Sweet pea love

This year we've had a magnificent display from our everlasting sweet peas, and they've flowered for the longest I can remember. There's still one flower out now, although it's dying out now and I think it'll be the last.

I wasn't sure if they'd return this year, what with the fence work we had done earlier in the year I thought they might have migrated to the other side of the fence, but luckily they hadn't. They had moved half a metre or so towards the house, but they were still there.

They say you should keep cutting sweet peas to encourage them to keep flowering, and it's true I've cut them more this year than any other year. Perhaps that's it, who knows.

I've been photographing them since June, and as the last flower's almost done it seems right to share the photos now.

After flowering later than usual, when they got going they really got going and shot up over the fence and onto the trellis above. 

I couldn't resist poster-ising them either. 

They were in the house too, where they did this weird thing of turning white. I think it makes them even more beautiful. 

And that brings me to the most recent photos, and what I think will be my last sweet pea of the year. 

The leaves though are showing signs of a tough summer

But still there are young, lush green shoots among the older leaves. I can't see them doing anything flower-wise, but I'll be happy to be proved wrong!

So just as these finish my dad tells me I can sow the seeds he gave me which featured as my black and white photo last Sunday. 

52 Cookbooks #37: Apple & Walnut Crumble

It's time for more Hugh! I do love a bit of Hugh cooking and I thought I'd already used this book in this challenge, but it seems not - so happy days.

52 Cookbooks: the challenge is to cook a new recipe from one of my (many) cookbooks each week for a year...

Infact the real reason I pulled this book - River Cottage Everyday - off the shelf was to remind myself of its apple compote recipe, which in turn I hoped would help me make some headway into the apples I brought back from Norfolk last weekend. 

But as I looked for the compote many of the other recipes were screaming "cook me!"

As it turned out I haven't deviated too far from the compote recipe (and I've some of that sitting in the fridge too) with this apple and walnut crumble, but I also used this book for tea last night and cooked liver, sage and onion. Yum. 

So as crumbles go, for me it's normally rhubarb (as I grow some in the garden) and a plain crumble. If I make an apple crumble instead that's usually fairly plain too, following the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" rule of thumb. But for Hugh I decided to make an exception. And I had just the dish for it too:

So breaking from tradition I added ground almonds and porridge oats (substituted for the oatmeal) along with more normal crumble ingredients. I pulsed it all in the food processor and it looked like crumble. So all was good.

I baked the walnuts - yes I actually followed the recipe - well almost, I only had 80g of walnut pieces not the 100g that Hugh said. I peeled, cored and sliced my apples and mixed them with 80g of caster sugar and the walnuts. Hugh says to get the fruit as compact as possible so I did my best with that and then added the souped up crumble. 

I left out the optional cinnamon as for a simple crumble girl I decided it was a flavour too far. And I have plenty more time to add cinnamon to apple and crumbles this autumn!

Ready to go into the oven... still looking like crumble!

Out of the oven, still looking good. It cooked for about 40 minutes and still looked like crumble, which is always good news. In the dish and with a splash or two of cream we were very happy (autumnal) bunnies. 

The verdict:

• It was easy to do, and I might be tempted to make more apple crumbles
• I liked the walnuts, but there were a lot of them. I'd only put in 40-50g if I were adding them again. 
• The oats in the crumble were ok too, but I'm not sure I'd bother with oats and ground almonds again as I thought the crumble was fairly dry
• Clearly though I'd be happy to eat any bowl of this put in front of me!

And I bloomin' love Hugh for this line in his recipe - which gives me permission to eat this for breakfast. I guess it's the porridge oats, but that's a good enough reason as any and with Hugh's permission I'm not sure I need that many reasons anyway...

A hard-working and productful Norfolk garden

For this week's How Does Your Garden Grow I'm sharing photos of my Dad's garden in Norfolk. When we visited this weekend it was choc-a-block with produce and dahlias and more and provided the flowers and greenery for Mum's Harvest Festival flower arrangement.

Up until recently Dad also had an allotment, but now he grows his fruit and veg in the back garden alongside his flowers and more usual back garden accoutrements! This means it's made to work hard but it seems to be doing ok...

There's plenty of runner beans, which is good as they're a family favourite. 

And there's still more to come

The onions (these are just some of them) are drying

The pumpkins are ripening in the greenhouse - and check out that ginormous geranium in the background. Dad assures me it's just one plant - the good news is I have some cuttings!

The marrows are as huuuge - and as plentiful - as always

And there's a whole forest of tomatoes

And we haven't even started on the flowers yet...  I'll warn you now I couldn't decide which to leave out, so here they are - grab a tea and a biscuit before you start scrolling down...

Let's start with some roses, this one's my favourite of the two:

Some anemones

And the dahlias - oh the dahlias - reds, oranges and pinks

And a hollyhock, on the pink side of things, of course

Plus frilly, full-skirted ballerina-like fuschias

And remember my vintage sign?  Well, it's clearly hereditary!

As well as the dahlias which always seem to signal the end of summer, Dad's garden has a couple of more autumnal additions, there's these berries - we've no idea what the plant is, but we know it had a pink flower...

And I'd forgotten about these Lords and Ladies, which we've seen a lot of in National Trust gardens recently. I'm not quite sure what they're doing hiding under the climbing rose, but it's good to see them there. 

And finally I'm finishing on a Passion flower - they're favourites of mine anyway, we had one in our garden when we moved in but somewhere along the way we lost it. I keep meaning to replace it but I've not quite got there yet. The reason that this one has made me smile is because it's the cat-equivalent plant, in that this plant prefers to spend time with its neighbours!

It's pretty rampant with plenty of flowers on Dad's side, mostly it's nestled in the winter jasmine but there's also some tendrils coming into the garage. These I think might be encouraged into a pot to see how they like that...  I think Dad would like that and I know I most definitely would too!

So that's quite a trip around Dad's garden, and as you can see there's plenty to see at this time of year.