I woke up this morning to rain. And it felt cold with it. It wasn’t really cold, it was 21°C, it just felt like it because it was so grey and miserable. Gardening was not possible – well… a determined fanatic would get out there and do something, but today that fanatic was not me. On other occasions it would have been, but not today.
I decided to make the most of the time by doing other things. Inside things. Boring things – like doing a bit of tidying up. Sometimes there is a place in the house that gets neglected a little and subsequently ignored. One of those places caught my attention today. After the last fire in the fireplace, we continued to do what we had done all winter and put our scrap paper in there, ready to help get the next fire started. The problem was we didn’t know there wasn’t going to be another fire at the time as the warm weather snuck up on us and so it wasn’t a conscious decision: “this will be the last fire.” So for the last couple of months the fireplace has had scrap paper staring back at us through the window.
Today I thought enough was enough and begin as it was ‘cold’ and miserable I decided to sort it out and put a match to it. The thing is, I always clean out the fireplace at this time of year, emptying out the ash and even getting the vacuum cleaner in there and making it all sparkly clean. Well we can’t have Santa coming down a dirty chimney. We are one of the first countries to see him and it just wouldn’t do for him to start his rounds in a grubby suit because we were negligent!
While that was burning down I went into another room where I tripped over something I was meaning to get around to, but hadn’t. Back in the autumn I collected a load of chestnuts with delicious thoughts in my head, however the drought had not been kind to the chestnuts and all the effort and bravery required to get them out revealed shrivelled nuts that were good for nothing! Completely disheartened I put the remainder aside hoping to get to them later, but deep down knowing I wouldn’t and hoping they would just disappear somehow. But they didn’t and every time I tripped over them – it hurt.
So it was with great satisfaction and thick gloves that I heaved them all into the fireplace with the burning paper and removed a tripping hazard and a guilty reminder of what I didn’t do. Then it occurred to me – I had chestnuts roasting on an open fire! How festive is that?! Well they were roasting for a brief period before the slipped into incinerating.
On a different note, it somehow didn’t seem right worrying about irrigation while it was raining so heavily so I took a day off from thinking about it.
How I had my zucchini today.
I did nip out into the garden during a break in the rain and was relieved to see that the zucchinis on the plant were too small to bother with yet. Phew!
So I opened the fridge and grabbed a couple of the ones lurking in there and grated them up and turned them into zucchini fritters which were gobbled up by The Joeyosaurus. I think turning them into chips broke down his preconceived prejudices!
Come again soon – I shall have to get creative with the gardening – there is supposed to be even more rain tomorrow – a lot more rain.
Sarah the Gardener : o )
Lol, poor old Santa must be filthy by the time he’s finished his rounds over here – we have a fire blazing virtually every night 🙂
Hi Elaine.
Santa should really have a change of clothes as that warm fluffy suit isn’t really appropriate for our conditions – he could overheat! But at least we aren’t trying to incinerate him!
We don’t even give him a beer with his cookies like we did when we were kids as he has such a long trip and it would be irresponsible for him to drink on the job especially so early into his journey.
Cheers Sarah : o )
The red currants look gorgeous! I see I’m back, like last year, living the garden through your blog. 🙂
Hi Virginia.
I love red currants as they look like little jewels. The problem is there aren’t really enough to do anything interesting with. Maybe next year when the bushes are more established.
Cheers Sarah : o )
Our bushes aren’t coming on as fast as I’d hoped. We do have a local farm that has the currants and gooseberries. But they aren’t organic so our bushes need to get hopping!
We had a gloomy day as well but that made me happy because I got to catch up on my RSS Feed Reader that had exploded while I was away over the weekend. It’s hardly surprising that the weather is dreary with WordPress making it snow on both of our blogs…don’t they know it’s summer?!!! ;). Its a fine day here today and I will be building more garden beds and emptying a trailer of homemade compost ready to fill the beds and mix with old horse manure and oak leaf mould from down at the front of the property. Lots of barrowing and exercise so I will sleep well tonight :). I noticed a few red currants on a poor potted specimen that has been neglected for years and have decided to plant the poor things out somewhere. I know that nothing touches them so pretty much anywhere is fair game as they are so hardy (I know they are, they have been in teeny tiny pots for 3 years now!). Good to see that Joeysaurus has broken through that zucchini barrier…good thing too and not before time as he is going to have to wade his little way through acres of them soon enough! 😉
Hi Fran. The hardest part about dreadful weather days, is it sets you back in the garden and everything grows like crazy so you have twice as much to do!
My poor red currants are one of the first things the goats go for when they escape into the garden, so you are doing well not to have anything bother.
I hope I don’t make my family permanently sick of zucchini by the end of the season! That would be terrible and defeat the purpose.
I can’t wait to see the next lot of photos from your garden, It sounds like it is going to be awesome!
Cheers Sarah : o )
Make muffins and cakes. Everyone loves them. Put grated zucchini in EVERYTHING…soups…cassaroles, make bread with it, use it in omelettes…it practically dissolves and adds nutrition and moisture to everything. You could even whizz it into a smoothie and no-one would be the wiser