Growing Like a Weed

Thank you very much for all the help in identifying the Wych Elm.   Jabblog-many thanks!  The Wych Elm will now be protected from nibbling deer and will, I hope, spread through the hedgerow.

This weekend has been warm and sunny which is very unusual for a Bank Holiday weekend.  I have begun packing away some of my winter woollies, so we could have snow next week!

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My granddaughter had a friend stay over for the holiday weekend.  

They get on really well and don't need to be entertained.    However, as the end of the visit loomed they began to get a bit downhearted.  Granny to the rescue.  I got out the "dressing-up box".    Two newly teenage girls playing dress-up?  Sounds a bit childish?  

Aha!  But I had two special dresses for them to try on.   Two wedding dresses.  

One is my daughter's wedding dress, the other an unused medieval-style wedding dress from a charity shop -  a £5 bargain from about a decade ago.  At the time I was looking for fabrics for dyeing and sewing and all that silk for £5 was too much of a bargain to resist.   My daughter doesn't believe in hanging on to clutter, I am a bit more sentimental, I wasn't going to let her wedding dress go to a charity shop.  Both dresses have been in my dressing room in their zipped bags.

This is my granddaughter, wearing her mother's wedding dress.  She was thrilled that it fitted her so well, so did the wedding shoes.  

They had a great time wearing the dresses and pretending to get married.  Both girls are very sporty, very slender and tall.  They wore the dresses well.  

I think my daughter was delighted to see her dress being modelled so beautifully.  It made her realise that she made a great choice all those years ago!

This is my little flower fairy just a few years ago.  How quickly they grow.

A New Plant in Owl Wood, but What is it?

 Wandering around Owl Wood a couple of days ago, my attention was caught by something I haven't seen in there before.  Just one single vine of this:

It was sprouting out of the hedging, a new addition.  No doubt it has been there for a few years and has only just reached a height where it has become noticeable.  

Can anyone identify it?  I should get my Observer's Book of Hedges, or an Idiot's Guide to Vines, out and have a read.  On this occasion I have too many other things to do.   

I have high hopes that someone will come back with the answer.

Owl Wood Today

 The weather has been warm and sunny, even the breeze has been warm.  Not too hot, just perfect for us, as we start to come out of winter hibernation.  We need time to adapt, and this is a beautiful way to do it...not sure it will last, but that is England for you.  East coast England.  We often get a cold breeze off the sea.

Owl Wood never looks prettier than on a May day when the sun is shining.  

You can just about see the owl box in the middle of the picture.  No owls again this year.😞  

Forget-me-Nots are romping away in the north-east corner, they arrived by themselves a few years ago.

The wild garlic is in full bloom, spreading quite happily.  This is in the middle of the wood, but there are two other patches over on the south side.

Queen Anne's Lace is growing taller, it will be in bloom any day now, then it becomes a sight to behold.  It grows to over five foot tall in some areas and hides a multitude of secrets.  The wild pheasants who have taken refuge in here take full advantage.  We know they are in there, we see them emerge a couple of times a day to head on down to the bird feeders in the garden.

The day started badly for me.  I haven't been sleeping well (back pain) despite trying all my usual methods to reduce the pain.  I can cope with a couple of nights like that, but today I got up feeling nauseous and with a migraine.   Once the grandchildren were safely fed and seen onto the school bus, I had a nap.

I still have a headache, but more like a 'normal' headache than a migraine now.  I can live with that, especially as the nausea has now gone.

The little walk around Owl Wood helped, along with the warmth and the atmosphere in there.  It really is a magical little place.

Smoke a Cigarette...

 ...is the first instruction for one of the 'recipes' in this 1981 recipe book.   

I learned about the dangers of smoking when I was 8 years old, back in the very early 1960's and living in Hong Kong.  No, I was not smoking then, it was a topic covered at Junior School.   No doubt we were given a lot of information, but my takeaway knowledge was that you could end up having your leg amputated.

My favourite aunt and uncle, who lived in Lincolnshire, were both fairly heavy smokers.

I immediately wrote them a very strong letter urging them to stop, telling them about how they could lose a leg, at the very least!  I have a whole cache of the letters I sent to them, unfortunately that one isn't among them.  

Moving on, this particular book, although only 43 years old, is a great example of how, for me, an ordinary book can be transformed into something very special.   A previous owner - someone by the name of 'Lettice', judging by the faint name written on the flyleaf, has filled the baking section of the book with scribbles and notes.

