Courgette city

My two courgette plants have really blossomed into benign monsters, and I've had the pleasure of eating my own courgettes for a fortnight or so now. However, I get too enthusiastic and pick them when they're a bit tiny! Check out these babies:



I took my camera to the plot yesterday. The courgettes are truly impressive.




There has been so much wind, though! All my tomato plants were blown down (thankfully not too badly damaged, they are thriving, as well), and the huge courgette leaves had been functioning as sails in the wind. This one is just about ready for take-off; the roots have been pulled out!

Sweet pea

I've been having an absolutely awful time at work, with deadline after murderous deadline, but I believe I have now met them all - phew! It didn't help that I was feeling rather tired and run down, but only two more weeks to go and it's all over.

Last weekend, my parents came to visit. Along with a huge amount of food and other goodies, they brought us a gift from the Provence, where they had just had a sunfilled walking holiday:



I do love my peppers, so when my mum saw this lovely colourful tea towel, she thought of me! It is now brightening up our kitchen corridor.

But let's take a closer look:


Okay, you may think that that is a rather pathetic selection of sweet peas, so small that they have to be held up by a hair scrunchie. However, I would have you know that these are the first product of my hand-sown organic sweet peas! I am very excited about them, and I learnt on Gardeners' World last Friday that the more you pick them, the more flowers grow!

My mum was rather invaluable as far as help and advice with regard to the plot was concerned. It was nice to have someone more enthusiastic (and hardworking) than myself around! She of course came with a selection of plants, and picked up a few more along the way. This nicotiana (very strong-smelling at night) we bought at the local organic market for 50p, and it's already coming into flower a week later:


More pictures of the plot, which is now thriving, will follow soon!

Plot developments

Earlier in the week, we had our friends Evert and Anouk over for dinner. The plan was to go punting, but unfortunately it had rained extremely heavily the day before, and the river level was too high to go out. Never mind, we just had a picnic in the gardens instead, and a most civilised affair it was, too!

I was feeling very pleased, because I had made a salad out of the first lettuce yield of the crop. Look at all that goodness!


We had lots of other exciting goodies, such as these tiger-striped tomatoes:


Here we are enjoying it all:


This evening, I was emptying my compost bin, when I noticed a development so exciting, I had to go back for my camera, so that I could record it for posterity.

My initial thought was, 'Ah, a flower on the courgette!'


But WAIT! That is not just a flower, that is ... a mini-courgette! My first real-life courgette! Woohooo!


This all reminds me vividly of last summer. I had a courgette plant then, which I was even more excited about then than I am now. I was monitoring it extremely closely, and you should have been there to experience my joy when it produced its first, amazingly beautiful flower. Unfortunately, that was to be about the extent of it, thanks to the worst summer I've ever lived through! We are already ahead of last summer!

Christmas present finished!

I'm really proud of myself. I've finally finished a whole cushion cover, which looks like it may not fall apart right away, unlike my first effort. This was meant to be a Christmas present for Alan, but it's actually taken me five months to complete this! It's completely handsown, so it was bound to take some time to produce.


I'm quite pleased with the back. Alan donated some old shirts to my fabric collection, and suddenly I saw a way of recycling one of them:


Here are some close-ups. You can tell I bought these fabrics back in the autumn. Perhaps, one day, I will have created enough cushion covers so that I can rotate them per season!


Look at that careful quilting!


Yay. Mission well accomplished. And now Alan finally has a nice cushion to sit on.

Baby quilt

This is ever so slightly after the fact, as my baby nephew was born at the beginning of this month. Luckily I was present for the birth, and got to meet him on his first day of life! He was very sweet and smaller than our cat.

I had, of course, planned to have my baby quilt finished by the time of his birth, but I had slightly underestimated how long it was going to take me to make it by hand. I had chosen a simple rail-fence design which my quilting book was billing as 'perfect if you need to make a quick gift for a special someone'. Hmmm, that is, if you have a sewing machine.

