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The first pods of peas showed up on my plants a few days ago.  They were promptly turned into a stir-fry, along with some chicken, broccoli and corn :)  There’s a certain type of satisfaction that comes with knowing that I grew that food in my garden, and that the furthest the food had to travel was 10 feet onto my chopping board.  They’re quite good raw too!  (Hell is scheduled to freeze over soon.)

Talking to someone on an IRC server I frequent, he mentioned that he used to grow all the ingredients for a good salsa in has garden – that’s a tempting idea for next year.

All the onions are looking in good form, there must be about 50 of them!  Enough onions for a year if I’m lucky, and the packet only cost me a quid or so.

Today was the day of the Grand Inspection by my paternal grandparents of the new kitchen. I am pleased to report that the work has been approved of!

Need to get the channels filled in, and the wall re-skimmed where the tiles left holes. After that, I’ll have to decide on the splashback, and the kitchen will be pretty much done. It looks like it could use another lick of paint, but there’s no so much surface to cover now, so that’s something I can handle.

The garden also met with approval from Gran – she saw it a few months ago, and it’s come a long way since then. The peas are growing quite well now that I’ve got cocoa shells around them (slugs can’t stand the shells apparently), and I’ve moved most of the onions to the top bed under the flowering cherry. Apparently peas and onions don’t get on very well, so I’ve evicted the onions.

Put the new oven to the test the other night, and prepared a wonderfully moist roast chicken. I’ll be taking a knife and a long simmer to the carcass, and creating a nice chicken stock / soup tomorrow. Also made a batch of chocolate chip cookies from the Tollhouse recipe that I have – they went down a storm at work. I fear for my waistline now that I have an oven!

Well, Friday was a good day for the kitchen. The fitters got all of the doors on, built the custom surround for the boiler and did general tidyup. Considering I had 3 cupboards before, and an L-shaped kitchen, moving to 14+ units and a U-shaped kitchen has been a bit of a shock. So much storage space, and I wasn’t really sure what to do with it all. The fitters had left by the time I got home (and I got home early), and one had to assume it was to watch the World Cup footie. Not my favourite game, and I’ll only watch it if there’s nothing better on (and that’s pushing it). continue reading…

Well, it’s been another labour packed weekend, and there are results to show for it.

I had originally planned on taking all of Friday off to strip stuff from the kitchen, laze around and receive my new kitchen. $dayjob put a skewer through that one by sales managing to book my manager out down to Birmingham when our 1st/2nd line guy was on vacation. That would have left our new hire as the only support guy in the office – so I came in for the morning to get some work done and lend moral support. continue reading…

The grand experiment appears to be working – the peas have started to show their heads above the soil.  Time to put down a bit of snail and slug deterrent (garlic, soap, water, blended) to protect them from predators.  Hopefully the birds will be happy enough with the 4 feeders that are out to not pay my fledgling vegetables any mind.

Speaking of birds, a magpie tried to eat nuts from one of the feeders this morning.  Imagine a rather large magpie (foot long or more) standing on the top of a pole, trying to reach a swinging bag of peanuts below him.  Absolutely hilarious to watch.  Even tried holding on the the bag with both sets of claws, but gravity got the better of him (or her).  Pity it was a grey morning and I had no camera in hand.

I think at least one of the carrots is poking some greenery through the soil as well, but it could be my imagination.

Next move is to rent a skip for all the dead wood (from the fence) and stems etc that I can’t compost, and empty the junk out of the garden.  Again.  At least there are no paving stones to throw away this time.

This weekend saw another few hours of work on the garden. I worked on the very top bed, next to the shed. Ripped out a rather pathetic example of a rose and some other plant that was looking a bit past it. Left the berry (can’t remember which one, pink flowers) in place, though trimmed it a bit, and also left the fatsia japonica.

Gave a good solid tug on the fence, and it decided to make friends with me, so I’ve pulled all of the rotten fencing out. Good thing the neighbour put up a new fence last year! Nipped out to Focus, and picked up some begonias for the second blue pot I have – just need to find a spot for it now. I might get a smaller pot for the chimney pot in the middle of the lawn and plant some begonias in there as well – it should look pretty good to have a burst of colour in the middle of the lawn.

The clematis is looking quite happy – it’s growing nicely, and the flower buds are showing, so it should bloom soon I hope. Supposed to be a ‘multi blue’, so we’ll see if it really is. No sign of any vegetables yet, but I suppose I’m expecting a bit too much. I’ll probably sow another set of carrots in the bed with the flowering cherry this weekend coming (or later this week), and perhaps find a spot or three to toss some onions in the ground.

Well, another day of toil in the garden has produced three more ‘upgraded’ garden beds. Numerous plants that were showing their age have been ripped out, and another 150 litres of manure have been blended in to the soil in all three beds. In each bed, a combination of various cornflowers, echiums, chives and bulbs have been planted, and some plants I deemed worth saving put back into the bed.

I also sowed the first batch of carrots in the lower bed, and installed a belfast sink as a heather & lavender pot. I don’t know if lavender can tolerate acid soil, I suppose I’ll find out the hard way! The upper bed around the tree (which I worked over last year, and left to sit) turned up a suprising number of worms, which is always a good thing. 50 litres of manure and 50 litres of topsoil went in to this bed, and several wild strawberries were unceremoniously yanked out. A clematis was put in, and hopefully I can train it to grow up the tree.

The tree, by the way, is one of those flowering ones, and it’s covered in beautiful pink blooms. Shot quite a few shots of them this morning before I wandered off to town to shoot the beds in one of the parks. Didn’t need to go to Holland to see tulips it turns out, as there were quite a few in Newcastle!

Last year, I chucked a potato or two in the bed next to the upper tree – to my suprise I found 3 more there Saturday afternoon while turning the soil over. Guess I can grow potatos if I want to.

It rained for most of Sunday, mostly as a light drizzle, and today hasn’t shown any sign of easing up on the water from the sky.  It means I can’t really work on the very top bed (as I’d rather not get drenched when it’s cold out), but the seeds should be loving all the fresh water – miles better than tap water.