Catch up

My tiny garden is keeping me busy with watering at the moment. We have had Strawberries and then Raspberries over our cereal of a morning for a few weeks. (My late raspberries have yet to flower!). Last week we emptied one of the spud bags and had a couple of day's worth of Pink Fir Apple Potatoes.
Most of my bizarre and varied Tomatoes are either in flower or have set fruit and the Courgette plant I was given will provide a meal later this week. In the hot box the assorted Chillies are flowering and seem to be loving the sweaty heat and the garlic (which I planted in October) is ready to be dug and dried.
The Beautiful Wife and I both like to see birds in the garden, and to this end we have various feeders to encourage them. The strange consequence of these feeders is that we have found ourselves grown some seriously agricultural crops. The ability of a family of sparrows to flick seed all over the garden is quite remarkable. So far we have grown (without planting) oats, barley, wheat, sunflowers and oil seed rape. I can't bear to cut down these impostors as the have such statuesque elegance.
On the subject of grains I am now using the Richard Bertinet methods of making bread and they seem to be working. More of this in a later posting.
And... on the subject of later postings, many years ago I promised an old colleague (the Recovering Vegetarian) that I would write at length about sausages this too will happen soon too.

Spring is here (we hope!)

My garden (which is the size of a postage stamp) has gone bonkers in the last few days. My tomatoes have surfaced as have my chillies, The raspberries have leaves and the gooseberry has flowers. At the weekend I planted potatoes in bags made by the Beautiful Wife (The variety is pink fir apple). We planted some in September for Christmas eating. It appeared that they had died in the pre Christmas frosts but when I finally emptied the bags in January there were enough little spuds for three or four meals and they were delicious. I have been watching "Lambing Live" on BBC all this week. This should be compulsory viewing for all people who wish to eat meat. The care, attention and kindness shown to the animals on a well run farm is a perfect demonstration of what I tend to rave about on here. I'm not sure about the Organic certification or the Paper ethics of the featured farm but it is plain to anyone watching that the animals in that glorious location are well managed and cared for. Even more than this, there is Kate Humble for the men and Adam Hensen for the ladies.