Sunday night chit-chat and sealed pot challenge

I've started to feel a bit creaky by now after all my unusual activity yesterday. Gardening makes it presence felt. I thought it was going to be my knees that hurt the most but it's actually the backs of my legs that seem to be complaining the most. Oh well, it'll all be good for me in the end. I made sure to walk up all the stairs I came across when I was out today instead of taking the escalator in an attempt to gently stretch everything from time to time.

I really, seriously, absolutely must get my photos from my holiday last December sorted properly and up onto picasa or flickr so that I can share them with people I know and who, for the most part, have by now stopped asking to see them. Here's one of my favourites - a very young giraffe at Toronga Zoo in Sydney (you can see one of the adults just behind the fence pole, just to give you a sense of proportion)

What are you:
Reading
Nearly finished The Princess Bride. Have also picked up The Fast Diet - the official 5:2 diet. I'm not so much interested in actually fasting but some people's descriptions of what they were doing following this diet sounded awfully like what I've been doing this time round of trying to lose weight and eat healthily so I thought it would be interesting to at least read it and see what the science behind the idea says.

Listening to
Nothing much. Just the clock and an occasional car outside. I'm not long back from a concert where some friends were singing a Bach mass though - that was nice.

Watching
Going to watch an episode of Justified before bed, I think.

Cooking/baking
Not a thing. I have strawberries in the fridge that I bought on Wednesday and I'm supposed to have sliced them for the dehydrator today but I spent longer ironing than I thought and didn't get to them before leaving for the concert, which went on longer than I expected. And now I'm just too tired to think about it. Will try and rescue as many as possible tomorrow and perhaps puree them for a fruit leather.

Happy you accomplished this week
Had a very busy week so just getting through it was good. Had my annual review in work (and am now on the less formal "Du" terms with my boss). Went back to Biogarten and worked yesterday for a few hours and have told them I'll be aiming to be there every second week. Did the ironing. Filed all of my tax stuff away only three weeks after actually submitting my returns - I think that's a record.

Looking forward to next week
A week where I don't have something planned every day after work. Just choir on Wednesday and my first German lesson on Friday. Interested to see how that turns out. And then on Saturday, since it's the first of the month, I'll be heading to the chemist to step up on the scales and see whether just cutting out most snacking has been enough to get me started on a good weight loss followed by heading to get my second set of photos taken.

Thankful for today
A nice place to live in and a warm comfy bed waiting for me.

Bonus question: what was your very first real job
Well, I never did a huge amount of  babysitting. My first job was working for my dad in his garage (complete with mini-supermarket) - I started that the summer I was 12 (a year later than normal as my mum had died the year before so I ended up having to stay at home with my younger brother and sister). Worked most days during the summer and then every day after school for a couple of hours. Got away from it by claiming compulsory summer jobs abroad when I started college (it was only actually compulsory after second year) so that at least I had the summers off. First summer I worked as an ice-cream seller in a small village in the Bavarian Alps, then the second I had an internship at the Deutsche Post headquarters. During the college year I still worked in the garage every day though. I loved working outside on the forecourt the most but rarely got the chance since my dad seemed to think I was one of the best in the shop. Sigh. Too bloody polite and friendly for my own good. Anyway, I did learn a huge amount about business from working for my dad - family businesses can be like that. I know when I was doing my business classes in college I found that a lot of it was the kind of common sense that I'd learned in the garage anyway (like the day I had an argument with my accounting teacher because he wanted to use the pure mathematical answer, complete with fraction and I was of the opinion that since we were doing calculations on logistics and stock, you just wouldn't have a fraction, 'cos, you know, who orders 0.357 of a unit of something?).

If you fancy joining in with Sunday night chit-chat, post away and head over to Half-Dozen Daily to link up.

And finally...
Sealed pot challenge update
Not a lot gone into the pot this week but I did empty my purse of coins twice so at least something went in. I'd love to have a nearly no-spend week this week but we'll have to see how that goes. My goal has gone from one thing (something from etsy) to another (a freezer) and back again to nearly where I started but it's fixed now. In fact, despite still being in debt last month I just went ahead and booked myself flights to Dublin for a long weekend around the time of my birthday at the beginning of December, as well as a hotel for the three nights. I'm not planning on telling anyone I'll be there (except my brother) and will just be having a few chill-out days entirely for me. There are things I always want to do when I'm back and I never get to because I'm running around trying to visit everyone while I can so I'm going to stay strict with myself on not telling anyone. If all goes to plan, I will have no debt commitments left by the end of November and I have always planned to allow myself to spend as much as I please of my salary, even if it's the whole thing, for the first two months following debt-free. I've already bought myself a ticket for a lunchtime concert at the National Concert Hall the day I arrive, plan to book a flotation session, possibly get my hair done, have several lovely meals out and visit the National Crafts and Design Fair at the RDS. And so that's what my sealed pot money will be for: buying myself something gorgeous at that fair.

Weight watchers

Went back to weight watchers on Thursday evening. Haven't been since I moved here and only went sporadically the last few months before I left Ireland. I still have my card from then though and the last time I went was 2 July, so a bit more than a year ago. I got her to weigh me in pounds as well as kilos. I'll just get weighed in kilos going forward but I wanted to see if there was a difference from what I weighed the last time and was absolutely thrilled to see that I've actually lost 7 lbs. I think I had lost more when I first moved here but put a bit on over winter again but it's a really big boost to know that overall I'm down. I've eaten plenty of crap since I moved here but just the different lifestyle and food available seems to be helping (as does living on the 4th floor with no lift I'm sure). I only went to one OA session when I arrived as it clashed with knitting and I decided the social contact of knitting was more important at the time. I'll keep on with ww for a while and maybe start going to a few OA meetings again in winter.

The ww program has changed though. Or, what is more likely, it's just slightly different here. So I have lots of figuring out to do over the next while but I think I might just drag out my Irish books and follow the plan I'm used to. The main thing for me at this stage is to start incorporating a lot more exercise into my life. I did this on Tuesday last week by walking home from knitting. It was still bright enough to do that (as the walk mostly involves walking through a park which I've been told I should avoid at night) but won't be in a few weeks so I have until then to figure out a way around it. It's really not that far from home, less than a 30 minute walk and only one stop on the underground. I heard recently that they've provided a space somewhere out the back of my building to keep bikes so I might start saving for a bike soon too.

