The reason for all this frantic marmalade making (below), redcurrant jellying (right) and, as soon as I can get round to it, bramble jellying and pumpkin chutney making is that we are intending to move house.

We've accepted an offer on our house and started an inexorable process of clearing out 26 years worth of junk from the loft and goodness knows how many years worth of fruit from 2 freezers.



As we haven't yet found anywhere to move to it looks likely that most of our stuff will have to be packed up and put into storage. I'm far too frugal (mean) to let my stored fruit go to waste so I'm suddenly terribly busy in the kitchen.

...and the garden. We're carting the wonderful home-made compost up the hill to the allotment, where the quality of compost is pretty iffy at best. (You put grass cuttings and sticks in and they come out again several years later looking very similar but with an added ants nest)

We live in exciting times!
Happy gardening (if only I had time!)

Animal antics

I had an argument with this fox. He wanted to tear up the plastic sheeting on the next door allotment. I told him he was a naughty fox and he was to leave it alone. He grinned and lay down to wait for me to go home.

Earlier I had been digging over where the leeks had just been lifted. I dug, then raked the soil and a robin who had been watching me couldn't contain himself any longer and flew over, landed on the rake I was still holding and picked one of those ginger wiggly centipedey things from the tines of the rake!

Somehow I feel that these creatures have got the upper hand!

Happy gardening