In which I manage not to kill plants, and successfully grow a mushroom

About six weeks ago, I started a new round of attempting to grow things that were edible. I have to say, I timed it perfectly, as the heatwave we've been enjoying, coupled with me remembering to water them every day (much easier now I have a garden hose!) has meant the herbs I planted have grown beyond my wildest imaginings!

This was how they looked when I first planted them

and this is how they looked a week or so ago!

They're doing so well! Especially the mint, it looks super-healthy compared to the sickly little thing it was after we brought it home from the supermarket. We've even used the sage a couple of times in the last few weeks, in my homemade sausagemeat stuffing.

I also bought a grow-your-own Mushroom kit at the same time as the herbs. A few weeks ago, I prepared the kit and put it in our spare room (the warmest room in the house). After the prerequisite amount of time, I moved it downstairs to the cool confines of an empty cupboard in the kitchen. It wasn't as cool as the packet suggested, but it was the best I could do given the heatwave!

After a period of time, teeny tiny mushrooms appeared. And one monster!

This was eight days ago

I was quite curious to see what would happen. And then I forgot about the kit until Saturday. When I went to check on it, this is what I found:

It's meant to grow button mushrooms!! This is HUGE! We haven't eaten it yet. We're a bit scared, to be honest. Also, none of the other teeny tiny mushrooms have grown. I will keep a closer eye on it and see what happens!

Green fingers

A couple of weeks ago, we treated ourselves to an ice cold jug (well, bowl actually as we didn't own a large glass jug at that point) of Pimms. We couldn't find a bag of cut mint in the supermarket, so Jamie got a growing plant instead. Ever since, it has been sat in the kitchen on the windowsill looking a bit sad because I keep forgetting to water it.

I decided I wanted to plant it, so that next time I wanted Pimms I would have mint on hand. This reminded me that I had a few very well established herbs in the garden in the last house, and it was a shame we didn't have that here. So earlier on in the week, when I was rushing about doing a variety of home related chores, I popped to Homebase and picked up some more herbs.

Sage, Rosemary, Thyme, Basil and the supermarket Mint

I tried to find plants that were already looking pretty healthy, as I have a bad track record for killing off herbs. I tried to grow basil from seed once and that didn't go well. The sage was on it's own, but the rosemary, thyme and basil were a multipack Jamie Oliver branded thing. I had to swap around the pots between the various sets they had on display before I had three plants I wanted to take home (yes, I am that person who swaps out the eggs in the supermarket to make sure I take home the biggest ones).

They haven't died yet, so I have high hopes at the moment!

In order to free up the troughs I had to repot my sycamore seedlings. Probably just as well, as they were growing like you wouldn't believe and would soon have outgrown the troughs.

They now have their own pots, and will hopefully do a lot more growing before the winter.

This one is doing particularly well

This one not so much.

I did pick up one other thing in Homebase which I am very excited about - a grow-your-own mushroom kit! I've wanted to give this a go for years.

I'm going to set it up this weekend, as I'm trying to time the crop of mushrooms to be ready after we get back from the next LRP event. I'll let you know how I get on!

Adventures in jam making

Ever since we moved into this house in April, we've been so excited about our garden. Three apple trees, a pear tree and a plum tree, all established and ready to produce a fantastic crop of fruit for us at the end of the summer.

I've been excitedly tracking the progress of the fruit as it grows, as you can see from my Instagram feed! The plums were the first ready, and over the course of a few days I gathered quite a pile of them.

I had nearly a kilo of plums, which was less than half the total available fruit (I lost quite a few to insects and failing to realise they were ripe, so insects, the squirrel and the fox got a lot of the windfall). I carefully halved them, removed the stone and put them in a tupperware box in the freezer.

After talking to my friends about what I was going to do with all these plums, we decided on jam. It had to be a collaborative effort, as while I had the fruit, I didn't have the right equipment to make jam. My friend did. So on Saturday we teamed up and made jam! A quick search of the net threw up this recipe.

First, we chucked the frozen plums into her amazing copper jam pot (it belonged to her grandmother). Then we added some water, and the juice of half a lemon.

We heated the fruit and simmered it until the fruit had completely softened. Then came the sugar. Equal quantities fruit to sugar meant we poured 851g of sugar into the pot! Plums have a lot of natural pectin, so you don't need special preserving sugar, regular granulated is fine.

Up went the heat, and we boiled the jam until it was ready. We did have a jam thermometer, but as we forgot to put it in the pot from the start, we had to judge the readiness of the jam by eye. Once it was ready, we transferred it into small square jars.

Those jars get hot once they're full of jam! In total, we filled eight jars (each jar is 130ml) which means we made just over a kilo of jam.

The jam is delicious! It is very sweet, so even a small jar like these will last you a while because you won't need to spread much on your toast to enjoy it. I love that because the jam came together so quickly, there are still bits of plum in it, like when you get marmalade with peel in.

