in one corner of my garden leans a small hibiscus tree. it delights me with it's lime green leaves in late spring and it's vivid purple blooms towards the end of the summer.
during May it's skeleton frame it carpeted with the prettiest of small pale pink clematis flowers. this year it is particularly beautiful.
in the evening the perfume, usually soft and delicate becomes deliciously heady. i must remember bring a few blooms inside to scent the room.
Gx
No. 3 ~potato harvest
and useful sewing.
Wishing you a Happy Monday : )
No 2 ~ blooms from the garden; jasmine, chives, geranium, lavender & marigolds cut and placed in a pinch pot i made at pottery class
no.1 ~ a bowl of freshly picked homegrown raspberries. so lovely to pick (these are a thornless variety) and great to add the girls school snack pots. feels good!
today is a beautiful day here in the south of england. bright, crisp and dry, just lovely.
there is a slight chilliness to the air but it as yet doesn't feel like it will snow although the news reports are speaking snow at the weekend.
my snow preparations include scarf knitting. in fact we are all knitting scarves, except my beau who i am knitting for and soup making ...
the above soup is butternut squash & tomato made using one of the wee squashes which we grew in the garden, well, which we grew with lots of help from mother nature.
i love making and eating soup. i wonder, will you share your favourite recipe?
mine is a simple hearty leek and potato soup from my green umbrella vegetarian wholefood recipe booklet which i bought as a student in London some 20 years ago.
i think this must have been the first recipe book i ever bought myself and i still love it.
most of the recipes in the book were originally published in Green Umbrella which was an east London & south-west Essex green movement magazine of the time & my wee booklet is printed on recycled paper, which is pretty cool.
it is also the recipe book which taught me how to bake bread, well bread buns actually, as this is what i always bake to go with soup.
if you have any soup or first recipe book stories, please do share in the comments.
wishing you a lovely day.
keep warm x
...harvested yesterday.
good thing we like tomatoes!
bad thing is cooker died a few days ago.
may need to borrow a friends stove to make some more sauce.
i think we are even on the competition, v. pleased with my 'cherry toms', though 'his' beefsteaks are gorgeous and so tasty!
:o)
it's been a great year for tomatoes so we have stocked the freezer with sauce made from the above and homegrown garlic ,basil and tiny red bell peppers. delicious!
he grew the beefsteak ones and i grew the cherries.
the garden is rewarding us for our hard work earlier in the year with lots of delicious produce.
we are lucky to have a garden of about 100 feet in length. it is fairly narrow but we still have space to grow many different kinds of fruit and veg.
the blueberries were only planted this year and the first ones are almost ripe. the tomatoes , of which we have 33 plants i kid you not, are just starting to ripen and the ones i have tasted are so very sweet. the varieties we have growing are gardeners delight, moneymaker, super marmande and legend. they were all sown from seed from packets left over from last year and have done really well.
the potatoes are international kidney which if you harvest small are actually classed as jersey royals, but only if you live on jersey!the rainbow chard 'bright lights' i think it is called grows in golden or red colours and tastes really good steamed.
the barlotti beans were from julia in her seed swap last year and are also doing really well.the main problem we have had this year, apart from slugs, is that it has been pretty dry so some plants have suffered or gone to seed, but we still are harvesting daily and enjoying some home grown produce on the table.
in reply to Tracy's post here
yes our courgettes have loved the rain. i have just picked the largest ones and noticed that some others are being nibbled ~ i think by either mice or foxes?! well at least these will keep us going for some time!
how grows your garden?
a great companion plant to strawberies and tomatoes. also looks pretty in Pimms.
