Scent for a rainy day...

A big basket of hyacinths, for those prepared to play the long game...Normally you'd be doing this in September for Christmas blooms, but, well, I forgot...and at any rate, who needs MORE stuff at Christmas? - It's the bleakness of January and February I want hyacinths for.

You need:

Hyacinth bulbs (available now, but selling fast) I like 'Carnegie' or 'Jan Bos'. Protect your hands when you're touching them...some people are hyacinth-bulb-allergic.

A basket (lined with plastic) or other container - the large one here is 35cm diameter

Bulb fibre (but if you can't get it, then multi-purpose is fine)

Something to cover the container with so that the bulbs stay in the dark...I use a deep plastic pot saucer

Method

Just plonk your bulbs in, leaving the tips uncovered, and then water the whole thing, cover the containers with something to keep things dark, and leave it somewhere cool and dark (I use my basement, but if I had a garage I'd use that). Check the bulbs periodically to make sure the compost doesn't completely dry out and wait until the shoots are about 7cm high (this could take anywhere between two and four months....you're simulating late winter and early spring - tricking the bulbs into coming up when you want them to.

Bring them out into the light and relative warmth of your home and they'll burst forth with their glorious scent before you know it.

Enjoy x

Sexy salad...after.

My beautiful nasturtiums which I sowed in window boxes back in June and have been glorifying my very boring side return for months now got trampled by something or someone yesterday, and I suddenly realised I hadn't posted a photo of the 'finished product', so to speak.Luckily, I had taken some a few weeks ago...(unfortunately AFTER I had pillaged the plant for peppery kicks...but you get the idea) These would have gone on and on until they get nuked by frost All I have done is water them...that's it.

Here's the recipe to remind..but obviously, don't sow yours till next year now...

You need A container Multi-purpose compost with a few handfuls of grit added Nasturtium seeds

Method Fill you container with compost and push in your seeds, 12cm apart and 1.5cm deep.  Cover them with compost and water the whole thing well so it gets thoroughly soaked.  Your seedlings will appear in a couple of weeks.  Let them grow on for a couple more, and then steel yourself and pull out half of them so that each plant has 25cm of space....Brutal but necessary (sorry).

Never ever ever EVER let the compost dry out.

Enjoy your day-glo cascade

Squish black-fly as and when they appear, or hose them off with a jet of water, or spray them with a weak washing up liquid solution....Just don't do nothing, because the critters are sap-suckers and, well, you want your flowers to bloom bodaciously don't you.

Have fun lovely ones.

ravishing....

...My lilies, that is.

When I had a balcony I grew lilies in pots to give away (they make fabulous presents). I planted a couple of these bulb-filled pots in my garden when I moved in (the feb before last). They didn't do much last year - just a few small flowers - and it made me a bit sad, so I fed them with some liquid seaweed last autumn, and again this spring...

I don't know what kind they are...'Casablanca' most probably.

The scent is intoxicating. It makes you want to lie down next to them in the evenings.

You can buy lilies now (in flower) from the garden centre and plant them, or plant bulbs in March next year. I shall be doing both.

Here are some other lily-like-lovelies in the garden right now:

Crinum x powellii (also comes in white). Scented, with strappy leaves ... very special and posh.

Gladiolus callianthus - with its sexy purple blotch and glorious, heady scent. I'll be eulogising these in my next book.

More about lilies next year...

Sexy salad

I've got the drabbest, emptiest, saddest side return ever.  I was going to make it over for Love Your Garden but stuff happened, and the idea was scrapped.  I've decided to do it anyway, but not right now....right now I'm going to fill the troughs that I had ready for the transformation, and because I can't afford the plants I really want to put in them I'm going to.....  

Sow some nasturtiums (or, moustarshalumps, as I think Pooh calls them).

This is really the last possible moment for it, and they are the most ridiculously easy thing to grow in the world.  You can use anything to grow them in, (as long as you water the things), but they're best raised up high because like clowns, they adore to tumble. The leaves are as beautiful as the flowers (if not more so) and yes, this is an edible plant, (flowers and leaves), so munch munch munch away. Quite the sexiest thing you can do to a salad methinks.