I found some white labels in the cupboard, so I have made these labels for the seven jars I have left (my friend took one home with her, as without her assistance I couldn't have made the jam at all. Actually, we were baking cakes at the same time, and she did most of the jam stirring!). I have already opened up one jar and started enjoying the fruits of our labour.

I am looking forward to next year though, as I intend to be far more vigilant of the fruit trees and try and collect every single plum.

WIP Wednesday and other things

I've been making solid progress on Eleonora this week. I've reached the shoulder and have started the long and boring back section, stocking stitch knit back and forth for what seems like will be an age. You'll notice I'm still using the DPNs; the pattern indicates I should have switched to my circular by now, but the cable isn't long enough on the one I have for magic loop and I'm still too close to the tube of the sleeve to knit flat comfortably on the circular, so for now I am knitting back and forth on the DPNs, which isn't so bad.

You'll notice my bright pink lifeline in there. I wasn't convinced the sleeve would be long enough if I knit according to the pattern directions, so I put in a lifeline where I was supposed to stop. Good thing I did, because it was clearly too short when I tried it on after increasing for the shoulder shaping. I had to rip back and knit another inch or so. 

I put it back in the second time I reached the shoulder shaping rows, just in case I get halfway across the back, try it on again and decide they are still too short. One thing I am quite pleased about is that you can't tell where I stopped knitting in the round and started knitting flat, as there is no difference in my stitches either way. That wasn't always the case, as I discovered recently that I've been twisting my purl stitches all this time! Not really noticeable when knitting anything else I've done in the past, but really would have been highlighted in this cardigan!

I noticed the other day that the rose growing outside our kitchen window was starting to bud. I have no idea what variety it is, so was not sure what colour to expect.

Turns out it's pale pink. They are so pretty and I can see them from the kitchen when we're cooking or doing the washing up (by which of course I mean loading and unloading the magical washing up cupboard).

This little guy was just chilling out in the garden when we came home from work yesterday. He was quite unafraid of us, and I managed to get up onto the lawn to take photos before he decided to run away. I think he was more concerned about Mr Fidget than me!

The morning after..

Yesterday we held a joint birthday/housewarming party, rejoicing in our ability to fit more than two extra people in the house before it gets full. You don't get a birthday party without presents, and as my friends know and love me well, there was of course new yarn!

First up, this gorgeous purple skein of Fyberspates Scrumptious Lace. I love Fyberspates; every time I go to the haberdashery in John Lewis I spend a good few minutes in front of the Fyberspates section, stroking the skeins and wishing I could think of a reason to have some. Now I have some, I need to think of what to knit with it! My initial thought is Rock Island by Jared Flood. I saw a purple one knitted in Wollmeise Lace at Unravel earlier in the year (this one, to be precise) and it was gorgeous. Will have to conquer my irritation of knitting with laceweight though! Otherwise, I'll have to find a suitable crochet project for it.

My other yarny gift was these seven balls of Rowan Fine Tweed, bought to accompany the pattern I was gifted on Ravelry yesterday morning - Peerie Flooers. Em knows I want to try my hand at stranded colourwork so got me the perfect challenge! This one is definitely going on my list for the second Year of Projects.

I had quite a few other non-yarny gifts too, all of which were perfectly chosen (for example, the bottle of Hendricks gin). We also received a few joint housewarming gifts, which was totally unexpected and absolutely wonderful.

A new cookbook and a gardening diary

We've already spotted a few things we'd like to try in the cookbook (after all, I haven't done a cookbook challenge in ages!) and the gardening calendar will come in really useful, now I have real garden to do grown up gardening in.

A gorgeous Calla Lily

I'll slip in a brief YoP update at the bottom, just to say that I've finished Hypernova!!! I will hopefully have time to get it blocked this afternoon, so there will be photos once it is done. Once I've got it pinned out, I will start swatching for Eleonora, which is the last major project on the list yet to be touched. Not sure I'll get it finished by the end of June, but I'll give it a go!

Year of Projects update 13th May

I had really hoped to be done with Hypernova by now, but it's still on my needles!

I made the tough decision to rip back to a couple of inches below the last chart, as I thought I would run out of yarn before reaching the bind off. I threaded the pink lifeline through, but didn't end up using it as the Wollmeise held up so well to being frogged that it wasn't needed.

I was halfway through the chart. I've knit back about half of that so far. Thirty or so rows to go and I'm done. Lets hope I have enough yarn this time!

Sad to say, I haven't had much time to knit. As I mentioned on Wednesday, I've injured my left wrist so haven't really been up to much knitting this week (although I am pleased to say it is much better this weekend, and normal knitting service should resume this week). Plus, after weeks of rain, this weekend has looked like this:

I just love the colour of the leaves on this tree

How could I resist getting out and enjoying this gorgeous weather?