Whenever I come across a book like this I know that I have found a treasure.  I get a frisson of excitement.  A very ordinary book transformed and personalised, recipes tried and tested, recipes adjusted, timings altered.

A Cut and Come Again Cake got a definite thumbs down, although it looks as though it had been tried out a couple of times and adjustments noted.  NOT to be repeated!! was the verdict.

Mary's Gooey Chocolate Cake was made for D&T and was awarded a v,good.  Can be repeated.

Very good (Tony liked it!!) was the verdict on Sultana Cake, along with a note to try it with self raising wholewheat flour.

There are plenty of other notes, but the one which made me smile the most was:

Not to be repeated:  NASTY!

The whole recipe has a line drawn through to make sure it wouldn't be tried again.  I notice that the baking time had +10 mins +10 mins + 10 mins added on to it.  

Poor OLD NANNY'S ORKNEY BROWNIE, definitely not a hit with Lettice, then.

Right, back to this cigarette recipe...to remove rings on polished wood, the book advised:

Smoke a cigarette.

Use the ash with vinegar.

Rub gently in circle from outside to centre.

My advice?  Don't try this at home-unless you want your leg to drop off...or have we moved on from there?

The Polytunnel

 By dint of doing it piecemeal, the polytunnel has finally had a good clean inside and out.  It has a beautiful slivery glow about it now.  The green algae and gunk which built up over winter has finally gone.  

The outside vegetable beds have been dug over and the strawberry beds have been planted up.  Young plants are settled inside the tunnel, just waiting their turn to either be planted outside, or coddled and nurtured inside.

This is where old Sparky likes to come and drowse away part of her day, snug and warm, waiting for the unwary birds or mice to come in, looking for whatever they can scavenge.  

She is too old to do much more than watch and remember her gory glory days.  The delicious warmth of the polytunnel is the perfect place for her to warm her old bones in peace.

Having said that, she is back indoors now and is sitting at my feet, giving me a hard stare.  She who must be obeyed!  

Time to go and feed the old girl.

Silverlocks and Golden Syrup

 Thank you for all the comments about how you like your porridge.  I couldn't resist doing a couple of taste tests, but more about that later.

An early 1918 cookery magazine, Isobel's Home Cookery, wrote a feature on how to make up for the shortage of milk and other dairy products.   No problem!  The magazine had lots of helpful suggestions to make porridge more nourishing when milk was not available.

Here is just one recipe, presented in their words. 

Creamed Porridge

A nice name goes a long way, you know!

There's not a drop of cream in it, but it tastes just as smooth and rich as if there was any amount.

I take the best of the dripping from the weekly joint "render" it carefully, so that it may not have the very least flavour of the meat, and beat a little of it into the porridge just before serving.  I allow one good teaspoonful of dripping for each child.

Don't boil the porridge after the dripping is in.

Don't add salt - it is not necessary.

If you use margarine, take twice the quantity-it contains much less actual fat than dripping.

Serve the porridge very hot, or the fat will cake on top and look horrid.

Serve hot syrup with it.  Sugar is not very nice without milk-it is too gritty.

The children simply love creamed porridge, and I think, myself, that it is far and away nicer than the plain kind.

For the sake of the children, I hope syrup was cheap and plentiful.

Unfortunately, further reading shows me that syrup was often not available.    Not to worry, those resourceful cooks at Isobel's had a recipe for a substitute made with dates, glucose and water, if dates and glucose were available, of course.

As for the shortage of milk for a bedtime drink, they recommended a soup made with rice water.  Fry an onion in a little good dripping.  To each onion add a quart of rice water and flavour well with salt-no pepper if the children are to have it.

According to the article, children much prefer it it to hot milk...  

Last word on porridge.  

If only I had golden hair and were many decades younger, I could have presented this little experiment in the manner of Goldilocks and the three bears because that is what it felt like as I sampled three variations of serving porridge.

I tried it with brown sugar and evap, melted butter into another one,  and drizzled golden syrup into the third.  

I discovered that my years of eating porridge without sweetness (other than that added by the evap) made the brown sugar and golden syrup versions far too sweet for my taste.

The butter was interesting.  It definitely made the plain porridge a nicer consistency.  

Old Silverlocks here, will be sticking to plain porridge with evap, but I did enjoy the little experiments, so thank you.