First of all, I had to choose the colours, which were to coordinate with the nursery's blue/green colour scheme. So off I went to the lovely fabric shop in Abingdon, and in combination with some fabrics I already owned (my fabric treasure trove is filling up!), this is what I had to work with:



By the time I arrived home, I had stitched long strips of three each together, and I was ready to cut them into squares, which I fortunately did without my ruler or knife slipping and messing up all my hard work. I experimented a bit with the lay-out:



I finally decided on the former. Despite working so hard I gave myself sewing RSI, I was forced to take the quilt back with me to do the actual quilting! Anyway, here is the 'finished' product:


I've sent it home and my mum is going to finish it for me and make it into a cushion cover, as I didn't know the exact size it had to be. So much work, but a nice result! I feel quite proud of it, and hope it will make a good breastfeeding cushion.

First warm and sunny day of Spring

And it's all systems go inside my flat.

Happy and proud tomatoes....


Little monstrous courgettes....


Pots and pots full of seedlings everywhere....


Sprouts and selected tomatoes 'toughening up' in our bedroom...


Sunflowers peeping out in the bathroom....

I've just planted out the very first tomato seedling, as a trial run! Very exciting! Let's hope there will be no more chilly nights...

Transition

Just before I head off for just over a week to admire my sister's as yet unborn child, some updates on my allotment. Not that there is anything to show, but I have done ever so much work to it, and it want to show it off!

First of all, there is what's going on inside. This is a picture taken a few days ago of the sprout seedlings desperate to get out of their shared tray:



I was putting off the potting process, as my mum had warned me that ten sprout plants were just too many, and I couldn't bring myself to discard any. Eventually I worked up the courage, though, and eight sprout seedlings made the transition successfully. Here they are, together with some tomatoes:



I was a bit worried about the tomatoes, as I seem to have hacked off quite a bit of their tiny little roots in the potting process, but they appear happy enough. Here is another bunch "toughening up" in the spring breeze:


Onto the garden itself, then. Now, it's been looking pretty dull and bleak, but yesterday I did enliven it considerably with the erection of a wigwam for future beans:



See? Now at least there is an expectation that something will be happening at some point. That dark line on the right marks the position of the rainbow chard, which I sowed this morning. I've also sown sweet pea around the wigwam, while we're waiting for the beans.



I hope there will be at least a few bits of green peeping out of the clay when I return!

Easter (belated)

Well, we weren't going to be doing much egghunting with the weather like this. Blizzard, sun, blizzard, sun, wind and biting cold.



I've been a bit annoyed about Easter, since I couldn't go out to do all that work on my plot that still needs doing, and Alan is away for ten days, so I'm a bit lonely, too! Luckily, I had invited some friends over for Easter brunch, which was extremely civilised. I made some rolls:



As well as cake and French toast, and I had all the usual Easter goodies. Here are my guests, Glenn, Simon and Sarah, about to embark on an epic Easter eating adventure. This was at 11am, and they didn't leave until 12 hours later!

Sprouts!

This was the surprise that greeted me this morning when I opened the curtains. The Brussels sprouts, which I sowed only a week ago, had shot up, seemingly overnight, and with such force! One had lifted a whole clod of earth in its eagerness to see the light:


And all this happened while my attention was fully fixed on the exciting goings on in the bathroom, where the tomatoes were also reaching for the light:


So exciting! Of a similar magnitude to the impending birth of my sister's baby! Well, it is March now, and I've received almost all of my seeds. Check out my riches:


I've been compiling lists of when to sow what, and where. Lots to do in March, and still so much digging and pulling up of grass roots to be done! I've also made a new plan:


By the time everything starts growing and ripening, I will be able to bring my harvest home in this fantastic and appropriate bag my mum sent me:


I can hardly wait. I just hope it stops raining so I can get on with it!

New avenues

Alan is in the process of buying a 1967 Riley. Stupidly, I offered to make some cushions to brighten up its interior (thinking of some nice quilted ones), and he agreed, but instead of quilted cushions he wanted me to make two headrest covers with the emblems of both our colleges on them! So he bought me this ready-to-stitch kit with the Balliol logo, and is currently designing the Wolfson one, as it's not available in the shops. So now I can add embroidery to my repertoire! I feel like quite the old lady sometimes.

In the same craft shop, I stumbled upon these wickedly cool cards:


Aren't they simply fabulous? And... the long awaited envelope from my mum finally arrived, with these very chique gardening gloves.


Thanks, mum! Now I must go and do a little bit of work, before we go off to watch the last day of Torpids rowing races! Go Wolfson and Balliol!