Tag Archives: cape gooseberry

Starts with Poetry and ends up with Wallpaper Paste

As with Newton’s Laws there is always a price to be paid for success and that has cut in today. I looked at some of my successes yesterday and decided they could have been written a lot better. This morning I woke up with the thought that if I’m going to justify my place in magazines I have to back it up with another selection of successful submissions, then another . . .

The road to Hell may be paved with good intentions, but somebody has to provide the wallpaper and that is a task that may well fall to me. I can see it now, hundreds of yards of wasted drafts and rejected versions.

The vision in my mind is not, believe it or not, the flames or damnation, but wallpaper paste. It’s what we used to use in school handicraft classes for doing papier-mâché work. That was our limit at school. We did art and we did “handicrafts”, which was sewing for girls and papier-mâché for boys. Yes, I grew up in a patriarchal society, but look at it this way – sewing is much more useful than the ability to make badly proportioned models from newspaper and glue.

At home, during wet school holidays we would sometimes do it, but using flour and water to make the paste. That skill later came in useful when we produced a Greek style helmet for one of the kids when he had to do a history project. We cheated and kept it for a couple of years before resubmitting it for the next child. We used diluted PVA glue for it, so it didn’t suffer from storage.

It’s very simple and works for a number of things. Select an ion from history that is roughly balloon-shaped, cover it in glue and then cut holes/paint as necessary.

Strange what you think of when you blog.

Now I need to find a photograph. It has nothing to do with anything in the blog. The header is a frangipane tart made with our Cape Gooseberry harvest. We have just eaten the last ones out of the garden. Unfortunately they die in winter if you grow them outside, so we will have to try again next year. There are no pictures of one that was actually baked as they tended to get eaten fairly quickly.

Lazy Sunday – not an Unusual Day

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Today I have watched some TV, eaten chocolates, snoozed and cooked brunch. I have then pottered around on eBay, cruised the web, done some reading on WP and decided on the menu for tonight. Yes, eating loafing and little else has been the pattern of my day.

Depending on which government advice you believe (it is all getting a bit confused) we are either out of quarantine or almost out of quarantine.

It is nearly half past six in the evening and I am only just getting to grips with writing. I really am going tom have to start a procrastination diary to see how I manage to waste all this time. As I’m going to cook soon I will leave it until tomorrow…

I have enjoyed the ramble through old photos, and am feeling more inclined to get out, do some walking and take some more photos. On the other hand i still have the rheumatology specialist’s advice at the back of my mind – stay indoors and don’t even go to the shops. This advice has not been passed down via the NHS, as thy are currently vaccinating the over-65s. When thy get down to the over-60s and call me, this will be confirmation that I am not at any increased risk of death from Covid. Fat, high blood pressure and on drugs to supress my immune system, but not, according to the NHS, at any increased risk. So was all the talk of “underlying health conditions” just hype, or have the NHS, once again, proved to be bad record keepers. Past experience suggests both explanations are equally feasible.

My blood test results came back on Friday – a am in the middle of the range, but now have to have tests every two weeks or so until I can get back to three-monthly intervals.

I suppose there are worse things than getting up at 6.30 and visiting a building full of sick people…

Top photo is physalis, or Cape Gooseberry, Inca berry or ground cherry. Easy to grow in UK as long as you can get them under cover. There is a decorative form – the Chinese lantern – which does grow outdoors but doesn’t fruit.

The other photo is the beach at Dunwich, featuring that well-known cliché – a fishing boat on the beach.

On the beach at Dunwich. The square block in the background is a nuclear power station, which you can also see in my Aldeburgh photos.

Sitting in the Garden

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I spent a while sitting in the MENCAP GardeThere was a distinct nip in the air but it was still very pleasant. Julia provided the coffee and the Tunnocks teacakes. They aren’t really teacakes, they are chocolate coated confectionary with a marshmallow filling and a biscuit base. Somehow I managed to get over my concern about the accuracy of the name…

There’s plenty of colour in the garden at the moment, with fucsias and sedums doing well and the sumac trees changing colour.

It’s also time for the final picking of cape gooseberries – the crop with more names than it really needs.

Cape gooseberry, physalis, goldenberry, pichuberry, ground cherries and inca berries – take your pick.

Cape Gooseberries

We’ve had our first frost this weekend so it’s going to be medlar time in the garden this week.

Nottingham Medlars

We missed most of them them last year – either because of the birds or because of medlar rustlers.