You need A container Multi-purpose compost with a few handfuls of grit added Nasturtium seeds

Method Fill you container with compost and push in your seeds, 12cm apart and 1.5cm deep.  Cover them with compost and water the whole thing well so it gets thoroughly soaked.  Your seedlings will appear in a couple of weeks.  Let them grow on for a couple more, and then steel yourself and pull out half of them so that each plant has 25cm of space....Brutal but necessary (sorry).

Never ever ever EVER let the compost dry out.

Enjoy your day-glo cascade

Squish black-fly as and when they appear, or hose them off with a jet of water, or spray them with a weak washing up liquid solution....Just don't do nothing, because the critters are sap-suckers and, well, you want your flowers to bloom bodaciously don't you.

Have fun lovely ones.  I will post a picture of mine when they are up and blooming; in the meantime you will have to be content with this...bit silly but, well, I AM a bit silly.

x

Something for the weekend

Perhaps it's the weird weather but everything in the garden centres seems so have gone over so badly that it's beyond useable.  Not good news if you want to do something gorgeous to your window-box or terrace this weekend, unless, that is, you go for something that looks fabulous all the time.

Sempervivums are just perfect for year-round table-top glamour.

Even better, they need practically no care and attention whatsoever.

I have a tableful, planted in various shallow containers (semps are perfect candidates for crevices and crannies - they love to live between roof tiles which is why they're called 'houseleeks')

I've got an urn that's not much good for any ordinary plant because the sides are so ridiculously shallow.  I used to grow ivy in it but I got bored, as you do, so I used it for this project, but honestly, you could use anything, from plastic pot saucers with a hole or two punched in the bottom, to the hollow of an old brick...up to you.

You need:

1 container of your choice - terracotta or something porous is best because these plants need to stay dry.  A hanging basket, suspended at eye height is another nice way to display them (see above)

Small pots of different sempervivums - number depends on the size of your container but make sure you leave plenty of space between them when you plant, because they're going to spread.  If you want to get geeky, (and treat yourself), then there's no better place to go than here.  Always remember that semps are like jewels -  you can never have too many.

Compost - I use a mixture of one quarter John Innes No 2, one quarter peat-free multi-purpose and one half horticultural gravel or grit (see below) This will produce a very free-draining soil for your semps

Small horticultural gravel or grit -available in bags at the garden centre

Broken pieces of polystyrene, or terracotta pot to lay over the drainage holes if you are planting in anything but the shallowest of containers.

Method

Mix your compost, throw a couple of crocks into the bottom of the container and fill it to the top with your mixture.  Now carefully remove the plants from their plastic and plant them firmly in their new home.  Make sure your semps are a couple of millimetres proud of the top of the compost so that their leaves don't touch it too much.  You can even mound the compost up in the middle of the container if you like, to get that vesuvial look.  Leave ample space between your plantings to allow the plants to spread.  Each 'mother' plant (the hen) will produce lots of 'chicks' which are attached to her by stems.  Eventually the mother rosette will die (just remove it carefully when this happens) and the chicks will carry on growing...it's a beautiful thing.

When everything is where you want it, water the pot and then cover the gaps between the plants with gravel (I pour it into the gaps, using a plastic measuring jug) which will soak up any extra water on the base of the rosettes. I like to plant semps on a sunny day because they the rosettes dry out quickly from their initial watering, reducing the risk of rot.

That's it...water just occasionally to keep the compost from completely drying out (although if you do forget, they won't hate you). You can leave them outside all year round - don't water them at all in winter.

A perfect posy

Forgive me...I know I shouldn't but the babety gave this to me yesterday She chose and picked everything herself and my mother held the tiny bottle so that she could arrange the flowers.

It's quite the most perfect posy I've ever received....but then I am a mother, and as a breed, well, we're utterly blind aren't we.

