Thursday 30 April 2015

Organising sewing cotton reels


I saw this idea somewhere on the WWW and today all the pieces came together with 5 minutes to make it.  I was wasting cotton as the reels were getting loose and tangled in my sewing tin.


Just a block of used wood that had been used for a project in the garden which I painted with some nice chalk paint (which I was given) and some screws from the overfull old tin in the shed left over from a lifetime of hubby's projects.



The only problem turned out to be the cotton reels had quite narrow centres and I had to search for screws with very small heads. I found most of the most suitable screws in those packets you get with prepacked hinges,  etc from the DIY stores as my husband always casts off  those packets as inadequate for the job in hand and used bigger ones!

I subscribed to a feed from GotoPatterns and have been receiving emails daily from Sewtorial with some lovely ideas for quick sew/craft projects. Recommend a look at their offer!

It has rained here today - not a lot, but it did quite a lot of good and refilled the water barrels. We are hoping it helps the seeds sown directly in the veg bed.

Tuesday 28 April 2015

Pillows

Have you been taking advantage of this good spring weather?

Back in the day of high management wages and access to lots of shops if the pillows got a bit worn I would just have gone and got some new ones.  Not these days. After changing round beds to accommodate visitors recently I noticed the pillows were grubby.  I checked the labels and though the instructions varied despite the fillings being the same materials they were all washable,

I found two would fit in the washing machine at a time and with the warm windy weather would dry in a day.  I have done 8 so far. There is one more in the cupboard.  Mostly they came out fine; one was bit lumpy but it will probably even out.

Are we all hoarders when it comes to bedding? Despite downsizing 4 years ago from a 4 double bed house (with spare single bed as well) and giving away 50% of the linen cupboard  there are still a couple of extra blankets, sheets and a spare duvet in the cupboard along with a stack of towels. I could do with the cupboard space but I cant't quite get myself  to cut down further!


Monday 27 April 2015

Poly tunnel gardening

Our poly tunnel is up and running at last. There are some bits to do on the roller screens on the sides which we have left as netting at present but it is up to 26C in there!
Here is our first plate of food - some salad leaves from a potted on seedlings I put in there a week ago.

My husband dug the side bed and centre bed - and it is nearly all planted up!
In the centre bed I put in a courgette, 4 ball pepper plants, 2 chilli, 2 cues, 6 strawberry plants,2 tomatoes, a basil plant,  two wigwams of mangetout peas, short rows of seeds - spring onions, baby carrots, spinach, radish.  All little bits of yummy stuff to fill out the meals! My husband put in a row of stocks for cut flowers,  8 moneymaker toms and about 12 lettuce plants in the side bed.  Over the other side we will grow things in pots this year.  We wanted to be sensible with the amount of digging.
Outside in the veg garden things are progressing but it is still so dry here,  Got some more things to go in but all this work with a hose for an hour is a bit time consuming!

All this gardening means the house keeping is a bit behind. We had a backlog of veg not getting used so I quickly made some leek and potato soup and a some parsnip soup.  Had some for lunches but half went in the freezer for another day while we carried on with the salad and more perishable items in the fridge. Now its nearly empty but I discovered the eggs had got out of rotation and we were a bit past the use by date stamped on them!  Scrambled eggs and a sponge took care of that. Will be going for a real clear out of the fridge before the next shop!



Saturday 25 April 2015

Busy in the veg garden and helping the neighbours

In the hope that it will rain this weekend I have taken advantage of the warm weather to carry on planting up the veg garden.  Here is a summary so far - the bed is 25 ft wide.

  • two rows of onions
  • one row of garlic
  • 4 rows of broad beans (in full flower)
  • (all planted in the autumn)
  • Beetroot planted 1 st April and just making progress)
  • parsnips (only half the row successful so put new seed in)
  • Carrots (most of the row is now up and quite full) (Autumn King)
  • onions (spring planted sets)
  • Peas (put in hedge trimmings as pea sticks)
  • swede
  • turnips
  • Carrots (James Scarlett)
  • Celeriac (as small plants raised from seeds)
  • Two rows of purple sprouting
  • 4 rows of early potatoes (some leaf showing after 3 weeks)

I hesitated today over putting out the self blanching celery (small plants) as I could not decide where to fit it in. My husband checked the greenhouse and declared 24 sweetcorn plants would not be enough - panic not, some more on the way!  There was then a discussion about how many courgette plants were too many.  My view is more, husband not so keen.  Planing the runner bean structure as we know we have to make sure it will stand up to winds.  No rush as the seeds are just coming up.

