Allotment Dreaming

Greetings! Today we have visited our local allotment association and after waiting for a plot for five months, I have signed a tenant's agreement for a five rod (roughly 5m x 25m) plot . Until the end of the year the plot belongs to the current tenants who need to remove all of their property from there. At the moment there are blueberry and blackberry bushes, some lavender plants, sage and rosemary and quite a cure green shed with tiny patio made of stepping stones. I would be quite happy if all of these items stayed where they are but to be honest, I am so excited that even if the plot was covered in waist high weeds, I would still be jumping with joy.

Even though it was a cold November day and the water in the barrels was covered with a layer of ice, there were still some plants with flowers on and vegetables growing. This is one thing that I like about mild English winters.  When we got home and had some lunch I went through my big box of seeds and wrote a plan of what to sow when and when to harvest it.

At the moment is all green and brown and grey and large portion of the beds is covered with black plastic, but in my head I can see how amazing this piece of land can be, with all of the greenery, flowers, veg and fruit bushes, bees buzzing around and birds chirping and in the middle of all am I sipping a cup of tea and observing it all, being a part of it. I look forward to feeding us better and feeding Rocket better and spending my Saturdays outdoors with other creatures rather than watching telly at home. And the best of all - the management is ok with me building a temporary tortoise run for Rocket, so even when we don't have a garden where we live, she can be getting her UV light whilst I am growing us both some food. It's a win-win.

Autumn Visit to Lulworth Cove in Dorset

As the autumn is in full swing, my mammalian brain tells me that I need to slow down, wrap up and just be still and restful for a moment. Unfortunately, my job description tells me otherwise and so as the autumn progressed and the days started getting shorter, colder and darker I became more sad, uninspired and exhausted. Riding this wave of seasonal affective disorder or whatever it is wasn't taking me anywhere nice. 

So it was a great relief when half term holiday came and we could finally get away for a few days on our long planned minibreak in Lulworth Cove, Dorset. We stayed in a nautically decorated room in a small local inn, with the view of the sea, even though lingering leftovers of storm Brian might have spoiled it a bit with a cover of thick dark clouds and persistent wind.

Lulworth Cove 

We walked on the beach and the hills in the wind and the cold, looked for fossils in the cliffs and beach combed. We picked up many cuttlefish bones, mermaids' purses and strange flotsam and jetsam and saw Protuguese man o' war jellyfish for the first time. We ate fried English breakfasts and snacked on cream teas and spent many hours in our toasty little room reading books with cups of tea at hand whilst it rained outside. I started knitting a new blanket (more about it later in a separate post), breathed the salty air that smelled of seaweed and felt very relaxed and happy and most of all thankful that we finally had some special time together after all the long hours of work we have both been putting in in the last few months.

Durdle Door limestone arch 

Cuttlefish bones of all sizes were everywhere.

A notice warning visitors about the jellyfish.

Soon enough we found one on the beach.
The colours were striking.

Man O' War Beach

Collecting Seeds of Pot Marigold (Calendula officinalis)

Pot marigolds (Calendula officinalis) were my favourite flowers this year. I do not remember where the seeds came from but I picked them myself and had them stored for a few years, yet they germinated perfectly. I primarily grew them for their leaves as food for Rocket (yes, tortoises can eat pot marigold, but not other marigolds, which might have the same English name but actually are not related to each other - English can be very confusing. It is always better to go by the scientific Latin name). They did not do very well until I moved them into direct sunlight. It is almost middle of October and they are still flowering.

When I was little and wasn't such a huge fan of creepy crawlies as I am now, the marigold seeds terrified me because they looked like a cluster of caterpillars. I'm sure you'll see what I mean when you look at the picture below.

I let the seeds dry on the plant and then cut the whole head off and let them dry thoroughly on a tray at home. Then I store them in a labelled paper envelope where they will rest until spring. With so many seeds already dried and many more forming, I will probably have more than enough for a nice flower border and more than enough tortoise food.