Here's what's in it:

4 daisies from the lawn - ones you might make a chain with. One of them has been bruised slightly (the babety picks FLOWERS, not STEMS) 1 common lawn geranium - I don't know the name of this. It grows in my lawn.  I call it a geranium because it looks like one but is tiny. This particular one has two flowerheads on the stem, one of which has set seed and the other of which is going over, with two petals left opposite each other, and curling slightly. 1 forgetmenot (remarkably unscathed actually) The bottle is one of hundreds I found at the bottom of my garden when I was digging the flowerbeds. A neighbour told me that there used to be a perfume factory on this site, so that would figure.

A promise, kept

Back at the beginning of the year, I planted a pot of little alpines to make me feel better, and I promised to post a photo of it when it had flowered...Here it is.

Here's the before shot....no less pretty methinks....

...and the plant list: Jasione laevis 'Blue Light'

Ajuga reptans 'Braun Herz'

Sedum 'Cappa Blanca'

Erodium 'Bishops Form'

Sedum reflexum

Cyclamen neapolitanum

Has it made me feel better?....well, let's just say it's impossible to be sad when you've got an erodium peeping up at you, so yes, it has.

x

A quick spring posy....

....for my mother as it happens ...and featuring one of my precious fritillaries, amongst other things from the garden...

Cowslips, dicentra, muscari, tulips, nepeta, narcissi and forget-me-nots... Needless to say, she loved it

Hooray for lovely, happy, eggy spring x

March Nirvana

When I saw these, my first snakeshead fritillaries growing in the long grass at the side of my 'lawn' (such as it is) I nearly took all my clothes off and ran round the garden screaming.  I'd always grown these in pots (because, obviously they are must-have plants) but they're SUPPOSED to live in the meadow-like atmosphere of your lawn-outskirts and multiply with abandon to provide you with carpets of bliss every spring.  With this in mind I planted some bulbs in September last year, very hurriedly and without much ceremony...just removing a clod of lawn, dumping the bulbs in and replacing the clod...I didn't even water them....I never, ever expected them to come up.  Fritillaries seem to hold some sort of mysterious allure to me - their beautiful nodding, tessellated petals and wiry stems seem to whisper "I'm too beautiful for an ordinary mortal like TOI"

But hey....as with most things in life, I am wrong.

If you want to grow fritillaries order your bulbs well in advance and plant them in autumn for flowers the following spring.  They will have their delicious moment pretty much right now and be over before you know it.  Go next year to somewhere like Magdelen College in Oxford and have a look at them en-masse - it is heart-stopping.  They come in every shade of purple, and white, but you see the chequered pattern better on the purple.  Once they're over the stems grow much taller and they dry out to disperse the seed from those fat capsules, so don't even think of chopping them until the wind has done its dispersal job.

Better-making things 2: A six-pack in a pot

Here's the perfect pot for January - a little sea of perfection with the promise of tiny blooms. I love picking up an alpine six-pack from the garden centre.    Making this pot was the first bit of gardening I did after the horror.  It helped, somehow.

Gorgeous, even without flowers...

To make a little pot of alpines you need:

One terracotta pot, shallow and wide - or you could use one of those lovely tufa tubs

Multi-purpose compost mixed with a good few handfuls of horticultural grit to make your alpines feel at home

More horticultural grit, or pea gravel to top-dress your pot

A selection of darling little alpine plants (I get mine in a six-pack from my local garden centre).  This time they were:

Jasione laevis 'Blue Light'

Ajuga reptans 'Braun Herz'

Sedum 'Cappa Blanca'

Erodium 'Bishops Form'

Sedum reflexum

Cyclamen neapolitanum

Method

Simply plant them (being especially careful with sedums as they are so brittle) and cover the surface of the compost with a layer of grit or pea gravel, which will keep things nice and dry up top so the leaves of the plants don't get sodden and rot.  Water the pot well and put it on a table or somewhere you can see and appreciate it and where it will get full sun.  These plants don't care about the cold, but they don't like the wet, so if torrential rain is forecast, I tend to move the pot somewhere out of the impending deluge.  I'll post a photo of this when it flowers.

Smugness alert!!

