Reflecting on my week #89

Thankfully the weather has improved since last week, though I’m still carrying my umbrella in my handbag just in case. There’s thunderstorms threatened and some more rain, but somehow in London we’ve got to that stage where a thunderstorm to clear the air would be welcomed, as it’s already got to the “too hot” stage for some. I could do with less muggy-ness, but I’m pleased it’s warming up.

There’s been a sudden burst of fruit activity in our garden and we’re regularly picking - and eating - handfuls of strawberries. I love it when plants just carry on producing when left to their own devices, it’s the best type of home grown veg. Short on effort, but long on flavour.

It’s been a funny week in Greenwich. There’s been a couple of big events at the Old Royal Naval College, where a tremendous amount of fantastic flowers have been brought in to make a stunning place look even better. Then on Friday some cattle arrived and took up residency in a large gilt picture frame as part of the Greenwich and Docklands International Festival.

They were hefty old cattle and while I was keen to have a peek I stayed firmly on the outside of the picture frame and did my best not to make eye contact. There was an electric fence, but let’s face it this city girl wasn’t going to put that to the test. It was quite an attraction though, and without the cattle I’d have happily tried the picture frame seat for size.

On Sunday we realised why people have those collapsible fold-up chairs for picnics and such like. We headed over to Greenwich Park for one of the first Bandstand concerts of the year. Sunday wasn’t as nice as Saturday, but armed with a picnic blanket and an impromptu picnic which mostly contained cheese, which was perfectly fine by me. It’s been a few years since we’ve been to a concert in the park, and in those years it seems the ground has got a lot harder, and a lot more uncomfortable!

There’s plenty more bandstand concerts to come throughout the summer, and we’re hoping to go along to more where we can. Each weekend there’s a different ‘flavour’ to the music, this week was country. The one I’m hoping to get along to sounds as if it might be more Cuban, with a band name of Here to Havana, i think there’s a fair chance, don’t you?

The other thing we’ve been picking from the garden over the past week, while enjoying the heady jasmine smells, is cherries. We’ve bowlfuls of them - the pigeons have stripped the top of the tree, but seem reluctant so far to strip the tree bare. So we’re making the most of it, and of my photo editing software as you’ll see below.

I’d been wondering how we could use them, as while some are sweet enough to eat as they are, I prefer them cooked. Today, while having a bit of a browse of the Craft Gin Club site I spotted a recipe for a boozy gin and cherry trifle. Yes, i know, I wasn’t really looking for this, but once I’d found it I knew it would be useful. While we could make our own swiss roll and custard, I’ve opted for some specially made for us by Marks & Sparks, so we can concentrate on the main event, i’ll let you know how we get on!

Elderflowers, the scent of Spring

* These items were gifted by I Love Cosmetics

There’s certain scents that immediately bring the current season to life, whether it’s cinnamon at Christmas, wet leaves in Autumn, freshly cut grass in Summer and for me what screams Spring is getting a whiff of Elderflower. In previous years we’ve been on holiday in France, luckily with the car, staying in quite a fancy hotel close to Lumbres in Northern France. The country lanes around the hotel were jam packed full of elderflowers in flower, so I had the bright idea that we should forage while we were there, and so we arrived home with a bagful of elderflowers ready to turn into our own elderflower fizz.

At times you have to feel sorry for MOH don’t you? Not too much, mind you…

We have our own elderflower plant in the garden, but it’s a plant that loves the sun and often it’s flowers sulk and face our neighbour’s garden. When we got back from Portugal this was all that was left of one of the few flowerheads that remained. I wasn’t going to get my Spring elderflower fix from that, now was I?

But luckily, this year I didn’t have to as I received a range of Elderflower Fizz products from I Love Cosmetics to try out. And after a day of gardening there’s nothing more welcoming than a hot and fragrant bath. On Sunday evening that’s just what happened, and it’s been a long, long while since I’ve had bath salts. They have a bit of an old-lady reputation don’t they? And they do remind me of my nan, who by very definition was an older lady. Hers were in square packages though and I remember being very strongly scented, these are quite different to those memories.

As well as the elderflower, there’s also jasmine, apple and cucumber. We’ve jasmine in our garden too, and I’ve written before about its heady scent and how a holiday in Seville, where I learnt that smell. The apple brings freshness and the cucumber its cooling properties, and for someone with an often missing ‘nose’ I’m pretty impressed with myself.