The Promise of Future Fruit

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Here are some pictures of the fruit trees from last week. The Magpies seem quite keen on the big yellow cherries, which are ripe despite being yellow. We are going to have to research the variety. The smaller, more prolific yellow cherries are not yet edible. Even the Magpie, which is happy to eat a dead badger from the gutter, won’t eat them.

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The strawberries are doing well, and this particular punnet was going to the school caretaker, on the grounds that cooperation is a good thing. They are one of the few things Julia is able to sell from the site, and they will be paying for some of the materials needed for shed repairs before winter kicks in.

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There is a good selection of apples, pears and plums around the garden, though Julia has given me (in my capacity as a non-volunteer) responsibility for drawing up a pruning plan for the winter. They are generally in good order but a few are growing water shoots, and most are congested. It’s easily done, as people tend to concentrate on pruning for fruit and neglect to open up the centres of the trees.

There are also several apple trees that were obviously pruned as step-overs but have grown into hedges over the years. Being the owner of a plum tree that started life as a minarette I know all about this sort of thing, and have no moral high ground to take.

There are vines and figs in the polytunnel, a hazel with nuts and, in one corner of the garden, we havea group of Nottingham medlars. They are a “traditional” tree which means they have no practical use these days and are grown as a curiosity. At one time they were handy for late crops but we have imports and chillers to fill thst gap these days. You have to blet the fruit before eating, which means letting it ripen to within moments of it rotting. They dress it up in most articles on medlars, but that is what it means in practical terms.

It will be interesting to see how they go, and to try some recipes with them.

Nottingham Medlar

Plans include raspberries and gooseberries, because we can get free cuttings, and finding what is known as “the special plum tree”. I think we’ve probably found it, but we just don’t know it’s special yet. We also need Cape Gooseberries, because we’ve always done well with them and visitors like to try them.

Compared to the farm garden, which was lumpy clay and rubble when we got there, this is luxury.

You also have the bonus that people don’t steal your fruit when you aren’t there.

It rained, we made pom-poms and played balloon ball

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It’s rained all day, we don’t feel like using the kitchen because of the internal politics and I’m not eating biscuits.

So what do we do?

Well, we have to feed and water the chickens whatever the weather.

We also had a good moan about various things (centre left in a mess, one of the new toilets out of order, someone has thrown some of our stuff out of the kitchen).

We did a stock take of what we have left in the kitchen.

We picked the last of the chillies and the cape gooseberries

We made pom-poms. I managed 14 today. I explored a method I found on the internet – using a fork to wrap the wool round. I hope these photos explain it. It’s tricky getting it tied tight enough and fitting the scissors in, but it seems to work OK for producing small pom-poms.

A fork with longer tines may have been better (as would sharper scissors) and I’m just wondering how much wool you’d need to wrap a garden fork…

: Birth of a pom-pom

: Wind it round – a longer fork might have been better

: Tie it off

: Finished pom-pom

Then we played indoor balloon volleyball/tennis. It’s a game we invented last year using a large balloon. The rules are not fixed, the umpiring is abysmal and the scoring is random, but it seems to work. So far nobody has died playing, we’ve had no tears, and we haven’t damaged the building (though as we’re under notice to quit I’m not sure I’m bothered).

Indoor Balloonball – just look at the speed of that serve!

As we told the group – only boring people get bored.

Worms, Cookery and Bread

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For tea on Wednesday we had chicken, mushroom and bacon pie with tarragon. Yes, we’re in “tea” territory here, and even if we weren’t I spent my early years in Lancashire, so it will be “tea” wherever I go. On the side we had baked potato and sauteed kale. (It’s stir fried really but people always seem to call it sauteed). Of course, those people know how to access the French accents on their keyboard; I don’t and on my screen the word is underlined in red. We had a proper meal because we left work as early as we could and got home in time to do some proper cooking.

That’s what we’ve been missing recently, time.

We did a bit of easy cooking with the group -jam tarts using ready-made pastry and the jam we made on Tuesday from the blackberries we picked on Monday. It’s known as Any Berry Jam. I would include a link, but I can’t find it. I’ll try later. There was very little washing up and we had very little inclination to stay longer, so we went home, where I cooked again.

Joy.

Tonight, we will be having soup and a sandwich because we tested sausage rolls for the food blog. I am putting weight on in my capacity of pie tester.

Quick blackberry jam tarts

It was a very pleasant day, and there were several butterflies on the wing as I drove down the lane. I snapped the two Red Admirals just behind the centre and the very tatty white on the verbena is by the polytunnel.