We've actually been focusing quite a lot on sorting out the house this weekend, with a trip to Ikea yesterday to get a dishwasher (and you have no idea just how happy that magical washing up box makes us) and lots of box emptying and putting things away in the attic going on today. I'd say we were 90% moved in now, which is just awesome.

Our local neighbourhood fox, strolling through my garden

Cheeky squirrel stealing the peanuts

How does your garden grow?

One of the main drivers for us getting this house, aside from the masses of space, lovely wooden floors and a kitchen three times the size of our old one, is the garden.

Our old house was a Victorian terrace, so the garden was a small paved square, covered in weeds.

This was taken after I'd spent a few hours strimming and sweeping
and generally tidying up the place

Our new house has a massive garden! The living room opens onto a small patio, then there are steps leading up to a raised decking area.

It came with a table and benches, so with our furniture too
we can seat at least 11 people for a BBQ!

So far, so similar. Not much bigger than our old yard. However, to the left of the steps is the path leading to  the rest of the garden.

I'm going to have to do something about
all the dandelions though.

View from halfway up the lawn, back towards the house.

The rest of the lawn and greenhouse, taken from the other side.

You see those blossoming trees? Those are apple trees. There's a pear tree behind the greenhouse too. On the right side of the garden is a plum. There are strawberries growing all around the base of the greenhouse, and next to the house is a space for a kitchen herb garden, currently planted with mint, sage and rosemary.

We are very excited about the greenhouse. We plan to grow chillis, peppers, tomatoes and garlic; I also want to try out potatoes in pots.

I brought my sycamore seedlings over from the old house. They are doing well! Soon I will need to re-pot them. I'm not sure if they should stay out on the table, or if I should put them in the greenhouse. What do you think?

Year of Projects update 1st April

This is going to be my last Year of Projects update for a couple of weeks. The two projects from my list that I currently have on the go have both reached a stage where updates are pointless! Hypernova is growing slowly; I'm getting close to the point where I have to knit with my scales handy, to make sure I start my increase section with enough yarn to finish it. This makes it harder to knit on the go.

The Cherry Wrap has seen some attention this week. Last time I updated on it, back in January, I had finished the main panels for the body and was starting on the sleeves. It looked like this:

I don't have an updated photo, but I am pleased to say that I finished hooking the second sleeve about twenty minutes ago. Now all it needs is blocking, and seaming. I was worried I'd run out of yarn, but I've got about two thirds of my final ball left over, which should be enough.

The main reason I haven't really done much crafting this weekend is because of the house move. This was my last free weekend before we actually move on the 21st, as I'm away at LRP events at Easter and the following weekend! We focused on getting rid of things this weekend, which involved a trip to the recycling centre to offload all our old and broken electricals and two trips to the bottle bank to recycle the glassware that had accumulated over the last couple of years.

This was the second trip

Today was all about the garden. Our back yard was covered in weeds; even the trees were doing their best to take over. We'd promised our agent we'd tidy the garden up before we left, so I dug out the strimmer and hedge trimmer and got to work.

This pile of branches is everything I took off the holly bush, sycamore tree and the porcelain berry vine.

You can see the vine on the right. It used to reach all the way up to the wall of the house! These things grow like you wouldn't believe (up to 5m a year, I understand) and we'd not cut it back, well, ever.

It looks so much nicer now it's clean and tidy. Almost a shame to be leaving! But I am looking forward to having a greenhouse and a lawn.

I was, of course, observed all afternoon by my neighbour's cat, Pepe.

Green(ish) fingers

In the seven years we've lived in this house we've not had much success with gardening. Our yard faces north and is very sheltered, so gets very little sun. Every last inch of it is full of weeds as well, so any attempt to grow real plants fails almost instantly.

One of the things we've always enjoyed, though, is the sycamore that grows in the garden next to ours.

Every year we watch the bare branches burst into life, and I marvel at how quickly the flowers bloom, leaves spread out and seeds appear.

While we don't always appreciate the amount of shade the tree provides (we get little enough sun in the garden as it is!), I do love the fact it screens the garden from our neighbours windows. Every year we say to each other that when the seeds are ready to fall, we'll collect some and try to grow our own. Unfortunately we always forget!

This last autumn it was even more important, because we kind of had a feeling we'd be moving house this year and I really wanted to take a piece of the garden with us. But once again, we failed to collect any seeds.

I was out in the garden this morning, hanging out laundry and enjoying the sunshine, when I noticed some odd seedlings growing in an old plant tub that's been sat under the sycamore for years. It's full of rain water, leaf litter and general garden detritus. So I was quite surprised to see eight little green seedlings poking through the brown gunk.

A quick Google told me what I wanted to know. They were sycamore seedlings! They must have fallen from the tree straight into the tub, and germinated in the last week or so. I immediately set about gathering plant pots and hunting through the shed for my half empty bags of compost.

I rescued eight seedlings from the horror bucket. Hopefully at least one or two will survive and grow, and we will be able to take a part of this house with us when we move next month.