Saturday Morning Chatter - Saturday, 1st August 2015 - of this and that and, maybe more!!!

We've just done the Alice Walk to Daeda's Wood, a small wooded area just before one reaches Deddington, which we visited for their Farmers' Market last week.

Daeda's Wood is a small area of protected and conservation forest which, we took note of, will be celebrating its 20th anniversary next year, 2016, which is great.

Alice used to love walking Daeda's, at any time of the year, but particularly during the winter flooding season.  Today was my first return walk since we lost her and it was very good to connect with another Alice-memory site and doing so, notching-up for me a total of 1330 steps towards my goal of a possible 5000 steps a day, which is very good!  Himself came with me too - a much needed walk although he gets out quite a bit doing things, but not exactly walking; walking is definitely the thing to do to keep one fit and agile, but working exercise is definitely not the same as  exercise for its own sake.

I would have included a photo of Daeda's but I can't upload one pressently!

Nowadays we are encouraged to fit our small exercise sessions into our daily routine of activities and doings, making it seem far less of a chore, like having to fit in a class-taking-time-out activity, and more a time-friendly-accessible time allowance just for you.  I do indeed like to do a class for the user-friendly benefit of a helpful tutor, equipment and friends to greet and chat to plus the scales-weight-and-record taking habit.  "Have I lost enough , any or am I the same as last week "hiatus?

Making good use of my pre-walk time, while having my bowl of homemade muesli-mix plus sliced banana, Lacto-free milk with toasted quinoa seeds and deciding I should make up the next month 's batch, I was amused to learn from the labels how world-oriented my food choices were with Scottish porridge oats, United Kingdom poppy seeds, Pumpkin seeds from China, Sri Lankan organic Desiccated coconut plus a small quantity of dried mix fruit "Packed in Turkey" and "Produce of more than one country"..  It had to be mixed fruit 'cos I was without raisons, oh dear!

my muesli-mix with those lovely black berries 

I'm not complaining just thnking out-loud in print!

Before all this happened I was on Face Book and reading about the new postage stamps due to come out on 18th August celebrating wild bees with a link to the Sussex Wildlife Trust's photo and their concern re the use of neocotinoids - http://www.wildlifetrusts.org/neonics.  There is also a Face Book posting recently this week about the Environment Secretary's approval of the use of pesticides which is believed to be fatally harmful to our bees.  I believe the NFU were very keen to have the use of these chemicals for crops of Rape Seed Oil plants in Suffolk.

There has been a great deal of interest over the last few years about our bees and I'd noticed earlier problems, years ago, for winter sugar supplies, to keep them going over the long cold winter months.  I've personally signed up to various petitions, looked for bees for various concerns and generally seen bees during the many gardening sessions with vegetables, flowers and now wild flowers in a project I am heading up with my local Adderbury & District WI group.  We need our bees - please help save them if you can?

my flower  garden yesterday - I've just cut a new neat edge!

Our WI GWS @ KHH garden in Adderbury

My garden with blooming and fruiting runner beans...!

My point is, all viewpoints need to be ingested and questioned as we are all citizens of our beautiful world and people need to be fed, businesses need to make money and people need to live.  Of course, people are animals and all animals need to have their lives respected and honoured and balancing everything is tricky.

OK it's coffee time and time to do a few chores.  Happy weekend everybody - maybe more "chatter time" next weekend!!!

Daisy xxx

Daisy Does the Alice! - Thursday, 30th July 2015 - Walking Fit

I have just done the Alice walk but forgot to switch on my Apple Step Mode action button!
.
Since our darling dog Alice died last June I have actually stopped my daily walk routine and I'm now reaping the benefit of that inaction.

Of course, I exercise by gardening and doing housework and I walk down to the town centre once a week on a chores-mission but the regular and daily doggie walk has gone from my life and I'm really desperate to get back into a routine of daily walks.

My plan for the next two weeks is to make sure I walk before breakfast every day, the Alice walk, which will take about 20-25 minutes to complete and then to do a second walk before supper time.   Hopefully these two daily walks will get me into the swing again and encourage long-term walk action.

I have walked throughout my life, taking the kids to school, shopping and doggie walking and its certainly kept me trim and agile.  Friends have lamented the lack of walking exercise in their lives leading to loss of usage and general ill-health.  I'm sure its not that people don't wish to walk; rather its the fact of easier and quicker transport to the various places which must be accessed on a daily basis, which keeps people motor-moving, rather than self-propulsion leg-work.