Back in June I took some leaf cuttings of a particularly beauteous streptocarpus and now, five months later, the first of my 13 babies has started flowering. Yip Yip!

This stuff takes a bit of time and care but even a small plant like this costs around £3.  I'm going to have this gorgeous star-like flower absolutely everywhere.  I have another lot of cuttings ready to be transferred to little pots soon, so no surface will be safe.  Buying enough plants to do that is just something I would feel a bit naughty doing....hence the smugness.

These little babies will stay in their little pots (they do better if slightly confined) and in Spring next year I'll stick one of those streptocarpus food tablets into each one and hopefully they'll really flower like mad.

I'll take a picture of my blue and white streptocarpus living room forrest next year to complete the cycle...until then, I'll shut up about them.

An Autumn Table (with dinosaurs)

I get quite excited by autumn (principally because it means Christmas is coming, but also because colours start getting juicy).  Here's a simple autumn table that you can make in ten minutes and will be quite happy for weeks as long a you give it the odd night out(side).

Dinosaurs, birds and gourds are optional of course, but I find them necessary to keep The Babety occupied at mealtimes - anyway, I feel vindicated in my use of plastic animals because the ever-chic Miss Pickering does it too (but better).

You need:

1 long tray - I use a black plastic one that I got with a window-box

1 small pot of very beautiful small ivy

3 pots of cyclamen

1 small bag of sphagnum moss

5 small terracotta pots - make sure they can hold the cyclamen without any plastic pot showing

A small amount of multi-purpose compost

Make sure everything is watered well before starting

Method:

First, put the tray on your table and line up your five pots along it.  Now divide the ivy into two by carefully teasing it apart.  Re-plant each piece in a terracotta pot with some dampened multi-purpose compost.  Plonk them second and fourth in your terracotta army and then simply drop the cyclamen plants into the three empty spaces...(you could bother to plant them up, but I don't because, well, laziness, and the fact that I might wake up one day and want white instead of pink....it happens).

Now tear off bits of sphagnum moss and arrange them around the base of the pots so no tray is showing, and finally, arrange your ivy tendrils artfully around the pots.

That's it...you're done.  Water as and when needed, and in-situ (hence the tray)...just stuff your finger in the compost and see if it's dry or not.  The whole thing would, as I said, benefit from the odd 'night out'...not on the town, but in your garden, or in an un-heated room to keep the cylcamen perky for longer.  But honestly, as long as you dead-head them when the flowers are over, and you don't live in a sauna, they should be just fine.

This bit of loveliness will last brilliantly well into Christmas, when you will, I'm sure, want holly and stuff.

Autumn wonder

I love Autumn

...and not just because it's my BIRTHDAY (15th October if you must know)

This year I have this lovely bumper crop of knobbly, warty gourds

I'm also loving my blueberry...almost as much as I love it when it actually has blueberries on it...in fact, probably more. The Autumn colour is just yummy, like sweeties:

I'm taking Mark Diacono's book 'A Tast of the Unexpected' to bed with me every night and dreaming of mulberries and szechuan pepper (amongst other things). It's quite the most sumptuous and inspiring thing I've read since Jilly Cooper's Riders which made me want to put on jodhpurs ....well, this makes me want to cavort with carolina allspice...sorry to be bossy but you really should buy it, like, immediately. Mark blogs here with something magical that makes you giggle and cry all at once...I defy you not to go back for more.

If you want a bowl of gourds like mine (or better than mine) for next year, then it couldn't be easier.

Timing: Late Spring/early summer

All you need do is go out an choose a packet of gourd seeds that you love. You need fertile soil and a sunny, sheltered site.

Just sow your seeds 2cm deep and three at a time, under an up-ended jam-jar and choose the best one to grow on. My advice is just to let your gourd gallop.

I love the way they climb over everything, growing their enormous leaves, clothing and covering everything in their path.

Leave the fruits on the plant for as long as possible before the first frosts. I've cut mine off early this year because its so wet and I don't want any rottage. Actually, I think it matters not one jot. Just cut them whenever you fancy, along with a length of stem and bring them indoors to display to your heart's content.