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The marigolds are having one last hurrah, whilst the Cape Gooseberries (or physalis, ground cherries or Inca berries if you prefer) are still struggling to ripen. The ones that were left from the vicious attack last year are a little behind the ones we grew from seed.

The last wheatsheaf loaf broke. This year they all seem to have deformed as they dried out and have actually broken instead of cracking as they normally do. I think it may be because I should let the dough rest more before use.

Sad fate for Wheatsheaf Loaf

The wormery is going well, though we will probably release them after tomorrow’s session. They have produced tunnels, they have dragged bits of grass down and they have even moved a paper triangle, though not as impressively as in Darwin’s original experiment. In their defence, my worms are smaller. 😉

Wormery, with paper triangle showing

Progress, phythalis and pizza

More lambs and visitors

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It was a busy day today, with people coming to see the lambs. We had about 30 people through, which isn’t bad when you consider the lack of advertising and the fact that we aren’t really a tourist destination.

I was a bit disheartened, on counting my surviving cuttings, to find that I don’t have many survivors. In the case of the periwinkle and cape gooseberry none have made it through the winter. In the case of the curry plant I have 100% survival. I only took them to see what would happen because, apart from smelling like curry, they are pretty useless. Even the mallow and buddleia have done badly, and they grow like weeds if you leave them alone. I’m beginning to suspect that I have the opposite of green fingers. I couldn’t have done worse if I’d replaced the rooting hormone with Agent Orange.

Things looked up a bit as we visited my dad in Peterborough with the first butterfly sighting of the year – a Small Tortoiseshell.

In the evening we took the longer way home and spotted a kite in a tree on top of the hill just before Elton, with it’s forked tail prominently displayed. There were two more wheeling over the edge of the village, and just before Corby, two more. One of the second pair obliged by formating on the car for a few moments – about ten feet away and a couple of feet above.

However, good as it was, it’s now time to start planning the 2015 cuttings campaign. An idiot, a knife and a pot of rooting compound…

…what could possibly go wrong?

Not a boring day

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Now that the remnants of hurricane Gonzalo have passed over we have blue skies again. It’s almost shirt sleeve weather at the moment, though that will pass by tonight I’m told. It’s October so this is a bonus. I usually associate this time of year with mist and drizzle rather than crisp clear days.

We haven’t suffered too badly from the hurricane. Some chairs in the outdoor area were blown over, door mats moved and the doors in the fruit cage blew open.They tend to blow open in anything stronger than a stiff breeze so it’s not surprise. What we’re looking at there is badly fitting doors rather than a high wind. Considering that the fruit cage is built from a polytunnel frame that was donated after it blew down in its original site it has stood up well.

The guinea fowl had disappeared when we arrived to see how they had coped with the storm, but we found them later. They have flown back into the chicken field where there is plenty of shelter and people bring them food every day. Maybe they aren’t as stupid as they look.

It can be difficult to tell the difference between days on the farm and this will be remembered as the day we had to pick the chairs up.

Meanwhile we have polytunnels to clear out and Cape Gooseberry to cut back. We will be trying to keep the plants for a third year. All the articles talk about them only lasting 3-4 years so we have taken cuttings this year to give us a new group of plants. We are also talking about growing some from seed again, which was how we got the first lot. I’ve also been throwing squashy fruit into the hedgerows in case they seed naturally. It’s worth a try.

They have been good croppers though the size of the berries has dropped off. Not sure if this is due to the weather or the age of the plants. We have been able to eat the berries, give some away and use them to decorate frangipane tarts. If we get a decent crop next year I will try something more ambitious.

This is one ready for the oven – cutting the fruit in half makes it go further and gives a better effect after cooking. When you use whole fruit the frangipane seems to rise to cover them.

The one on the left was made with halved fruit. The one on the right used whole fruit.

Later: I should have kept my thoughts to myself. The weather turned grey and the day will probably be known as the day the pigs got out.

At least it won’t be known as a boring day.

And yes, this might be a good time to admit what some of you with sharp eyes may have noticed – I do use ready made pastry cases. Given the choice between paying 98 pence or wrestling with a sheet of pastry, shrinkage and baking beans it’s not a difficult decision for a lazy man.

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Life after the Care Farm

Tag Archives: cape gooseberry

Starts with Poetry and ends up with Wallpaper Paste

Lazy Sunday – not an Unusual Day

Sitting in the Garden

The Promise of Future Fruit

It rained, we made pom-poms and played balloon ball

Worms, Cookery and Bread

Progress, phythalis and pizza

More lambs and visitors

Not a boring day