This is a busy time of year for me mainly because parts of every weekend are spent ferrying Miss L round various parts of the country. It is a double whammy this weekend because Miss L is a away for the week with a friend and H is away for the weekend with her sister. Miss L just needed ferrying across town to her friends house on Friday evening Miss L, Jess, her Mum and the dog "Ollie", red bandanna and all are to go camping in Cornwall for the week. H was going over the Hathersage to see the Silly Burgers , a compilation of tribute performers. Apparently H and Sis danced their socks off.
I saw H off on Saturday lunch time the went to the lottie for a few hours. There is not a great deal to do at the moment. Weeding of course. I did the carrot patch on my hands and knees and filled the wheelbarrow twice. It looks good now. In the adjacent area I has found that there was no sign of the Parsnip I had planted six weeks ago. There was the odd one which I transplanted into a single row. I figure the slugs had them so re-prepped the area and sowed two whole packets of Carrot seed for the autumn instead.
I dug up another row of Charlotte spuds and washed them. H likes them all clean from the lottie. I checked on the French Beans - climbing and dwarf in bed 2. They are not doing so well. The Pumpkin I put in has got it@s feet under the table and is romping off across the lottie. I had a couple of Butternut squash plants available so I dug a big hole for each one and dumped in five shovel fulls of manure and planted the squashes on top. I also had a a dozen outdoor ridge cucumbers so I planted those around the edge of bed 2
I had a six foot strip of bed 4 which had not been dug over since the winter. I had a load of assorted brassicas to plant out so I set to. The soil was like chocolate cake to dig over. The weeds fell to the fork with ease. Half an hour later the digging was done and I set about planting the seedlings. I have made a discovery. I always plant the seeds in modules and when big enough plant them out. I figure I give them the best start and usually they are big enough to the resist the slugs. I have been gradually increasing the size of the modules. I ran out of modules and sowed the last batch of brassicas in a big deep tray. They turned out to be the best seedling yet. This has lead me to the conclusion that to have vigorous seedlings one must plant them in deep trays so as not to restrict the root growth. Another lesson learnt.
I had an invitation to honour. By tradition Steve has a BBQ on the first weekend of the summer holidays. That was this weekend. A fortnight ago Steve asked me if a could make Elderflower Champagne to order. I said "I don't know". I had only made it once before. I spent a wet but invigorating afternoon tramping round Hick Lodge collecting Elder flowers. I followed the recipe and took the results to Steve's BBQ. The bottles were tight as drums. That made me think they would probably be fizzy. Yep, it was fizzy. It exploded out of the bottle. It was an interesting taste, sweet but slightly bitter and a low alcoholic content. A nice drink to start a summer party with. A bit later the red wine came out and things go a bit silly. All in all it was a very pleasant evening.
H came back on Sunday about dinner time. I had a lie in then a light breakfast and a sit down. Luckily there were heavy showers which stopped any plans for the lottie.
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