My new mantra...

Testing, testing...

I'm enabling mobile blogging - whoop! :)

The Thrill of the Harvest

At last our first big harvest from the garden is in.

We've been nibbling on the odd lettuce, plucking a few baby spinach leaves to bulk out a salad and snapping off a rogue ripe pea pod but now we have full containers.

The dramatic rise in temperature made our lettuces in the greenhouse bolt and so Sunday I pulled up the remaining half a dozen for immediate consumption. Unfortunately the next lot are not quite ready to be planted out, so my continuous sewing falls at the first hurdle and we'll be without lettuce for a few weeks, but by the time we've finished this lot I'm sure we'll be glad of the break.

Out in the patch the spinach also bolted so I pulled up the lot and picked off the baby leaves to add to the salad pile.

Our peas, flushed with the success of producing one pod, have now produced half a dozen and I think a tablespoon of peas could make a tasty sidedish or delightful starter one night this week. To be honest the peas were hand-me-down plants from my Aunt and once my boyfriend knew they were looking for a home I had to plant them out. He won't let anything go to waste, to him thinning veg is tantamount to murder and I've taken to quietly letting excess seedlings wither without water so that I'm not see to be actively taking part in their demise.

In the fruit cage we have had our best win of the year so far, and I think it will take a lot to top it. Our strawberries (I say ours, they've been there for many years before we came along tended by my Grandmother) have been sheltered from marauders and we can finally say that we have grown and harvested strawberries in Wimbledon week - our family's true indicator of strawberry growing greatness.

As well as these the redcurrants are out and we enjoyed a fresh soft fruit salad for dessert on Sunday night. Redcurrants, strawberries and blackcurrants - sweet and delicious paired delicately with yoghurt. It's the kind of dessert that makes you realise why you grow fruit/veg in the first place, fresh, tasty and worth every moment of the labour you put in.

The Secret Post Club - my new blogging inspiration...

So it is my first Secret Post Club ever. The draw has been done and now it is up to me to make a package for someone and hope that they like it...

I'm not going to blog about making the package or what I was thinking of putting into it, I wouldn't want anyone to see the blog and then realise that it is them that is getting the package, how dreadful would it be to spoil the surprise.

Instead I thought I would write about one thing that has been bugging me for a few days - being a blogger.

In order to be part of Secret Post Club I need to be a blogger. I've been trying to keep a semi-regular blog for over a year now and it is clear from my list of posts that I've not really managed that. But now I need to be a blogger to take part in this wonderful idea, so the fact that I even have a blog means that I can play with the lovely people, and yet I don't think of myself as a blogger and because I don't blog that much it paralyses me and I don't blog more.

How ridiculous is that? If I want to have a blog about little things that I like and my life, well the only way to do that is to... er... write the damn blog!!

So now Secret Post Club is my new blogging inspiration. Keeping me on the blogging straight and narrow. I need to think about what I'm going to fill my first package full of and then make a pact to also think about what I want to blog about and be a bit more like the old Nike ad - just do it!

This year's gardening...

This year is year two of our garden at my Grandmother's house and already I'm thinking about our home grown vegetables night and day.

After last year the one thing that I have learnt is most important is that we need to be there regularly. The more we are there the more we can do, the more we can monitor and the more that we can get from our kitchen garden.

Also on this year's target list is take our own balcony in hand. Last year we managed to do some great growing at my Grandmother's but to the detriment of growing anything on our own balcony a mere arm's length from our kitchen. This year, despite having had a baby at the start of the year, I am much more disciplined about just opening the window and climbing out to spend 5-10 mins watering and tending to the balcony garden most days. Already the balcony is flourishing with herbs, two types of mint (already harvested for a delicious mint tea), potatoes and our little apple tree, this year covered in apples.

At my Grandmother's things are progressing well, but I can't help still being overcome by the amount of stuff there is to do all the time and the fact that I'd love to be there more often doing as much as I can. The babe does try his best to join us but really it is the one activity for which he is far too small, all my efforts to try and garden whilst entertaining him have come to not much and so my boyfriend and I take it in turns to baby sit while the other gets down to business.

As per last year we are tending the soft fruit cage with raspberries, strawberries, redcurrants, blackberries and this year's additions of blueberries, gooseberries and blackcurrants. The greenhouse is home to our tomatoes, a bed of ever replenished lettuce, two cucumber plants that we have our fingers crossed will grow, two pepper plants, a weedy aubergine plant and our spinach seedlings before they are planted out in the bed. And out in the bed, potatoes (ones planted this year as well as the ones that were killed off in last year's frost making a comeback), peas given to us by my Aunt, two rows of red onions, a lone courgette plant and a pumpkin that we bought at a local fair.

But there is more to come. This week I've planted another three courgettes on the balcony and three pumpkins from a packet of seeds I didn't even know we had! I'm also planning to put in some mange tout next week. These late additions will be started on our balcony and then moved to the garden, taking residence on the sunny patio and hopefully therefore taking off in no time at all.

As we begin to see the fruits of our labour I remember already why I love doing this so much. The triumph of finally harvesting spinach after trying two years in a row and getting nothing feels like I have earned the right to eat a fresh and tasty baby leaf spinach salad. Our first lettuces are crisp and tasty. And watching the pea pods begin to swell reminds me why it is that I do this.

And this year there is an added bonus, over the summer as we start to harvest our veg we will also be weaning our little boy. Digging at weeds and thinning out veggies knowing that these could be some of the first foods that he eats really does make this even more worthwhile.

Secret Post Club

One of the many lessons that I learnt the year that I worked at a Summer Camp in America was the power of the post. Watching kids who are almost incurably homesick tear open a letter from their family and hastily devour its contents is enough to melt the hardest of hearts.

Getting a hand written letter, lovingly put together parcel or scrawled postcard can bring a smile to your face any day of the week. And when thought and a little bit of humour has gone into it, so much the better. My favourite item that arrived in the post at camp was a milk carton with a mocked up 'missing child' announcement on the side; a humourous and yet plaintive plea from a mother for her child to write and tell her he was at least still out there somewhere and hadn't had a mishap on the lake or been eaten by a passing bear.

Since then I've made every effort to put a little postal joy in people's lives and I applaud anyone who does the same. The year that I lived in Portugal I envied my friend Clare who took it in turns with a friend of hers to send random joyful parcels back and forth to and from the UK throughout the year. My random act of postal kindness that year was to send postcards to friends and family at semi-regular intervals, a steady stream of little thoughts and memories scribbled on the free postcards available in bars across the city. And post from the heart works, that was the year I managed to worm my way back into the life of an old school friend who is now my best mate and who I couldn't be without, all with a series of postcards to remind her that I was still out there somewhere thinking of her.

So when I read about the Secret Post Club I suddenly realised that this is the reason that I write a blog! The brainchild of Heather Sunderland, author of the Notes from Lapland Blog, the Secret Post Club pairs fellow bloggers together, who then send a parcel each month to another blogger. As soon as I read about it I had to be part of it, so I sent an email immediately. I'm now officially accepted and signed up to take part in July - I'm so excited!

Watch this space to find out what I send (although not until the recipient gets the parcel!) and what I get in return.