Elderflower Cordial has been made

Further to my last Elderflower post, about deciding not to make it, we then decided to give it a go with the remaining elderflowers on the trees which wasn't many.

Aunty Emma was over so she helped pick some flower heads.

We failed in our quest for Citric Acid, so in the end we resorted to using just Lemons and made just one batch of cordial using 20 heads.

I wonder how it will taste?

I did take a photo of the flowers in the bucket, but i haven't downloaded them yet.

Camping was a huge success

On Saturday we drove to here http://www.rockseast.org.uk/ to go camping and everybody loved it.

There were 22 of us in total which consisted of 10 adults and 12 children, including 9 girls so Daisy and Iris were in their element.

Five families in five tents, a camp kitchen under our gazebo and an open fire.

I discovered that a Sloe Gin and Tonic is delicious especially with bbq'd meat.


Here are some photographs

We went on a woodland walk and spotted lots of wooden sculptures, which the children loved.

Pippa especially loved this wolf.



This is 11 out of the 12 children, Lola was still in the backpack on Aaron's back..

Daisy and Freya being friends.

Iris walking and drinking, she likes to walk on the edge of danger does our Iris.


Fairy mushrooms.

Back at camp and Daisy and Freya play with the little fairies they bought in the campsite shop. Which incidentally sold no food, just fabulous trinkets for children.


Another walk in beautiful weather and beautiful countryside.

Iris resting in the shade of trees.

Iris with human label.
(in case you didn't realise)

Camping

We are going camping tomorrow.

I have my camera and my batteries ready.

Oh and we have a tent and bedding and wellies, and i'm told somebody is bringing a bubble machine apparently, so we'll all be sorted.

No Ederflower cordial, but a greenhouse instead

I decided not to make Elderflower cordial afterall.
I might still get round to it, but then again, i expect the flowers will have all dropped off by then.

Here however is our new greenhouse, which was my mums, but is now ours and is now residing in our garden.


Marc put all the glass in, well i think i put one sheet in at the beginning, and i did help to wash some of the glass but Marc did most of it.

We had to buy a few extra sheets of glass as some of the sheets had broken in transit, also one of the windows has been left out as it needs to be fixed slightly, but it has one window and it's all lovely and solid and warm as toast inside.

Horay, once we are back from our camping hols, i shall put the tomatoes and the chillies inside and then think about growing some more things like Cucumbers, strawberries, whatever.

Elderflower Cordial

We are going to attempt to make Elderflower Cordial.
Daisy and Iris have already picked lots and lots of flowers for us and they are all laid out on a sheet on the grass.


Ingredients
20 elderflower heads
1 sliced lemon
2 tsp of citric acid (ask at your chemist)
1.5 kg (3.5 lbs) of sugar
1.2 ltr (2.5 pints) boiling water

Method
Boil a kettle for the water.
Fill a bowl or small bucket with all the other ingredients.
Pour the water over the other ingredients and stir until the sugar has dissolved. Skin the surface of the water to get rid of the scum that can arise. Cover with a cloth (mine has a pillow case over it).
Stir twice a day for five days.
Strain though a fine sieve though a fine sieve or through muslin cloth and decant into sterile screw topped bottles. Refrigerate.
As with other cordials dilute with 5 parts water to serve . Experiment with it and add it to some of your favourite spirits. It is really nice as a gin mixer.


Trouble is we have no Citric Acid, but i am reliably informed by lots of anonymous people on the internet that 1 tsp / 5 gms of citric acid is equivalent to the juice of one lemon.


which was taken from this website.
www.selfsufficientish.com

New pets - Nematodes

After my morning in Taunton, i drove very carefully sticking the speed limit at all times and popped into a garden centre, where i purchased 20 million Nematodes, to water my garden with.

I thought i had never heard of Nematodes before but when a local friend suggested them to control our slugs and snails, i remembered that actually Lucy O'Reilly had suggested them a year ago when they came to stay.

I am waiting for my Nematodes to arrive in the post, apparently because they are alive the garden centre wasn't allowed to stock them, so you order them and then they are posted to you.
I expect Dobbies would have had them.

Wiki - Nematodes
Other Nematode info

Ooh i'm glad i didn't go to Dobbies, i paid £12.99 for 20 million, and Dobbies are charging £27.99 for 30 million.
Expensive Dobbies

I am a naughty driver

Yes i am, i might as well admit it now cos Daisy will probably tell you anyway the next time she sees you.

Because i was doing over 30 in a 30mph area, i was 'pinged' and sent a fine for £60, but instead of automatically getting 3 points, i was offered a 3 hour course to learn how to be a slower better driver.
So today off i went on a Speed Choice course in Taunton, run by these guys.

The history of my crime, was when we swapped our girls for a greenhouse back in this post, Marc and me drove up to Bristol to go to Ikea and the chinese supermarket. On the way back i wasn't really concentrating on the road, and i drove past the one speed camera on the A37 from Bristol back down to Shepton Mallet at about 36/37 mph in a 30 zone!
Very naughty.

I won't give an excuse, i heard too many today from an older fella who simply couldn't accept the fact that he was in the wrong, he'd been doing over 35 in a 30mph zone, and he had every excuse at the ready as to why he shouldn't have been 'pinged'.

But i think why dwell on the past, areas are limited to 30mph for a reason and no matter how unreasonable that reason might seem, i learnt today that there are probably half a dozen other reasons as to why it definately should be a 30mph limit.

I left there having learnt quite a lot really, but i suspect it's one of those things that you have to experience for yourself, so i wont' try to convert the whole world to slow down and drive a little bit safer on this blog.

However if you are driving in a hurry, and your stuck behind a car rigidly sticking to the speed limits, don't get cross, it might be me.

Daisy loves snails.

Daisy made a snail lagoon to keep the snails in that she rescued from me stamping on them.

Yes i know i'm very very bad and the big karma fairy is going to have my guts for garters but when the said fairy comes round to my house, i'll walk him down (are fairy's boys?) the garden and show him the damage that the naughty snails and slugs are doing to my lovely runner beans and then he'll understand and we'll all have a lovely cup of tea.




This one is only for snail lovers.

We have been hiding, but we are back

Yes we were hiding away like The Wombles, busily working underground, overground and wombling free.
I wasn't picking up any litter though, so not really wombling very well.


This was actually a very hot day when Iris decided she wanted to throw buckets of cold water all over herself, the usually quite timid Iris became brave and soaked herself again and again.




For those that don't (and for those that do) remember 'The Wombles' click here or here.
To hear the wonderful theme tune click here i think the lovely Bernard Cribbins sung it, or he was definitely something to do with it.
To watch the wonderful theme tune click here

I shall try to do a post every night for a week at least.

I'm free

Yes I'm free now from my temping job so normal blogging with photos will resume very very soon.

It's half term this week so the girls are currently causing trouble as I speak in their bedroom, although Daisy has gotten herself dressed without being asked. When Iris tries to get dressed she's ok with the bottom half but she just gets in a tangle with t-shirts and vests, I have no idea how she will get changed for PE at school come September.