growing – Page 2 – Louisa Parry

Food metres, great taste, dog identification

1. We’re supposed to have leftover risotto for lunch but what should have been a side dish for that becomes our main dish instead: John’s Grandma’s marrow flower fritters, made with flowers, courgettes and eggs from our garden. The risotto can wait for another day.

2. The holy basil cuts through the spice. It’s ages since I’ve had any Thai food and this is just wonderful.

3. The pub is full of dogs when we arrive and we sit near the terrier and the other one we can’t identify – she looks like a labrador in the distance – perfect shape and proportion but tiny. She looks so soft, smooth and uniformly black that we’re transfixed by her. Later on, we discover what it is: her owners don’t realise when she escapes and wanders around the pub introducing herself to everyone. After she’s nearly completed her round and heads over to the dog-loving shift manager for a hug, her owner spots her and says “oh look, there’s another Patterdale like Jessie.” Then he realises and laughs, and with a smile, warns us off the dark Erdinger.

Refreshing, uplifting, productive, coincidence, helping hand

2/7/2010 / louisa / 0 Comments

-1. (from last night) I don’t realise how stifling it is in the house until I open the door to let Lily out for her bedtime wee. The comparatively cool air is wonderfully refreshing. I breath deeply and the skin on my arms tingles.

0. (also from last night) I finished reading ‘Miss Pettrigrew Lives For A Day’ by Winifred Watson. A wonderfully uplifting tale about seizing the day. A new one for the favourites shelf.

1. A full to-do list becomes an empty one over the course of two hours.

2. Twice today, when I’ve been watching the chickens, two of them have scratch-scratch-peered at exactly the same time. It looks like they’re synchronised clones in an animation or music video.

3. The job – repotting the 4ft tall tomato plants – is so much easier when there are two of us doing it.

10 goals for 2010 – June progress update

1/7/2010 / louisa / 1 Comment

Half way through the year – so where was I with these things…?

1. To make a meal using only ingredients I’ve grown, raised, caught or killed myself.
I’m getting closer with this. Ok, I don’t grow my own wheat but I’ve made slow-rise bread about every other day for the month, and handchurned butter too. We’ve had homegrown salad & herbs nearly every day for lunch and for most dinners too.

We’ve got about half a dozen courgettes & lots of their flowers begging to be picked, more salad (two different types of mixed leaves) will be ready for picking early next week and some broad beans might be ready this weekend too. Aside from slug damage to a lot of the beans & peas, everything else is growing well – it’s all kinda exploded over the last few days. Going to spend a lot of time potting stuff on/out tomorrow and over the weekend.

But you know what though? Sod that veg stuff – at long long last, we got chickens! We only got them on Tuesday night but we’ve had four small-but-perfect eggs (and two not quite there but almost eggs) from them, so if I was being pedantic, I could right now have a herby courgette frittata with side salad to complete my goal – but I’d rather keep striving for it ;)

2. To travel to a place on my “top ten places to go before I die” list.
Nope, still nothing on this one. I think my first step would be to re-write my list because I think I’ve plum forgotten about half of them.

3. Finish writing my second novel.
I’ve been thinking more about another idea but really. really. should. refocus.

~~4. Learn how to make sausages – wet English style ones and cured ones too.~~
Completed in April. We’ve not made any of our own at home yet though. Maybe this goal should change to that…

4. Make some sausages at home – wet English style ones and cured ones too.
As I’m thinking of making/getting a smokehouse for my birthday, I’d be able to make some interesting dried ones!

5. Spend at least a day fishing out on the North Sea.
Another idea of something I thought of doing for my birthday. Also been looking at changing the sea focus and doing a “learn to fish” thing in the Lakes or North Yorkshire instead…

6. Finally finish learning how to drive.
Still done nothing on this and, well, tbh, I’ll losing the will to do so. I know I should just do it because sometimes it would be useful to go exciting places like Morrisons without John but I think I’d drive so rarely that it wouldn’t be worth it. I will expect a kicking from certain people for saying that ;)

7. Make a full outfit’s worth of clothing for myself – including spinning any wool used.
Oh, I had lots of fun spinning during my two days off work at the start of the month! I started on a little DIY CD-and-pencil type spindle but bought a better one mid month, as well as some more roving – and I got a bruised palm pad from spinning so much one night. Extreme yarn crafts! I still haven’t spun enough yarn to make much though.