A few things have gone into the poly tunnel as we start to get going. My husband declared the lettuce had grown twice as big over night.  I will post some pictures tomorrow.

Since we moved here last year we have been grateful for the help and advice, and wealth of local information, from our two immediate neighbours all of whom we are much older than us. But this week it was our turn.  B was struggling to find time to mow his half acre of grass with his wife in and out of hospital for Chemo treatment. Husband went round with his ride on mower and ran over the grass for him.  Latest news is they will be away for weeks for more treatment in another county - poor dears - we will run over their lawns and the back grass as much as we can.

On the other side D wandered round to chat and told us he had fallen back on some kerb stones in the front garden and bruised his back. He just could not bend at all, We offered to help if he needed anything but he stubbornly pottered on with his market garden but had to ask for help with coupling hoses in the end! We chided him to put on some arnica or ibuprofen rub but as a widower he would have to ask his daughter to do that and he was scared he would get a right telling off!

We had a cup of tea in the garden and thanked our lucky stars that, despite the aches, we were fit and healthy.
Pictures tomorrow.



Thursday 23 April 2015

Spring allergy?

It is a long time since I was 16 when I suffered hugely from hay fever from April to June but it seems to have come back!  It may be because we have retired to a more rural area ( I was brought up in a rural area of Hampshire) where there is more to react too.   It is also dry and dusty here at present.  My husband thinks it is the birch tree outside that is causing it, and the internet does say that causes 25% of allergies at this time of year.  Not helped I suspect by the farmers spraying the cereal crops or the early bloom of oil seed rape round here!

I tried an allergy pill from the medicine stash last Friday and felt totally spaced out. So decided to tough it our and put up with the sneezing and nose blowing and tried all the physical stuff recommended. Wash face with hot fresh flannel on coming indoors, change clothes at the end of working day,  wash hair before going to bed, etc.  Then today when shopping and feeling very bunged up I saw a bottle of Olbus oil for £1 and decided to go for a nasal decongestant.  Wow.  two drops in hot water and a deep sniff soon put pay to the stuffed up feeling!  The old ways are the best ways!

It also says you can use it as a muscle rub - will it do my aching hip joint on the left any good??



Wednesday 22 April 2015

110th foot of hedging completed

Having turned down several properties last year with existing hedges, trees and fences I finally had to ask my husband why we are planting yet more hedging in our new property?
We live about 8 miles inland from the Wash so winds are quite strong and the plan (apparently) is to have  permeable hedges to break up the wind effect on the veg garden and shelter the poly tunnel. The other angles are broken up by the row of houses and some large conifers which are, luckily, far enough way not to cast their shadows on our land!
Along the long fence line we have gone for 45 ft  plus of privet and 30 ft of Escollonia  at least this will hide the rubbish post and rail fence we inherited.  Across the bottom of the field is the natural species hedge I have written about before - hazel, alder, dog rose, etc.

We love the big open skies of north norfolk but it can be windy.  Look what happened to our scarecrow after the storms just before Easter.
He has had to come down to the house to be dried and rebuilt!


Now we have a hose to get to the veg plot the early seedlings are doing much better - it is so dry on the top of our soil now that we are looking forward to the rain forecast for the end of the week!

Tuesday 21 April 2015

Fish

While we were out on Monday taking the main computer to be mended (mainboard failure) we called into the fish wholesalers on the Kings Lynn industrial estate where they also have a retail shop for the first time.  When I worked in a city centre there was a fabulous fresh fish stall in the indoor market and I have missed my twice weekly visits. This was an opportunity to ditch the lack lustre supermarket fish!

For this visit I stuck to cod and haddock (although the salmon and bass looked lovely) as I knew we have a few busy weeks ahead of us. I purchased a total of 2.25 kg of fish at £10.40 a kg.  My husband was a bit taken aback but it was £3 a kg less than the street vendor in the town (only on a Tuesday) and over £6 a kg less than the supermarket per kg.

