January landscape

Last year I started taking a regular walk, 3 times a week after I had taken the grandchildren to school. It's not a very long walk, about 30 mins, but after the early morning madness with two high spirited children it helps to clear my head and set me up for the rest of the days' chores. It also gives me a bit of exercise.

The walk, which is not far from my house takes me down a little lane towards a farm. One thing I've noticed about being retired is that I have the time to notice things, the changing scenes of nature, the landscape.

At the start of January the weather was fairly mild and wet. The fields were muddy. Sometimes when I reach the farm I like to walk a bit further, but I wasn't wearing the right footwear on this day.

Later in the month the snow arrived, transforming the landscape.

In a few weeks time the bare branches of the trees and hedges will start to show signs of new life.

The snow has gone now I hope we've seen the last of it.

Obstacles to salad growing

With all the mad rush and busyness of Christmas, salad growing got a little bit forgotten in December.   So I'm a little bit behind now. Walking  round the garden last week when everything was covered in snow,  I could see that the mustard has finally given up. However I lifted the lid of the cold frame, (well I had to give it a good pull because it was frozen shut) and there underneath was a row of frilly salad leaves which I'd planted in the autumn, not very big, but looking fine.

On the kitchen windowsill is a tray of pea shoots which I sowed a few weeks ago. They are much slower to grow at this time of the year, but will soon be ready for cutting.

My plans were to start growing some beetroot, cabbage, kale, radish etc for micro leaves as I did last winter, see here. but recent events have put a stop to that for a while. Last week I slipped on the ice outside our gate and broke my right wrist. I had to have surgery to repair my wrist with plates and screws. I am now in plaster from my wrist to my elbow and it is likely to be several weeks before I can be back in action. My surgeon is aware that I garden and is anxious that I can resume my hobby as soon as possible. I am having to get used to working with my left hand and work at a slower pace, but I think I will be able to sow a few seeds in a tray soon. In the meantime I will try to be patient, read some gardening books and make plans for gardening in the Spring.

For more on the 52 Week Salad Challenge click here

Soup

I seem to be spending a lot of time making soup at the moment. Cold weather is soup weather. It's warming, comforting and healthy. I like to have a few packs of it in the freezer for an easy lunch or  dinner with crusty bread or dumplings. Some time ago my daughter and I had lunch out and I had a lovely celery and mushroom soup. I thought I would make some myself. I've made celery soup before but not with mushrooms. So I looked up some recipes and adapted them to suit what ingredients I had in at the time. This is good and easy to make.  I'm sure I'll be making it again.

Celery and mushroom soup

1 head of celery cleaned and chopped
250g  white mushrooms, chopped
1 medium onion chopped
1 clove of garlic crushed
a knob of butter
1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley
1 litre of chicken or vegetable stock

Melt the butter in a large pan, add the onions and garlic and fry gently for about 5 mins.
Add the celery, stir round. Put the lid on the pan, lower the heat and allow the onion and celery to sweat gently for about 5 mins.
Add the mushrooms, season and cook until all the mushroom juices disappear.
Add about half a litre of the stock, bring to the boil, then simmer for about 30mins until the celery is cooked.
Turn the heat out and allow  to cool slightly, then put the soup into a blender or liquidiser.
Return the soup to the pan adding more stock if it is too thick.
Reheat and add the parsley before serving.

NB
I found I needed a litre of stock.
You can also add chopped fennel with the onions, but I didn't have any.
Fresh thyme could be used instead of parsley.
You could add cream  before serving too if you like.

Using up the rhubarb

When we went to the allotment recently I was pleased to see that the rhubarb was starting to grow. There were some lovely bright pink stems just showing and new green  leaves. We had moved three rhubarb plants from our old plot to the new one a few weeks before Christmas and the soil in the new bed wasn't as good as the previous one so we weren't sure how well they would do in the new plot. The plants had done really well last year and we had frozen a good amount of it. We love rhubarb crumble in our family, but when you have so much rhubarb you need to find other ways to use it up.  Which is why when I was making blackberry and raspberry gins before Christmas, I was pleased to find a recipe for rhubarb and ginger vodka.  Ginger and rhubarb go really well together and this drink is just wonderful. I made it a couple of months before Christmas. I found a few different recipes, so I just tweaked them a bit and used the basic method I use for the blackberry and raspberry gin.