So - on with the walking and I'll let you know how I get on, how the stride-action gets moving!!!

Do you walk - your response would be illuminating?

Daisy xxx

Gardening - The Beautiful Passion - Thursday, 23rd July 2015 - out in the garden again!!!

Do you get that delicious feeling waking up to the prospect of a gardening day stretching out before you?  An entire span of time simply spent out in the fresh air with your garden soil, its plants and seedlings with you watering, digging, hoeing and deadheading?  The enjoyment and satisfaction to be gained is immeasurable and complete and its therapeutic value undeniable.  Well such a feeling pervades my whole being every Thursday morning in serious contemplation of the day ahead as I sip my morning cup o’ tea with diary in hand.  Mostly there is a little paperwork to be done first of all which happens whilst eating breakfast and then I’m off.  

Presently my first port of call is to the gardens at Katharine House Hospice - 

where I’m organising our WI Grow Wild Seed flower garden; a community project I fell into last autumn when I applied to the Grow Wild Seed Kit team of Kew Royal Botanic Gardens to take part in their “Flowers to the People” campaign   Your name goes into the ballot, winter takes hold and spring’s arrival still finds you waiting for that letter telling you your wild seeds are on their way.  Our seeds arrived mid-April and shortly afterwards we were happily digging and preparing our garden area which KHH’s Garden Team had very kindly  made available. Our seeds were sown and watered in and

now, twelve weeks later our seedlings are flowering.

poppies in the garden......Thursday, 23rd July 2015.....just

 Imagine my delight this Thursday morning discovering poppy flowers amongst the green froth where last week we’d only had seed heads and a few small white flowers.  “We have poppies” weeks ahead of my anticipated mid-August date as I take a few photos for the album.  Already there’s seed heads to be collected and stored for next year’s flowering and our identification seedlings to be planted out.  Our new garden patch is still being prepped so I heel in the growing seedlings in their small flower pots into this new bed and water well, stand back and reach for my camera again. It’s a proud moment!!

Then I’m off to water my flower garden

 and discover a few empty spaces amongst the greenery where plants have withered and faded in the current dry spell.   I’m already contemplating the prospect of buying new plants on Saturday at Deddington Farmers’ Market!  The compost heap brings me down to earth again as I recall the bag of compostable material left in the kitchen…ah well, next visit will do.  Thankfully rain is forecast for the next few days, which is good, as the contents of my compost bin are rather too dry and with that thought I head off to my veggie garden.  Here my compost material is contained within two of those “Dalek-like” structures which I’m not totally certain I approve of, for you cannot easily tell if the plant life is breaking down for future use.  They’re both dry and in need of kitchen waste plus shredded newspaper or straw which I must remember to sort out before my next visit.

My veggies are doing fairly well but the whole garden is a work in progress......

as I contemplate the weeds cluttering up the courgette bed and around the purple dwarf beans.  I remove some of these and water but what we really need is a long slow day of rainfall which we’ve not had for simply ages.  I water the greenhouse where there’s a whole mass of green tomatoes, green pepper plants and a purple-flower bedecked aubergine plant awaiting my attention.  We need a good sunny spell to encourage my green plants to bud and fruit and I’m really excited by the prospect of home-grown veggies for the kitchen.  I even have a natty-looking veggie bag in which to carry them home!  Honestly, wouldn’t you think I’d go home with my bounty in an old carrier bag rather than an expensive shop-bought bag which, if I’d thought about it, could easily have been run-up from material scraps at home!

Well the thought is tantalising but crazy….there are only so many hours in the day, aren’t there, and only so many chores to be fitted into ones busy day.  Yes I know, my thought is father to the action, but there’s enough action already going on without getting out the sewing machine, sorting out the fabric and running up a draw-string bag!!!

I run the hose over the greenhouse plants and tidy up; my gloves are wet, there’s plastic bags to chuck, flower pots to stack and pesky weeds to remove.

I photograph the runner beans and pick my first courgette which comes home with me for lunch, but the new lettuces and green tomatoes must wait for another day’s picking.

Back in the kitchen I create a salad of sliced courgette, baby tomatoes and lettuce, from His garden, while sautéing bacon lardons with cold sliced potato and a handful of grated cheese, tossing the steaming mixture with a good dash of "Wheat gluten-free Organic Tamari Soy Sauce".  It’s been a long day since breakfast time, I’m cold and hungry and need something hot to eat and my hot bacon salad is just the thing to eat right now!

