We have chickens

Indeed we do have chickens, three of them.
Glinda (belongs to Iris) is the brown one and she's quite friendly.
Gloria (belongs to Daisy) is the white one, and she's a bit scared.
Gladys (belongs to me) is the black one and she's utterly terrified of all humans.


This is their humble abode just before they moved in, which was still clean.
They moved in on Tuesday and it now looks like they've lived in it for a year, poo everywhere.


** We have actually changed the set up since this photo was taken, the little house on the left, has moved further down the garden to a spot which gets a bit more sun, and the run on the right has gone, their little house is now in a bigger fenced off area, where they can roam free**

Marc the tree man

Marc gave the apple tree down the bottom of the garden a haircut.
We think it's a cider apple tree and it was in desperate need of a pruning.
Perhaps it got a bit more of a haircut than it expected, but it did really need a bit of haircut.

Mangey Touts

Apparently (so Marc tells me, cos I didn't go down the garden yesterday) we have two flowers on our Mange Tout's.
Hooray, we might get some vegetables this summer afterall.

Mum tells me if you leave them on the plant they will fatten and turn into peas, I didn't know that.

I will photograph the flowers shortly.

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.

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

We swapped our girls for a greenhouse

Literally.
My mum and dad have a greenhouse each or should i say had a greenhouse each, until this easter weekend. We went down to Devon to take down my mums greenhouse, under instruction from my dad.
We left the girls and instead drove home on Sunday with half the greenhouse.

This is it before it comes down

This is it after it has come down

And this is Daisy dancing on it's grave.