Postcard from 2016


Some of my favourite highlights of 2016. Here's to a wonderful 2017 for you and yours :)

Comments

  1. Thanks, and to you too. Flighty xx

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  2. A happy and blessed new Year to you too, Michelle xx

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  6. A most Happy New Year to you and NAH Michelle. I hope that all went well with your mums' move so that she could be nearer to you xxx

    ReplyDelete

  7. Thanks for your good wishes everyone :)

    ReplyDelete

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Review: Riverford Recipe Box with guest chef Sarah Raven

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The arrival of a big box is always exciting, like Christmas come early, and last week was no exception when a trial recipe box arrived courtesy of Riverford. They currently have Sarah Raven as guest chef and this was the first week out of four different recipe boxes on offer, with seasonally adapted recipes from her latest book, Good Good Food.

The box contains everything needed* to create three recipes with accompanying goodies for two people and retails at £36.95. There's a suggested cooking order for each dish; I reversed 2 and 3 as the chicken recipe requires marinading overnight. The dishes were:

Tomato and Poppy Seed Tart served with salad leavesSangria Chichen served with red rice and salad leavesSweet and Sour Vegetable Curry served with red rice
My box arrived on its appointed day last Wednesday at 7.30 am, much to our surprise. It seems deliveries can start as early as 6 am, so luckily ours arrived when we were awake**

As you can see from the above collage, everything is…
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How not to look after your Pilea peperomioides

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I was really happy when Barbara gave me an unusual looking Pilea peperomiodes aka Chinese Money Plant last summer. Little did I know then just how cool and trendy they are, being at the forefront of the houseplant revival. They even have a dedicated Pilea Lovers page on Instagram with over 21,000 Followers - it's not often you'll find me amongst the hipsters!

I nearly wrote an article on my new treasure back then, but Jane beat me to it with a far more comprehensive guide than I could have managed with loads of links to further information. Jack's written a great blog post on how to divide them too.

When I noticed my plant wasn't looking quite as happy as it should as you can see above photo, I knew just the right people to consult on Twitter, along with Andrew who's acquired quite a houseplant collection recently.



From their replies it's clear I am a perfect example of how not to look after a Pilea as follows:
Place it on your sunniest windowsill - south facin…
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Down to Earth with Monty Don

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Some days are destined to be extra special and the last day of September was one of them. Not only did I get to swan around a secret garden in the heart of London, I - along with twenty or so other garden bloggers - had the good fortune to meet Monty Don and preview his latest book, Down to Earth.

What a perfect setting the Ham Yard Hotel turned out to be...


...nestled close to Piccadilly Circus and whisked up to the fourth floor, there's a different world waiting to be explored. It's a beautiful, productive roof garden complete with a bug hotel, bee hives and a green roof on the shed. It was a great space to explore with my blogging buddies and unlike my poor tomatoes, the hotel's were still going strong with not a hint of blight. I also envied the huge aubergines and curly chillies in the display.


There was plentiful space for entertaining, though we were too busy chatting and enjoying the warm afternoon in the garden to move onto the inviting sofas. Then Monty appeared…
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How to make a show judge's life harder

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It's been great to see lots of people showing off their produce and show prizes on social media the past week or so. Prime village fete season is here and I'm delighted to be judging at Foxham again after my debut there last year.

I dusted down my judging clipboard this week to find most of the 'equipment' I use is still in there. Can you spot what's missing in the above photo? NB there's a clue in the next paragraph...

I also see there's some hastily scribbled notes on what I was looking for, plus some general observations on last year's standard of display. I thought I'd expand these, so that my job is harder this year. These notes should be good for anyone thinking of dipping their toes into showing off their produce, not just at Foxham Show.



Before the show
Have a look at the schedule and spot which items in your garden and/or house are likely candidates for you to show. It's been a tough growing season this year, but don't let that put …
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#mygardenrightnow: there's still plenty going on!

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The great thing about memes like #mygardenrightnow is they let us pause and have a proper look at the garden. I've been on holiday this week and I thought the recent cold snap would mean a wintery drabness on my return. Yesterday's inspection showed the garden's having none of it. There's still plenty to see, plus a few surprises.


