shattered

After an emotionally-exhausting Saturday (a family gathering to commit my mother’s ashes to the River Evenlode) and physically demanding Sunday doing the last bits around her house before putting it on sale, followed by the dreaded train-with-backbreaking-seats trip home, I was in no fit state to do anything.

So, the first time I’ve ever had a Macca delivered ! Not even a posh burger from the Burger shop, just whatever looked quick, though I did at least have home-grown lettuce on the side. A prolonged soak in a hot bath and an early night seem called for.

Yum !

A mealtime experiment tonight.

A “woodland mushroom (Waitrose mix of shiitake, maitake and oyster mushrooms) pearl barley and rice “risotto”. A sprinkling of parsley to garnish, and essential “greenery” was home-grown lettuce – even if the bulk of it was the red oak-leaf lettuce! It’s a meal that I’ll definitely add to my veggie repertoire.

heritage and heirloom edibles

I’m not entirely averse to modern varieties in the garden (I grow the F1 courgette “Solleil”, and am trying the F1 carrot “Purple Sun”) but most of what I grow has been tried and tested for many decades. Whether it’s for taste, for suitability to my soil and conditions, or for particular features or sentimental associations, heritage varieties seem to suit me in most cases. This year’s list:

VEGETABLES:

  • Tom Thumb peas. Dating from the1850s, and occasionally sold as”Half Pint”, it only grows to about 30cm high, requiring no pea-sticks or netting. It’s quick-growing, as well, and good for successional sowing.
  • Nantes carrots. Again, dating from the1850s, it seems to be the least unsuccessful carrot here, though I’ve tried many varieties over the last 10 years and absolutely none of them have been at all reliable.
  • Black Russian tomatoes. I can’t find out when they were introduced, but all the catalogues describe them as “heritage”or “heirloom”.  This is about the 6th year of using seed saved from the previous crop.
  • Fordhook Giant chard.  Dating back to the 1750s, this apparently is also known as “Burpees Large Ribbed”. I like this for the large leafstalks, which can be cooked separately from the actual leaves. Most other chard, especially the popular”rainbow” mixes are much smaller, with spindly stalks.
  • Marvel of the Four Seasons lettuce. Dating to “before 1885”, I like this for its colours, for being very slow to bolt, and for its relative cold-hardiness.
  • The Sutton broad bean. Introduced in 1925, so a bare century old. sometimes described as 9-12 inches tall, though mine are normally 12-15 inches. It doesn’t need support, is wind-resistant, and the beans have a good flavour.

FRUIT

  • Black Pear of Worcester. Stretching back into antiquity, it’s a Warden”-type pear, and some sources suggest that’s associated with the visit of Queen Elizabeth 1st to Worcester, making it 16-th century at least. A very large keeping pear, it provides stored fruit in the late winter.
  • Worcester Pearmain apple. Introduced in 1874, and still a very popular apple for home growers, though it doesn’t travel well so is rarely grown commercially.
  • Annie Elizabeth apple. Dating from 1857, I was introduced to this around 1961 when my grandfather moved into a house that had an elderly tree of it, with a still legible label. My Aunt was Ann, known as Annie, and my mother was Elisabeth, so it stuck in my mind. It’s mainly a smallish cooking apple, but fairly sweet.
  • Brown Turkey fig. It looks as though “brown turkey” was a generic term before becoming fixed to a specific variety in early Victorian times, so date of introduction is rather murky. Definitely heritage though – and still known as the most reliable fig for the UK climate.
  • Cambridge Favourite strawberry. Introduced in 1938, it’s still a well-flavoured heavy-cropping variety.  I also grow Honeoya as an early variety – a relative newcomer that’s only been around for about thirty years – though, like all commercially-grown varieties, it seems to have sacrificed some taste for robustness in transport.

out with the old …

Winter lettuce has come on apace, currently outgrowing the depredations of the slugs. The last of the kale and leeks form tonight’s veggies – the bed has been forked over (it pretty much was from getting the leeks out!) and broad beans planted in half of it.  Given how attractive freshly-dug areas are to the badger, the broad beans have been caged!


Shrove Tuesday

I’m pretty much of a traditionalist when it comes to pancakes. Lemon, no problem of course. However, I rarely keep caster sugar … but a couple of minutes with the pestle and mortar reduced white granulated to something very acceptable.

yum!

I’d got slightly behind my target of having two veggie days a week (though I’ve exceeded the target of one fish day a week), so thought I’d tempt myself with something nice. The recipe misleadingly and rather grandiosely calls it “mushroom wellington”, but made with a mix of lion’s mane, oyster, and shiitake mushrooms, with a sprinkling of finely-chopped leeks, it was certainly towards the top end of what I’d call a “mushroom and leek parcel”.

The pastry is bought (I don’t do puff myself), but expensively all-butter as I try to avoid things with palm oil in them.

Black Pear of Worcester

Getting implements out of the shed for pruning the apple and pear trees, and sorting out the gale-stricken rose, I noticed the Black Pears of Worcester. They’re just about ready for eating – the recent cold has probably done the job of helping them turn starches into sugars. Much bigger than normal pears, and single one is just a bit more than I’d normally have for pudding, but I was feeling self-indulgent!

catch-up

I went over to Oak Cottage on 21st December for a pre-Christmas visit, the first time I’ve managed to go there for about nine years. I really couldn’t face travelling via London, partly because the Worcester-Paddington Hitachi trains are desperately uncomfortable on my back, and partly because I didn’t feel capable of doing the Underground in the pre-Christmas weekend rush. Apparently, it’s not uncommon for such autistic things to become more intense, or more allowed, in the period following diagnosis. Anyway, I went via Birmingham and Cambridge, being collected by Sim from Ispwich station.

