Midlife Gardener

Although, as I said yesterday, I feel that I am putting the garden to bed at the moment, somehow harvesting veg at this time of the year and heading into the winter seems almost more satisfying than the summer months, when we had plentiful (but sometimes short-lived) harvests of fresh produce.  I am sure that when I was young I would have dreaded the call to go and pick some Brussels or dig a parsnip, but this autumn I am feeling that I am almost getting something for nothing.

A week’s worth of cabbage

For example, the swedes are gently expanding and growing, but are perfectly edible in the meantime.  And the same goes for the parsnips, although there are not as many of them.  The cavolo nero will keep producing for a good while yet, as will the curly kale that is looking great.  Only the cabbages have produced a glut which I will not be able to eat.  When there are only two of us at home, one cabbage can last us weeks…

Although we had some Brussels sprouts at the weekend, they are not up to speed at the moment.  The plants seem to have shot up and the sprouts themselves have opened in the warm weather.  In some ways Brussels Sprouts are the benchmark against which I measure the garden, as it was the Old Man’s excellent Brussels which drew me in to taking on the responsibility in the first place after the cows had rampaged through the garden and destroyed his work in a few hours of bovine mayhem.  Those sprouts a few years ago were looking truly impressive – but had not been picked as there had not been a frost up till the point.  But after the lunch on Sunday, I am thinking that there is more than a grain of good sense in the OM’s insistence on picking after the first frost.

So I am actually wishing for a little cold weather to improve the harvest and keep the food for free coming in.

Clear greenhouse – just the green peppers to come out

Over the half term I spent some time putting the garden to bed, as it were. The runner beans and French climbing beans had all needed to be taken down and the canes packed away.   It is a little sad to be undoing all your hard work from earlier in the year: so much blue string tying up the canes and plants that have overgrown the tops of the canes and hang now with brown drying fruit.

So I took some of the pods and harvested the beans inside for planting next year.  I don’t have a clue if they will be good seed, but I don’t see why not.  So I took the plants and piled them up on the compost heap – which is finally looking like it will produce some decent mulch for next year.

The greenhouses are almost clear too: the tomato plants seemed to bear fruit way longer than I was expecting – but finally we had to say goodbye to them and put them to compost too.  And I harvested the last the green peppers before they died: 17 green peppers which will go in the freezer.

But it wasn’t only digging up and composting that needed to be done.  With the so-called storm of St Jude due, I took the precaution to make sure that what veg there are in the garden would still be standing come daylight.  So I staked the white sprouting and green calebrese, as well as the Brussels sprouts which really have sprouted in the warm autumnal air.  Thankfully they survived what turned out to be a bit of a damp squib of a storm:  nothing like the great 1987 storm when whole forests seemed to be devastated.  All we had around us was one telegraph pole leaning slightly precariously towards the main road with a van from the power company parked next to it all day with its hazard warning lights on.

But we all survived as did the garden plants as we head on into winter.

After the storm. No sign of any damage…

A cosy lunch for six

After the fun and frolics of last weekend it was our turn to host family members for Sunday lunch and we were determined to ensure that it was a positive experience for everyone.

We had some advantages over the Old Man in preparing the Sunday meal, though.  For a start, we knew how many were coming and, in addition, we had a clear idea of exactly when they would arrive, because this was Claire’s side of the family:  her mum and dad, and her brother Richard and wife Pauline.

Roast dinners are something of a British badge of honour: doing a Sunday roast is a competitive business.  Everyone believes theirs or their mum’s or their granny’s is the best.  But I am confident that my wife does the best Sunday lunch around.  And I think perhaps this might be one deep-seated reason why I enjoy growing vegetables: namely so that I feel that I have contributed in some way to the creation of a Claire Sunday roast dinner.

Home grown veg in the pot

So today we had some fabulous roast potatoes (the King Edwards still going well), cabbage, carrots, swede and brussels from the garden.  They were so good, even Richard ate some Brussels.  In addition, Claire made a blackberry and apple crumble with locally sourced blackberries, and I managed to use up some of the glut of eggs that the hens are providing at the moment, by making a rich bread and butter pudding with extra custard.

So a simply planned meal was delivered on time, using local produce to a set number of guests.  But then Claire’s side of the family are always a little more organised than mine.  For example, much of the conversation was taken up with planning for who was going where in February of next year when Claire’s father turns 90, one sister is getting married and another is coming over from Australia for a few weeks.  Planning for every eventuality is essential, but one half of the family will be prepared.

A relaxing lunch…for how many?

“Would you like yoghurt with your sticky toffee pudding?  There is yoghurt in the fridge…”

And so was rounded off another classic meal next door with the Old Man and it was a classic of its kind, highlighting all the reasons why The Old Man should not longer offer to host meals and why my relatives should avoid putting him through the perceived ordeal.

