rewarding gardening

Solstice garlic is one of my favourite traditions – sow the cloves on the winter solstice, harvest the heads on the summer solstice. Biodynamic gardening suggests this to have a harvest of extra-potent garlic to boost your immune system. A sceptic friend was brought to tears when he cheerfully popped a clove in raw. Being used to chewing shop-bought garlic every day, he thought there would be no difference…mwhahaha! His eyes streamed for at least 1o minutes! I gave him half a dozen bulbs and advised him to use them in cooking (!) and after a month he said he could really feel a difference, as well as taste it. Organic crops may look bumpy and irregular, but their potency is not to be doubted!

 

Scrummy tea today – homemade super seedy bread, egg mayonnaise, homegrown lettuce and fresh from the pod peas! I’d treated myself to nearly a kilo of cherries at Lidl yesterday – to share, of course…not my fault people haven’t all come for their visits so they need to be eaten before they turn 😉 I recently realised how much I enjoy food I can eat almost as picked, and peas and cherries in one meal was just right.

 

The garden is thriving, and most days David, Ben or I pop out for some celery ( I cut and come again for a month, then wrap a loo roll inner around to blanch the heads), a lettuce, peas or herbs…and the potatoes are flowering and the first courgette is as big as my little finger! Good crops from the potatoes I hope, they self set from some organic ones that got lost in the shuffle and started to sprout – I was cross at the time, but am all smiles now 😉 There are some randoms from the compost too, pinky/lilac  flowers, so they just might be pink fir apples…one row of cabbages is doing well, the others were planted as sacrificials to keep the slugs(grrr) off my peas and are very sad lacey skeletons…I’ve discovered it’s worth leaving them though, as they will come back later, when the others are long gone into cabbage with herby yoghurt dressing…

 

 

 

May to July – so much growth!

 

 

and lots of lovely flowers, and lots of juicy pods –

and the other bed is even lusher!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

a breath of sea air 2

I had such a lovely holiday in May, being by the sea blew the cobwebs away and gave me so much food for thought/ art/ making… It’s a long time since I’ve been on a proper holiday, finding the spoons is hard, and much as I felt nourished and inspired, I can’t help noticing it’s over 6 weeks since I posted!

I had a lot of catching up to do in the garden (separate post!) and there have been a few dramas for me to remind myself that my new favourite mantra is ‘Not my circus, Not my monkeys!’ and then a couple where they were my monkeys – a scan (all clear) and activism chores….but now I feel the new idea inspired by the yarn I bought in Bath

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and the expanded space I feel when I am by the sea:

 

 

 

are blossoming into a new piece…to be called Mused, as it is about inspiration, and keeping to the process, while pacing

I have been working away on various elements of it, and gathering materials from my *ahem* extensive stash 😉 but the momentum has been growing the last few days and now I am at the happy embellishing stage:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

– helped by visits from friends who don’t mind me crafting as we talk…

 

 

 

 

 

as long as there is homemade cake 😉