38 days ago
An MRI scan on Thursday might cost me a few quid but will, I hope, give the Shipmans a clue as to how to treat the sort of medical condition that a gentleman does not discuss on his blog. Suffice to say it is a pain in the bum and it means that, while not in actual pain, I have sufficient discomfort to make it hard to get to sleep. On a bad night, like last night, I might grab two hours in fits and starts. On a good night I might get five hours. So what to do?
60 days ago
For some reason this blackberry and apple crumble made on Saturday turned out far larger than I had planned. The blackberries were foraged by myself and the kids from the lane by my wife’s chapel, the apples are cooking apples from the tree in what was once the jungle, picked by myself and Joshua.
79 days ago
What you do not see is a tray of blackberries flash frozen and packed away in the freezer for making winter summer puddings and another litre of ice cream (blackberry) now on its way to the same place. However…
148 days ago
Okay the bread and sugar was bought in but the raspberries, blackcurrants and strawberries were all home grown. With my weight now down three stone this year at just 14 stones, I broke my rigid diet and had a small portion with a bit of cream. It was delicious and the family demands that I make another pudding this weekend. We might be a tad short of raspberries so for pudding two I have bought some blackberries from Tesco to add to the mix
458 days ago
Normally Joshua and I pick blackberries for ice cream, flavoured vodka and crumbles (with homegrown apples) after we get back from Greece. But this year they started early. One of our favourite haunts is the village churchyard where there is an enormous bush in the middle and a few smaller ones either side of the fence between the graves and our upper field.
512 days ago
With all home grown: cherries, black currants, red currants, raspberries, blackberries (okay foraged and frozen), dessert gooseberries and strawberries this was a triumph. Okay the juice missed a bit at the bottom but the sliced bread held and allowed me to turn it out almost perfectly. With lashings of cream it was excellent. The first half was last night, we will polish it off tonight. Yum, yum!
514 days ago
The only cheat is the blackberries which Joshua and I picked last September and froze. Everything else I just picked in the garden this lunchtime: strawberries, three of four very early raspberries (red and golden), dessert gooseberries, red currants and black currants. I shall cook this evening and serve tomorrow night with lashings of cream. Photos will follow. Summer is well and truly here.
766 days ago
Last night it was rhubarb as you can see below. This morning it was a sheet of the last green tomatoes, sliced. Tonight more of the tomatoes. And so it goes on day after day, until there will be nothing left to flash freeze.
824 days ago
We have one damson tree here at the Welsh hovel up in the vegetable patch. It overhangs the road down to the hovel and you know when the fruit are ripe as they spatter onto the road and your car crunches over them as you drive in or out. There was a second tree alongside it but the gales took it and I have planted a cherry tree in its stead. For there is already a second source of damsons. My neighbours have a tree which leans over into our garden so we are allowed to pick its fruit too. Our neighbours are in their nineties and their needs are not that great.
1017 days ago
No doubt yesterday’s small fire will get blasted on the village facebook site since it was in direct view of teenage mutant curtain twitcher Abi Lancelotte. For I am hard at work removing a thick wall of bramble that runs either side of a drainage ditch seperatng oiur top field with the main field. Cutting this tangled mess back with a strimmer is is bloody hard work and I fear that it will take me two or three weeks to get it all sorted.
1136 days ago
Actually, I had not given it much thought which I feel rather ashamed about. I was aware that today was the day but the last 48 hours of childcare have been rather manic and I just want to get to the end of this day without another crisis. My baby daughter Jaya is still not well enough to go to nursery but I was meant to be relieved at one O’Clock today. However..
1919 days ago
Young Joshua loves blackberries. But it seems that the summer rains mean that this year’s crop is late. So we have scoured the numerous bushes around the Welsh Hovel and in its fields and most are still green or red. But God works in mysterious ways…
2299 days ago
The photos below may suggest that Social Services should be called regarding young Joshua. The truth is blackberries. Whenever we walk and he spots one we are off. On the way home from nursery there is an enormous bush on the side path we take. This snap is after a six mile walk on Sunday along the river Avon. hand over five or six blackberries and he does not devour one at a time but just pushes the whole lot towards his mouth and stuffs them in. Then almost at one there is a cry of "More blackberries Daddy! Daddy Blackberries Yes" which is repeated until a fresh source above the dog wee line is located.