Am heading off now to go (finally) to the organic garden run by the community college and see if I can volunteer there. I've intended to do this since February (when I even went to go and find it so that I'd be able to find it again when it was open without any problems) so it's about time I think.

Vertical garden experiment

Here are some photos of my attempts to grow a few tomatoes indoors. I've discovered there are lots of things you need to pay attention to when growing indoors and in this climate: humidity and lack of airflow are big problems. Going away on holidays didn't help either as most of these plants are now completely withered. The few flowers I've had have shrivelled up and died before even properly opening. Apparently growing indoors can also lead to more sterile pollen (can't remember exactly why now, think the lack of air flow and potential dryness from growing in containers play a role) and the lack of wind means you do need to hand pollinate. Anyway, it has been interesting to do and once I clear out the dead plants this weekend I'm going to plant another few salad and spinach seeds and see if anything will come up and how long it might keep going through the winter. It should stay warm enough here for another seven or eight weeks, it doesn't really start getting cold until well into October (even based on my Irish idea of cold being different than the Germans', many of whom seem to consider anything less than 19 degrees worthy of cardigans and jackets.


This window box had two tumbler toms in it and a spinach plant. It was my most successful looking effort before going away and the most damaged when I got back. The spinach sort of seems to be coming back to life and the tomatoes aren't quite dead but I suspect when I cut off the damaged parts there really won't be a lot left.




And this was the contraption I created to try and get a few things growing. I'm actually pleased with the way it turned out but it's not really suitable for tomatoes, which just need bigger pots than this offered. But I'm going to try it again with just salady things and see how it goes. To the right you can see the other window box with the huge tomato plant. This was the plant I bought as a small one rather than growing from seed. You can see the size of it there and that was after the top three feet or so had bent over and snapped off. It probably survived the best but has only produced a few small flowers. There are a few on it now so I'll see if anything comes of it. I ran out of stakes big enough to tie it up a long time ago.

In the middle is a telephone table which I got from freecycle (it came up just when I was wondering how to get this whole vertical gardening thing going). I needed to have something which was on wheels so that it could be near the windows and thus the light during the day while I was at work but that I would be easily able to move out of the way in the evening when I got home and wanted to open the windows wide (necessary to air out the apartment and cool the place down). On top of it is a frame constructed using the shorter parts of two tomato tents I used in the garden in Ireland. So I have roughly a square foot frame, which just fits nicely on top of the telephone table and is about three feet high. Hanging from one side I have a kind of a metal fence part with some baskets, which is actually a kitchen utensils arrangement which I purchased from eBay for 4 euro. I lined the baskets with some plastic backed material and filled them with soil. I could have done a better job of lining them - there are bits where they leak so there is a towel in permanent position on the floor underneath them. And they are too small for tomatoes but the salad things did seem happy enough. Until they dried out and died that is but that's a minor point.

On the far side (i.e. facing the window) and just barely visible in this picture is a hanging bag, the kind you might use to put your toiletries in when travelling. Again I lined each pocket with some of the plastic backed material and filled it with soil. Unfortunately I didn't take account of how heavy the soil would be and so it was very difficult to get it to hang without completely sagging forwards. I'm glad I tried it though - if I had some way to support it a bit (maybe attaching lengths of bamboo stakes to give it a more solid structure then this could work although again only for smaller plants.

I have a third window box resting through the middle of the frame. I did this mainly to weigh it down and stop it falling over and as the tomatoes grew, tried to train them through the gaps in the metal part so they would get more light. These two plants are the ones with the least amount of damage so although I haven't seen any flowers on them yet they're going to get a good feeding at the weekend (assuming I can find anything to feed them with - so far all of these plants have only had water and whatever was in the compost they were planted it).

So there you have it. My first attempts at vertical indoor gardening. Mostly a plant it up and let's just see what happens effort I have to admit but I don't care about not getting anything edible out of it, I think it has been worth it just to have been able to grow something this year after all. I'll be very excited if I can get some more spinach going to use heading into (and maybe during) winter.

Working too much

Have a few 12-hour days behind me now as well as having brought a document home to proofread yesterday. But am getting to where I want to be so that I have a chance to keep things ticking over better going forward so that is worth it at least. Got my email inbox back down to less than 20 emails and sent items emptied - it's always such a weight off my mind to do that. I'm heading back to Ireland for two weeks on Friday and when I come back I really want to make a big effort to not work any overtime. That means I need to be more efficient with my time but I need to do it. I sometimes think I have somewhat workaholic tendencies but really it's because of having grown up working in my dad's business. The line between home and work is very, very thin for me so I don't even notice the hours being eaten away out of my evening. I have friends who resent having to stay even a few minutes late at work but these are mostly the friends who only had to work during school holidays and never during school term. Whereas I started working when I was twelve and worked almost every day from then until I left home (left the country to make sure I was getting away from it) at twenty. I worked two or three hours after school every evening and then all day Saturday and Sunday lunchtime and evening or Saturday lunchtime and evening and all day Sunday. We all did it and at the time it didn't seem strange at all but now I'm sort of beginning to realise how it could have led to some problems in maintaining a healthy work/life balance. Yes, that's a terrible phrase but it's an important concept. And one of the reasons why I think I might just be better off if I can get to the stage someday where my life is my work and I don't need to go out and earn money but can just do all the stuff I want to to live my life.

My cold is hanging on so I'm going to go to the doctor tomorrow. If nothing else, I want to be able to say to the people at the airport that I really do just have a cold. Although when clearing out my inbox I re-read the email we got a couple of weeks ago after swine flu cases started happening in the town I live in and apparently at the first sign of any cold-like symptoms I should have gone straight to the doctor and not gone near the office. Oh well. I have no aches and pains, no fever and what I was sneezing and what I'm now coughing is clear so I'm fairly confident I'm flu free.

