Cheesy but true good life post

It was a beautiful day here in the mountains on Friday. We had the luxury of knowing at least a day of good weather was on the way. On a day like that I am determined to spend the day in the garden. And that's exactly what we did. 

Lunch was homegrown lettuce, french beans, and broad beans, a friends rocket and eggs and the tuna was from Aldi. (Lidl's tuna is much better)

The dressing was garlic, Dijon mustard, balsamic vinegar and an olive oil that we brought home from Spain.

Washed down with our very first attempt at homemade elderflower champagne. 

I wasn't sure what to expect from this drink. We only made it about 3 weeks ago. About 7 bottles. One of the bottles exploded in the shed even though we were letting the gas out every other day. Another bottle didn't seem to be fermenting as much as the others, which is the one we stuck in the fridge and had while sitting in the sun. It is sweet and floral and still fizzy, and absolutely lovely.  

One of the jobs for the afternoon was picking the soft fruit. Redcurrants like dangley earrings will be used for their pectin content in the strawberry jam fest that i am planning for the wetter weather that is forcast for next week.

Great blackcurrants this year, i'm thinking these might be infused in vodka, as the raspberry vodka that i normally make is under question, because the raspberries look half the height they usually are and i'm not sure that they will crop well this year.

The blueberry bush is a great plant. Laden with fruit at the moment, our four bushes enjoy our acid soil and will be picked  several times in the next month, as you can see they don't all ripen at once. Once they have offered up all their fruit, then the foliage goes flaming red and are wonderful to look at. These berries rarely make it into the house. If they do, they are in such small numbers they are snaffled out of the little bowl in the fridge before i can ever do anything with them.

This year I am determined to make a blueberry pie or at very least a batch of muffins.

Who'seberry?

 July was a very busy month for me. Work started on a new extension, and surgery at the end of the month knocked it out of me a bit. But even with out those events, July is always a busy month.

 In recent years my fruit and vegetable garden has become really productive, and July  is a month where just working in the garden and kitchen can keep a girl busy. Lots of things to sow, weed, feed, water, plant out, and of course harvest. I love bringing in the food. 

There are some things that  you just harvest as you need them, the garden becomes like another cupboard in your kitchen. Like making a crumble and popping out to pull an armful of rhubarb, or nipping out to snip a bayleaf, parsley and thyme to tie up a bouquet garni for a slow cook stew.

 Then there are things that NEED  to be picked everyday while they are in season to keep them productive, like mange tout peas and french beans and courgettes, if you skip picking for a day when they are really powering along, they become like triffids and you can be facing a glut. It still amazes me how much growth they can put on in 48 hours. In the rainy summer we've been having, the strawberries go from ready to mushy very quickly, so these too need to be picked everyday.

One of my favourite harvests is the soft fruit. Gooseberries are generally only harvested once, in one sitting. There is a window of a good couple of weeks, where they are ready and can be picked.

 Its a sunny day job. Little Bee and i will get little chairs and sit below the bushes and pick and chat away. Inevitably she will remind me of how sharp the thorns are. She will remind me of how funny it was two years ago when i was bending over picking one bush and i backed onto another and let out a holler as I got pricked in the bum. She was three at the time and thought it was hilarious. Any mention of gooseberries since then, and she loves to tell the story.

The picking in the garden is very satisfying, but it isn't over at that. Food will be wasted if not dealt with efficiently. Gooseberries need topping and tailing, washing, bagging and freezing. Armed with a  small scissors and my 7lbs of gooseberries took about an hour to top and tail. 

Sometimes the occasional visitor makes his way in with the crops. 

This snail was really really tiny,

and this little fella was extremely green.

I'm not sure which one of them was responsible for this very artistic.....

poo initial left on this gooseberry.

For me and my daughter, harvesting gooseberries never fails to dissappoint.