It all started when TOM invited three to lunch: Fiona (granddaughter no.1), Chris and great-grandchild Edith (now 5 months).  Unfortunately they then declined due to Chris’s work commitments, with TOM making it clear to Fiona that he would have to fathom a way for him and Gill to consume the joint of beef he had taken out of the freezer.  So he devised a second plan and invited Hugh and Sally with their two teenaged boys, Will and Barney, whom it was safe to assume would make a decent job consuming the available food.

I was blissfully unaware of this until he saw me as he was driving out on Friday and he asked me when we were going to Liverpool.  I told him Tuesday.  “Oh…” he said.  “I thought you were away on Sunday….would YOU like to come to lunch with your brother too?”

There is no easy answer to such a question.  To say no would blatantly be rude.  To say yes, puts more stress on him, and leaves you with a feeling of throwing away a couple of house of your life for nothing.

“That would be nice” I said, already picturing the stressed nature of lunch with my father.

So, if one assumes that Gill was always going to be a fixture for lunch, his catering numbers had gone from four plus a baby, to two (just him and Gill), back up to six (him, Gill, Hugh, Sally and the two teenage food processors), to eight (all of the above plus Claire and me).  He was just getting to grips with this after his morning foray into Castle Cary, when Fiona called back, oblivious to his burgeoning guest list, and worried that a perfectly good piece of beef might go to waste, announced that she and Edith would come to lunch, without Chris (who was going to work…)

After the regulation conversation with him whereby I offer all the vegetables from the garden and he says that he does not need them:

“Cabbage?”

“I’ve been given some”

“You know there are a lot of carrots still in the garden”

“No, I didn’t – I bought some”

He had, thankfully, planned to use some of the King Edwards and one of the Crown Prince Squashes.  Anything to do with royalty is acceptable, it would seem.

We did offer to help by agreeing to make a pudding, though the Old Man was very much hanging on to the reins in terms of getting the main body of meal done in his new Alpha stove (more of that another time).  He was a little concerned whether his roasting tray would fit in the oven but otherwise it all seemed on track.

And so, when Hugh and Sally arrived with boys in tow, I went next door to say hi and see how things were going.

Not well was the clear impression.  On the one hand, the kitchen was sweltering.  This was not such a great surprise as the house itself is enjoying central heating for the first time ever, after TOM had it installed last month.  But the kitchen should not have been that warm, even allowing for the fact that in addition to my father’s sizeable frame there were two large teenagers and three other adults filling the air space.

The temperature was further raised by the fact that TOM was – at 12.30 – only just draining the par-boiled spuds prior to roasting.  A 1pm lunch was definitely not going to happen.  And this was further pushed back when it was noticed that the meat was not cooking as quickly as expected, due to the fact that the roasting tray WAS too big for the oven – and so the door had been slightly ajar for the last hour and a half.  So, if you can’t stand the heat, don’t get out of the kitchen, just shut the oven door.

But before the temperature could drop appreciably Fiona and Edith arrived – with Chris, smiling broadly, bringing up the rear.  “I thought one more would make no difference as you have so many for lunch anyway” was the not unreasonable justification for Chris to join the merry throng before getting a train to work later in the afternoon…

….But it did not meet with overwhelming delight from the now ragged Old Man.

I had decided that this was not wort getting upset about elected to open a bottle of wine to relax.  TOM refused to have a glass (he had not planned to open any) “It’ll kill me” was his bald reasoning.

So, as I retired to the living room to chat with my nephews and ponder my impending inheritance, it was left to Claire to salvage lunch by rustling up some yorkshire puddings, some runner beans from the freezer and finishing the beef off in our own oven, while also making the crumble which TOM had assumed she would make in addition to the extra desert she had offered.

But the Old Man had recovered his joie de vivre sufficiently to offer the obligatory plastic carton of yoghurt to accompany Claire’s sticky toffee pudding.  Why, why, why does TOM have to offer yoghurt with every pudding he serves?  I could be cruel and say that it did not do his arteries any good, but then that would be harsh.  I shan’t say it.  But in the meantime I will continue to clog my own blood flow with full fat double cream to accompany my home-made sticky toffee.  Yum.

So, miraculously, the equivalent of the feeding of the five thousand was accomplished.  No fishes were hurt in the making of this meal, and I am not sure that we would have been able to collect twelve basketfuls of left overs, but a crisis (or maybe a famine?) of biblical proportions had been averted.  And we have learned a new chant for the next time relatives my father invites relatives to lunch:

Two dogs, one bed

The kids have left home – but we remain hide-bound by two other youngsters: Fudge and Ella.  The latter is gnawing at whatever she can find and acting like a sulky teenager out on walks, refusing to do as she is told and simply wandering off to explore in hedgerows or eat cow shit, while the older, more sensible  dog (haha) managed to cut her eye open while digging in the undergrowth – probably showing off to her younger compadre.