The heat over the weekend was oppressive again. I should have spent a few hours at least cleaning and tidying my apartment but I didn't manage to get much done at all. This evening it is mercifully cooler but I only got home from work at half-nine and really need to go and sleep soon so I don't think I'll get much done.

I did make raspberry jam yesterday and oh my, it is delicious. I got four jars plus a half one from the 900g of berries I had and half of that half one is gone already. The recipe said I might end up just eating it straight out of the pot and I thought it was just another piece of chef's hyperbole but it really is that good. Don't care if it stays that runny either, if so it'll be a fantastic sauce for rice pudding, maybe some ice-cream. Oooh, sponge cake and ice-cream with this raspberry jam would be amazing. Hmmmmm. I used the recipe from the River Cottage Preserves Handbook. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It's really just absolutely fabulous.

I also made tomato ketchup yesterday but despite having gone to the shop on Saturday specifically to buy cloves I, for some completely unfathomable reason, bought ginger instead. More ginger to be precise because I only bought a huge bag of it recently. No idea what I was thinking of. I know I was distracted trying to figure out if I should buy whole cloves at the same time since I'll need them in a few weeks for making chutney but how that led to me picking up ground ginger instead of ground cloves I'm not sure. And of course I didn't notice any of this until I was tidying up after having put the ketchup on to cook i.e. after I had added ginger instead of cloves. Haven't tasted it yet - might be interesting.

I have a large courgette still to use but not many days left to be cooking before I leave so I'm thinking of making this pizza crust from it.

And I did take some photos of my vertical gardening attempts but will have to post them at a later stage. I found several catepillar types growing in the leaves of my spinach today so have removed and disposed of those leaves affected. They were really inside the leaves though, not just on them. Very strange but then again I've only had catepillar problems once before and that was on parsley so maybe that's what just what they do if they can. It was like they were sucking all the green out of the leaf around them.

Don't know what's going to happen while I'm away. I have no-one to leave a key with and ask to come in and water plants for me so hopefully I won't arrive back to an apartment full of wildlife and completely dead plants. Still, I was looking on my attempts this year as very much experimental so I don't mind too much not getting anything from them. I wasn't really expecting to so have essentially been too surprised by actually getting some salad leaves and spinach to use any of it. Have had a few tomato flowers appear, only to wither up and die before really opening properly. Two more plants have a few flowers now so maybe they'll do something.

Mould on soil around tomatoes

Since I potted on the tomatoes there hasn't really been any growth (8 days ago) but I assumed they would just be recovering from the transplant shock and that roots would be growing. I used a mixture of a tomato compost and soil. Today I came home to find a large amount of mould growing on the soil of two of the plants. Any ideas?



Not great pictures but I don't seem to be able to get any decent ones any more.



I didn't have anything to use as proper drainage so I scrunched up some newspaper and put it in the bottom of each pot. If anything I was worried this would mean I'd need to be extra careful to water enough as the paper would draw water out of the soil (which is what drainage is supposed to help with I suppose). Am hoping it might just be these two but if it's some horrible disease then presumably everything else will probably have or get it.

New adventure

About an hour ago I switched on the dehydrator in my first attempt at drying food. Got a kilo of strawberries at the weekend but somehow only 650g have made it into the dehydrator. That's two trays full.



Since I had another three trays I thought I'd throw in a few onions as well. Not sure if the flavours will mix during the process or not but have put the strawberries on top in case of any dripping (thought strawberry flavoured onions sounded better than onion flavoured strawberries) and as the motor of the dehydrator is also on the top. Then again, heat rises of maybe if heat builds up the flavour from the onions will be wafting upwards. Time will tell. Googling it would probably also tell but where's the fun in that.

Yesterday I finally potted on some tomato seedlings which I really probably should have done about two weeks ago. Still have some left to do but will get to them tomorrow hopefully. The ones I did weren't root bound so I'm hoping my neglect has just slowed growth rather than complete buggering them up. I'm so late with them I even bought one already well progressed tomato plant a couple of weeks ago but then I also left that one sitting in its much too small pot. It was very root bound so we'll see if it recovers. I bought a sage plant at the same time which I also moved into a bigger pot yesterday, discovering along the way that it was actually two plants in one pot. I hate it when supermarkets to that but there's really no reason for a garden centre type place to do so.

Following a tip from Potio Appotment I have planted the seedlings nearly up to the first leaves. It should encourage more lateral root growth contributing to a more sturdy plant.

I have three bay plants growing in one big pot that also need to be potted on. They were from a supermarket plant which I got about four years ago. I painstakingly separated out each of the seven plants which were squished into the teeny tiny pot and planted them out into bigger pots. Then nothing happened. The a whole lot more nothing but they also didn't seem to be dead. Finally, two summers later, just as I was about to dump them onto the compost, one or two of them got a couple of new leaves. So I left them be and last year there were another few new leaves. They survived the move to Germany (well, I brought one pot that had three of them in it) and this year seem to be really loving the sunny windowsill in my kitchen - the biggest one has grown at least three new sets of huge leaves. My brother reports that the others which I left with him are also doing well.

And I've learned that contrary to some people's experiences, it is really, really easy to kile aloe vera plants. The plant I bought last summer seemed to be thriving and was overflowing from the pot it was in so I bought some soil that was supposed to be suitable for cactii and aloe vera and put each part into a different pot (as I had been advised to). Almost all of them are dead or dying less than four weeks later. Will have to learn a bit more about aloe vera before replacing with a new plant I think.

And here's what was for dinner this evening - summer is definitely here foodwise although the organic farmers at the market have yet to show up with any tomatoes.



Salad leaves with some turkey salami, a few bits of bauerkaese (farmers' cheese) and a simple vinaigrette dressing. It looked like so much on the plate but it didn't last long. Who knew when I was growing up that it wasn't actually salad that I hated, just iceberg and butterhead lettuce!