Rhubarb and ginger vodka
600g rhubarb
300g caster sugar
3 inches of ginger root
Zest of one lemon
70cl bottle of cheap Vodka

Pour the sugar into the bottom of a large sterilised jar (it should have at least double the capacity of the amount of vodka you’re using, and be airtight). Clean the rhubarb and slice it into 1inch chunks and put it in the jar on top of the sugar. Slice the ginger (no need to remove the skin) into coins, and toss it in along with the zest of a lemon, pared carefully with a knife into wide strips.

Pour over the vodka, seal the jar and shake well until all the sugar has dissolved. Then give it a shake  every day for  a week or two.

Leave it at room temperature (it’ll be fine sitting on a shelf in the kitchen) for two months, at which point the rhubarb will look disgusting and grey, having given up all its juice and colour to the now pink vodka. I stored mine in a cool dark storeroom as I didn't read the recipe properly!

Strain the mixture through a sieve into sterilised bottles. This liqueur is even better if you leave the finished bottles to mature for six months or so, but can be also drunk immediately.

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day

 

I've been reading a few gardening blogs today and somehow or other I found my way to Carol at May Dreams Gardens  There I read about Garden Bloggers Bloom Day. To blog about what's flowering in my garden on the 15th of every month sounds like a good way to keep record of my garden progress. To start this in January is a bit of a challenge, but I thought I'd have a go. So on this very cold but sunny morning I went out with my camera.

The garden is still looking a bit white after yesterday's fall of snow, but it's gradually clearing. I found primroses around the borders, these are native primroses which I planted a few years ago.They have formed some big clumps now and I really must get around to dividing them sometime.

The viburnum tinus has some white flowers. I love this shrub and the flowers have a lovely delicate fragrance. The witch hazel is in it's second winter. I bought it with garden vouchers given to me by my daughter. I'd wanted one of these for ages for it's winter colour.

Another shrub just flowering is winter jasmine. I brought this as a cutting from my daughter's garden a few years ago.This is planted in the woodland garden where it drapes itself over the wall. The hellebores are also flowering in the woodland garden.

In the front garden I spotted some flowers on the mahonia. This is another shrub with a lovely scent.

Although there are no flowers yet on the snowdrops there are  plenty of green shoots pushing their way through the soil. That's something to look forward to in February.

January

The Christmas decorations are down, the sparkle and glitter has all gone. I'm a bit sad about that as I like a bit of sparkle and glitter. But it had to go.  Sometimes I can still see bits of glitter on the carpet, I don't think I ever  get rid of the glitter completely.

It's back to normal for everyone this week, the schools are back and the council recycling wagon was busy the other morning collecting everyone's Christmas trees. The trees looked a bit abandoned on the pavements outside peoples' gates, lying in a pool of pine needles and with semi bare branches, but still a reminder of the last few weeks' festivities. 

We've had some fine weather in the last couple of days and looking around the garden I've seen signs of new growth. There are primroses flowering and shoots of bulbs appearing in the borders. There are flowers on the winter jasmine and the  witch hazel.  We managed a few hours at the allotment at the weekend it was lovely and spring like. I'm looking forward to being able to get outside more, clear up the borders and make a fresh start with the vegetable plot.

The house can look a bit bare once the decorations are down, so I always buy daffodils for the house after Christmas. They're a lovely change from the reds and greens we have at Christmas and bring a lovely freshness to the house with their colour and smell.

January can be a miserable month, when it's gloomy outside sometimes the best thing to do is curl up with a good book or some knitting. When I'm not doing that this month then I will probably be planning what vegetables to grow this year on the allotment, ordering seeds, onions and seed potatoes.

A New Year

I've read so many blogs recently on new year resolutions that I thought I should do one myself. But I don't do new year resolutions. I do make plans though. Sometimes plans have to be shelved for a while because other things get in the way and that's OK by me. Resolutions can be hard work and you can be so disappointed if you don't keep to them.

I looked back on last year's plans and some I didn't manage to do because I was too busy with other things. I managed to do more walking and keep up with my healthy eating to maintain my weight loss. We finally made the decision to have a big tree cut down in the garden, which gave us more light and I was then able to redesign the border around it. I'm pleased with that. We were going to have a new kitchen and redo some of the paths in the garden, but none of that happened because we were offered a 'proper' allotment after having a small starter plot for the last three years. This new allotment needed an awful lot of work doing on it, so all our spare time and energy was focused on this. We didn't mind, it's been hard work, but we've enjoyed doing it.

My plans for this year will include the allotment which continues to take up a lot of our time. I'll blog about those plans soon when we've worked out what they are.  I definitely want that new kitchen this year and the garden paths still need doing.

Anything else? Well I just want to enjoy life, and my family.

What are your plans for this year?