"Whatever happened to my Transylvania twist?"

This year, as well as growing them in the ground, I've been experimenting with growing potatoes in containers. The reasons are numerous: you can grow more without having to dig, the compost is clean so the risk of blight is minimised, and because the containers are moveable they can be grown in otherwise idle corners. This year my containers have been of the cheap-and-cheerful variety; I bought some growbags, cut off one end and emptied the compost into a spare bag. I then turned the growbag inside out so that the black side was outside in order to let the compost warm up quicker (and it looks tidier). I rolled the open end of the bag down, punched a few drainage holes in the bag and added a small layer of stones for additional drainage. A six-inch layer of compost was replaced and a couple of sprouting potatoes placed on top and covered with compost.

As the potato plants grew they were earthed up and the top of the bag unrolled a bit to give more depth. They're very thirsty plants with all that top growth to maintain as well as growing tubers underground, but they don't like boggy conditions, hence the drainage at the bottom. Anyway one day after they'd flowered (and I needed some potatoes for supper) I thought the time had come to empty one bag and see how they were doing.

There was a lot of top growth



and a fair amount of success was evident.



Okay, so the local greengrocer isn't going to lose any sleep over the threat to his business, but they were fresh, organic and delicious.

Please release me, let me go

I'm very annoyed. In fact I'm more than annoyed, I'm very very cross and fed up. Yesterday I was silly and clicked on the Friend Finder application on Farcebook. I know, I know, you should never click on anything on the right hand side, but I believed its lies about which of my friends had used it, and now all my real friends are going to get the spam emails like Ned's had in the past about how X, Y and Z are suggesting he joins Farcebook himself. Seeing that some of the invites have been from me, and I haven't sent them, I know it's all spam.

But worse than that I now can't fully sign out of Windows Live after using my email account. All the Hotmail accounts on this computer, even ones that Farcebook haven't heard of, give the same message after signing out - that it's failed to log out of the following site: h ttps://ssl.facebook. com/accept_token. php (I've put in a few spaces to try to stop it making a link). When I paste that into google I find it's been happening for years, with various suggestions of what to do to fix it. The ones that aren't too complicated for me to understand are clearing cookies (done, no effect) and contacting Windows live help (done, no answer).

Does anyone else have any ideas? I'm really not happy.

I'll bet you think this song is about you

It must be ... ooh, two or three years ago I bought an apricot whip (that's a baby tree, by the way) that was guaranteed to fruit in the second year after purchase. Duly, in its first season it grew but didn't flower. Last year it flowered, but we had late frosts and no fruit resulted. This year it had plenty of blossom



but despite my best efforts with the pollinating brush and throwing bees at it only one fruit developed. This was nurtured; the tree, still in a pot, fed and watered copiously to encourage it to ripe fruition. This baby fruit was cherished and admired, and woe betide anyone who did anything to hinder its development. It swelled satisfyingly and the heat of the past few weeks blushed its cheeks to a delicate pink.



Then yesterday it fell from the tree in its ripe perfection. It was carried indoors in triumph and reventially halved and shared. The verdict? I have never sampled any fruit so sublime. Juicy and sweet and warm, like no other apricot can ever have tasted. Perfection. :)

She could clean the house for hours or rearrange the flowers

At last someone's pointed me in the direction of the version I really love ...

Your sweet face seems to haunt my dreams

My 'lilium regale' has excelled itself this year; so many beautiful flowers and a fabulous scent.

Hear the dogs howling out of key

And they think this is 'home', do they?



Acksherly it could be worse



What's 'caching'?



I don't know what a durdle is, and there's no sign of a door anywhere.



A castle full of maidens? Where?



I could be asleep, you know.



Where did that fat bloke go?



So that's a holiday, is it? I wonder if I'll get my 5.30 am walk tomorrow.

And I will give to you summer wine

After the required 48 hours had passed I dutifully strained the elderflower cordial through muslin to remove all the flowers and lemon and decanted it into sterilised bottles.