Babies update

The dream?

The dream is to have THIS all over my house....for precisely ZERO quid.

Back in the beginning of June I did a post on taking leaf cuttings from my most favourite star-like white and blue streptocarpus plant.   You can find the whole post here, but here's a quick recap:

Now, a few months later.....,

and the babies are forming well, and I could have left them happily growing there for a bit longer but today I peered at the soil and saw several fungus gnat larvae squiggling about.  They're basically harmless, but in numbers, they eat fine roots.  They are there because I overwatered the cuttings before I went on holiday.  Fungus gnat larvae can't get a foothold if you let the compost dry out completely between waterings.

I don't dig wiggly things inside my house, so it's time to pot up the babies.

To do this I use a two-thirds/one third mixture of seed compost and vermiculite or pearlite.  I then tease the cutting very gently apart.  It feels a bit brutal, because you have to tug a bit, and it feels like you've broken the leaf, but don't worry, as long as the little baby comes away with some roots, then it'll be okay.

The most important bit is to keep everything scrupulously clean, fill some small pots with the compost mixture and then carefully bury the roots in it, so that the little baby is put to bed at EXACTLY the same level that it was when it was attached to it's mummy.  This will seem really shallow, but as long as you firmly and gently bury the roots, making sure there are no air pockets around them, the new leaf will stand up on its own.

Put all your babies in a tray of water and wait until you can see that the compost in your pots has turned dark with moisture.  I don't water from the top - the babes are too delicate.  If I had a greenhouse these would go straight in there....but I don't so they go inside my kitchen window.

A notebook on a wall...

Hello from Label Land!

I've been thinking about what to do with my pile of plastic plant labels....

I've been thinking about it for far too long...they've just been sitting and sitting and sitting, waiting in that limbo between a good idea and the dustbin.

Sometimes, just sometimes the planets align and the something gets done.  In this case, the Babety slept longer than usual, I had found a particularly lovely builders merchant who could cut bits of plywood to size for me, and I had run out of Curb Your Enthusiasms to watch....So I got off my bottom and collected a hammer and some pins

Attached some plywood to the side of my shed:

...and started banging in labels.

It's a can of worms, you understand, because the ply is forgiving in some places, and hard as nails in others.  I ended up using drawing pins but it's still a nightmare.  Of course, I should start again, using pin-board and finish the thing in half an hour, but I'm desperate to have it outside, and pin-board would rot most horridly...so I shall carry on.

What do you do with your plant labels?

Do you make umbrellas out of them?

Or perhaps jewellery?

Or are you a non-hectic, well balanced person who throws them in the bin?

x

I'm having a moment...

Look, I know everyone KNOWS that a sweetpea is pretty much the most divine thing on the planet right now....

...but I just have to state the obvious once again.

There is nothing so utterly scrumptious as a little glass of sweetpeas next to your bed - just nothing (except perhaps the smell of your own baby's head or something).  If you've never had the pleasure, it's sweetly floral, but not overpowering...intoxicating, yes, but not headachey.

So now I've got that out the way, I also need to say that it's the single most GIVING plant of the entire summer...

...requiring nothing from you other than that you pick it.

I've been thinking about sweetpeas a lot because the wonderful Easton Walled Gardens have been doing a sweetpea question and answer session on twitter (and by the way, if you want to see sweetpeas in the sort of profusion that will knock your socks off, then Easton is the place to go).

I was picking my daily bunch today and putting it in FIVE vases (as you do)...and suddenly, newly, realised how lucky I was, and how these bunches were becoming such a normal part of my life, that I was forgetting to evangelise properly and praise them like I should...

...So here I am, evangelising.