To update on what I spoke about in my last progress report, dyeing was lots of fun. I dyed two lots of wool yarn – from cream to duck egg blue and heathery lilac – and with more of the original cream, imagine it’ll make a nice chunky blanket. I had purple dye left over from the purple-ish yarn so dunked some of my slightly-greyed white knickers in and they went a lovely plum, then I told John about it and he demanded I tie-dye some of his impractically white underpants & made a vest stripey – I had to comply ;) I definitely want to try natural dyeing some time soon.

8. Learn how to program and make a mini-game/application using Ruby.
The weather has been too nice to be sat inside on my computer. And the people who claim I’ve spent many, many hours playing Theme Hospital this month are LYING.

9. Climb a mountain or at least a jolly big hill.
Lots of walking with Lily but nothing more than the Chevin in Otley – and that looks a lot bigger than it really is.

10. Participate more in the real world – plan/run a real life green event or scheme.
I’ve taken the first baby steps with two of them – but haven’t heard anything yet from my contacts. Will poke.

3BT – five from after dinner

24/6/2010 / louisa / 0 Comments

1. The red, yellow, pink and white are all tinged with black.

2. I put some Encona (scotch bonnet pepper) sauce in the marinade and while it doesn’t overwhelm, it is definitely there. John runs out for the bus with his last skewer and texts ten minutes later to say his lips are still tingling. Mine are too.

3. A second evening of reading in the garden after dinner of the week. While I read, I listen to Kathryn Williams‘ Little Black Numbers and Bonnie Prince Billy‘s The Letting Go. I fell in love with both albums on a lovely long weekend on Lindisfarne in 2007, which even though I had to work for a few hours each day, was wonderfully relaxing. The albums catapult me back into that state whenever I listen to them – not that I need much help relaxing tonight: a good book, cats and birdsong.

4. As I refill the slug traps, I notice that the dark shiny courgettes will be ready for picking this weekend – I can’t wait!

5. Lily is noticeably absent from the al fresco reading session. I don’t mind as we’re trying to encourage her to not stick to us like glue all the time but eventually I get up to look for her and check she’s ok: she’s stretched out on the dining room floor, looking longingly at the door John left through. She deigns to join me at various points throughout the evening but her heart is elsewhere. She’s fast asleep though when he finally comes home and I have to interrupt her dreams to tell her he’s back – she runs downstairs so fast she nearly falls and circles him again and again before pulling him back up to bed. Lily loves her dad.

3BT – submerged-ish, I can make them, perfect purple

21/6/2010 / louisa / 0 Comments

1. The barely-warm water hits my closed eye lids as I turn and suddenly I have a strong desire to go swimming again. I wonder if the pool around the corner is open again yet (I’ve just checked – it is) but I also want to go swimming outside. When I’m dry and dressed, I rush downstairs to tell John my brilliant day-trip idea.

2. I need more low planters for growing more salad leaves and it occurs to me I could make some – there is more than enough suitable scrap wood in our woodstore and I feel emboldened after my success making a wellie stand out of other scrap wood yesterday. Within half an hour, I have two foot-square planters, ready to be filled with soil and seeds.

3. We make “jazzberry” hands while admiring Katherine & John’s hard work in their spare room.

3BT – it’s working, always time for bread & jam, comfortable

19/6/2010 / louisa / 0 Comments

1. I spend the afternoon pottering in the garden – sowing more salad, potting on small seedlings and planting out their bigger siblings. Growing veg is such a waiting game – waiting and hoping – but when I see the first courgettes forming, it feels worth it.

2. John’s out all day at a friend’s stag do but pops home between the go-karting and the evening activities to eat some bread & jam.

3. Boron discovers a new place to sleep – my yarn stash between the sofa & the armchair. I hear rustling as he circles around, padding it into shape but by the time I turn around to look at him, he’s curled in a tight circle, his chin resting on a fluffy magenta skein.

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