Sempervivums in October

It is a bit hard to believe that October is already here. I guess I shouldn't really be surprised. Autumn is really letting us know that it's here, whether it is in the leaves changing colour, morning chill that makes me feel like I need to wear more layers or acorns that bombard me every single day as I wait for the bus home. Grey overcast days take priority over the warm and sunny ones and if the latter happen occasionally, they definitely get many mentions in the casual short over-the-cup-of-tea conversations in the staffroom.

The garden is becoming less busy. By now most of my plants have died down or been harvested. The only vegetables still going are runner beans and sweet potatoes. From ornamental plants nothing much survived apart from a few pansies which I grow as tortoise food and those will go as soon as the weather turns properly cold. However, one plant that I can always rely on is Sempervivum. 

I am not sure which variety I have, there are many, but these are offsets of the plants that my mother grows at our cottage. I brought five of them over last spring. Somehow that makes them have a sentimental value to me as well as aesthetic. They are hardy perennials with succulent leaves able to withstand direct sunlight and drought, but do not mind the abundant rainfall that we get either.They coped well throughout the last English winter and now they are even producing offsets themselves! One day I might separate them from the mother plant, but at the moment I m enjoying the slightly crowded look. And once I started taking pictures of them, I could not get enough.

Sempervivum offsets grow from the base of the original plant. When they touch the soil, they start developing
roots of their own.

Savoury Saturday Scones (With Recipe)

I love Saturdays. They are the only day of the week that I don't set an alarm (I do tutoring on Sunday mornings, so I have to). I wake up whenever I feel like it (usually at the time when my bus to work would be leaving) and have a nice slow morning. Sometimes I knit and watch telly, sometimes I make a cup of coffee and catch up on emails on blog posts, but whatever it is that I choose to do, it is always non-forced andI do it because I want to, not because I have to.

Today my morning included, apart from doing the dishes and two loads of washing, making savoury strudels and cheese scones for today's  Macmillan Cancer Support Tea Party at my sister-in-law's - a part of "The world's biggest coffee morning" taking place later in the week. Its main purpose is to eat cake, drink coffee and collect money for a charity that heps support people with cancer and their families.

I find making scones incredibly easy. When I first moved to the UK and started working as a teaching assistant (because no school wanted to employ me as a teacher), Food Technology (now called Food and Nutrition) was one of my favourite subjects. Mostly because I got to put on an apron and get on with the cooking hands-on just like the students that I was supporting. I do not remember the teacher's name but I remember how encouraging and calm she was even though the class asn't exactlyideally behaved. It is her recipe that I wrote down have used ever since. Here it is.

INGREDIENTS:

• 150 g of self-raising four
• 50 g of butter (if you are making savoury scones, you can use salted butter)
• 50g of sugar or any sweet or savoury ingredient you want to add
• a couple of spoonfuls of milk

METHOD:

1. Mix the flour and butter together by hand until crumbly (if you are making sweet version, add sugar now, if savoury, add the savoury ingredients)
2. Add milk bit by bit and gently mix until the mixture joins together
3. Flatten by hand and cut out shapes
4. Bake on approx. 180°C until golden brown

I made mine with the most ordinary hard cheese I could find in the supermarket and grated it on a coarse grater, so the chunks of cheese are quite large and visible in the scones. They are delicious with a bit of butter and fresh chives. Enjoy!

Back to School

I must admit, I do not want to go back. Not ever, just not yet.

If I recall the last year's me, I see a woman who'd rather get shredded than go back to work in September. Crying, I was clutching and clawing my husband's shoulder the night before the first INSET day, begging him not to make me go back. I remembered only too well the nights spent worrying, the long parents' evenings and the crippling feeling that it will never get better, ever, and I spent all these years studying for this and yet I cannot do it. I looked for other jobs, I got more and more depressed realising that they are far away or I am not qualified enough, more and more broken every single day. I hated it.