Got home and found some sharp knives and plastic bags and cut the fish into 200g portions, with the scraps into one bag for fish pie or fish cakes. Wrapped individually and froze except for 2 lovely thick loins of cod for tea.  The flakes were a good 1/4inch thick by 2 inches round and lovely and fresh. A real treat.

I am looking for fish recipes and intend to stretch the fish over the next few weeks.  Besides frying some in a nice light batter, I do like to put a portion each in individual dishes on a nice bed of just cooked spinach and top with a mix of cream cheese and mustard and bake.   I have looked up some other recipes and think I will try a tomato sauce with thyme and the cod slid in to baste or a simple and quick fish curry. Then some fish cakes with fresh parsley ( my dill has not yet grown but the parsley is freshly sprouting) and a fish pie (with some prawns). To stick to my overall budget of £60 a week for feeding two of us well, this parcel of fish is going to have to last at least 10 meals. So there won't be many lovely big lumps like yesterday!




Saturday 18 April 2015

Economic Lamb buy

I sometimes hesitate to buy expensive big things in the fortnightly shop but my last purchase of a leg of lamb turned out to be good value.  The fresh meat was on offer so it was £7.58 for quite a large "lump" for the two of us.
Day 1 - roasted with a sprinkle of rosemary.  Lots of roast veg and greens.
Day 2 - 200 gms sliced off and diced and added to a basic homemade curry sauce
Day 3 - busy day in garden so at lunch time broke the joint in the leg and shoved the whole thing in the slow cooker. Added some stock, roughly cut a bit of celery, half and onion and half a carrot and emptied a nearly empty jar of sun-dried tomato paste and red lentils and left on high. Came back later and diced in some potatoes, mushrooms and slung in some peas before rushing out again. Lovely tender meat and the extras were filling at the end of a busy day.
Day 4 - Quite a lot of meat and stock at the bottom of the slow cooker so put this in a casserole to get thoroughly hot before adding some nice fluffy dumplings.
Each meal with veg used with stock cupboard bits and pieces averaged £2 for the two of us. They were filling main meals too.


Thursday 16 April 2015

Poly tunnel covered!

At last the dawn broke with no wind. No sun either, and quite a lot of drizzle.  But as we were both sneezing from some kind of allergy overnight, we went out to the  damp field determined to get the poly tunnel covered!

Calling on our friendly neighbours there was a steady pull to raise the cover by 10 am. 

The rain stopped mid morning and the sun came out so by 4 pm the sides were fixed and the plastic batterned round the doors. There are side panels to be fixed and fitted to a system that rolls them up and down, plus the doors need to be covered too. Another day's work and it will be up and running!


Wednesday 15 April 2015

Warm but windy

Having got everything ready to put the poly tunnel plastic on the wind just won't die down enough!
We have waited patiently for 2 days occupying ourselves with making 4 large hanging baskets to sit in the greenhouse until they fill out.
Everything in there is doing well and lots of hardy things have been staying outside as well. We are ready to move everything back in at first sign of frost.
The daffodils and tulips we brought in February for a £1 a pack are flowering well.
The recent excessive winds have made us a bit concerned about growing veg in the open field. We spoke to the market gardener next door who suggested a privet hedge down one side to break up the winds from the north. We got 30 hedging plants locally and planted those today while waiting for the wind to die down! Another 40 on order.  We also indulged in another tree and planted that today to help shelter the poly tunnel. We feel we have done a lot of tree and hedge planting since moving here!

I still have my wild flower free seeds from the Kew Gardens Grow Wild campaign to put in but meanwhile a host of cowslips have appeared in the field.  There had been no trace of them when we moved in last August as the grass was then 3 or 4 feet high so it was a nice surprise.
Like everyone else I spent quite a lot of time watering my seeds in the veg bed by hand today. My husband is going to make a new hose connection from behind the shed and run it down to the tunnel and the veg garden to help with watering in the future.  If it continues windy perhaps he will get it done tomorrow.  If it is windy I am going to the library for a rest.