I was rather surprised this morning to find that it's started fermenting, which isn't at all what I'd intended; my plan was to have a soft drink and not an alcoholic one! It's been put in the fridge to slow it down for the moment (I really don't need glass bottles exploding!) but the fridge isn't really very big, so that can only be a temporary measure. I don't really want to haul out a demijohn and all the winemaking paraphernalia to fail to make a drinkable wine. I might have to add a little vodka or gin to stop it, but again that rather defeats the object. Drat.

To adorn and perfume those sweet meadows in June.

I love this time of year. The honeysuckle's in full bloom



and filling the air with its sweet scent; it's especially lovely in the cool of the late evening, round about ten o'clock when it's not yet quite dark. It's a shame that it's determined to flower at the back of the trees and not the side facing the house, but there you go. The roses are glorious, as well as the lavender, although the philadelphus (the variety we grow smells exactly like Juicy Fruit chewing gum) is dropping its petals, like confetti in a churchyard after a wedding.

Following the blackthorn blossom of early April and the hawthorn (mayflowers) of May, where the hedges looked as though someone had thrown muslin curtains over them now in the hedgerows there are the wild dog roses - some white, some palest pink and some really quite determinedly rosy. Not forgetting, of course, the foamy umbrella flowers of elder with their cool scent,



so many this year that we decided to seize the moment and have a bash at making elderflower cordial; grown-up squash which is a delicious long drink, with ice, on a hot summer day.

We decided to use a recipe from a blog I regularly follow, called the Cottage Smallholder; a real feel-good site.

So we gathered together all the ingredients



and put them all together.



Now we wait for 48 hours before straining and bottling it. Fingers crossed it will be as good as I hope!

Sitting on a fence is a man who drinks real ale

So we took the rickety old fence away and wondered what would be the best replacement. With it open the garden looked bigger, but it made it easier for the local foxes to poo on the grass which isn't pleasant.



A hedge was a possibility but would mean I couldn't grown many flowers that I'd be able to see from the house. So a new fence was the best compromise - one that allowed more light to get the garden yet still gave us a bit of privacy.

The posts were duly concreted in (using markedly less concrete than the ones we removed!) last weekend, which meant that this weekend, weather permitting, we hoped to be able to finish it. The weather did indeed permit, so in the morning the rails were added to the posts




then in the afternoon the pales were nailed in place, and a great improvement it is too. A good day's work; now, where's that beer?

The football it has taken away the wee bit of sense he had

Let's get one thing clear from the outset: I'm the first person to admit that my knowledge of, and indeed interest in, football is slightly less than zero and I have absolutely no intention of changing that, no matter what tournament is being fought over played for. It's a tedious winter game with no summer respite, but thankfully our TV is allergic to it and is incapable of showing any, other than isolated incidents shown on the news. So that's good.

Okay, having made that clear I have a query. In the world cup match against the USA I gather that someone from the England team scored a goal early on, and that later on someone from the US team scored. So why is the England goalkeeper being blamed for the TEAM failure to win, when there were another 10 members of the team who had 75 minutes or so to score again? Why were the rest of the team not preventing the opposition getting the ball down to the England goal in the first place? Surely the goalkeeper is the last defender, not the only one.

When your feet just can't keep still

I thought a particular style of footwear was hideous the first time I clapped eyes on them a long time ago, and nothing in the intervening years has changed my mind on that point. But I thought that they might be useful for trudging across a dew-soaked campsite at first light rather than donning wellies, so I tried on a pair in the shop (as well as you can try on shoes that are fastened together with a security tie, making actual walking in them impossible) and my neuroma didn't immediately have hysterics, which was a plus. So I bought them.

What a mistake. Why on earth did I think that a normal-shaped pair of feet (yes, they are normal!)



would ever be comfortable in something designed for ducks?



Just look at the difference in width!



