The cordial recipe made 2 stoppered bottles and a half-full irn bru bottle. It’s a bit sweeter than I prefer and doesn’t have the full-on heady aroma, but it’s palatable and tastes of elderflowers. A success!
Summer pudding was as disappointing as the weather. Thick bread doesn’t work, there wasn’t enough juice, and there were too many strawberries relative to the other fruits. I also left it in the fridge too long and the outer layer of bread got a bit hard.
The peak of the elderflower season’s gone but there are still a few newly-opened infloresences around, on lower branches or in sheltered spots. This year I vowed to make elderflower cordial and today is the day…
today's haul of elderflowers - about 25 heads
The first step in The River Cottage Cookbook recipe is to steep the flowers + zest of 2 lemons in just-boiled water. The recipe also calls for orange zest but I couldn’t find an unwaxed one in the supermarket.
elderflower infloresences barely covered in just-boiled water
Strain (1100 ml liquid), add sugar (775g) and lemon juice (125ml), bring to a gentle simmer, skim, leave to cool, strain again and bottle.
It’s gently cooling at the moment, and I’ll bottle it up before bed. Apparently she who knits’ mother is impressed that I’m making cordial.
Other produce today includes a few small turnips, two beetroot, a box of mixed lettuce and enough fruit (strawberries, blackcurrants and redcurrants) to make two summer puddings. Tomorrow, when the daughter is asleep for her afternoon nap, I’ll break them out for me and she who knits.
lettuce and summer fruit
Last week was very windy, and I was worried about the peas and beans. I also put up some netting over the strawberries and redcurrant, so I was a bit worried that the net would act as a sail and get blown away.
Success: The sun’s out this week and everything’s looking much better. Nothing got blown over and the stakes I put in for the broad beans have kept them upright; elderflowers ready (not that I did anything to manage the elder tree); strawberries warm and tasty; garlic progressing nicely. OMG blackcurrants! A lot of these are coming through…
Less good: the overwintered vegetables haven’t come through. Out of 60 onions I planted, only one has survived (although I did munch on a couple of shoots in February). A slightly better rate for the broad beans but still quite poor (3 out of 21 survived).
Which reminds me: transplanting has been a great success. I moved one onion, three broad beans and the redcurrant and all of them have taken to their new homes. Forgot to move the rhubarb this year, so that’s something for the Autumn.
The last piece of bad news is that the French beans didn’t work, and only a couple of fragile sprouts came through. The under-planted lettuces are going great so I don’t think the soil is deficient. Perhaps just wrong conditions for germinating, so this morning’s activity with the daughter was getting some more beans into modules. It’s a little late in the year, but we’ll see how it goes…
the daughter helped put French Beans into modules
calabrese, fennel, French beans
the daughter's grubby hands
Down the allotment with the daughter in the morning, and then distributed some of the surplus rocket to two victims friends. From noon: A long cycle ride with the girl on the bike seat. This evening, I cycled around Dalry. In one pannier, a 1 terabyte external harddrive; in the other, takeout sushi.
Nice family trip to the plot today — a low impact way to spend the bank holiday Monday.
The rhubarb’s still going strong and now the rocket and spinach are ready for harvesting. It’s nerve-wracking, really, ensuring that the food’s not wasted. And I can see the blackcurrants swelling but still green, the garlic strong, the beans in flower; more picking and preserving needed throughout the Summer.
Today’s work: weeding, weeding, weeding; planted a row of peas with the girl; planted 25 French beans around the tepee.
Planting peas with gusto
Today’s haul: 1.8 kg of rhubarb that’s gone straight into the freezer in 300 gramme bags; 125 grammes of spinach that’s maturing in a dahl sag for tomorrow night’s tea; 250 grammes of rocket that she who knits made into a jar of pesto.
Picking rocket with the girl
Rocket pesto - we put it through the hand blender next
Had a very productive morning in the playgroup garden, assisted by Stephen and Gavin. Perhaps assisted is the wrong word for it: they did the graft and I faffed around with habitat piles, rakes and compost heaps. All the nettles are now gone and there’s a decent view from the kitchen window, so I think there’s more scope for the kids to get outside during the playgroup sessions.
View from the kitchen before the cleanup
View from the kitchen, after the morning's work
Plenty much vegetation outside the window
much clearer view of the window after our efforts
A respectably-sized compost heap
For the record, it took three of us 2 hours to
I am more at home with cooking, so today we made jam. Well, I made jam and the girl helped with the labelling.
Three jars of jam. An apple and roses in the background
Three jars of rhubarb and ginger jam, each with two labels
We now have 7 jars of rhubarb and ginger jam in the understairs cupboard. In a moment of clarity, I’ve realised that I’ve used up perhaps 10% of the rhubarb. The last jar from 2008 is dated 15 June, so that means I may have to make jam every day I look after the daughter from now until the holiday on 5 June…
She who knits reckons I am too cool to post pictures of my sewing on this blog, so I have to rise to that challenge. ‘Cos she’s bought a tonne of yarn from Morehouse Merino, they sent a sewing kit. And because she doesn’t sew, I’ve decided to learn.
Sunglasses case: warm grey case, purple running stitch, purple heart, red sheep button
Detail of sheep button: those dangly legs are tricky to sew around, but that's what the daughter chose
Detail of the heart: again, a choice by the daughter
Prof. Adrian Newton of Bournemouth University has co-authored the Red List of trees of Central Asia that are endangered. This list includes the Niedzwetzky apple Malus niedzwetzkyana.
As apples blossom in the UK, their wild ancestors face extinction
The press release mentions Roger Deakin’s book Wildwood which has such wonderful passages about his visit to the woods in Central Asia.
In other news: I’m off to the Tree Surveying course at the RBGE on Saturday. – my freebie for being on the pilot Certificate of Practical Horticulture last year. I wonder how far I’ll get without being able to identify many species of tree… There is a saving grace because the RBGE are also putting on a drop-in session of how to draw native trees on 27 June.