Leftovers and filing

I spent almost all day yesterday (eight hours on a beautifully sunny day!) sorting out papers and all the filing I hadn't finished doing. I now have everything sorted by year and ready for proper filing in actual folders. Actually I had pretty much everything done up to around the end of 2006, the last time I tackled it all properly and from 2007 plenty of things are processed so to speak (i.e. receipts attached to bank statements and that kind of thing) and just need putting away properly. And the piles for the other years are fairly small. But such a relief to finally, once and for all, have it done. I would often think I had it done at least up to a certain point in time and then another box or bag would turn up that I had shoved stuff into. Now that I have the space to not just shove things wherever they fit I am finally doing it properly. And I have my medical expenses tax claims ready and waiting to be processed, just need an answer from Revenue on one question and I go enter them onto the website. My couch is covered in paper: but what the hell. Definitely worth it to get this done. Then I can start thinking about doing my German tax return.

Having had to pay for the car repair I've definitely been having a storecupboard diet week or two till the end of the month. Brought all my empty bottles back to the supermarket on Saturday so that I could buy some veg at the market. Got seven onions, two big carrots and a kilo of potatoes for 4 euro and then a few slices of turkey salami and, to be adventurous, two rabbit legs. They'd been marinated in a spicy oil (mostly rosemary and chili I think) so I fried them yesterday for lunch and at them with some wheat which I had flavoured by adding a bit of lemon juice to the cooking water and then thrown some peas and corn into. Delicious although rabbits legs really don't have a lot of meat on them. I knew this. But now I really know it.

So tonight I'm having the best kind of leftovers. At least I have high hopes for it. Leftover wheat/peas/corn is being heated up, I threw in a tin of tomatoes so it didn't dry out and I had a mettwurst in the fridge which I'm also going to add. Then I had the great idea to try some chutney and have added a couple of spoons of pumpkin chutney to it as well. It smells fabulous so I don't care that the wheat will be hopelessly overcooked by the time it's heated through again.

Did some reading this weekend about vertical gardening and now have a brain brimming with ideas and wanting to completely rearrange my living room so that I actually will be able to grow some of my own food this year.

And found out today that the cost to me of repairing the rental car is 465, so will get 335 refunded to me, which will make a HUGE difference to my budget for the next couple of months (i.e. will allow me to actually have a budget instead of trying to make my storecupboard stretch that far. Which it couldn't.)

Crappy weather today, horrible black clouds but I feel good.

Contaminated manure

I'm worried and saddened by all the reports I've been reading of people whose crops have been ruined because of manure they purchased which is contaminated by a herbicide used on the grass eaten by the cows who produced the manure. A chemical in this particular herbicide 'sticks' itself to particles in the grass and is not broken down by digestion (very bad explanation see links for proper details).


This one has very good information:

And the issue is discussed at length on River Cottagehere
and It's Not Easy Being Green here

It seems that this is not just the first time this product has been involved in this kind of problem before and that something similar happened in the States a couple of years ago.

Pottering

Spent a lovely day yesterday pottering around the garden, in and out of the shade inside as well making and taking lots of phone calls. Great way to spend a bank holiday. I harvested compost from the plastic cone shaped composter I got from the council when I first moved into this house (over two years ago). Mostly I just kept putting more and more stuff into it and never turned it or anything, occasionally adding some organic liquid accelerator stuff (to use when most of what you're composting is grass) and some shredded newspaper. Then last year in autumn I chopped back a pile of branches from the fuchsia and dumped them in on top of all that as I had no time to cut them up small. So yesterday I tipped it over, harvested what was at the bottom (mostly well composted but quite dry and very little sign of worms but loads of earwigs). I got almost a full wheelbarrow full which I was pleased with.

Most of that went onto the bed in the front garden, where I also chopped back the last of the tulips and the comfrey. There are a couple of garlic plants growing away there and I did plant a few potatoes into it as well recently. Once I have seedlings sturdy enough to plant out I'm going to plant some out there are well.

I put the dead branches around the foot of the fuchsia, couldn't be bothered chopping them at the moment and they'll do there out of sight for another while. And I managed to tip the composter back into place without making too much of a mess of the last few weeks grass cuttings, which had been thrown in on top of those branches.

I kept some of the best compost from that lot to mix with bought compost and soil to pot on the seedlings I have. I planted everything a bit haphazardly at the beginning so ended up with tiny pots with loads of salad seedlings in them. Hopefully some of them will survive having been pricked out and re-potted in bigger pots. Ditto for the tomatoes. I'm not too worried about the five courgette and two squash seedlings as they were much bigger and sturdier. The leeks were very fragile though so am really not sure about them.

But the big news is that I found out this weekend that I am being offered a job in Dusseldorf (for the same company I work for now, had the interview a week and a bit ago) so it makes it that bit more difficult to be bothered if things don't survive. I may not actually move until the end of July though so I have some time to get a harvest if things go well. Of the two better established tomato plants I have I realised one had a blackfly infestation on Sunday but have sprayed it with this stuff my brother gave me (something organic) - hopefully that'll work. And then despite my really not wanting to I finished off the day by clearing up the kitchen and then, after soaking my feet, I washed all the floors and had a lovely hot shower before heading to bed. I knew I'd appreciate having done that when I got up this morning and it was definitely nice to have a clean floor rather than one with dirt and grass all over it!

Growing stuff

My seedlings have started to come up, hurray!

I only planted them at the beginning of last week and I know I'm pushing it to get anything much this summer but hopefully I'll get some salady crops (have sown mizuna, spinahc, purslane and some mixed baby lettuce seeds and they're all going great guns). Garlic seems to mostly have given up the ghost but I will try again with it next year and this time pay attention!

Beets are coming up as well, no sign of tomatoes yet, courgettes and squash are flying along and, very excitingly, some leek seedlings appeared. Will have to sit down this weekend and actually write down the types I planted so I have a proper record.

A friend gave me two tomato seedlings about five weeks ago though and I potted both of those into bigger pots last week and they're growing well. And my brother gave me some potatoes which he had chitted for me (i.e. he hadn't used them before they started sprouting so decided he had been 'chitting' just for me) and I shoved them into the ground out front. No harm in trying. I never fully dismantled the potato tyre stack I tried last year (the three tiny potatoes it yielded were blighted) and now it's got a really vigourous looking plant growing again. However, I've read many places to be careful not to let any blight volunteers (i.e. potatoes from a blighted plant left in the ground by accident) grow so have to dig that out and get rid of it. I found two or three similar ones out front but before they really started to grow so it wasn't too bad. There's a healthy looking potato plant also growing out of the compost again so may need to do some investigating of that this weekend.