While my elderflower in the garden is sadly absent and my jasmine has yet to flower, we are enjoying another strong scent: the mock orange, or philadelphus. That too has its own scent story. It was in full flower on our wedding day, and we held our wedding reception in our garden with the tables for the sit down at the rear of the garden. Our table was next to the mock orange, and that’s when we learnt it’s one of the plants in our garden that makes MOH sneeze and wheeze, cue hayfever tablets for him!

It’s not just me though.  I’ve placed the reed diffuser on our bookcase, replacing the one that has long lost its smell.  After a day or so, MOH commented on the scent, not realising that I’d put the new one there.  He was trying to place the scent, his words:  fresh, summery and something he’d smelt before.  He wasn’t wrong, he was probably recalling that car journey home from France! 

He’s lucky, it wasn’t the one where the car smelt of goats cheese - but that’s a story for another day.

* These elderflower items were gifted by I Love Cosmetics to review here on my blog, as usual all views and opinions shared are my own.

Reflecting on my week #88

Well that was quite a week. And quite a wet week at that. I half-joked about the drop in temperatures from the much balmier days in Lisbon, but it wasn’t any fun persevering with your summer clothes - and footwear - and getting wet every day. Eventually even I had to cave and wear proper shoes again.

Usually when I get back from holiday I can’t wait to get out into the garden and see how the garden has fared, but this time it took a couple of days for there to be a sufficient break in the rain. I realised that my tomato plants would most likely be swimming in the trug I’d left them in by now. So there was nothing else for it, the tomatoes needed rescuing. However when I got out there, it was clear that these cowering peonies also needed some help.

And I’m sure you will have seen the rescued peonies either here on Friday or on my social channels. It’s only today that they’ve drooped and are once again looking sorry for themselves again, so their next stop will be our compost heap where the whole cycle will begin again. And while I was out there, I couldn’t help but have a longer nose around. The tomatoes were also rescued and returned to the greenhouse, where they’ve since been planted and will need feeding as it looks as if there’s tiny fruits appearing. I’ve only got two tomato plants this year - which is far from my usual tomato farm, but that’s probably representative of our garden endeavours so far this year too.

But look at the cherries. The pigeons have saved us some! Well for now at least.

Over the weekend the weather improved and I’m sure the sun has helped them ripen even more. It’s also made them appear even more attractive to our local bird population and now I’m sure even more have been pecked. Today MOH could wait no longer and he picked a tupperware tub to bring inside so that we at least get to eat some. Our garden has become very popular with all sorts of birds, so I think it’s a wise move.

It wasn’t all good garden news though, we did arrive home to this.

NOT LOOKING SO HEALTHY…

In fact it’s looking rather dead, rather than not healthy. It’s right on the patio too so wasn’t a great sight. I can only assume that it’s been snipped on the other side of our fence by our newest neighbour, who does seem rather keen on having things just so. I was all for having A Talk with the neighbour, but they weren’t in. I know neighbours can cut back overhanging branches, but they don’t have the rights to kill plants.

As the weather was nice - it was much nicer on Sunday - out came the ladder for a much closer look. And it was worse when I got up the ladder, as there was further deadness, as I looked. It’s quite dense in here, and is a mix of honeysuckle and the small pink flowered plant I shared here a while back. And it did need a trim, but even so, this was more drastic than I had in mind. And just so you know, if a garden is deemed to be overgrown or unkempt (and ours certainly isn’t) that doesn’t give neighbours any more legal rights to take things into their own hands.

I’m still all for having A Talk with our newest neighbour, as I don’t want our other plants along this boundary to suffer in the same way. Having looked at this from up the ladder, it’s possible that it was snipped in error - but it’s still quite a lot of dead plant to do by mistake. There is a lot of ivy on their side of the fence, which I know they’ve been trying to remove, sadly I know that as the fence is in places showing the wear and tear of their efforts, which I’m also not happy about and is also another reason why I still want to have A Talk.

As I tried to untangle live growth from slightly crispier growth it was clear that I could rescue a fair amount of what was there, and give the rest of it quite a severe trim. It has given us some extra space on our patio, and has made me cut further back than I usually would, but even so, I’m still not impressed. I’ve a new plan to grow more of the plants lower down the fence, but allow it to grow up again to cover the trellis and retain our privacy.

But after a full day’s gardening yesterday, that will have to wait as there’s still some severe pruning that needs to happen. As the weather is due to turn (again) the parts I’ve rescued have temporarily been tied back in place, as I’m sure in the wind they’d really look quite wild.

And I still think I’ll be having That Talk. Would you?