Before the stitches

We gave Fudge absolutely no sympathy whatsoever and simply wiped the cut clean – probably with a dirty dish cloth or whatever I had in my hand at the time.  To be honest, when she first came in with the wound, I thought she has been involved in a road accident: her eye was swollen and she was covered in mud, as if she had been thrown into a ditch.  Only later did I find the tunnel she had been working on – a sort of combined Tom, Dick and Harry (from the Great Escape) – and realised that she had clearly got carried away trying to dig through some rusty chain link fencing.

Three days later she could not see out of the eye as it had (not surprisingly I guess) become infected.  So a trip to the vets saw a large bill for antibiotics, anti-inflammatories and painkillers.  Not to mention the obligatory bucket on the head – or cone of shame as it is beautifully termed in Up.  A week later, the eye was now scabbed over, but seemingly better, until the vet scrubbed away the dried blood to reveal a small canyon of a wound above the eye – which would need stitches.

So the next day an increasingly stressed dog was once again taken to the vet and four stitches put over the eye.  Another week of bucket clanging fun and games and today I am pleased to report the stitches came out and Fudge is finally back to her normal self.

Moody teenager?

While Fudge has been injured and recovering from the operation, Ella has been quite respectful of her.  She has not made any great attempt to have mock fights or to get too worked up with Fudge.  Indeed, she has spent more and more of her time heading off by herself on walks, which is driving Claire and I mad, as she simply ignores our calls and whistles.  We are assured that this is simply the doggy equivalent of adolescence, when your adorable puppy is simply testing the boundaries as she wanders off to follow different scents.  Like any teenager, she probably thinks that she knows it all by now and that we just a nuisance to her when she is out on a walk.

Things came to a head last week-end when, after an afternoon in garden hiding from Claire, she decided not come back in when she went out for her bedtime outing.  I trudged down the garden to find her.  It’s not an easy job finding a black dog in the dark, in the pouring rain.  She really made me jump when she appeared from the bushes behind me – with a bird’s wing sticking out the side of her mouth.

“Have you been eating something Ella?”

“Whmm mmm? Nmmm” would have been the answer, with a mouthful of magpie feathers.  The combination of a labrador’s nose with a labrador’s appetite makes for a single-minded dog, whatever the time of day.  It was no better the next morning when I was up early to play golf, when I had to walk down the garden to get her in for her breakfast.

As they say, this will hopefully be a phase she goes through.  Thankfully, Fudge’s  recuperative phase is finally over, after two weeks in the cone of shame.  The stitches came out on Thursday.

In a field of her own

High summer has become an Indian summer with warm weather interspersed with serious rain.  Perfect growing conditions, in fact, and the grass has come back with a vengeance after being parched in July and August.  I have been mowing more than at any time this year, just to keep the grass tidy and – more importantly – to enable us to clear up the copious amounts of dog waste which are being deposited by our rapidly maturing puppy (and her colleague the ginger whinger).

A barrow load of Sarpo Mira

They are good companions in the garden, although I am concerned for the well-being of some of the veg as Ella, like an unruly child, does not grasp the idea of boundaries.  She gleefully jumps over the low chicken wire designed to keep the rabbits out, trying to gorge herself on raspberries or simply run through the swedes, beans or potatoes.

Growing fruit and veg one soon realises that what you see is not always what you get.  The Sarpo Mira have been happily growing all summer, and when I dug the first ones it was clear what a good summer it had been.  I was afraid that the small areas where the soil had washed off and the potatoes were green would mean a smaller crop.  But no: they were massive…weighing in at two pounds apiece some of them – like mini meteors.  Although they mostly look good, they are not all going to store well: there were a few already rotting, but when one potato will probably suffice as a meal for four, you don’t need too many to survive.  And anyway, we are still working our way through the King Edwards – which are storing well – so we will be OK for potatoes for a while yet.

Red pods easily spotted

Next on the harvesting were the borlotti beans, which I had been monitoring to see how the pods were maturing and drying.  Waiting till the surfaces of the pods turn red mean that they are more likely to be ripe, and they are also easier to spot as they stand out well against the yellowing leaves.  I duly harvested them a couple of weeks ago and, after they had lain in the greenhouse to dry off a little, I podded them.  Eight pounds of beans was the resultant haul, with most showing a good speckled burgundy on cream.  I had the rapt attention of Fudge who loves a bit of bean picking, but who was dismayed by the taste of the one errant bean that fell to the floor.  As borlottis are one of those beans that need proper cooking before you can eat them, it’s probably as well that she spat it out.  The last thing we need is a ginger puker.

The beans have dried reasonably well, though some have gone a little brown.  Perhaps I should have left the pods longer to get the crimson coat before shelling.  Who knows.

