From the batch ripened indoors after the plants had been pulled up, I’ve been having the orange plum tomatoes at lunchtime but this Black Russian is the very last of this year’s crop to ripen. Nothing now until I sow the saved seeds, which I do on Valentine’s Day in Febrary.
Despite having managed reasonably well to water it and rotate the pot during the scorching summer drought, the south-facing side of my Christmas Tree is beyond recovery (the north side is ok-ish). Time to say goodbye. It did Christmas 2022, 2023, 2024 so I’m not complaining: three years is about as long as I ever get for a potted living tree.
A new one of the same species (“Picea Glauca Conica”) has been ordered, for delivery in the last week of November.
It’s been a rotten year for yields of some staple food items, and food price inflation, while a bit lower than the very scary peak, is still far too high. It’s grossly misleading for media and government to claim that high food price increases are offset by lower air fare and fuel price inflation when calculating the overall rate – those most affected by inflation are least likely to afford cars or planes.
As autumn slides gracelessly into the past, the winter flowers have started to appear. Yesterday was the winter-flowering clematis (c. cirrhosa v. balearica “Freckles”), today is the winter jasmine. A cheerful note of colour, planted just outside the french window so I see it every time I go to sit in my recliner.
Despite most of the leaves on my fern-leaf clematis having gone brown and crunchy during the summer drought, it’s recovered well. Lots of buds, and this morning I noticed on my way to put veg peelings in the compost bin that the first flowers have opened. It will now go on flowering until about March.
The clocks have gone back, and it’s almost winter. I’ve pretty much reached my targets on keeping healthy, but my weight continues to creep upwards, sadly.
BST target was 5,000 steps, achieved 5,208, which is the most in the last five years. Daily fruit-and-veg averaged 6.1, against a target of 6. Daily calories of 1,822 against a target of 1,800, but that’s closer than 2024, 2023, or 2022. I was on a very restricted intake for 2021, aiming for 1,500 and achieving 1,590, so it’s actually the closest I’ve even come to meeting the goal.
However, weight this morning was 69.6, and it’s largely been 68 point something for the past few months. That’s not good – I do aim to be in the general area of 66 point something. The next couple of months will have to see a bit more effort, before the inevitable Christmas splurge.
Indoors, the Schlumbergera cactus is coming into flower – I think of it as the “neither Christmas nor Easter” cactus, as it normally flowers mainly in November and again late February into March. The pink colour scheme continues outdoors, with the last flowers on the scented pelargonium, and a late self-sown cosmos growing from a crack in the concrete path.
Facebook has remined me that thirteen years ago today, Neil Laurenson came round to ask me to stand as a paper candidate for the Green Party in the the local elections due the following May. I said yes … setting my feet on the “ladder of engagement”, which has led me to some unexpected places. One of them is the job I’m currently prevaricating about getting round to: replacing the broken mains inlet socket on our Risograph printer. Like me, it’s getting elderly … together, we’ve done about one and half million copies over the nine years since Marjory Bisset persuaded me to adopt it.
The nights are drawing in, the clocks change at the end of this week, and Halloween approaches. That all means it’s time to make parkin! Best if left in the tin to mature for a few days, but a sample has been removed for quailty control purposes …
Due, I think, to my inability to water them twice daily during the drought, it hasn’t been a bumper year for tomatoes. More of a steady trickle, rather than having any gluts, in fact. But yesterday saw the last picking of a ripe tomato for lunch, and today has been rescuing the few remaining fruit, cutting down the plants, and removing and sorting the plastic cover for the tomato house for the winter. The “garden waste” bin is now fairly full of that, and runner bean plants also pulled up, ready for collection early on Thursday.