Until one day at the end of 2016 that I did suddenly realised that I no longer stay up until eleven just to finish the next day's presentations or get up early to mark the remaining few books that I just couldn't do the night before. Nor do I carry so many books home or spend all my weekend indoors closed in a room with textbooks and computer. Some of it was because I got a teeny bit relaxed and stopped worrying and micromanaging so much, but also because somehow the job has become less daunting and I had more free time but rather than resting or spending it doing things I loved, I spent it worrying. So I decided that I will stop - and that was somehow enough to make me do it. That simple shift in mindset.

So now I am actively making myself think about and appreciate what I have been through, what I will go through and what I definitely have coming, because - big revelation - teaching isn't easy. I won't go as far as saying it is one of the hardest jobs in the world because I really don't think it's true (surely mining sulphur at a semi active volcano somewhere in Indonesia is more demanding), but it is hard enough for us pampered first world types.

It means a lot of sitting down getting a nice carpal tunnel syndrome from using the red pen a lot, rushing around, caling the IT guy when the printer doesn't work and you're convinced that it hates you, saying 3-2-1 a lot and sometimes being cried to, being shouted at and having to carry out polite "arguments" with both parents and their offspring but it also involves the things I love most - helping young people learn how to be organised and focused, how the world works and introducing them to the wonders of Science. That's what I do, that's what we all do. So next time a school year comes close and threatens to smash me in the face, I say:"Just bring it on and get it over with. I am ready."

Runner Beans "Borlotto Lingua di Fuoco" or "Firetongue"

Runner bens have been the most successful crop of the year. There wasn't enough time to run back and forth with watering cans, but they did well anyway, climbing up their support all the way into the trees. In fact, there are still some lonely pods hanging too high up to reach, waiting and drying up patiently to become seeds for next year.

I cannot remember how I acquired these seeds, but they were most likely an impulse buy.

They are called "Borlotto Lingua di Fuoco" or "Firetongue" because of their bright red pods.They start green as any other beans pods, but as they mature, red splotches appear, eventually fusing together, turning the pod dark red.

I turned the first little harvest of pods into a stir-fry and the latter ones were blanched and frozen for later. I loved checking on them, watching them grow, checking on the size of seeds in the pods and eventually picking and cooking them.

Succulent Presents

This September it has been  year since I started in my new job. It has been incredibly stressful and
there were times when I really had enough and I was thankful to have so many incredible colleagues by my side. Some of those people, however, decided to move on and leave and I felt that giving them a little something to remember me by was only appropriate.

I love giving presents, when I have enough time to make them or buy them - or in this case grow them! Some of these little Haworthia plants are especially significant to me, because I grew them from the offsets of a plant that was given to me by my best friend for my 16th birthday good 12 years ago.

I re-potted each one separately into simple plastic bowls from Sainsbury's Mono series. I also gave each person a card with the instructions about how to grow the plant. Everybody was really pleased with the present and I hope that the plants will live for a long time and create many more offsets. In the meantime, I am growing more - just in case. :)

Our Brief Time with Peter Fantastic and Sourdough Baking

My husband likes sending me links to interesting ideas that we could try one day. One of the more recent ones has been the link to a sourdough started and the ways to make bread with it.  Finding out about it some more, I have found that there is a little bit of craze around it and that many of my friends back in Prague have actually got experience with sourdough baking. So I joined the Facebook group, researched the topic on the Internet, read through the Say! Little Hen blog and eventually we decided to give it a go.

Sourdough is fun but it needs some attention. This New York Times article describes sourdough as “America’s rising pet” and it is true. You feed it, you take care of it, if you don’t give it the right conditions and don’t feed it, it will die. It will smell and look weird and you will have to get rid of it. It also mentions that people name their sourdough cultures, which was a little challenge in itself!

… and so with a little strange twist of fate and possibly extremely weird train of thought and mental associations we ended up living with Peter Fantastic. He is a lot like one of those relatives that you barely know about but from time to time you have to doing something nice for them.

