasn't absolutely sodden, or did it only start when I woke?? Strange.

Anyway, decided if I was up at that time, I'd not make it through the day, so went back to bed and did manage to drift in and out of sleep for another couple of hours. 

Not sure what I m doing today, wow, don't have many days where I've not got planned everything I have to do., but today is one of them. I have a hanging basket to make up for a friend, I bought the plants yesterday and need to get that done.

I also bought myself a small magnolia stellata and need to decide where I'm going to put that. I'm contemplating a spot in the middle of the lawn where I currently have a small bed with a standard rose in the middle, one of those supposed to be blue ones, but it has small rather uninteresting lilac coloured blooms on it.

Troughs and baskets day today

Got up and the rain was here, so not gone out on my gardening job this morning so we've had a nice leisurely breakfast and catch up on the Internet and I'm now going to sort out my hanging baskets and troughs. I moved over to wall mounted troughs rather than all hanging baskets a good few years ago as it gets so windy here, we look straight out over fields to the west and this is there the prevailing wind comes from around here.
I bought plants from a market garden in the area last week, plus I have many already planted up and so that's my job for today. I'm going to photograph when finished and then try and remember to keep a weekly log on them to see how they progress and when they actually reach peak.
They're nothing exciting and will be mainly fuschia, geranium and lobelia, but a few odds and ends too. I think someo of the tomatoes need repotting too and I'd really like to get the beans out, all this rain will help them settle in.
This is the view across the fields from the front of the house, pretty open.

The other picture is the current state of the wall troughs, ignore my finger at the top of the picture.

Home made butter

Just after Christmas a friend who knows my propensity for trying out new ideas told me to watch out for the supermarkets selling off all the overstocked fresh cream, as you can make butter at home with it apparently. She didn't know how, but said it just involved your food mixer. So of course I had to try it out.

I bought 3 pints of cream for something like 35p a pint and had a go, it was interesting and very messy, but the end result sure enough, was butter.

After this weekends cake stall, I was left with a load of whipped cream and half a tub of clotted cream so I've just done a batch. Just added salt crystals.

This is stage one, after the initial mixing, it turns in to butter all of a sudden, you can hear the change in your machine as it has this large lump going round in it instead of the cream and lots of sloppy buttermilk, which goes everywhere. I've tried wrapping the while machine in cling film, but it still just slops everywhere, so I've given up now and just give the whole machine a good wash down afterwards.

And here is the end result. It doesn't keep quite as well as shop bought butter, especially as the weather gets warmer, so I'll make it into smaller pats, wrap in cling film and then freeze, and we can take it out as we need it.