A kind of alchemy with vinegar

The whole house now smells of vinegar - that must mean that it's chutney season.  First chutney of the season is green tomato chutney, one of my old favourites.

It's a recipe I've not used before, its by Darina Allen, and needs a kilo of green tomatoes and a kilo of apples and is spiced with ginger, allspice and black pepper.  We had some leftover apples from a recent visit to family in Devon and our garden is filled with green tomatoes.  The weather has meant some of them were starting to split so we decided to pick a load of them for chutney.

 

It feels like a kind of alchemy to turn chopped up fruit and vegetables and use vinegar spices and salt to turn them into a chutney.  I hope to make some of Mr C's favourite marrow pickle later in the year.  If all goes to plan I hope to donate a couple of jars of each type to our Christmas Fayre in late November. 

 

 

A sloe day

Its a rainy and surprising dark August Bank Holiday Monday and I've been pottering around the house tidying up after quite a busy weekend.  The house is filled with stocks, one of my very favourite flowers, as it was my birthday last week and between Mr C and my family, I've been entirely spoiled.

We were very lucky with the weather yesterday as we went sloe and blackberry picking.  Although we didn't expect to be picking sloes until next month, it seems a lot of berries are early this year.  We found a blackthorn bush which was heavy laden with berries which were all very ripe.

 

 

Sloes are one of those fruits that aren't particularly useful for the usual things like crumbles and pies and eating.  Anyone who has tried eating one will testify that they aren't sweet and pleasant.   However, we plan to make some sloe gin this year and were determined to get some, and luckily my brother in law knew of a great place!  We managed to pick almost ten pounds of sloes in about an hour, leaving a lot of sloes behind still.  I did wonder how many people pick sloes each year?

We have taken our half of the sloes and washed and frozen them.  By freezing them, we will not need to individually prick every single berry when we come to make our sloe gin.

 

After filling our buckets we also picked about three pounds of blackberries.  If any berry can claim to be the best and most readily available free food, it has to be the blackberry.  Brambles will take over every patch of ground if left alone, including our garden.  The positive to having this painfully prickly, almost invasive plant is the wonderful berries that appear each summer and autumn.

 

 

The is something quite magical and beautiful about the blackberry.  It always evokes childhood memories of blackberry picking or of blackberry and apple crumble.  Nature provides so well this time of year.  The hawthorns were also laden with haw berries, although after having made haw sauce before (and the amount of work it takes to de-stone a haw berry!), we decided against picking any.  This beautiful insect was found amongst the hawthorn, it looked as if it was made of copper.

 

 

On a rainy day like today it seems that Autumn isn't far off, although I'm sure the weather will change again.  It is a day for staying inside and remembering bank holidays where it rained all day and I watched old films with Cary Grant, Doris Day and James Stewart... 

 

 

The sound of silence

We've been rather busy of late and not really doing very much that was interesting to report.  After coming back from our sojourn to the lakes, it has been mostly all about work rather than the lovely things we like doing back here at Hazel Cottage.  We did manage to fit in a visit to see family in Devon and see how happy the pigs and chickens are in their new homes.

It was great to get away even for a weekend, and just spend most of our time outside.   We also managed to collect the first lot of apples....

 We brought a few of them home and some have been made into rosemary jelly last weekend

 

I also made a few jars of raspberry jam from our home grown raspberries but didn't take a picture.  It was lucky that I didn't eat the raspberry jam straight from the pan as it was so lovely!  The other apples are now sat in our kitchen and larder, waiting for me to make apple crumble or apple jam

The brambles are coming into full fruit here, although they were a little behind in Devon still.

 

"In August, the large masses of berries, which, when in flower, had attracted many wild bees, gradually assumed their bright velvety crimson hue, and by their weight again bent down and broke their tender limbs."
-  Henry David Thoreau 

 

Everything in the garden is starting to look as if it has overreached itself and it starting to look tired.  There is very little that is flowering in the garden, which makes me think about how I can change the garden next year.  As soon as I do that, I want it to be autumn and I can start cutting back.  I must remember to listen to Thoreau again:

“Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth.”

A sojourn to the Lakes

I listened, motionless and still; 

And, as I mounted up the hill,

The music in my heart I bore,

Long after it was heard no more.

William Wordsworth

 

 

We are back from a week to the beautiful Lake District, welcomed back to Hazel Cottage by streams of swifts careering over the house and garden.  When we arrived at our very remote cottage we were rather charmed by the swallows swooping over us so it seemed quite right that the swifts welcomed us back home again.  This was my first visit to the Lakes and it served to prove that no photograph can ever do the majesty and scale of the mountains and hills and lakes justice.  I took hundreds of photos and although they remind me of the holiday they cannot really show what it was like - especially as I never managed to get a single swallow in a picture, even though they were always with us!

 

Before we went to the Lakes, I wanted to have seen a few of the lakes and mountains, as well as seen something of the lives of William Wordsworth and Beatrix Potter and what had inspired them.  We visited two of Wordsworth's houses, and saw his grave and some of the places that had inspired him, but it was Beatrix Potter who was ever present.  We went to her house at Hill Top of course, and saw her beautiful paintings in the Beatrix Potter gallery.  Her influence on the lakes however is immeasurable - the thousands of acres of farmland she donated to the National Trust which is still being farmed to this day, and the remote farms (including the one we stayed at) where she encouraged farmers to open their cottages to visitors at a time of financial depression. 