We set him up in an IKEA jar, combination of water and plain flour, adding more water and flour every twelve hours.

Here he is, twenty-eight minutes in

And he grew. After about a day and a half there were first bubbles. One couldn’t be sure whether they were just bubbles of air that got caught in the starter during mixing that are now escaping or actual carbon dioxide created by the yeast, but we kept our fingers crossed for him.

Soon it was clear that we were successful. He was properly bubbling!

The first thing I baked were Kaiser buns, because my husband loves them and we have them every single time we go to Prague. So I tried to re-create them, but the proofing did not work that much and we ended up with some quite dense stuff. However, they were still pretty good

The first actual bread was very hard on top but nice and airy inside, even though a bit too dry.

This one was much better, probably the biggest success of all.

The above is my most rustic and probably crunchiest loaf. It was delicious with butter and honey and a cup of tea.

This was a challenge. Bread with pieces of lardons are quite popular in Slovakia and Czech republic, so I tried to make my own, as we happened to bring some lardons home from Surrey County Show. The only thing I did wrong was add the chopped up lardons early on and then started kneading it properly and - ouch - they are sharp!! ;D

***

We do not normally eat that much bread but with Peter, we kind of had to. It was a proper adventure, getting up early  on a Saturday morning to make bread - but only with the two of us we were overflowing with bread a bit.

I write in past tense because, well, as the weather got warmer, Peter started being less and less active (which is strange) and eventually the way he smelled has changed, there were no bubbles and small pink specks started appearing in the starter. That was the time when we gave up and gave him a good old down-the-toilet funeral.

However, the whole experience has opened the door to the amazing craft of breadmaking which I am sure I will return to one day. One day when we have a house in the country, family to feed the bread to and a garden full of bees buzzing outside the window (although just writing about it makes me want to go and set the whole thing up right now!)

Wild Blackberries

There is one part of the garden that is becoming very busy these days and that is the blackberry hedge. Not really a part of the garden, as the hedge technically grows behind the fence and tends to fall in and poke through it, sticking the heavy fruits in to be picked.
Best things in life are free :) Yum.

A couple of months ago

Now

Nasturtium Joy

English garden does not offer much joy in autumn, it is dark, wet and cold. However, one thing that makes me really happy on a daily basis are my nasturtium plants. Even now, in November, they are flowering and producing seeds. I am collecting them as they fall off the plant and letting them dry to make sure that we can grow some nasturtiums next year as well. It is the first time I have grown Nasturtium, but oh, what joy!

Meeting Tortoises

African spurred tortoises walking around in their little pen are definitely not a typical sight in England in middle of October, but in a reptile centre near National trust property Clandon Park it can very well be.

I could spend ages just looking at them. In fact lately I have been thinking about changing my career slightly and just be a tortoise shepherd somewhere in Galapagos, but this desire is slightly hindered by the fact that I speak absolutely no Spanish. Still, tortoises are one of the most amazing creatures on this Earth.

Beginnings of Autumn

The last couple of weeks have been so full of work that I have barely had the time to appreciate this wonderful season of autumn that has come upon us. Morning chills and mists, scarves and warm coats, waking up in the dark and reading on the bus to work in an early morning twilight.

Some days are grim, yes, and I am busy, yes, but there is always a little bit of time to appreciate the little things in life that make me comfy and happy. The nice woolly jumper that I wear in the evenings to keep me warm, the soft lighting in our bathroom, going out to have late breakfast on Saturday mornings and sipping a flavoured latte whilst discussing the events of the previous and following week or just sitting in front of the computer screen reading other people’s blog posts whilst stuffing my face with boršč soup and nice dense bread.

We had some friends visiting earlier this month and even though it was incredibly hard to fit everything into our busy schedules, I am incredibly happy for those couple of days that showed me that friendships can still thrive even when you're hundreds of miles away from people.