Unintelligent Design

Just had the first of my (many) homegrown chillies. Well, a tiny bit of it, anyway. Deseeded.

jambon_gris would approve. Glad I had a glass of milk on standby... :)

Much to my surprise, I managed a decent cauliflower soup last night.

People ate it. Some had seconds. One briefly grumbled that he didn't like cauliflower much - an hour after finishing his seconds - which I'll take as a compliment, of sorts. :)

Possibly worth noting that this was 'cauliflower and chive' (NCG recipe) - no cheese was involved.

(My only grumble is that I had to buy chives - I've just divided and repotted mine, so they looked too frail to cut... )

So, word from Infest is:

"It was great to be back, so who knows, maybe we'll get to do it all again next year"

...which isn't exactly definite, is it? I'd just assumed that it was back as an ongoing concern after the one year hiatus...

Time to consider other plans for next August, perhaps...

Not the most cheerful weekend.

A guy who was walking down the road knocked on the door last night to ask me if I owned a black and white cat, as one was lying injured on the pavement - hit by a car, from the looks of things .

The cat in question wasn't Lady - and I didn't immediately assume that she was, as I'd just seen Lady in the back garden. Neither of us had any idea whose cat she was. Thankfully, lostdreamer666 was visiting at the time, so when we found that the nearest vet was closed (and the 'emergency' number on their door directed you to the PDSA on the other side of town...) he was able to offer me a lift there.

She didn't survive - she'd slipped away by the time we reached the PDSA. Only about six months old, they think.

I don't think there was anything more we could have done when we found her; from what the vet said it was probably too late before I answered the door, if there was ever any chance.

One thing, though - as a cat owner, I felt completely unprepared. I don't have a vet's emergency number programmed into my mobile. I don't know which local vets are available if something does happen outside of the normal surgery hours. I'll be fixing that in the next day or two.

Every time I consider cooking fish, I think it's going to be too much faff - awkward to prepare (especially in a kitchen with limited worktop space), fiddly to eat, annoying to wash up.

Every time I actually cook fish - which has been, oh, about three times in the last three months - I actually think it's very tasty, although I probably need more practice, and decide that I need to cook it more often.

Of course, living in Coventry probably doesn't help. It's hard to get further from the sea - and the only decent fishmongers seem to be in the city centre, in the market (as opposed to good butchers or greengrocers... which are just over the road from me...).

Having said that, Morrisons actually has a pretty good fish counter. And half the problem is that I'm not organised in my cooking - I'll buy something, then end up going out (or eating something simple like a sandwich) and decide to cook it another day. Fish isn't so good for that.

However, I will try to do better in future. One meal a week, say, at least. That should be achievable.

(Tonight's attempt was trout, cooked whole in a foil parcel with some green garlic, sliced lemon, butter, fennel fronds, parsley, a little white wine and a bay leaf or two. Served with buttery mash with a little horseradish mixed in. Garlic, fennel and potatoes were all from the garden :)

...I'm tempted to make it to the Blitz Party's September event. Cocktails, swing bands, dancing... all sounds good to me. :)

Any London (or not-London) folk been to these before? I've been to Birmingham's Hot Ginger, which is a similar sort of thing (and generally great fun), but never made it to this one...

Possibly I'm just getting old and domesticated, but I love this time of year. Not too hot, not too cold and miserable. I can get home from work, wander into the garden and Do Stuff for hours before it gets dark.

Or, more accurately, I can Start Stuff. Later in the year, the garden becomes a maintenance project. Right now, it's not quite at that stage.

There's still time to plant things. I'm clearing flowerbeds, assembling raised beds, repotting strawberries (...all this while telling myself that this year I'll find them a permanent home, you understand...), watering the newly laid turf and occasionally grinning when I notice that crops are sprouting or fruiting.

(Things guaranteed to make me smile - potato plants appearing, artichokes sprouting and gooseberries swelling on the bush...)

In a month's time it'll all start to feel too much like work (or possibly like an unwinnable war against slugs and blight). For the moment, though, it's going ok.

It's not a bad moment.

When's a good time of year to visit? 

Looks like I'm visiting Tuscany / Siena for a weekend (possibly a long weekend) later this year.

Thanks!

...it's really rather good, isn't it?

Last year was my first serious attempt at gardening.

It wasn't entirely successful - partly because of the learning curve, partly because of the chaos and lack of access caused by my building work - but I'm hoping to do better this time.

However, I'm not going to have time or space to try everything. So some decisions need to be made - basically, do I revisit the things that worked really well last year, try to improve on some of the failures, or do something completely different...?

Some things are pretty definite, though:

• I'm growing runner beans again, 'cos they were lovely. Ditto for courgettes and/or marrows.
• I'm going to try growing peas and potatoes, which I didn't have room for last year
• The perennials - rhubarb, globe artichokes and jerusalem artichokes - will keep their places, assuming they survive the winter.
• I'm going to try turnips again. They didn't go well this year, but I think the problem was poor maintenance rather than soil.