I like growing stuff.

Rats!

Well, a rat. A dead one to be precise. In my compost heap. The cheek!

I went down to add more stuff to the compost on Saturday morning (would have done the same on Wednesday but it was dark so didn't notice anything) and noticed some mangy looking fur lying on top of but kind of burrowed into one corner. I've seen cats climbing over the compost heap before (collapsing the top of it every time, I really should put a solid top on it) so although it didn't really look like a cat that was my first thought, that a cat had dug in for the heat. But cats don't like to get dirty, do they? I gave the fur a poke and it didn't move and then I noticed the big long tail at the end of the pile of fur. Eeeeww!!!! Which reaction caused me to think I may not be cut out for country life one little bit! I was also, to be honest, quite scared and had every fact/myth I'd ever heard about rats running through my head. I don't run or else I might very well have run screaming up the garden into the safety of the house. As it was there was definitely some shuddering and I was no sooner in the "safety" of the house when I remembered there's a cat flap in the back door (from previous owners) which doesn't shut and my head was promptly filled with visions of giant rats invading via the cat flap to take revenge on me for messing with one of their dead.

Hmmm. Yes. This is why I never watch horror films on purpose.

I left it alone and went out yesterday morning and it still hadn't moved so I bit the bullet, grabbed it by the tail and put it into a plastic bag and threw it in the bin. Really, finding a plastic bag was the most difficult part of the exercise. But I'm still a bit shuddery.

Now for the practical bit where I need to probably dismantle that compost heap to make sure there's no nest in it (it gets turned about once a month and I've never noticed anything before). Can I use that compost safely or should I make sure to only use it on flowerbeds and not edible ones? I'm sure I've seen this discussed so will have to go and search. Anyone with any tips please let me know.

Monday 28th after a bad weekend

Lunch was home made veg soup with a bit of chicken thrown in and some homemade bread. I've also had an apple (which I brought in) and a pear and a banana from the fruit platter in work.

Dinner will be something with chicken. I bought a chicken from Coolanowle yesterday, slightly smaller than usual but still a good size. It, plus three (very tasty) rashers and a half-dozen organic, free range eggs cost €18.19. I got some onions and a few leeks from Denis Healy as well, who for once actually had marked up what was Irish organic produce which cost €2.15. I allowed myself to be persuaded to go to the cinema on Saturday, bought popcorn there (definitely not a frugal thing to do but as filling a lunch as any other) and after the film we went for a couple, well, three drinks. That plus the takeaway I felt I needed on the way home left me not much of my budget for the rest of the week. I do have €20 left from last week which will have to do me for going out to lunch later in the week. Still, I'm glad I went out on Saturday - I rarely do anything spontaneous like that and I had a good time. Mind you, deciding to get off the bus early and stroll down Grafton Street on the way to the cinema wasn't such a great idea - I couldn't believe the amount of people and then remembered why I don't go into town much anymore.

Yesterday, after spending what felt like the whole day (but was really only a couple of hours) giving a driving lesson to a panicky friend who was having her driving test today (she passed, thank goodness) I was in no mood for doing anything in the house so I spent the last hour of glorious sunshine tidying up the shed a bit and cutting the grass, turning the compost a little and generally tidying up the garden, including chatting to the neighbour over the front garden fence for twenty minutes. I really needed to get out in the fresh air. Still didn't feel like cooking or expending any effort when I came in so I just shoved the chicken into the oven to roast. By the time it was cooked though I at least felt enthusiastic enough to strip the carcass and put several portions of meat into the freezer for next week plus some into the fridge for today. And then I also made stock straightaway.

While doing all this I managed to keep the washing up under control so this evening when I go home I just have to clean the bathrooms, the cooker and do the floors. A last quick tidy up before I go to bed (for which read, bringing everything that's lying around upstairs and dumping it in my bedroom instead!) and the house will be good enough to show people tomorrow - the landlord will be over and showing the other room to prospective new tenants. I spent a few hours knitting yesterday instead of cleaning the house and I really want to get back to it so it's an added incentive to not dally while cleaning and just get it done.

I made a new hat for my youngest niece and started and am halfway through a scarf for her older sister. This is really their Christmas box I'm making stuff for as I couldn't summon up the energy in December to make and send things. It's my nephew and brother-in-law's birthdays this weekend so I'm aiming to post stuff over by Wednesday for both the birthdays and Christmas pressies for everyone.

Of decluttering and weed tea

I've been making some good progress on the decluttering front. I started on Saturday morning by bringing all of the folders, files, boxes and piles of paper strewn throughout my room downstairs to the sitting room. I went back up to my room and was sitting on the bed admiring the fact that there were now surfaces to be seen when I could feel myself nearly dozing off again. Fortunately my housemate (who I thought was away for the weekend but had just been away for Friday night) came in just about that time and it was just the impetus I needed. She came upstairs and, as it turned out was also about to begin a big clean up of her room so we spent a very pleasant half-hour working away and shouting back and forth between the two rooms. She has been reading a book called The Secret and says that it has really reminded her of the way she wants her life to be. It's great to be around such a positive outlook at the moment. I think that just as negativity can feed off itself and create more negativity so too can positivity and so I'm trying hard to stay on track and contribute a bit of positivity to the house as well.

While doing all of this I also finally remembered to dig out the gardening diary I started to keep early in the summer. I must say I'm impressed with how well I did with it. Well, better than most attempts at diary-keeping so far in my life. 22 April was the first day I wrote in it and I wrote regularly up to 2 July. Mostly I wrote things like "nothing is growing" or "bloody snails/slugs/aphids" or "it's raining again" but still, it's the thought that counts.

