It has turned from reasonably cool to excessively warm and back to cool again in a week. Today has been warm in the sun. After finishing the arch replacement a well deserved ramble to take in the garden’s other pleasures.
Category: Garden
Having watched a program on solitary flower bees and having recent logs lying around, I thought we’d give making another bee intended log pile/ stumpery a try. I did manage to overheat a small drill with my usual gung-ho approach. First I had to remove all the suckers from the Hazel, then split some of the logs, then the drilling and piling
In 2015 I made an arch from pollarded Sycamore branches, to mark the begining of the main steps down the garden. I didn’t expect it to last long. A bit later I added a carved sycamore owl to it. The insects were boring holes in to it already.
2026 and high winds have finally brought the arch down. It has done good service for wood from our own garden.
At the same time my latest sculpture project is coming along nicely. Something to smile at till the arch returns. As it is a cherry tree that had to go, carving needs to be done in stages. It is very soft and prone to split at first in parts then dries out much harder. Time to leave it for a while longer and decide how much more work to do when it has dried out more.
Update:
The logs have evolved into a stumpery with loads of holes drilled for bees (and one overheated drill bit casualty) and a slightly less pretty but pretty practical arch has risen up. The roses that collapsed with the old arch will come back and soften its lines. The old wood turned from nuisance sycamore tree to insect friendly arch and will now be reduced to shorter lengths and continue as a wildlife friendly zone. The two wood pigeons in the tree behind the arch fooled me into thinking they were pheasants. Masters of disguise.
On Monday Ruth was clearing one of the longer vegetable beds (they are all actually mixed flower/veg beds). We’ve got into a habit of treating brassicas like Purple Sprouting and taking heads of, leaving the plant to do its own thing, unless we need the space. During the clearing it became clear that the cabbages had developed multiple little loose heads, the Autumn broccoli had developed nice little sprouts, some spinach had developed a few vaguely acceptable leaves and a little patch of beetroot that was too small to harvest hadn’t entirely given up the ghost. Ruth saved them and passed them over to me.
Ruth and I are both on the same side of one of life’s great divides – Beetroot. I have a policy of keeping on trying things until I find out what it is people like about it and after many years of failure I discovered that Beetroot with goats cheese, really worked, especially if the beetroot is roasted. We eat it regularly now.
With that is mind and what I had in the house I came up with the following vegan recipe, which went down very well.
Flavouring – 1 tsp Allspice, 2 tsp sumac, 2 tsp ginger 1 tsp cardamom powder added to 1.5 tbsp olive oil in a roasting tin at 180 degrees fan oven.
Vegetables – 1 medium red onion, 1 clove garlic, 1 carrot, 10 small beetroot, 2 punnets of brassica tops, tin of sweetcorn,
To add at the end – 1.5 tbsp nutritional yeast, 1 dsp vegan bouillon powder, 100 ml water.
Process – Clean and if necessary peel/scrape vegetables and cut into long pieces not to thick. Remove any hard stalks from the Brassica tops and clean up.
Starting with the beetroot and carrot, pre-cook the vegetables (other than onion, garlic and sweetcorn) in the microwave and add in turn to the hot roasting tin, putting the onion and garlic in after the beetroot has cooked crisped up a bit. When the leafy bits are starting almost to turn into crisps, add the sauce ingredients and the sweetcorn and return to the oven for around 5 minutes. You can turn the oven off at this point.
We ate it with toasted home made bread and there was a little bit left for lunch today.
We woke up late this morning and opened the curtains to a really miserable day. Not looking like a day for the planned gardening. As we sat in bed drinking tea, the rain started to clear and a strange light appeared down in the valley. Slowly it spread up into the sky and, equally slowly, turned from a vague streak of colour into a bright rainbow.
As the rain moved away the rainbow faded again and then finally disappeared. The sky turned blue and gardening looked possible.
Later Simon, who helps us look after this hilly wonder nowadays, turned up and the three of us set off clearing, planting, pruning and cutting down, now that the leaves have gone. The rain kept coming and going but not enough to stop us.
We had a really productive day, from the top right down to the bottom of the garden. Holes in the laid hedged were filled, brambles cleared, redundant, rampaging wild roses removed, perennials planted, the garden produced, garden pole stock renewed and a spot the difference created in one corner of the top area, where a maple needed its yearly trim and an old ailing cherry tree needed to come down to make room for more planting. Now I need to decide what to carve the cherry stump into.
I happened to pass the window where the camera phone is set up when there was a rush of birds. Some bits are speeded up others slowed down. Originally they were there for around six minutes after I pressed the button.