Some calming, pared-down chic before the party that is summertime beginneth…
I love it. Here’s what’s in it:
HAPPY EASTER!
It's a jungle in there....
It's still raining (yawn) but our house is still so full of boxes from the move, that we get cabin fever and have to get out. The babety wakes between 5am and 6.30am, and this morning the three of us were trudging the streets looking for somewhere to have breakfast in our new neighbourhood at a seriously ungodly hour.
We had to wait for the place to open (yes, we were up THAT early) and found these gems as we walked around the block to kill some time.
Tarzan's house (above) was nothing compared to his mum's:
....Extraordinary...I do hope they have those nice rope-things hanging from their light-fittings so they can swing from one corner of the room to the other, yelling arrrrrgggh!
On a different (exterior) note, there was this:
VERY jolly!...like it a lot....and this:
Ummmmm....not so much.
Lastly..oh JOY...this:
What a brilliant walk!
Oh I nearly forgot...one more thing - this is priceless (sorry, not horticultural at all)
....whenever I hear that word my mind always adds '...is the cruellest month' (throwback from my schooldays, so forgive me) - and I suppose April is rather cruel in a sense, as - gardening wise- we are hit with unexpected frosts and seemingly un-ending rain, just when we think things ought to be feeling just a teensy weensy bit ...well....BALMY?
Anyway, TS Elliot was rather a grumpy old kermudgeon wasn't he? - I thought about him again today as I walked in the park with the babety and Mr Pug and we feasted our eyes on this delicious scene:
Somehow I think he wouldn't have thought the candy-floss shade of pink and the blowsy magnificence of the blossom quite 'the thing'. I adore it...wish I had room for one in my garden...wish I knew the cultivar because I will definitely have an avenue of them like this in my next garden....
But back to my own back garden - It's been a pretty soggy round here lately (by which I mean it hasn't stopped raining even for a polite amount of time). It's good in some ways, because the garden has been planted (of shrubs at least) and the torrential down-pours mean I don't have to be out there watering every day...but the SQUELCHINESS is sort of getting to me and I'm dying for some drier weather just so I can go out without wellies on.
Okay, it’s time to ‘fess up – I’ve just moved into my new garden, and I’m harvesting precisely nothing at the moment except bundles of herbs. In the spirit of optimism, I’ve made leek and potato soup , because i MEAN to harvest lots of lovely fat leeks NEXT year. The recipe is so simple it’s embarassing:
A couple of fat leeks a good 2 tablespoons of butter 3 large potatoes about 1.5litres chicken stock (or water if you don’t have it) a dash of dry vermouth a good handful of parsley salt and pepper
Chop up the leeks and sweat them in the butter for a good ten minutes in a heavy pan until they are soft.
Add the potatoes and cook them in the butter for 5 minutes.
Add the stock or water, the vermouth, salt and pepper bring the whole thing to the boil and allow to simmer for a good 40 minutes or so until the potatoes are really soft.
Allow to cool, add the parsley and then blitz the whole lot in a food processor until you get your desired consistency (sometimes I want velvet, sometimes I want lumpy).
Put the soup back in a saucepan and season to taste (this will need quite a bit of salt).
Eat piping hot with really gorgeous bread and lashings of butter.
One thing I am getting in great abundance is sweet violets…I’m crazy for these, and spend probably far too much time kneeling on the wet ground with my nose buried in them. They have the most fabulous scent on their own, but if you smell them on the plant, you get the earthiness of the leaves and soil too, which I love. I shouldn’t have enough time to paint violet petals with egg-white…I don’t know what it says about me…but I do manage to fit it in somehow. Put them, ceremoniously a-top a bought cupcake (or one you made yourself of course)…or treat them as glorious sweeties (they keep for ages in the fridge).
Make sure the flowers are free of aphids, and dip them either whole, or as single petals, into whisked egg-white. Put them carefully on a sheet of greaseproof paper (use tweezers), and shower your little beauties with granulated sugar (caster sugar with dissolve in the egg and you’ll get clumpy petals).
Leave them to dry somewhere out of the way and eat them with other girls (in my experience, boys don’t seem to get how beautiful and special they are, so I don’t offer these to the Hunk – however, you may have altogether better males in your household).