So I can see that on 17 June I started a weed tea and I have to admit I have ignored it for so long I'd completely forgotten about it. So here's a question for anyone out there with weed tea experience - do you reckon it'll be okay to just dump the whole lot onto the compost now? Bearing in mind that it hasn't rained here (apart from a short drizzle yesterday) for about a month or so so my compost is very dry anyway at the moment. Or should I siphon off the liquid (would it still be useful?) and just put the black gunk (which I assume is in there - haven't actually braved the smell to have a peek yet) onto the compost? These are the things no gardening book really mentions. They all assume that you'll go back to things as soon as you are "supposed" to!

My decluttering continues and I hope to finish sorting all the papers etc. tonight which will leave me free on Thursday and Friday evenings to file things properly. I unearthed my bag of bits and bobs as well and will recommence my 3 little things a day next week to get rid of or find a proper home for all those little annoying bits. I've done well so far in gathering photos into one place, cards and letters I've received into a box together, cards and postcards I've bought but never written into another and so on. Once the major decluttering is done then I can go back to each of these things and sort them out properly as well. For now, it's a huge step to have things all together.

This weekend then the Great Bbook Clearout (planned for, oh, last January or so) begins. At the moment I'm planning on moving the furniture around a little bit in my room which means I'll have to take the books off the shelves anyway. I'm aiming for three lots: have read more than once and will read again; have read before and thought I would read again but can't remember what it's even about (I suspect I will re-read many of this pile before finally getting rid of them); and, bought because I thought I would read it but never had (will have to try and be realistic about chances of actually ever reading any of this lot). Of those latter two groups I aim to get rid of at least 80%. I suspect it'll take me a while to get through this task though because I'll keep getting sidetracked into actually reading. We'll see how it goes.

Potato harvest

Yes, there were actually some potatoes in there - can't really believe it because the plants were only in a couple of weeks before I had to chop them down. I got three potatoes from the two plants which were planted in a tyre stack in the back garden. Two were very squishy and one, which was a big potato, had a baby slug and lots of slime on it and also felt a bit squishy - they all went straight in the bin.

From the plants I put out in the front garden later in the year though (thinking they'd give me some potatoes for Christmas), I got this lot:
That's just over 1.2 kilos although I admit I did also weigh the teeny tiny ones. I also picked the last of the scallions.

It was all very exciting and with yesterday being such a lovely sunny day it reminded me of something I'd forgotten over the course of our miserable, wet summer -it's all worth it when you get to pick stuff and then eat it!

I'm wondering now if I need to wait a year or two before planting anything in the same space - do blight spores live a long time?

I got a lot done yesterday. I made a trip to my sister's storage unit and brought back all the spare duvets and bed clothes which I'd taken out in July for my other sister (visiting from France) to use. That has cleared a hugh space on my bedroom floor which is a big incentive to finish tidying up the rest of it too. I also brought over three small vacuum pack bags of clothes in sizes too small for me to wear at the moment, which has cleared a bit more space (both physcial and psycholoigal) in my room. She's decided to stay on in Australia for a while longer so renewed her storage contract for another year. It's handy for me as I can make use of the small amount of space left in it without falling into the trap of just shifting all my clutter somewhere else without properly dealing with it.

I also made it to Spring Wools to pick up a couple of balls to make hats with. I need something simple to knit and I did a good few of these last year so it'll keep my hands busy without needing a huge amount of concentration.

And finally I managed to get to the library with my overdue books. I finished Awarenes by Anthony Mello and thought it was good but not necessarily one I'd bother reading again. Barely got a few chapters into Gestalt Therapy Verbatim but a large part of the reason for that is that someone had underlined huge parts of the book and made notes in the margin and I find that really distracting. Particularly as it was a library book I was adding annoyance at how inconsiderate people are to that distraction.

I did enjoy the book on preserving I got but it's not the "one". I think I'll have to spend a bit of time in a good bookshop to find one which suits me better. And finally, there was the Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. I still haven't actually finished this book but have bought my own copy because I really like what part of it I have read. It's funny really because a lot of the ideas are very similar to Awareness but that didn't resonate with me half as much. I'm looking forward to reading further in it but think this is a book I'll probably come back to again and again.

And then I ended the day by heading in to Christchurch Cathedral which was hosting Voices for Hospice. People from lots of different choirs gathered at 5 or so to rehearse excerpts from Messiah, which we then performed at 7.30. I was on time (for once) for the rehearsal and we had a half-hour break between rehearsal and performance, which was just enough to get out to get a drink of water and introduce myself to the people sitting near me. The evening flew by and I was wondering why I was starting to feel tired towards the end of the performance when I realised that it was after nine and we'd been there (and singing) for almost four hours. What a great way to spend a Saturday evening.

One Local Summer - Week 10

Still no photos as I still haven't managed to retrieve my camera from little bro. However, I did finally manage to roast that chicken and it's delicious. Pulled the rest of the meat off the bones today and am making stock with the carcass, which is also a good excuse to use up the last few veg in my fridge before going away. I'm off to Germany to WWOOF for two weeks. Heading over on Friday and will be singing on Saturday in Limburg with choir - we're singing Dream of Girontius again with the German choir who came over to Dublin in May for a performance of it here. Have the rest of the weekend to spend with friends and then on Monday will be heading off into the unknown to spend two weeks on a farm with people I've never met before. I'm trying not to think about it too much as I think I'll just get nervous. I know it's going to be physically challenging as well as I'm so unfit but I'm planning to bring much gusto with me and hope that helps.

So, to my local meal this evening. Cold roast chicken with fresh garden peas and chutney.

Chicken - from Coolanowle (60 miles)
Green tomato and lemon chutney - McNally's Farm (30 miles)
Peas - from my back garden. Yum.

Is this the last week of OLS? I can't remember. However, I expect that I'll be eating a fair amount of local in Germany - it'll be interesting to see what kind of a set-up it turns out to be. As far as I could tell from the description they grow mostly herbs. I'm hoping the onion harvest is already underway though because I remember Zwiebelkuchen (onion cake) from around this time of year with great fondness but can't quite remember if it was a bit earlier or later than this.

I'm not sure how much I'll be posting until after my return - bis zum nächsten Mal!

