The Hallow'een Collection

I'm BACK!!

Do forgive me, I've been a bit preoccupied with finding new jobs, entertaining visiting family, having the cold, dreaming up business ideas so I can become rich and stop job searching, and generally being busy with an increasingly demanding and cantankerous almost 2 year old.

I will also admit to falling out of love a little with my garden and being more than a little pissed off at the lack of autumn fruits to collect and eat and share recipes with you!

But that's all over now!  So as a treat I thought I'd share some seasonal ideas with you, the best of Halloween as it were....  I love this daft festival.

I had planned many months back to share my amazing little squashes that I grow every year with you, but they totally and utterly FAILED this year, so I only have some pumpkins awaiting decoration this year.  I'm not quite sure what to do with them this year.  I know I should have some decorated for this evening all ready as many kids will probably be trick or treating tonight as it's a Saturday, but I'm using the excuse that we'll be at the annual Halloween party at Daddy Native's sister's tonight! 

Inspired by the wonderful Tiffany at  Easie Peasie who posted these exquisite pumpkin ideas a while back which I just HAD to share with you, I also found these on American site Womansday (let's face it the best ideas are going to be American)-






The site also has some rather fabulous Halloween templates for decorating and these party ideas have me thinking maybe I could hijack the party next year and throw it myself!





And what to do with all that pumpkin flesh?  Bored with Pumpkin soup?  Well how about making a Pumpkin Curry, or Pumpkin Hot Pot, a healthy Pumpkin and Sweetcorn Risotto , Pumpkin Muffins with mulled apple juice, or a devilish Pumpkin and Apple Meringue Pie from River Cottage.  If you're really feeling adventurous and want to show off to friends and family The Guardian has this collection of recipes from top chefs.

Check out this Halloween Vodka idea from the fabulous blog Scary Mommy.  Jill, you rock!  Hic!

This year we're dressing up as Zombies as its the easiest cheapest idea I could come up with. And I kinda like it that we always go as a family theme.  Last year we were boring and tired new parents so lazily went as cowboys.  The year before I was heavily pregnant and the only clothes that still fitted were my pyjamas so Daddy Native wore his Fireman's uniform (aren't I a lucky girl!) and I went as the rescued heavily pregnant damsel in distress pyjamas!  But we have yet to surpass the year we went as the guys out of the 118 TV ads.  Very funny. 

Here are some very clever ideas that would take way more planning than I'll ever manage!
This is a pretty comprehensive list of costume ideas & instructions.

Well my friends, I think that's enough inspiration for this year.  Do please share what you got up to and dressed as this year!

Happy haunting!

Medicine Woman - Ayrshire style

One of the things that make up for our horrid winters in Scotland, is the sheer enjoyment of watching the change of the seasons.  I think that's why Spring and Autumn are my favourite times of the year.  As well as looking forward to the annual Eurovision Song Contest party every Spring, and my birthday falling in Autumn!

I wish I could say that the reason I've been so quiet on here of late is due to being busy collecting berries and making huge batches of jams, cordials, crumbles & jellies.  But I'm sure you'll have noticed that there are very few berries for the picking!  The blackberries were so late to ripen here, that only a few have survived, meaning that the autumn walks I've been looking forward to are offering only a handful of berries which Baby Wild immediately swipes from my grasp!

I managed to scramble around a wild apple tree nearby and collect some fallen fruit & had been hoping to turn them into an apple and blackberry crumble but it's clearly not to be. And I'm not paying for fruit at this time of year if I can help it!

I've exhausted my resources of rose hips locally, leaving behind all those not in perfect condition for the birds.  We have plenty of rose hip syrup bottled away, and if I find another bush somewhere I'd like to make more jelly as we demolished September's batch almost instantly.  I wonder how the birds are getting by on so few fruits to feast on before winter?  There are no rowan berries either I've noticed, as I had been hoping to make rowan berry cheese for the first time too.  Check out these plentiful rowan berry recipes I found on line... tempting aren't they?