Bloom in the Park 2012

Bloom in the Park is an annual gardening and food event held in the largest public park in Europe the Phoenix Park which is located in central Dublin. It was its sixth year this year, covers 70 acres and attracts about 100,000 visitors. I went for the first time last year, and was impressed. It's no Chelsea but there is lots to do and see for anyone interested in gardening and food ....HELLO!  There are nearly 30 show gardens, produced on a fraction of the budget of a Chelsea garden, but great for ideas. I find its always good to see what you don't like as well as what you do like, so even the mediocre ones are worth a look.

This was the winning garden. Entitled simply 'My Garden' It was nice because it was real.

'Green House' was my favourite. The details of window, gravel, cobble were all just  to my taste.
The planting was perfect. It just looked like a lovely place to sit and chill.

The herbs planted above a cupboard for the bins was a nice idea, as long as your bins  aren't too rancid.

Of course at any of these kind of events there are endless opportunities to shop.(Which i kept to a minimum)

Gardening products galore.

Some of the more interesting products....

.....were ridiculously expensive ...€125!!! for a painted  birdhouse!

Nice, but i'm glad i married a carpenter.

These were lovely, cast iron i think, on a long spike and probably hand painted.

The Grand Pavillion housed the floral displays of plant and bulb sellers from around the country and also over from the UK.

 The smell from these lilies was to die for. 

I love alliums.

Onion envy.

There is a whole are dedicated to Irish Craft. The Irish Crafts Council run workshops for children throughout the 5 days. Demonstrations of woodturning and blacksmithing and 24 retail tents from Irish Crafters. The best in the retail area were a milliner called Rebekah Patterson who created this beautiful silk chiffon headpiece, as well as a whole host of other vintage inspired headwear.

A really lovely girl heads up Karo Art Ceramics, delightful ceramic buttons, garden markers, artwork and tiles. She had adorable little bowls in gorgeous colours, that i was so enamored with i forgot to take a photo, but are available on line in her Etsy shop here . Lovely stuff, really nicely presented. 

This grass design ceramic tile was so incredibly  life-like my poor photography really doesn't do it justice.

The third and last of my nominees in the craft area was an artist called Belinda Northcote 

Very cute little mouse prints.

She also had a butterfly theme. Very pretty.

This was a musically correct version of Dolly Partons 'Love is Like a Butterfly' substituting the musical notes for butterflies.

I took absolutely no photographs in the food area, far too busy sampling and drooling. It was a lovely day out even though the sun didn't shine. We got parking in the park and passed the Presidents residence on the way back to the car.

Aras an Uachtarain - the official residence of the President of Ireland.

Linking to Penny Worthy Project and Coombe Hill

Tool of the month.

Well, with a bit of a change in the weather I was able to get out to the vegetable garden and do some tidying of the onion bed. This bed contains garlic that was planted in October, Radar onion sets that were also overwintered, and my saved shallots from last years bumper crop. The one thing onions dislike is competition from weeds, and it is easy to damage the bulb when hoeing with a regular hoe.

However,  this fantastic contraption is an oscillating hoe and a job that used to me an hour now takes 10 minutes. My very favorite garden tool at the moment.

The next genius tip i picked up last year, was to grow onions/leeks from seed in modules and then leave them sit on the top of bare soil, where they will happily root down through and not dry out too quickly.

When the time comes to plant them out into the allium bed, they can be lifted off the soil roots and all,

 

Pop em in a hole just over a hoe's width apart (5") so you can whizz your majic hoe around them later.

TA - DA threes new rows of onions and the Allium bed is full for this season.

Shallots starting to split into more shallots.

Garlic all grown from saved bulbs. We've been self sufficient in garlic for about 4 years.

Now i feel the need to really show off, this is an old photo (as you can see)

The last time i grew Radar onions I got first prize in our county's big agricultural show. 

Weren't they just beauties! Prizewinning money from this show pays for seeds and compost for the following year. Thrifty or WHAT!

Do you think 'Tool of the month' could be a regular feature? 

Linking to Faith Hope and Charity's Ta-Da Tuesday