One Local Summer - Week 7

This week it was another very simple meal. I've also noticed that all of my meals seem to kind of look the same. A sauce that's a kind of murky red/brown colour and a pile of potatoes. Hmmm. May try to get my hands on a chicken next week for a bit of variety. They sell out very early at the market and I'm not often up early on a Sunday.

This week I had a dish which, in my house as a kid, was simply called "mince". It was usually served with mashed potato and I wished I had mashed what I had but it was nice with just boiled potatoes too.

Beef mince - Coolanowle (57 miles)
Onions - organic, bought from Denis Healy, (not Irish, exception)
Bisto - from cupboard, still haven't figured out where it was made, either UK or Ireland
Potatoes - Irish, organic, bought from Denis Healy

Brown mince, take off some of the excess fat, add onions to fry for a minute then pour over the gravy. Leave simmering in pan while potatoes are cooking. Add more water if needed. No spices, no extra flavouring, just a plain, hearty meal like Mum used to make. In fact, I think this may be the only thing my mum ever did teach me to make (she died when I was 11 so we didn't have much time for things like cooking lessons, especially bearing in mind that she apparently hated cooking).

In other news, I now have 11 pea-pods and two of them look big enough to pick so I'm heading home now to do that and add them, along with five more small tomatoes I picked yesterday evening to a big omelette. If I still have good eggs that is. Came in to work for just a couple of hours today and have been here all day so didn't get to the market to buy more. Have gotten a lot done here but have to admit I also spent a couple of hours reading blogs. Am really enjoying catching up on the goings-on at O'Melays, a blog discovered recently when Karl left a comment here. They're building a root cellar you see and I just got Root Cellaring out of the library and am finding it very interesting reading but not always able to picture it - seeing theirs in progress is fun.

One Local Summer - Week 6

I'm late again, sorry. However, I had a marathon cooking session yesterday (not really, but it felt a bit like it) and have made lots of extras so that I'll be eating local or nearly local every day this week. I also checked the place I got my white wine vinegar from as mentioned in my post on tomato ketchup below and it's from Breisach in Germany which according to ViaMichelin is 1,263 km (bit less than 800 miles) away - so definitely not local then.

First up then is bistecca all' pizzaiola which is beef in a tomatoey garlicy sauce but that description really doesn't do this dish justice so I stick with the Italian name.

For the beef, I used a housekeepers cut (which is only €10.50 a kilo, I got about 500g) cut into four slices - more or less, decent knives are one thing I don't have so it was more like three slices and some diced bits for a fourth portion. Meat was browned on each side and then put into a casserole dish. Meanwhile I chopped an onion and a couple of cloves of garlic and fried them in some olive oil. A tin of tomatoes was added to this with salt, pepper, basil and oregano and the whole lot simmered for fifteen minutes then poured over the beef and put into a low oven for an hour or so. This should normally be served with a baked potato and peas or a green salad but I had no greens so just did some potato. It was absolutely fabulous, the meat was meltingly good and very, very tasty.


Ingredients:
Beef - from Coolanowle about 57 miles
Potatoes - organic, from market, Denis Healy sold, definitely Irish but not sure if from his farm or not.
Onion - forgot to ask, also organic, Denis Healy sold but not Irish (onions are on my list of exceptions)
Garlic - French (also an exception)
Tomatoes - I used a tin from the cupboard, Italian tomatoes so not local but have been in the cupboard for ages so I'm counting them as a storecupboard ingredient. I did intend to use the tomatoes I had cooked and frozen a couple of weeks ago but had already added them to my lentils (see below) by the time I remembered I was aiming for local on this meal! So, instead of one almost entirely local meal and one not, I have a mixture.
Dried basil and oregano from cupboard.

My second dish was not very local at all (bar the tomatoes which should have gone with the beef above!) but will last me for at least six meals I think.

Lentil stew with chorizo.

Ingredients:
Lentils - from cupboard. Another item that's been sitting in my cupboard for ages but in Tupperware so no label to tell me where they're from. I'm pretty certain you can't get Irish lentils but that these are organic.
Chorizo - from local cheesemongers - label was blurry but I believe this was from France.
Tomatoes - Irish, bought and cooked down a few weeks ago and used from freezer
Potatoes - Irish, organice, bought from Denis Healy
Onion - as above
Garlic - as above
Rosemary - garden

I also made a broccoli and herb quiche - tried to be clever and make wholewheat pastry for this but obviously there's a different technique for making pastry using wholewheat flour so it ended up more like biscuit than anything else. Haven't tasted it yet so will be interesting to see what it's like.

Ingredients:
Pastry made using organic Irish wholewheat flour (Co. Tipperary) and handmade butter (purchased from Coolanowle but made by a neighbour of theirs).
Eggs - Co. Meath
Broccoli - Irish, organic, bought from Denis Healy
Courgette - garden (only a mini one)
Tomato - first from the garden, a cherry tomato, half of which I ate (soooo good) and the other half sliced in two to add a bit of colour
Scallions - garden
Chives, thyme, oregano - garden

Doing a bit better on the local front for this one. Next time I think I'll just do a pastryless quiche.

I still have some mince at home which I bought from Coolanowle as well, will be doing something with that this evening. I think a bolognese style sauce made using the Irish tomatoes I bought at the market this weekend.

Garden July 2007 or, is this blight?

How many posts have I seen with the "is this blight?" title on them over the last month or so? Quite a few, so you'd think by now I'd know what it looks like but honestly every picture I've seen and description I've read seems to be just a bit different from the last. So, is this blight?

I've taken off the few leaves that looked like that but I'm wondering whether to cut the whole plant back, wait a couple of weeks then dig up whatever's there. Or to take a chance and wait to see if any more brown spots develop. I did try to dig down into the soil a few weeks ago to see if there were any small potatoes there but only found one eensy one so to be honest I'm really not sure there's anything happening down below at all.

There were a couple of flowers on the other plant in the tyres with this one a few weeks ago but they didn't stay for very long. This opened just the same day as I noticed the brown spots though, isn't it pretty?