Yesterday Baby Wild & I managed a walk between showers and found a happy elder bush in Spiers Park, complete with a handful of large ripe blackberries underneath! Must be blessed by fairies I imagine!  So we treated ourselves to just enough elderberry heads to make 2 small bottles of cordial which taste fantastic.  Since we have plenty of rose hip syrup, I'll keep the elderberry cordial for soothing colds and sore throats later in the year.  Am loving making my own medicines this year!  Elderberries are packed full of vitamins, but be sure to cook them rather than eat them raw, as uncooked they can contain traces of cyanide!

Elderberry Cordial (for juices, sweet treats, drizzles and sniffles)

To make the cordial, collect and wash heads of elderberries, before removing the berries from the stalks with the help of a fork.  Don't worry about getting every bit of stalk removed, life's too short for that!  Pop in a pot & add just enough water to cover the berries, bring to the boil & simmer for 10 minutes.  Once that's done squeeze all the juice out through a doubled muslin cloth back into the pot.  Ramp up the health properties by adding finely chopped ginger & cloves to the juice, along with the juice of 1 lemon (from a bottle in my case) and 1lb of sugar for every pint of berry juice you squeezed out.  Bottle into jars or bottle straight from a hot dishwasher to make life even easier.  You can also freeze the cordial - as it doesn't freeze solid I'll be eating it straight from the freezer by the spoonful to sooth a sore throat later in the depths of winter.

We're gonna be a healthy family this winter!



Blogging in a storm

CONDITOR HORTI FELICITATIS AVCTOR
Or more simply put - "Those who plant a garden, plant happiness".

Isn't that grand! I love it.  I think I'm going to inscribe it across the arch of my shed, since I doubt I'll have anything grander to display it for a while yet!

This month I've started planning what improvements I'd like to make for next year's garden, and started choosing what plants I shall move around in the coming weeks.  The most important thing to remember I find, is the fact that I have learnt so much in the past few months, and therefore not to be saddened by plants that haven't worked for me, or sowings that were badly timed, or crops that I couldn't keep up with. 

The main thing is to keep notes and these photos, and remember that this time a year ago, never mind two years ago, I was so much more clueless!  It was my choice after all to try to learn and enjoy learning as I went along, picking up bits of advice and wisdom here and therefore, but mostly through trial and error.  I must stand by that idea, and appreciate the mistakes to learn from as well as the successes, as I'll learn better this way.

Not that I've managed to do much last weekend with the end of Hurricane Katrine that is whipping Scotland at present.  I'll be very grateful if I manage to keep a hold of my Eucalyptus, which is mostly horizontal in the wind but for the post we have tied it to as support.  Some of my hardy herbs that I planted out last week having grown from seed, such as Russian Tarragon to rejuvenate the herb garden, have been clean blown out of the soil roots and all.  Daddy Native's flimsy plastic PVC greenhouse thing was annihilated, and all his lovely tomatoes that were threatening to fruit any day now are in a pile waiting to meet the compost heap.  Never mind, once the storm is over we'll hopefully get a chance to build the proper greenhouse, and make sure it's secure enough to stick with us on top of the hill here throughout the wild winter.

And next year, it'll be even better, and the garden shall be stronger and more organised as I continue to learn a bit more each month.

On a foraging note - I had hoped to collect mushrooms this weekend as it's been so wet yet mild. But the severe weather put pay to that idea. Hopefully I'll have a hoard to show you soon though, I'm not giving up hope!

Test the pH of your soil for free

If, like me, you've wondered how to find out if your soil is acidic or alkaline without having to splash out on a test kit, read on.
All you gotta do is take some soil from your garden and put in a clean container. Then, add a half-cup of vinegar. If the soil bubbles or fizzes, it's alkaline.
If there's no reaction, try again with a fresh soil sample into a second container. Add a half-cup of water and mix. Then, add a half-cup of baking soda. If the soil bubbles or fizzes the soil is highly acidic.
If your soil is acidic, you could add wood ash or lime and give it some time, to try rebalance.  If it's alkaline, use sulfur or pine needles.  Much easier than you thought, isn't it?

I like free and I like simple.

Let the jam making season BEGIN!

I'm going to need a larger storage area for all the jams I'm making this year.  I hope everyone is practising their 'happily surprised' faves for opening their Christmas presents this year- as everyone's getting jam!