This huge bunch of sweetpeas get picked daily from the plants I put in two small trenches back in March.  They were not grown from seed, (naughty, naughty me), but bought in six pots from the garden centre.  Each pot contained about six plants (Lathyrus Spencer Mix if you're interested) , and they were all crowded together.  I didn't bother to separate them, (too risky, because sweetpeas don't like root disturbance) - just dumped them into the trench, which had been dug over the month before with some horse manure.  I spaced them evenly, firmed them in and then stuck six pea-sticks in the gaps.  By the time they started growing I was so busy that I didn't even bother to tie them in, just sort of twiddled the stems into the twigs and let them find their own way.  That's it, nothing else, no tending or fussing, and I've fed them once (yesterday) with tomato food.

The point of all this is that even though I did the bare minimum, my plants still yield this vast amount of loveliness, and they do it for me every single day.  I feel like a cat that's just eaten a tub of Rodda's clotted cream (the yummiest, naughtiest cream in the world, and best spread thickly on Bonne Maman Galettes, but only if you're not on a diet).

Imagine, just IMAGINE, ladies and gentlemen, the abundance I could have achieved with a modicum of preparation and care.  At Easton Walled Gardens they dig their trenches two spades deep and add lots of manure.  They also feed much more regularly, and obviously they grow individually from seed, making sure that each plant has enough room to grow, and no competition from weeds.  I'll definitely be digging my trench much deeper next year, and will hopefully be back to growing them from seed, where I can take my pick of varieties.

If you want to discover the wonder of growing a sweetpea, you don't need to have a garden either.  I used to grow mine in a deep window box and let them cling to the railings on my balcony.  Just make sure you give them a nice deep root run and lots of water.  The most important thing though, is to keep picking, because if you stop, and let the seeds develop, then the plant will get lazy and give up flowering.

Free babies

If you follow me on Twitter (or run a nursery) you'll know that I like to shop for plants, often entering the shop (on-line or otherwise) fully believing that I'm only after one thing, and then 'accidentally' ending up with a bulging basket.

I was about to have one of my legendary accidents at Dibleys, who sell, amongst other things, one of my favourite plants, Streptocarpus (Cape Primrose).  They are truly exquisite plants, perfect for indoors, that come in a myriad of colours and sizes and seem to flower for ever and ever on these lovely boingy thin stems that shoot up out of a thicket of thick hairy leaves.  I can't resist buying them whenever I see them, simply because there are so many different ones and I like to collect.  Here's one I picked up on a trip to the garden centre the other day.  Sorry, can't remember its name and the label soon disappeared into my label bag (more of which one day soon).  Anyhow, I was about to have this massive accident but was cruelly stopped in my tracks by horrid old paypal who think i don't have enough money...(they are right, I don't)....I was about to turn to The Hunk with pleading eyes and then decided to be sensible and thrifty AND have fun all at the same time and take some leaf cuttings, for FREE plants and a sense of achievement all at the same time.

All you need to take leaf cuttings of streptocarpus are:

1. A sharp knife (I use my incredibly chic Leatherman Tool)

2. A clean board

3. Some cuttings compost (I use seed compost mixed with a handful of horticultural grit or, if I have it, pearlite.

4. A seed tray

5. Some sort of covering (I use a plastic seed tray lid, but a plastic bag or piece of glass is fine)

Method:

Fill your seed tray almost to the top, and firm down the contents gently.  Then Choose a nice, healthy leaf and cut it off the plant at the base.  Lay it up-side down on your board and cut along the central vein on either side.  the idea is you want to cut through all the veins that come from the central one.  Out of these, will miraculously appear new plants...amazing.

When you've done your cutting, this is what you should be left with:

Discard that central vein and now place your leaf halves, cut side down, into two little trenches in your seed tray.  Firm the compost around the leaf cuttings so that those cut veins are sure to be in contact with the growing medium.  Depth-wise, I put my leaf cuttings in so they're only just buried....I'm not sure how the experts do it.

Now put the whole thing in the sink in a sort of 'bain marie' and leave it so that it can suck up some water.  Frightfully important not to let it get completely saturated though, otherwise your babies will rot.

And now all that's left is to cover it with your plastic or glass to keep the moisture from evaporating, and put it somewhere near a window, out of the way.  You'll need to be patient, and keep checking to make sure it doesn't get too dry.  I also take the cover off once a day to get the air circulating.  You should have some babies within a couple of months.  wait till they're about 5 cm long before you remove them from their mother.