Monday 13 April 2015

Busy with visitors

Just finished the sheets and towels from a week of visitors. It has been extra windy lately and had to use pegs every two inches to hold things on and it was all drying quickly.  Not a cold wind, but strong.
The reason for the washing, and my absence on the blog, has been the visits from my 3 beautiful grand daughters and their various parents. We started with two adults and one 10 month old, and felt the house shrink with all the baby gear. We enjoyed a day showing her the beach and teaching her about sand. Not a great deal was eaten and she got really excited by the sand properties using her feet something like a dog to paw at the ground!  We visited Brancaster beach for a long walk


 Then Wells beach to have a cup of tea and a sit on the dunes. Wells seems to have lost more sand and there is a big muddy hollow when the tide is out just off the beach huts.
Back home we then were joined by my 10 year old and 8 year old grand daughters for a large family meal, the absent part of the family  happened to phone from London and was greeted by a lot of shouting and giggling.

Sunday despite the wind today I took the two girls to Snettisham beach. We went right from the car park along the nature reserve. Luckily this gives you a little shelter when the wind, which was blowing parallel to the beach, got just too much.  The blackthorn there will be a mass of flowers in the next week or so and the gorse is already in full bloom.  Great shell collecting on the Snettisham beach - my daughter in law was so pleased (not) by a large bucket of treasures collected! The 8 year old watched CBBC over breakfast and someone made a string picture using wool and sewing bobbins.  By lunch time I was able to find enough craft bits and pieces and a string picture was made ready to take home to mummy who had been left behind to do teaching prep (the downfall of being a teacher these days).

Finally everyone departed and the washing of sheets and towels began.

Like Retireewannabe blogger, my early outdoor sowings in the veg garden have been slow to emerge as it has been so dry.  So dry, in fact, on the way from Snettisham to Kings Lynn we witnessed a large dust cloud being lifted off a field by the wind, it coloured the sky a dingy brown for about a mile along the A17.

 Everything in the greenhouse and conservatory is doing well except the brassicas which are all having a problem with damping off. I think the temperatures have varied too much and we have not been quick enough to move them to a cooler spot or keep them damp enough. With the help of the local windows firm we have replaced the broken panes from the greenhouse build (£16 spent which was not too bad) and the greenhouse is now in full production.
The weather forecast is for sunshine for 2 days and we are all prepared and ready to cover the poly tunnel at last.  We started its build in November last year! Though quite sheltered from the direction of the wind in this last few days, the strong winds have prompted more discussion on wind breaks to be developed in the garden in the future. The broad bean plants practically laid horizontal for 2 days but they stood up this morning full of flowers and looked happy enough.
Two plum trees have started to bloom. The variety is Avalon and were planted in November as quite large trees (3 or 4 years old).  All the other fruit is doing well and buds are gradually coming!

Tuesday 7 April 2015

Recording spring

Busy day out by the vegetable garden today.  We added a row of swede and a row of turnips (each right across the 26 ft wide bed) and between put a short row of radish and spring onions.  Today has been incredibly warm and we think the soil temperature is increasing and the top is quite dry.  Seeds put in on 1st March are only just showing - beetroot, parsnips and carrots.

While wandering back and forth I think I spotted the first swallow of the day.  I had already seen the first tortoiseshell butterfly and there are a few bees around. Bit worrying as I can't see much food - few insects and apart from daffs, violets and a few primroses there are only some pansies in the tubs and daronicum in the perinnal bed but none of the fruit trees or elder-flower are out yet.

Having caught up with BBC Springwatch I thought I would record the signs of spring here to add to their data collection. Thought the site was a little complex but got there in the end and recorded the swallow and the may blossom just down the lane!

My husband's reaction to the swallow was to think about closing the workshop windows and blocking any holes. Love them, but they can be messy when taking up residence above the workbench and when they have young and you run power tools and saws they get upset!

Monday 6 April 2015

The need to be careful at checkouts

We went out today to buy 6 steel butt hinges. I know that sounds simple but it was not. Screwfix only had one packet of two. B&Q had some but as usual the packets were all mixed up on the price hangers. And the packets all looked the same and contained 3 hinges. At the automatic checkout the first packet was £4.38 and the next £11.48. Luckily I noticed and stopped the transaction.  The second packet was nickle plated.

While my husband handed the packet to an assistant and got the transaction taken off I went to fetch another of the steel ones.  But now the price was £3.48. More head stratching. Ahh, they are steel, and the others are strong steel. But all are 100 mm butt hinges produced for the Kingfisher group so similarly labelled except the small print.

By the time we got home we had a right mixture of 8 hinges from which we managed to make something fit the new poly tunnel doors.
By tea time I did manage to comment that if we had waited and gone down to the local independent hardware store we could have brought them loose and probably for a lot less and they would have been clearly labelled!

