printing and vegetables

We've picked a lot of things from the allotment and garden because, quite frankly, the weather is rubbish.  A busy week or so ahead and pretty uninspiring weather forecasts have led us to believe that the veg would be better off at home, in the warm and dry, despite needing a little burst of sunshine to finish off ripening...

That means I have to share my printing space with hundreds of green tomatoes.

I feel a print coming on...

as happy as a quail...

Quails like the small things in life (woodlice, worms, seeds etc) and are often to be heard chiruping away to themselves with delight when presented with a new bowl of sand to bathe in or a bowl of leftover rice from last nights tea.

Nothing gets them more worked up than a bunch of burstingly ripe elderberries though.

I'm sure they can feel the Autumn goodness giving them a little boost to keep their lovely eggs coming for a bit longer before they start to moult and settle down for a winter snuggled on top of their hot water bottles.

Watch out to the right though Speckeldy because Eagle has just spotted what you have got...

fabulous fibre

My family have had a thing about fibre for a while now, first my grandad and then my mother and I think it may have worked its way through to me too.  Many a happy weekend in my childhood was spent looking around carpet factories and spinning mills (not so many of those around these days) and the sound of the knitting machine lulled me to sleep through my childhood.

So this tea towel, while slightly obscure to some, seems almost inevitable to me and surely we all need to celebrate the strange places we can get fibre from?

If you sit still with a spinning wheel in a public place then it will not be long before someone comes over to ask whether you can spin the dog hair they have been carefully saving every time Shep/Fluffles/Fang has a big moult (the polite answer being that you have an awful lot on for the next ten years...) but there are some equally strange animals that do supply fibre in real life, and probably some as equally smelly.

Crumpled enough?

preparations for winter

We have rearranged our house in readiness for winter - sofas are now both in the room with the stove, dining table and pretending to sit round it and have meaningful discussions banished to front of house.  We are ready.  We are eating tea sitting on the floor waiting for the temperature to drop...

Hopefully we will have a couple of weeks to wait, as we are still picking and digging at the allotment and the elderberries and tomatoes are nearly ripe and we've got a whole list of things we haven't yet done this summer but will be cramming into the next two weeks, but then...

ello design

WEDNESDAY, 17 AUGUST 2011

Folksy Wednesday Wishlist #8

After a week off, the Wednesday Wishlist returns with a veggie theme! My grandparents used to have a lot of vegetables in their garden; tomatoes, potatoes, runner beans etc. so this blog is inspired by them and their love of gardening/vegetables :) enjoy

Melanie Wickham Lino Prints  /  Sixteen Eighteen

Bumbleblue  /  Sunshine and Snowdrops

Great to have my Allotment teatowel featured by Leanne on her blog feature "Folksy Wednesday Wishlist", this week all with a veggie theme.  Yummy items, especially love the peas in a pod, have a look at the whole selection here.

victorian gardening

I've been looking through a fantastic book filled with gardening tools from days gone by, strange pointy things which look beautiful but which we somehow manage without these days.  Lots are still very much needed however, but are now often not quite so stylish as their handmade older relatives.  Some just sound painful and are not for the squeamish...

summer snacks

No one asks me for snacks at home anymore because they know what they will be offered...

I have a strong squirreling instinct and it extends to many things (okay, mostly food).  Why plant ten pea plants when I can plant fifty and fill the freezer with peas and dry some for the winter?  Why plant enough onions for a few weeks of feasting when I could plant a couple of hundred and have onions for every meal well into the next year?

I think some would say the fact that I live in a small house and have zero storage space for two hundred onions and tens of kilos of potatoes should be a consideration and the fact that drying the onions means that we all have to leap the length of the kitchen because the floor is completely covered and we now can barely cook anything unless you have arms like Mr Tickle (only in the evening - I take my onions out for an airing everyday before breakfast and bring them in later, unless it looks like rain...).

I do like the philosophy of those who buy the cheaper, space taking vegetables from shops and concentrate on the more expensive, unusual or must be eaten the second they are picked ones on their allotments, but I just can't do it - I have to plant the lot, in triplicate.  It's the squirreling thing...