 

 

She was all around us it seems, and when I was surrounded by the countryside she loved so much, and saw the rabbits in the fields and the swifts swirling around our heads, it felt as if she was there, ready to paint he scene!

 

In the week we were there, I never tired of the views we saw, even the view outside our cottage was inspirational.  Now we are back home and planning nice things for the next few months to get over the shock of going back to work on Monday...

 

 

Flaming June

“It was June, and the world smelled of roses. The sunshine was like powdered gold over the grassy hillside.” ― Maud Hart Lovelace

It's Flaming June and the garden is lush and abundant and teeming with life.  A mixture of rain and a lot of warm sunshine has done its job and everything is twice the size it was the day before!  The rose bushes are laden with blooms and I can't keep up with all the dead-heading I need to do.  Insects and birds of all kinds are buzzing and twittering and hopping around the garden.

 

Weeds are growing faster than anything else, although some plants grow and they are so lovely and pretty I don't mind leaving them especially if the bees love it.  I have no clue what this is - any ideas?

 

In spite of the best efforts of our massive slug and snail population it looks as if we will get some broad beans finally and there are carrots, beans, potatoes and swiss chard growing in varying sizes.

"Now summer is in flower and natures hum

Is never silent round her sultry bloom

Insects as small as dust are never done

Wi' glittering dance and reeling in the sun

And green wood fly and blossom haunting bee

Are never weary of their melody

Round field hedge now flowers in full glory twine

Large bindweed bells wild hop and streakd woodbine

That lift athirst their slender throated flowers

Agape for dew falls and for honey showers

These round each bush in sweet disorder run

And spread their wild hues to the sultry sun."

-  John Clare, June

Meanwhile inside Hazel Cottage, a lot is going on - our Parsnip wine has been bottled and stored away for a few months time....  I can't help calling it our Peapod Burgundy!

We are in the middle of having our fireplace transformed too as we are having a wood burner fitted.  Here are some photos of the work in progress, once it is complete, I will post more pictures.  Its really very exciting!

The fireplace has been cleared out and the brickwork re-pointed

The flue is in!  And the hearth tiles have been laid

Hearth tiles now grouted and decorative tiles fixed.

Still round the corner there may wait, A new road or a secret gate

I've just realised how long it is since I last blogged.  The whole of May has whizzed past in a frenzy of work it seems.  I have had  time to start to learn to crochet however, wanting to find a craft I could do to keep my hands busy as well as something a little more portable than painting or patchwork.

We've both put a lot of effort and energy into our garden lately when the weather has allowed.  On a pleasant sunny day, it is my sanctuary.  One of the things I loved about the garden when we bought the house was the fact that it wasn't just one long space, the people who lived here before us had put effort into adding fences and large shrubs and of course, the gate in the middle of the garden.  There is always a sense of a journey, of a secret garden beyond a gate....

 Still round the corner there may wait, A new road or a secret gate.

J. R. R. Tolkien

I wait for you at the garden gate

Yes I will patiently wait

Among the wild flowers that bloom

So fragrant and so free

They will wait with me

With lots of room

As I watch the path

Time will pass

That leads to my garden gate

My heart knows to wait

This path that meanders on by

Sometimes it seems to touch the sky

I am not all alone you see

My garden keeps me company

As I patiently wait for you

The sky turns azure blue

It reminds me of your true eyes

Holds no secrets, holds no lies

So my anxious heart yearns

Lingering memories that burn

For my true love to come along

He'll bring me flowers and a song

He'll wander thru my garden gate

My heart knows he was worth the wait

The gate is the focus of our garden all the year round, even in the depths of winter when the snow is deep and even.

 

'Show me your garden, and I shall tell you who you are'
Alfred Austin

Time for tea

Sometimes there is nothing else for it but to have a proper pot of tea and a slice of homemade fruit cake of an afternoon.

We bought our Wood's Beryl ware tea service on our honeymoon and it usually sits on our dresser.  Sometimes however a mug of tea isn't right and you need to get out a teapot and  cups and saucers.

Using the teapot is also an excuse for using a tea cosy.  I love this tea cosy, I didn't make it sadly, its a Cath Kidston design from a few years ago.

'Never trust a man who, when left alone in a room with a tea cosy, doesn't try it on.'

Billy Connolly

I also bought some flowers at a market, which looked so beautiful on our dining room table.  I do love cottage garden flowers like delphiniums and stocks.  As I struggle with growing such flowers due to our massive slug and snail population, I try to buy them often during summer.

“There are few hours in life more agreeable than the ceremony known as afternoon tea”
  Henry James

If you've read this blog often, you will know that I'm a great fan of Jerome K Jerome and his wise and witty writings.  He has this to say about tea;

'“After a cup of tea (two spoonsful for each cup, and don't let it stand more than three minutes,) it says to the brain, "Now, rise, and show your strength. Be eloquent, and deep, and tender; see, with a clear eye, into Nature and into life; spread your white wings of quivering thought, and soar, a god-like spirit, over the whirling world beneath you, up through long lanes of flaming stars to the gates of eternity!”
  Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat