Garden Delights and Kitchen Crafts

April is a busy time in the garden with seed sowing, planting and cutting back. I’ve sown French beans, kohl rabi, carrots, parsnips, celeriac, peppers, radishes and Spring onions. Enjoying fresh cabbage and kale. More about the garden later.

You may remember I’ve been experimenting with making homemade yoghurt and was deciding whether to buy a yoghurt maker. I was reluctant because I like to be self-sufficient if I can but began to wonder if it would make it a bit easier. The milk has to be brought to the boil, then cooled to about 43C. It’s a bit of a faff, to be honest, so I thought perhaps there might be a better way. So I gave in and bought a yoghurt maker.

Unfortunately, to my dismay, when I read the instructions the heating of the milk still had to be done in a separate pan beforehand! The so-called yoghurt maker simply holds the temperature throughout the hours it takes to develop. It doesn’t make the process any easier, after all. Plus it didn’t improve on the quality of the yoghurt I made with my own method.

Perhaps there are extremely expensive machines that do all of it. I don’t know but I’m not prepared to fork out that amount of money and have another large gadget cluttering the kitchen. Not to worry. I shall probably carry on making it now and then.

A few sunny days soothed my disappointment as I could work in the garden and enjoy lovely flowers.

Apple blossom is opening on the trees. My favourite fruit blossom. Rosy buds opening to a beautifully delicate shade of pink.

My clematis “Freda”, a kind gift from my sister, is opening her lovely flowers.

The hellebores are still producing a few flowers and the self-seeded wallflowers have been such a pretty sight.

The berberis has grown tremendously and is putting on a wonderful show. It grows a bit too fast and it’s extremely prickly but it looks so fabulous in Spring and it’s evergreen so I forgive it and enjoy what it has to offer.

Here are some more Spring delights.

Wildlife is busy in the garden. Tadpoles are whizzing about in the pond, ladybirds are mating, shield bugs around on the leaves and bees buzzing everywhere.

My “Roma” tomato plants were growing like mad in the windowsill but the nights have been very cold so I was wary of putting them in the greenhouse. My husband came to the rescue and fixed up a heater to prevent frost damage. So I planted them in the greenhouse bed where I hope they will thrive and produce their delicious tomatoes for us later in Summer.

We’ve had some atrocious weather though. One day it was far too wet to work outside so I gathered up all my bits of frozen fruit to make jam. I had strawberries and plums which I’d harvested from the garden and frozen and some blueberries I’d bought which were disappointingly tough.

Weighed them, stewed them and added an equal amount of sugar, stirred to dissolve then boiled rapidly until it was setting. Apples would have been a useful addition because they’re rich in pectin which helps jam to set. I couldn’t find any but I suspect there are some lost in the mysterious depths of the chest freezer! It took a while to reach setting point when a spoonful on a cold plate begins to wrinkle. Got there in the end.

Jam may not be a nutritious food but one of life’s real pleasures is a slice of freshly baked bread, slathered with butter and homemade jam. Delicious!

Not much I care to watch on television these days so I painted another picture. This one is “Sunlight and Shadows”. When I saw the photo I’d taken in the garden I loved the way the sun was highlighting the poppy petals but the camera gave intense shadows among the leaves. I’ve tried to capture that with my painting. Drawn first in pencil then painted with gouache.

Let’s hope the weather will now improve and we have many enjoyable days in the garden or out and about. With you again in a couple of weeks. Bye for now.