Last week I decided to make the most of the squillions of Rose Hips locally and try turning them into jam.

Baby Wild has a wee cold, so my intentions started out good with the idea to make her some Vit C packed Rose Hip Syrup.  I love this Ministry of Food release recipe during WW2 to encourage people to make their own medicine, and was going to use it as a basis for my recipe.

But then I read somewhere (maybe on the Cottage Smallholder?) that the syrup is best made after the first frost, and so until then jam is a splendid idea.   So I made jam with my pickings.  And it is DIVINE!

I topped & tailed the hips, boiled them up so soften them, mashed them up in the pot and then left them to drip slowly overnight through a double muslin lined sieve into a bowl.  Then I boiled up the resulting orange liquid with some pectin laced sugar and jarred it up.

Pretty eh!  Too pretty for my local flower show who turned their noses up at it!  I am planning on making more this week, and will tweak the recipe a bit.  Next time I'll chop up the hips first so that they don't need to be boiled so long as I bet this ruins the Vit C content.  I ended up with about 430ml hip liquid & only added 200g pectin sugar and it's definitely sweet enough at this ratio.

I had no idea jam making was so easy, and now there's jam everywhere!  I'll never loose the baby pounds at this rate, especially now that my local Tesco has finally started selling Sourdough bread. Thank god it's too expensive to be bought regularly.

PS check out these amazing sounding vegetable jam recipes from HFW via The Guardian! Oh YUM! I'm away to pull up some carrots already.....

Award winning flowers!

I won First place! Yay!

I was intrigued when the local town, which is not exactly renowned for beauty, community spirit or show gardens, was putting on it's Annual Agriculture & Flower show in the community hall. I had to go and see for myself, so I decided to enter it too. It doesn't take much to entertain me these days! It was a bit farcical when I showed up. Obviously they haven't had a new entrant for some time and were rather confused with what to do with this younger person showing up out of the blue. They were less than impressed when I tried to enter unusual jams, as they were only accepting lemon curd or raspberry jam this year. Obviously this is pretty daft and I found it very difficult not to giggle at the old fashioned-ness of it all.

The photos are a bit rubbish as I didn't get a chance to photograph the flowers until last night and they were already starting to wilt and the light was fading, but I think you can get the gist of them.  I called them 'Summer Scents (Sweet peas, apple mint, sage and eucalyptus) and 'Autumn Glow' (Nasturtiums, fennel flowers, beetroot flowers, fuscia, yellow daisies and bits & bobs).

I had never imagined myself as an award winning arranger of flowers!  In fact I've never been qualified to call myself an award winning anything except possible wine drinker & talker of shite.  As 1st prize was a mammoth 60p, I decided to leave it in repayment for the confusion I had caused, and promised to return next year better prepared!  There's another Flower Show in a nearby town next weekend, I think I'll enter some of my veg and see what happens there and hope they're a bit friendlier!

As a complete contrast to the fine art of flower arranging, I then spent Sunday bricklaying.  A woman of many talents, I am.  It may be the squinty-est wall in Scotland but I'm rather proud of it none the less.  Photos and description to come upon completion.

A productive weekend in all!

Growing colour combinations

It's taken me a whole week to get around to write this post - am struggling with work, toddlerdom, and the general 'stuff' that needs done daily!  So forgive me for being a bit lite on posts these days....

Last weekend we went to Kelburn Castle (again) for the Vikings.  We had a great time.  Check out our photos of the roaring Vikings on the other blog.  But this was the first time we wandered around the walled garden at Kelburn.  Man, I am a big sucker for a walled garden.  I WANT ONE!  And this was a big walled garden, full of various flower beds and stunning borders, Ewe trees that were over 1000years old! Wow!

It's a shame we didn't manage to see the borders earlier in the summer when they were in their full glory, but I could still admire the colours and textures, despite most of the blooms fading in the August rain and cool.

But the main thing I took away with me was the inspiration to be a little cleverer with the juxtaposition of colours in my flower garden.  I love both these combinations above and below, and hope to find some space in next year's garden to try to replicate such striking colours.

Imagine if this was the view over garden?  Swooning? I am...

PS. Can you tell I've finally got my new camera?!