Butternuts and Crown Prince

The squashes were next on the list and we have now got over twenty assorted butternut and crown prince squashes.  They are storing on the shelves by the Old Man’s back door – “the best place to store them” according to the oracle.  I took his advice.  It was not something I was going to argue about: it’s cool and relatively dry, so they should be OK there.

Tomatoes, peppers and even melons have continued to grow in the warm autumn.  The melons are not much larger than the melon balls that you get in second rate restaurants (and less than half the size of a sarpo mira spud) so we probably won’t repeat that experiment – unless Paddi wants to give us some more plants next year…

So: much of the harvest is gathered in – even a cabbage, which the OM advised me to pick before it split.  Once again, on the outside it looked a little caterpillar-eaten, but under the surface detail, the core was great.

It’s just rather a lot of cabbage for the two of us.

A basket of produce to have with Lemon Sole from West Bay

My youngest brother (2 years my senior), sister-in-law and two nephews came to lunch with the OM on Friday.  The discussions with TOM upon his announcement of their imminent arrival centred – as always with him – on “catering arrangements”.  He declared that he would be buying a couple of pies from Charlie’s (the piemaker and sometime butcher in Cary), and that we would have some potato salad and some green leaves with it.

“Excellent idea”, I said, “would you like me to dig some spuds?”

“Uuuuurm, actually someone bought some potatoes”.  He sounded a little embarrassed.

I pointed out that it seemed ridiculous to buy potatoes when we have a whole garden full of them and said that I would make a salad with our own spuds.  He accepted my offer to make some salad and – never able to resist the chance to offer some advice – told me that I would have to make enough for eight.

So Friday morning I dug a root of Belle de Fontenays, scraped ’em, boiled ’em and mixed ’em with some home-made mayonnaise (made with our own hens’ eggs).  I was duly summoned to lunch as soon as Hugh and Brigitte arrived and there on the table when I walked in was…..a bowl of potato salad which he had prepared with the shop-bought spuds.  And in addition to this there was a bowl of “leaves”: a little gem lettuce and some almost albino chinese leaves from the supermarket that looked like they had never seen natural daylight.

Disappointed would be an understatement of Wildean proportions in describing my mood.  The OM realised he might have messed up and said he felt that I had not made it clear that I would make a salad.  It was a rather poor attempt at an apology or explanation.

As a youngster and younger man I suffered years of my parents informing me of what was growing in the garden and what we should be harvesting and consuming before they run to seed.  And now I find myself – inevitably – turning into my parents as it is I who am telling my father to use up the spuds, pick the lettuce or use the beetroot tops in a nice salad.  Hell – I even made my own mayonnaise: how bloody middle-aged is that?!  For the dread of heredity to have finally come true, is no great surprise.  To discover that the Old Man has turned into a rather truculent teenager who fails to remember simple instructions and offers lame excuses for doing so is an unfortunate flip side to the same the coin, I guess.

Ah well.  Let’s not worry for now.  I feel better for that.  Let’s take a look at what is growing in the garden.  Even if no one wants to eat it.

Me making a noise? Noooo…

The OM has been out of hospital for four weeks now.  Fortunately Gill has been  coming in to cook him a dinner or lunch.  For the first couple of weeks he was coming to ours for breakfast on account of the fact that he had been told that he should lift nothing – not even a tea-pot – for a seemingly indeterminate length of time.  So a regular visitation for porridge with blueberries became the norm for a while.  And it was fine after all, it is time with my father in which we can have a thorough and meaningful two-way chat.   Ok, so I’m half right there.

Not Going Anywhere

With us about to take a break for a few days in south Wales, I managed to intimate to him that perhaps he was well enough to make his own breakfast.  So the next morning I was just enjoying a minor lie-in when I was awoken by my name being called in the yard.  I got up to find my father standing in the drive, looking up the yard at some of the young cows in the field which were moo-ing loudly at the next field.  He instructed me to go and find out if any had escaped.  I walked all of 30 paces to discover that there was no problem and that all cows were accounted for.

As I walked up and back I was thinking I know that the cows were the original reason I took over this garden, and that one has to be careful that this herd does not get into contact with next door’s (which has TB in the herd).  And I also know that he has just had major heart surgery,

“But for fuck’s sake, can you really not manage to walk the short distance to the gate to find out for yourself?”

Is what I did not say to him.

Is he just playing this for all it’s worth?  Has the general anaesthetic really had that much of an effect on his short-term memory?  He says he WORRIES so much more these days.  Well I guess you would, but everyone needs a bit of positive mental attitude.

“So you’re doing your own breakfast this morning?” I enquired as I retreated through the front door.

“If you like” he said.

So I got my way, without the use of expletives, which is a good thing.

But not as satisfying.