Sweet Cicely for Custard

Shhhh! - The Hunk absolutely hates custard so I've had to do this in secret - It won't be difficult to keep it a secret because I think it'll all be gone soon (this stuff is sluttily drinkable).

I inherited two large clumps of Sweet cicely when I moved here in February this year.  Its latin name is Myrrhis odorata and it's of European origin.  This is one of the first herbs to appear in springtime, and it lasts for yonks.  It has gorgeously pretty fern-like foliage and lovely white flowers that smell like seriously posh, delicate honey.

The taproot can be eaten raw or steamed and tastes of an aniseedy parsnip (hmmm)...The leaves have a sweet aniseedy flavour and they can be used as a sugar substitute.  The seeds are also lovely and sweet...I'm going to be experimenting with all that later, but today I just wanted to get my head around the flavour of it, so I made custard and infused the milk with a few leaves and some flowers.

The recipe is from the fantastic Prue Leith whom I utterly revere (and not only because she owns Elizabeth David's actual kitchen table...heart flutters).  Her book is indeed a cookery bible.  I had got myself all geared up to be beating madly in a double-boiler but found, with a sigh of relief, this recipe for quick, easy custard which doesn't require any of that faffing:

It's really easy, just one egg yolk, whisked with one ounce of caster sugar until pale and interesting:

Then one ounce of plain flour gets beaten in vigorously.  Meanwhile I'd scalded eight fluid ounces of milk with a few Sweet cicely leaves and half a flower-head:

I strained it, poured it into the egg yolks, whisking all the time, and then put the whisked mixture back into the saucepan, heating until it boiled, at which point it thickened perfectly, coating the back of the spoon (and my finger, and my tongue...etc).

It tastes divine - slightly liquoricey (but NOT in a horrid, hectic, fishermans-friend-type-way)  I purposefully didn't use a vanilla pod because I wanted to taste the plant, and I'm glad, because although it's distinct, it is delicate.  It's not overly sweet either.  I think that's because this was just an infusion.  I think this would be yummy with rhubarb, and I'd probably add a good generous handful of sweet cicely leaves into the stewing liquid, as they are renowned for their usefulness in sweetening tart fruit.  You're supposed to be able to reduce the amount of sugar you use by half...good news.  This little jug though, won't wait that long...it has 'drink me' written all over it.

To grow Sweet cicely, you need light, well-drained soil.  It spreads itself around in a rather naughty manner if it's happy in your soil, both by self-seeding and via its very long tap-root that, if broken, will produce another plant.  It wants some light shade but other than that, requires absolutely no TLC whatsoever.  I'm completely in love with it and I think if I didn't have a garden, I'd want to grow one in a pot.  You'd need a deep pot, because the taproot is long, and you'll need to keep it properly watered.

Do let me know if you've got any recipes - I'd love to try them out.

An Easter Table

Here we are already at Easter weekend and I haven't even unpacked most of my belongings.  Everything is everywhere (and shall probably remain so for the forseeable future). But I have unpacked some stuff, including my array of containers and vases.

The Hunk and I suddenly felt lonely and orphan-like when we realised we hadn't planned anything for Easter. A mad rush of telephoning later, we managed to round up some similarly orphaned friends for lunch, and had spring chicken and chocolate eggs at the ready. For the table, I plonked these exquisite fritillaria in a faux-mossy container, covered the gaps with sphagnum and that was that. Everyone adored this chequered beauty, which was all the more delectable for its being up-close and personal (something you rarely get when they're in the ground...unless you're the sort to get down on your hands and knees).

So, for an easy, Easter lunch table, you need:

1 pot Fritillaria meleagris - in bud or flower..it matters not.

A suitable container, that will fit the plastic pot

Sphagnum moss

Method:

Put the plant inside the container and cover the gaps with the moss. You can plant the fritillaria outside in the garden when it's over - they love open meadows, so will do well in any moist, well drained soil, and will come back up and see you year after year.