I dash off to the shops after lunch to do a few things and checking-up on my step-count when back home discover I’ve managed well over 4000 steps today which is brilliant.  Since losing our darling Alice last summer plus the consequent need for our daily “walkies” to keep us motivated and moving, the thickening waistline has made its presence felt which I’m now determined to deal with!  Of course, the new step-routine will have to be fitted in slowly for you just can’t suddenly launch yourself into a programme of extra exercise without some thought but…it needs be done and that’s that!

Over a much need cuppa I contemplate the glories of the garden, the herby smells and the delicious crisp texture of my first courgette blissfully ignoring the ironing basket before me.

Ah the garden - "the garden's a lovesome thing, eh wot" now who said that, d'you know?  I believe it was a certain Mr. Thomas Edward Brown - 1830 - 1897- who said in his work - "My Garden"

A GARDEN is a lovesome thing, God wot!

"how things do get changed about, but they're not my changes, just how things get passed from hand to   moiuth, so to speak, don't you know!"......

Daisy xxx


PS - thanks to online search for Thomas Edward Brown 1830-1897, and - My Garden - Bartleby.com
for the complete poem

An Adderbury Weekend

Begin the Weekend on Friday, watching Practise Sessions on BBC TV for the Hungarian Grand Prix –

Carry on right thru’ the weekend to the GP on Sunday at 1 o'clock...!

It’s the Weekend for – JS Auctions Next Auction Date at Cotefield Auction Rooms, Oxford Road, Bodicote: –

Start Time – 10AM – Saturday 25^th July 2015

Viewing day - Friday, 24^th July 9am – 7pm

Contact via – www.jsauctions.co.uk

T/No. 01295 272488

And Saturday morning is the time to head to Deddington for – Deddington Farmers’ Market, North Oxford – 9am to 12.30 pm Saturday, 25^th July 2015

Find them at – www.deddingtonfarmersmarket.co.uk

Then look for the good stalls bound to  be their ready and waiting to do business by selling you a selection of their particular goods.

Look for – Craig Churchill for Photographs; Ameen of Oxford Delhi for Indian Foods;  Sarah of Wild Berries for fruit curds;  Styan Family for 1^st season plums;  The Meat Joint;  Shake Oak Products;  Cornfield Bakery and Craft Stalls and Refreshments in Deddington’s Church

We’re promised good weather after the rains of Friday which happily fell on all gardens including my veggie bed where my new courgette plants, runner beans and purple dwarf beans where the rain is much needed....!

My veggie garden is indeed a work-in-progress - I'm clearing the weeds as my plants require more space! - with herbs about the base of the runner beans and previous flower plants gathered about the courgettes, happily just about to fruit.  I adore courgettes, don't you?

Ball Colegrave held their Open Day on Wednesday with their usual wonderful display of blooms of all kinds, in an amazing array of colours, all of which blended most happily alongside each other.  One almost suffered colour-blindness, the display was so brilliant.  Well, see for yourself...

 and there were a few very good craft stalls which I really enjoyed visiting....

handmadebyheartcotswolds@gmail.com

www.gardensintime.co.uk

uk.nyrorganic.com/shop/kirstenkinsellamiles

Then on Thursday evening Ball Colegrave held a charity event for Guide Dogs for the Blind when the really good sum of something between £500-600. was raised from the sale of raffle tickets, hot refreshments and delicious cakes and doughnuts and then an auctiion sale for the last prize which resulted in a sum of £40. for a most attractive potted plant.  Here's a few more photos from Thursday's event which was really great fun for all of us...

Happy weekend to you all!

Daisy

The Beautiful Passion - Veggie Growing - Tuesday, 14th July 2015 - then feasting on your produce !!!

Have you made a first picking from your vegetable garden then made a delicious supper with that harvest?

Well, I have and just earlier this evening ...and now it's all gone...but here's my photo I made earlier plus one of my garden harvest

 My very first dwarf bean harvest and let me tell you, the bean plants were an after-thought when buying the runner beans I'd just found, already looking forward to planting them in the garden, with very definite longings for future bean-feasts ahead!