I think we must be getting old, shopping is too complex for us.

Sunday 5 April 2015

How many tools does it take to plant potatoes?

A beautiful day absolutely ideal for planting the veg garden a bit more. We made a trench and put in the new asparagus and the old one from our last house that had spent the winter in a pot. There were a couple of juicy looking sprouts so we could get a little bit of lovely asparagus.

We then put in two rows of first early potatoes. We followed the old advice and mowed round the lawn first and put some nice fresh grass clippings in the bottom of the trench.

After a sit down and a cup of tea we planted a row of peas.  These I covered by laying pea sticks over the drill because we not only have fat pigeons hanging about but several pheasants!  When the peas come up the peas sticks can be put upright, The pea sticks were made from the enormous cuttings we took off the front hedge last August.

By this time we had managed to accumulate quite a pile of tools.
All of the tools have to be gathered up and taken back to the shed by the house. Yep, that one in the far distance.   Given the rate of rural crime in  we always take care to put everything away.

Tried something new for tea.  The prepacked fresh cod looked a bit limp, so divided this into 2-3 inch chunks and dipped them a thick batter and fried in shallow pan of veg oil.  Because small chunks they only took a few minutes.  Much better than a  limp fillet!

Thursday 2 April 2015

Busy on a glorious spring day

Absolutely lovely day with a steady 10C and no wind (at last). The greenhouse has been populated with the plants from the conservatory and the heating set up just in case.

We went over to the local fruit growers HQ to collect the last of our fruit order (they supplied raspberries, strawberries, rhubarb, etc in the autumn) This time it was no quite fruit - asparagus! This was the last item on our list.  They supplied 5 plants for £2 - a real bargain but then we probably have spent over £100 on our list!  My husband stripped yet more turf off the field to start to prepare the trench and tomorrow will build up the ground for the asparagus roots.  I probably should have done more housework like washing - but why waste such a beautiful day.  Even tea tonight was a simple pasta dish with chicken and pancetta in a cheese sauce with peas and carrots.

I posted off my entry to the BBC painting competition yesterday. Not as good as some on the gallery but I enjoyed taking up the challenge. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02kgkhg/p02kfzgb

What was shocking was the cost of sending this postcard - 63p!!

Wednesday 1 April 2015

What's on your local bus?

Jumped on the local bus to Kings Lynn yesterday afternoon for a quick bit of necessary shopping and was delighted with a new project on the bus.  There was a series of local "postcards" showing nice views/locations and a short paragraph of local history. I must have been the only "newbie" on the bus as I got a few strange looks twisting round to read about Walpole!

Have you spotted any of these projects on your buses?  I wonder if there is a "set" to collect?

 I did enjoy Poems on the Underground a few years back and somewhere in one of the bookcases I have an anthology.

I popped into one charity shop and purchased £2.50 worth of curtain material in a nice summer cotton fabric.  Not for curtains but the material will make a nice dress, as I want to try out how to put shirring elastic in my new machine. The reel of elastic cost 80 p so it won't be a costly experiment!



While I was at the sewing show in London I did add to my material stash and brought some children's fabric and 2 metres of a nice peppermint print. 4 meters in total for £12.



 I felt I could afford it as a very nice thing happened to me. While I was in the queue to pay £9 to get in a complete stranger tapped me on the shoulder and offered to take me in on her free complimentary ticket. She had no one to go with and did not want to waste the ticket.  Was that not kind?

Shall I continue the saga of the greenhouse?  We finally got in glazed, one piece was 4mm too wide and one small triangle snapped in two when it was lying on the workbench in the sun.  But the rest went in fine after yet more phone calls to the manufacturer to ask why the diagram of the glazing clips was different to the ones in the pack?  'Cause they changed them months ago but had not updated the instructions!!! The "better" ones needed a complex move to get in and they sent a u tube video to explain how. More frustration and another phone call to the garden centre who said, no it was not us, ignore the video and put them in another way as it worked better. I kid you not we were at the end of our tether!
What happened next?
65 mph winds for two days solid.
Two panes blew out.
The glazing clips kept popping off and we had to check the thing every two hours to put them back and secure the glass!
When we and the weather have calmed down we are going to find a way to strengthen and secure the fixings!