It was a very pleasant stay. I’d been a bit worried that Charlie – the most recent puppy, who is very nervous and defensive – would be a problem, but he seemed to remember me from Green Mount and settled down OK after the first ten minutes or so. Anne was, as I’d gathered, beginning to lose the plot a little, but we had several good long chats of reminiscences and it all went fine. A couple of good long chats to Sim – about Green Mount and suchlike. Phoebe drove me back to Ipswich on Mon 23rd, and we pent nearly all the journey talking about autism stuff, in a very useful, enlightening, and productive way.

The journey back, by the same route, was fairly vile, and not improved by a rail replacement double-decker bus from Coleshill to New Street. I got home about 9pm.

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were largely quiet recovery days. A brace of partridge for Christmas dinner, as I’d been unable to get a pheasant – probably the first time I’ve had partridge for over 50 years. Soup from the carcasses subsequently, of course, and I’ve frozen some as well.

Despite my best intentions, I did end up making a start on printing Green Party newsletters on Boxing Day. On 28th I sent a list of “state of play” to Alex Mace, for him to chase up the outstanding artwork, all of which (except Warndon) duly arrived by New Year’s Eve. I did manage to finish all outstanding newsletters by lunchtime, so some 26,000 in the last fortnight, each one through the duplicator twice and the folding machine once.

I noticed that the winter-flowering clematis has started to open – nearly the latest I’ve ever known it (last year was 4th November – it’s an extremely variable plant!). Weather this morning was vile, so I didn’t manage to get out to cut my traditional New Year forsythia until it cleared up around lunchtime. I’ve been feeling a bit under the weather for a couple of days, needing a lot of sleep, and aching not only in the usual wrists and ankles, but in my upper arms and thighs. It’s an odd feeling, almost as if there are large bruises, but there’s no sign of any discolouration. I’ll take things fairly easy for a bit.


Deeply depressing

It’s been a depressing few days since Trump Mark II was elected, and I’ve kept away from social media and news sites (even my beloved Guardian) for fear of falling into a deep and gloomy hole. It’s clearly going to take a while longer. Emergency cheering-up procedures have centred round food: I admit to a self-indulgent Worcester Burger Shop delivery, and there’s making scones (and I put clotted cream on the Waitrose order), an apple Charlotte, a full roast-pork-with-crackling dinner last night … Having the wood stove lit over the weekend was also good.

Most unusually for me, I didn’t observe the Silence either yesterday on Remembrance Sunday (10th), or today on Armistice Day (11th), though I have as usual been wearing the White Poppy from All Souls’ Day onwards. There’s a whole area of thinking about death and destruction which is starting to seem more imminent again: Trump, Putin, Chinese expansionism. I know that my generation is historically exceptional in having avoided living through a war that had direct domestic impacts, but I’m increasingly concerned that we may yet see one.

As distraction, there have been Green Party newsletters. Lots and lots of them, including two batches for Bromsgrove. In fact, I’ve done nearly 17,000 over the last ten days, at around three hours a day. I’ll think about asking for them to be a bit more spread out in future! Still, it’s been the kind of thing that requires enough attention to stop me ruminating, without actually being mentally demanding, so that’s all good. And I’ve taken the plunge to “upgrade” both laptops and the upstairs desktop to Windows 11 – a more mentally demanding task!  However, it’s necessary if I’m going to successfully sync data on the newer, more powerful, but much bigger Thinkpad to the elderly T460s, which has been a struggle to keep going but is more convenient. The plan is to have both in simultaneous use for as long as the old one holds out.

On a more positive note, the assorted “any time but Christmas” cacti have been flowering profusely, and the winter jasmine outside the French window is magnificent (and there’s some in a vase indoors – just about the only flower still going).

garden bits

The leaves are off the Black Pear, though still hanging on on the Deacon’s tree. I’ve picked the remaining Black Pear – those that had escaped gales, codling moth, and bird pecks – and stored them on the slats in the shed.

The badger is clearly active at the moment- latrine holes in the former courgette bed, and in the heap of soil it’s excavated from the former compost bin.

Other garden work was to pull up the last of the decaying courgettes, and take down almost everything that had bamboo frameworks to climb up – that’s the runner beans, and two sets of sweet peas. I’ve cut the top off the Morning glory, but otherwise left it, as there are still plenty of flowers each day. Three figs look as though they might possibly ripen, though the fig leaves are yellow and falling, so I’ve brought the fruit in and stuck them under cover with a banana – more in hope than expectation.

So, mainly a bit of tidying up in the unexpected sunshine. Only an hour’s work, but I’m still getting very breathless and weak after rather little exertion – the respiratory infection that started over five weeks ago has not yet fully cleared up. Indoors, I had a Homefire delivery of heat logs and kindling early in the week, which I put away in the cupboard yesterday, as I had to have the Riso out for printing. Today saw a small delivery from Lekto, of what they call “night briquettes”, compressed bark supposed to burn for up to eight hours. It’s an experiment, but I do have the problem after the stove has been going for several hours of the room starting to get too hot! Mock-coal briquettes aren’t really an answer, as they need wood with them or they go out.

And today is the last “light” day. Back to GMT and darkness, if not at noon, certainly at teatime. Ugh! Winter season food: there’s a large casserole of Boston Baked Beans in the oven, to have with Brussel sprouts.