I really don't remember noticing any mention of a particular colour with the plant name so when I finally noticed my developing dwarf bean plants sprouting purple beans, I was rather amazed.
Now there's lots of purple beans growing in my veggie garden and I'm rather pleased.  What doesn't please me is the  info. from gardening friends that when these beans are cooked, they turn green.  Ah ha! I thought, I'll eat them raw and that's what I've done tonight, in a mixed salad.

But OMG..the inside portion of the bean is GREEN so presumably that's why  they're green once cooked.  Well, I must say, I think this is an absolute swizz.  And how does this happen and is it an added colouration?  And if so, how and when could this added colour have been introduced.

If the colour is introduced early in the growing process, does it come from the soil; the type of soil or perhaps, perhaps, is it a natural phenomenon, this purple colouring of some vegetables.  I saw others in Australia last autumn in seed catalogues and longed to buy such seed, or better still plants, here      in England.  So what's the answer!  Well, we shall just have to do a bit of culinary sleuthing, hey???

Well sleuthing done, and not such a hard job in the end because I just went online where I found all kinds of info from a wide variety of people, posts and seed companies - all about purple veggies - dwarf beans, carrots, cauliflower, red cabbage!!!, red onions and chocolate.

All of these items contain flavenoids which are, apparently, plant pigments and from these come the colours red, pink, violet and magenta shades of  various plant bits and pieces.  And another piece of info is - flavenoids are also known as Anthocyanins which come from the Anthocyanidin group.

These same anthocyanins are also responsible for the colour of blueberries, in flower petals and leaves.

NB  - all the above info comes from Google Search - flavenoids at https://www.google.co.uk and
info on my question I put to Google search "where does the purple colour in veggies come from?" comes from - http://science,howstuffworks.com/life/botany/question439.htm/printable.

I hope no bother comes to any sleuther out there after reading this blog, or for me, for that matter. I liked science at school  so perhaps it's time I got scienced-up again, hey!!!

Happy reading and keep digging that colour purple and, don't just eat up your greens, as your Granny told you, and me to do - eat up your purple veggies too...and plums and blueberries and red onions and red cabbage too.  They're really good for you and everyone else, for other things too.  Watch this space for more news when I've got me some more science!!!.


Daisy xxx

PS just had to dash out shopping for aubergine, plums, radishes and blueberries ....                                                          

Banbury Charter Market Relaunch - New Craftsman Venture - Saturday, 23rd May 2015

A Market Relaunch for Banbury’s Charter Market with Cherwell District’s Market operator E.G. Skett  and Co. with new stalls and stallholders to meet and we’re late because my computer is misbehaving; the dear SO managed to get it working temporarily enabling me to finish off a  little project I was working on.

At the top end of Market Square were the regular market stalls offering a wider range of fresh foods and produce, plants, clothing items and fabrics.  We’re wondering where the new stalls are situated as we walk down, when we spot new blue and white striped awnings in front of Marks and Spencer and adjacent buildings, and catch the sound of music on the breeze.

The first stall we visit is 3D Card by Trang Nguyen and Long Sam with their beautiful, exquisite greeting cards; they are colourful, amazing and very brilliantly created and presented.  They are handmade cards par excellence and I was delighted to see these pop-up cards in Banbury.  Find Trang Nguyen via email – trangftu2004@yahoo.com and catch them on Face Book at - https://www.facebook.com/pages/Pop-Up-Cards-PC/502222703183436?ref=hl

To Merlin Porter Arts who drew a quick picture of me, as the Street Artists do in Paris, and Merlin is on Face Book at - https://www.facebook.com/MerlinPorterArts - to see his work…..

On to Qwerky Clocks “Handmade Hand Painted Wooden Wall Clocks and find them by email at – qwerkyclocks@gmail.com and on Facebook@: www.facebook.com/QwerkyClockshandmade....

Then to Forever Living Products with Beckie selling Aloe Vera and we bought their Aloe Vera Shampoo.  We have seen these Aloe Vera products elsewhere and were keen to try for ourselves….

Also there, a craft blanket stall, Cakes for Heroes and a Sea Scouts Charity stall all of whom were doing good business...

My computer broke down this same Saturday.  I sourced a new one over the next few days and with a few irritating hold-ups I'm now up and running again, just about.  However, somewhere along the road I seem to have lost a few photos from this Market day back in May.  So, sorry guys, but I seem only to have retained the two photos above.

I shall visit again at your next Banbury Market Day and take more photos, adding them to that day's blog post.  I hope all of you are well and selling successfully and I look forward to meeting all of you again soon.

