Some "cool" pics...

Until the last couple of days we have only had one frosty morning during the Autumn. Now however, it has turned very cold. This has meant some great opportunities for "frost photography"! It's not as easy as you might imagine, since with a covering of frost crystals plants reflect light in lots of strange ways. I offer you here a selection of my photos, mostly of Purple Sprouting Broccoli and Brussels Sprout plants.

From where I sit in our Living Room I can look out onto the garden, and at this time of year I can tell roughly what the temperature is, just by looking at the brassica plants. When it is really cold they "huddle up" with their leaves pointing downwards in an inverted V shape, but when it warms up you can almost hear them go "aaaahh"; the leaves go back up again and the plant takes on a sort of T shape!

An overnight stay in Windsor

The other day, Jane won a prize in a competition, something she does quite frequently since entering competitions is one of her hobbies. This one was a night's accommodation in a hotel in Windsor, complete with breakfast, dinner in the hotel's restaurant and a bottle of wine. Sounds nice, doesn't it, especially since Windsor is only about 20 miles from us. Funnily enough it is not somewhere we go very often - I think the last time must have been about 30 years ago! To us it seems too much of a tourist destination. [For those of you who don't know this, Windsor has a huge ancient castle, one of the official residences of the British royal family.]

We knew that the hotel in which we would be staying was close to the castle, but we were pleasantly surprised to be allocated one of the hotel's so-called "Feature" rooms, just about 50 metres from the castle's main entrance. This is the view from our balcony:

The walls of the castle are very tall, but from our second-floor room we could see over them to the castle's chapel. Here it is, glowing in the morning sunshine:

It's not really clear here, but looking out in one direction there was a long view over the town towards the River Thames, with Eton on the other side.

This is the River Thames, with one of the Queen's swans swimming on it. Did you know that the Queen retains the right to ownership of all unmarked mute swans in open water, though she only exercises her ownership on certain stretches of the Thames and its surrounding tributaries? You can read about the annual "census" of swans on the River Thames (called Swan Upping) on the official website of the British monarchy - HERE

Our stay in the hotel (I won't name it, for reasons that will become clear) was a bit of a mixed experience. The room we had was in a great location, and comfortably furnished (though we thought some of the décor a bit out of keeping with the surroundings), but the hotel itself was very poorly run. I have to say that it is fairly typical of what you find in many British hotels. A bit down-at-heel, tatty in places, and on occasions chaotic. Some of the staff were pleasant, but others were curt, verging on the rude. And procedures? Well, they didn't seem to have any! What they really lacked was someone (a manager) to organise and direct the staff, who seemed very poorly-trained. Simple things like delivering food and drink in a coordinated manner seemed to be beyond them. For instance, we ordered a Cream Tea (tea with scones and jam), and we had just about finished drinking the tea before the scones arrived. Before dinner I went to the bar to get us a drink, and although the barman saw me arrive he was "too busy" (despite the complete absence of other customers) even to acknowledge my presence and I waited a good five minutes before he condescended to serve me! I asked for a particular type of wine, and instead of saying "I'm sorry sir, we don't have any of that, would you like something else from our wine-list? (offering a copy of it...), he just said "We haven't got any" and left it at that! What foreign visitors must think of our hospitality business, I dread to think.

Incidentally, the food was OK, but nothing remarkable, with the exception of some Blade of Beef which was really outstandingly good. It was very very tender, having been cooked long and slow, but served in a piece like a fillet steak, with some super-rich tasty gravy (I suppose it was officially a "jus"!). Shame about the dull (probably frozen) veg that accompanied it. I understand now why some people think Brussels Sprouts bitter... Jane's starter was a little unusual too. It was Smoked Salmon served with what was described as lemon jelly, but appeared to be blobs of lemon curd!

Anyway, there were also some good aspects to our stay. After dark the drab grey walls of the castle were transformed by an amazing projected light display - right outside our room. This is the daylight view:

And here it is after dark:

The display was on a continuous loop lasting perhaps two minutes.

In between the pictures (which moved / transformed, of course), the display was of falling snowflakes:

Sorry about the weird "sky" effect there. This photo was taken through the window glass, and what you see is actually a reflection of the ceiling! All the photos were taken on my smartphone, by the way.

Dormant

The weather this week has been significantly colder - although we have not had any frost - and the garden is shutting down for the Winter. There is much less of interest to the vegetable gardener now. The Brussels sprouts are doing OK, and the PSB is growing nicely. The second batch of Leeks is coming along ever so slowly, and the Swedes seem to have completely come to a halt. I can still harvest endives and radicchio occasionally, though I have to discard many of the outer leaves of the latter, which are brown at the edges and much nibbled by slugs. Evidently slugs dislike endives, because they get nibbled hardly at all.

Endive

Around the edge of the PSB bed I have about a dozen Landcress plants.

Landcress is pretty hardy and will keep on producing throughout the Winter, especially if you cover it with cloches. You pick the leaves individually and add a few to your salads. They are quite peppery, so you don't need a lot.

Since there is little new in the way of veg for me to show off, today I'll just give you some "miscellaneous" photos...

Reflections in the birdbath

The birdbath and its "guardian"

A rather smug-looking duck enjoying the weak Winter sunshine

Leaves of Dogwood "Midwinter Fire"

One plant hasn't got the "Let's hibernate" message. The recently re-homed Rhubarb has decided to put up an exploratory leaf.

Hopefully it will realise that it is not time to start producing new leaves, and go back to sleep!