These other potatoes are out in the front garden, just a few old ones from the cupboard which I didn't think would do anything but they seem to like it there (even though it's in shade for a good part of the day and until this week it has been raining a lot). I'm kind of hoping these will be a crop for Christmas.

In other garden news (apart from the brown spots I found) Tuesday was a very exciting day. So, with my apologies for the quality of the photos, here's exhibit number 1:

Cue me jumping up and down exclaiming (in a weirdly high-pitched voice), "Ooh, it's a pea. I have a pea!".

And exhibit number 2:

Me: "it's gone red, it's gone red!!!". Aaah, it really is the simple things in life that can bring the most pleasure.

One Local Summer - Week...eh...what?

I've been neglecting my blog even more than usual although I have managed to eat quite locally over the last fews weeks. My sister is home from France for two and a half weeks so I am spending almost all of my free time with her, chatting and playing with the kids. This is the shortest time they've been over (they started with about six weeks and every year it seems a little bit more difficult to find somewhere to rent and arrange trains/boats/flights and they end up coming for a little less time) and I had to go away for a weekend to a friend's wedding so I took three days off work to have a bit of extra time with them. Had a great three days and visited Newgrange on one of them, which is one of those places everyone expects you to have visited but I never had. The centre there is great and well set up to keep the kids interested (although I do have very interested nieces and nephews, especially these three) and then you get a bus up to the site itself. It was very interesting to see it although I didn't feel as much atmosphere as I expected to. I think I'd like to go back sometime when it's not peak tourist season.

My local meal for this week (it was on Sunday, what week is that?) will be one I don't have a photo of as my batteries were recharging. Hamburgers and homemade tomato ketchup. As simple as anything really, bought mince from Coolanowle and made the burgers purely out of the meat. Lovely salad to go with it from the wonderful McNally farm and my own homemade tomato ketchup albeit not entirely local - I used Irish non-organic tomatoes, French organic onions, garlic and spices from the cupboard and German white wine vinegar I think, the bottle has a German label on it, forgot to check provenance althoug it could be Alsace. And organic French mustard which I bought the last time I was over there so that counts as local. Still haven't been able to find any Irish onions, organic or otherwise, will have to look into growing my own I think. I was delighted with my homemade ketchup and can't wait to make more. This was my second batch, the first was a bit vinegary but tasted great all the same (my brother: "tastes like tomatoes instead of tomato-ketchup-flavouring") and didn't last long. This batch is nearly gone as well. My sister heads back to France at the weekend so when I've a bit more time to myself I plan to buy as many local tomatoes as I can and try my hand at bottling them as well as making more ketchup. I've already cooked down a large pile I had left over and frozen them but my freezer is small and freezing large quantities isn't feasible.

I made the ketchup using the recipe in Rachel Allen's Favourite Food at Home. It's very simple - for my second batch I added a bit more sugar (forgot about the sugar, hmm, that wasn't local either but for this batch it was organic, fairtrade raw cane sugar) to offset the vinegar and was also more careful with my vinegar measurement (only needed 75ml and my smallest measure was 100ml so I used two jugs, put 200ml in one then poured 125ml from that into the other and used what was left. Felt very clever - this is the kind of maths they should teach in school!). Next time I might let the tomatoes drain a bit before starting as I did find it a bit more liquid than I like. karl left a comment on my last post and I linked to here from his blog which was lots of food for thought on further variations. I think I prefer the recipe I used which doesn't involve skinning and deseeding the tomatoes although I suppose I'll have to do that when I just want to bottle tomatoes on their own. I have to say I really enjoyed making ketchup and best of all was the bit when I tasted it and it tasted like ketchup. Because I really wasn't expecting it to. Which may sound odd but then odd I am at times.

Anyway, enough rambling for now, I have lots of work to finish before I can get out of here but I'd already nearly posted this all day yesterday and today and it would never have gotten done if I hadn't put work aside for a few minutes.

Oooh, one last thing, I used old jars (ones that had salsa in originally I think) to put the ketchup in. I boiled them and their lids in water for five minutes and then left them drying in a low oven until the ketchup was ready, about fifteen/twenty minutes. I just ladled the ketchup in and put the lids on (note to self to remember that jars and lids coming out of oven are HOT!!!). This time it was all eaten too quickly for correct preservation to be an issue but I was delighted when we opened one jar after a few days and I heard the safety seal pop. That means I did it right doesn't it? Still trying to get my hands on a decent book on bottling/canning through the library, all suggestions for good books welcome but in the meantime will take any advice anyone wants to offer. Especially want to find out about re-using jars and lids that I've bought something in and particularly about if there is a certain type of lid you're not supposed to use.

I will be attempting next week to cook one local meal every day as I really want to get back into the swing of things once the summer holiday hectic is over.

Another (nearly) local meal - spinach soup

It'd be local if I had managed to get anything resembling an Irish onion at the weekend but there were none to be had. I decided to forgo the New Zealand, Argentinian and Brazilian offerings and settled for shallots from France. The potatoes however, couldn't have been more local - they came out of my compost heap. There's been a very impressive looking plant growing out the sides of the pallet and since I needed potatoes for this recipe (really needed to make something to use up the leftover spinach from last week) I decided to investigate.
Here's the haul of edible ones, there were a few green ones which went back into the compost. I was a bit worried about the little white dots on them. These rubbed off easily enough but I decided to play it safe and peel them anyway. So, into a pot with shallots and some butter, sweated for 15 minutes then stock added and let simmer until they were cooked through with the spinach being added for a couple of minutes at the end and everything being blitzed with a mixer. It was delicious although I think I would try it with less potato next time as I felt it overpowered the spinach a good bit. It's a very green looking dish too!

One final picture to show you - here's my first harvest of tomatoes. Unfortunately this is what fell off the plant when the wind blew everything over - oh well, there are a few more like this still on the various plants, maybe we'll even get some sun in August and they might go red! That would be cool. In the meantime I've bought a big bag of Irish tomatoes and am going to try my hand at making ketchup. If that works out well I'm going to get my hands on some nice meat this weekend, use my new mincer to mince it and make hamburgers for the barbeque (I have a big umbrella so am prepared to barbeque in the rain at this stage!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)