Autumn hasn't quite finished here at VP Gardens, which means there are flashes of colour and some floral delights everywhere I look. True, they're on a smaller scale than previous editions of #mygardenrightnow, but the current season means they're especially welcome. Those fat hellebore buds shown bottom right in the collage also show promise of winter delights to come.

We've only just got home, so I'll have to leave the festive part of this edition of #mygardenrightnow to other contributors. I'll focus on the hope part instead...


...I was delighted with the efforts of Clematis urophylla 'Winter Beauty' in Feb…
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A clean break

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Sometimes fate conspires to take us in an unexpected direction, just like it has with my quest for fitness this year. In the last five minutes of a 5 week trial of walking netball, my feet got carried away in chasing after a ball. I eventually crashed into a cupboard then onto the concrete floor. Ouch.

I've got off relatively lightly. My pride at playing a better and swifter game suddenly came crashing down, which is a good lesson to learn. The more obvious results are a goth-like face without the need for make-up, minor concussion, bruised knees and a fractured wrist. 10 days later, yesterday at last brought good news... the bone has stayed in place without pinning, so I can look forward to 5 more weeks in a plaster cast. No driving in that time and no return to netball for around 3 months.

As is my usual wont, I'm concentrating on what I can do rather than what I can't. However, I'm also having to face up to reality. What I need to do in the garden is out of the que…
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Salad Days: Mastering Lettuce

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I've decided one of my salad challenges for this year is to grow as many lettuce varieties as I can, ready for the publication of my planned Factsheet* later on.

The idea is to grow as many of the Tried and Trusted lettuce varieties last year's Salad Challengers helped compile, then provide a visual guide and as many lettuce facts as I can muster. So far I've found around half of those listed**. Then naturally whilst I was out searching - because such is the way with seeds - a number of other varieties found their way home too ;)

A couple of weeks ago I sowed 22 varieties***. Just the simple act of sowing them has me intrigued. Why are some lettuce seeds black and others white****? They split into about half white to half black in my sample and as far as I can tell it's nothing to do with whether they're a type of cos, iceberg, or whatever.

I sowed them indoors and popped them into a propagator on the windowsill. The soil's too cold outside for sowing and it w…
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Things in unusual places #21: Ginkgo biloba

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I've followed this tree up the ramp at Cabot Circus car park in Bristol many times. Its buttery yellowness and being forced to park on the top floor finally persuaded me to take a longer look, much to the annoyance of some motorists. I didn't care. I was 'parked' on a little step and could safely peer my camera over the edge to take this picture.

To my delight I found a Ginkgo biloba. It's surprising a tree can survive being planted in such a space, never mind one of the more unusual ones. Later that day I realised the city centre's street tree planters seem to have a special fondness for this specimen. They're everywhere.


Here's one of several I found later in Broadmead. It's not the first time I've got excited about this species... here's a golden tale from the garden at Bath's Holburne Museum.


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Garden Bloggers' Blooms Day: Scabious 'Kudos Purple'

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I haven't grown many new-to-me plants in the garden this year; most of those delights are currently up at the allotment for my Flowers for Mum project. The exception is the pictured scabious 'Kudos Purple', a plant I've trialled courtesy of Thompson & Morgan (T&M) via February's Garden Press Event.

I'm having a bit of a 'Should've gone to Specsavers' moment because none of my plants are purple, but pink, and a look at T&M's online catalogue confirms they are indeed... er, pink. Why not call them 'Kudos Pink' then?!?

They've been rather shy to bloom too, preferring to fill out their pots with plentiful healthy foliage instead. They started flowering around three weeks ago, where they've been a welcome addition on the patio and making up for lost time. I'm dithering whether to plant them out in the garden now, or wait until they've finished flowering. They'll look grand in the sunny spot waiting in the lowe…
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Unusual Front Gardens: Christmas Greenery

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Christmas wreaths are increasingly common feature on front doors in my corner of the world, and to make your own is a popular workshop (here's my attempt from a couple of years ago - I made something similar on Saturday).

I think this simple arrangement of Aucuba japonica and red Cornus stems tied together with ribbon is an equally effective seasonal welcome. It's an easy idea to source and copy using festive looking greenery and stems foraged from your own garden or nearby.

The doorway hails from Holt and it isn't the first time this delightful Wiltshire village has featured in my Unusual Gardens strand. I found an equally beguiling Statue nearby in 2014.
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