Daisy xxx

Gardening - The Beautiful Passion - Wednesday, 8th July 2015

Well, don't you think so, when your patch of soil as if by magic, brings forth veggies for your hungry appetites, flowers to swoon over, herbs to delight in and a green space to linger in, after busy and frantic day elsewhere!

1st strawberry harvest...



green tomatoes....

My garden is divided between four different locations living as we do in a small flat without a garden.  Kind friends have allowed me to dig up parts of their unwanted, abandoned or grassed-over
garden spaces and I've moved in with vegetable plants and pots, herbs and flowers and pots in an endeavour to be creative, utilising my energy and enthusiasm.

Now this week has so far been incredibly busy - yes, I know it's only Wednesday evening - but this is the first evening of the week so far I've been free to water two of my gardens.  I get to water another one tomorrow and the fourth, potted garden, at the weekend.  Luckily, we've had a good quantity of rainfall since Sunday when I last visited my potted place and watered it madly, so I know it will hold out 'til then, thank goodness.  But the impact and sense of satisfaction that rushes at you, gazing at your garden after a day or two absence is mind-boggling, confirming what you've always known and sometimes, ignored, is that the garden is inspirational, engaging and totally compelling.

runner beans

When a seedling, a flower or edible fruit shows itself,  that compulsion to sow and plant, dig, hoe, weed and harvest anaesthetises you against all backache, broken nails, callouses and exhaustion.  When you carry that green and gorgeous harvest into your kitchen for supper that magic is complete;  you're eating the fruits of your labours, consuming the love and energy you've poured into your growing space and you are the sole victor of your endeavours.  It's bloomin' marvellous!!!

and dwarf green beans and curry plant by the strawberries

So today, I visited my veggie garden to water and pick a strawberry or two, even a tiny red tomato, all of which I did, also watering-in the new plants given to me last week plus my bed of herbs - the lemon  balm and marjoram, the lemon verbena and oregano and a clump of borage bedecked with small blue flowers.  These plants are all crammed into what once was the cold frame now sadly not useful for such a purpose, but still able to house and show off to advantage my bright green herbs.

There's green beans racing up their bean poles, without a  tie or yarn knot to hold them in place, dwarf green beans with their pinky-purple flowers just showing, potato stems and leaves from last year's detritus,  absolutely determined on production again this season, pretty warm-yellow courgette flowers with their mass of green leaves and tiny spiky finger-stems which you hope will turn into small, fat, crunchy fingers to sauté, bake of munch into salads.  Heads of vibrant green parsley, delicate leaves and stems of coriander, spikey waves of slender chives with a few pretty pink heads, a stem of newly planted bay and a mass of orange and apricot coloured nasturtiums with seed heads you could use for mock capers!

the flower garden

In the fruit bed the second-year strawberry plants are bedded down nicely on their straw, the rhubarb plant is resting on its laurels and the curry plant, exuding that wonderfully warm curry scent, is sending our long grey spires covered in bright yellow flowers, as the greenhouse hosts a row of resplendent tomato plants swagged with green fruit, just waiting for the sun to turn them bright red, ready for the eating.

Of course the weeds are resplendent too, poking up their heads wherever and whenever the inclination takes hold so, whatever the state of your growing scene is, your garden will always host an array of  flowers in-the-wrong-place to bring colour and vibrancy to your garden.  And mine is no exception especially since I've been rather disinclined to weed and hoe as much as I did last year!

clumps of fragrant herbs

Ah well, tomorrow is another day for weeding, watering, hoeing and tidying-up and a spot of seedling transplantation in a garden I'm managing for our local WI group; not my garden as such but one does get, attached to the soil one is digging and raking.

and the garden I'm managing for my local WI group - a head of wild seedlings,,,

Soil matters, wouldn't you agree.  That beautiful dark-brown moist and crumbly stuff you dig!  That dry, hard-baked earth when the rain don't fall or the ankle-clinging saturated mud of winter's snow-into-slush-season when you're trying to get ahead of your digging much too early.  Soil is The thing to cultivate if you want and need your green space to develop, grow and bloom.  You simply can't harvest your ambitions without a good bed of soil - unless you grow hydroponically - so grow your compost, practise your digging technique and cultivate a sense of patience for that green space to linger in, after a busy, frantic day elsewhere!

Toodle loo

Daisy xxx

PS all typos under control I hope; apologies for unseen weeds!