Miniature gardens of a different sort

Last weekend I went for a walk on a nearby stretch of heathland - Velmead Common, on the outskirts of my home town, Fleet.



This is a great place to see fungi. There are hundreds and hundreds of them, of many different types. In this post I want to show you some of the smallest ones; the ones you have to look for really carefully.

Take this for example. Some tiny "mushrooms" growing on a fir-cone. The fir-cone itself was probably only 4 or 5 cm long:

I saw several similar ones:

But once you start looking, fungi and mosses are all around...

Don't you think they look like miniature gardens?

To get idea of the scale of these fungi, just compare them to the size of a pine-needle, which you see in almost all of the photos, since this area of heath is thickly studded with pine trees:

Miniature salads

My "conventional" salads are just about finished. I have some endives still, and one or two radicchio, but the lettuce and beetroot are all gone, and the tomatoes and cucumbers are but a distant memory. It's time for micro-salads!

These little plants are from a Gourmet Salad mix sown in the first week of September. We had a few uses of them during the early Autumn, and now they are having a bit of a resurgence.

The Gourmet Salad contains a lot of Mizuna. My opinion of this is "Looks nice, but tastes of little."

Mizuna

There is also a lot of Red Mustard, which is much tastier. In fact you need to eat it when it is very young, otherwise it will be unpleasantly powerful. Bigger leaves can apparently be used in a stir-fry, though I can't honestly say I have tried them that way.

Red Mustard

In the next photo the pale-coloured Mustard leaf is "past it" and would not be nice to eat, whereas the leaf on the right is just at the perfect stage.

There are a few little Pak Choi plants in the mix, with their spoon-shaped leaves:

Pak Choi

The bigger leaf at rear right is of a pickable size, but the other leaves are still too small.

There was some Rocket in the pack too, and we ate some of it as soon as it matured, but it quickly ran to seed. When this happens the leaves and stems become very coarse and stringy and not nice to eat. However, if you're patient flowers will emerge and Rocket flowers are edible. They taste just like the leaves, and may be added to a salad to give some visual appeal.

Rocket flower

Rocket flower

My photos make these salad ingredients seem big, but they are not. They all live in one single seed-tray. But on occasion their diminutive size can be a distinct advantage - for instance, the seed-tray can be brought indoors or put under cover if frost threatens. And of course it means that even if you only have a very small space available, you can still grow something worthwhile.

If you are interested in this sort of thing, why not have a look at this recent article by Niki Jabbour on Savvy Gardening, which describes various types of salad Mustards.

Let there be light!

My little back garden (aka Veg plot) has the blessing of seclusion, but unfortunately it comes at a price. Direct sunlight is in short supply - especially as the trees get bigger. I have three trees in the plot: a Bronze Maple, an Autumn-flowering Cherry, and of course the "Fish tree" (actually a Cockspur Thorn). So in order to provide my veggies with a bit more light last weekend I had a serious pruning session.

Maple at right, in front of shed. Cherry in centre, behind ladder.

The Maple is too big for me to tackle (it has to be done a by a professional tree-surgeon), but I have successfully removed some branches from both of the others. This is when I am so glad that I have a proper pruning-saw, which makes the task really easy. However, the thing that has made the biggest difference is pruning the big Bay tree. This is more of a huge bush than a real tree, but it is exceptionally vigorous and puts out a massive amount of new growth every year.

 In the photo above you are looking more-or-less East, so you can probably imagine how the Bay tree blocks the morning light unless kept under severe control.

I'm happy with how the Bay tree looks now - though it will probably need trimming again this time next year - but the problem I have now is how to dispose of the trimmings. The garden is full of branches! It always surprises me how much bigger tree branches look when you get them down to ground level. Normally I would save a few of the Bay leaves for culinary purposes, but we already have a big bag of them in the freezer (this saves having to go out in the cold / dark / wet garden when you need a leaf!).

What I plan to do is use the saw to cut the bigger branches into short lengths so that I can add them to my log-pile / insect hotel, and then snip the leafy branches into pieces small enough to be stuffed into old compost sacks for taking to the tip. Sounds easy, but I expect it will take ages. Still, tasks like this have to be seen in the wider context: a day's worth of work will help the whole plot to do better for a year, so it will definitely be worth the effort. Now all we need is some sunlight, which is in short supply right now.

Some time soon I am also going to remove the white Buddleia bush. I have decided that it doesn't deserve a place in the garden because it's flowers are nowhere near as attractive as the purple version, and more importantly the butterflies don't seem to like it.

Faded Buddleia flowers go brown and don't look nice at all, and it is not really practical to dead-head a huge bush, so the flowers have to be very good to earn their keep. I think this task will have to wait a bit though - at least until I have cleared away the first lot of prunings.

Harvest Monday - 1st December 2014

I have a couple of proper Winter veg to offer for Harvest Monday this time...

First: a basket of Parsnips (475g).

I am pleased to report that the Parsnips (even the weird-shaped one) tasted really good, cooked in the fat from a roast Duck!

Yes, some of those are potatoes!

I also pulled the last of my first batch of Leeks. They are big enough to need only one to provide a meal for the two of us.

Of course all my pics of Leeks probably look the same to you, so just to prove that this is not an old photo, here is the latest Leek posing alongside the best of that batch of Parsnips.

This week I'm also counting a much, much smaller harvest:

That tiny bunch of greenery is Leaf Celery which I have picked at a very young stage, to use as microgreens. You may have noticed it on the mango sambal which I served with yesterday's chicken curry:

It probably weighed about 1 gram, but what it lacks in weight is amply compensated for in terms of flavour!