How on earth are they meant to stay on, short of actually stapling them to your feet? Yes, I know there's a heel-strap, but that's much shorter than the shoe itself



which forces your foot forward and makes them agonisingly uncomfortable. In fact the only way to get them to stay on your feet is to wear a couple of pairs of thick hiking socks ... which rather defeats the object, because the dewy grass will soak the socks.

Now, if I had feet shaped like this they'd fit like a ...



I wonder if I can get my money back.

Breathe, breathe in the air

At last the year has begun! For the first time in 2010 there's been enough daylight and warmth for me to spend enough time out of doors to throw off the effects of SAD and start to live again. Perhaps this is why I feel so much better when we go camping, even if the weather's shit. When we come home the house is stuffy and airless and I feel trapped. But now my brain is clear, I can think as quickly as I used to (I'd begun seriously to think I was in the early throes of dementia), as if a fog has lifted. This is fantastic. The Real Me, who's been smothered under a suffocating blanket of nebulous nothingness, has fought her way free! Hooray! Hooray for sunshine! Hooray for air!

Sittin' in the mornin' sun

An established bay tree is usually very hardy, and able to withstand cold weather without turning a ... I was going to say hair, but that's not right, and leaf doesn't really fit the bill ... anyhow, they can usually come through the winter unscathed. Last winter was particularly extreme, and our poor tree is rather the worse for wear.


The leaves should be a glossy dark green, not dry and desiccated. In places there are signs of life and regrowth



but despite waiting for months, others have clearly had it completely.


If we amputate all the dead bits I fear it's going to be very lopsided and unbalanced. The poor thing might have to come down completely.

Gentian, lupin and tall hollyhocks

As is traditional on a Bank holiday weekend it was time to get working on the garden. The monsoon conditions of yesterday had softened the soil to workable levels from the solidity of its previous dryness, and today (surprisingly for a BH) the weather was absolutely perfect. Ned dug out the final enormous lump of concrete, and a friend's jack hammer made short work of reducing them all to more manageable proportions. Several trips to the tip will be needed, but soon it'll all be gone!


I took a barrow up the road to a neighbour's smallholding and relieved his fields of some of the molehills, which are the most gorgeous riddled topsoil and have filled in the holes beautifully so that it no longer resembles a poor parody of the Somme. One more barrowload should see the major earthworks completed.



Next job is to install the new fence, and then I'll be able to put in some plants so for a few brief weeks it might look attractive.

The concrete and the clay beneath my feet

A long, long time ago when we bought Genie Towers, it was what would nowadays be called 'a project'. We did a fair amount of updating (some new wiring, new windows, redecorating, new kitchen, new bathroom, new carpets, etc - all of which are now past their best again - don't mention the bathroom) but pretty much just kept on top of the garden. This meant that as it became more and more 'established' it started to look a little neglected, if not downright shabby. So we've taken the bull by the horns and decided to replace the fence at the front, from a delapidated standard panel affair which was well past its best and was, frankly, falling apart, to (eventually) a picket fence. This means not only removing the panels which I think were being held up by the ivy, not the other way around



but also removing the rotten supporting posts. It was at this point that we realised whoever installed them intended them to be there for ever and ever. How much concrete does it usually take to support one 3" x 3" fence post? We didn't expect this much. I wonder how we can get rid of it, other than digging another hole and burying it ....



Elsewhere in the garden the lily of the valley is going feral. That I can live with because it smells just delicious in the sunshine.

Those were the days, my friend

I remember when all this:



was fields.



*thanks Mallers! Please tell me how you did that*

Lord help the mister who comes between me and my cyster

I did warn at least some of you ...

For some months I've been having a bit of trouble swallowing. My throat wasn't particularly sore, just a bit uncomfortable, but it felt as though there was something stuck, that coughing nor drinking would shift. One day, when peering annoyedly at my throat in the mirror I spotted something unusual that hadn't been there before, in the region of my left tonsil. Not being one to panic unnecessarily (when necessary I can panic with the best) I decided to take it to see the doctor for identification, and was 90% reassured when I was told that it was unusual but highly unlikely to be anything nasty, but that a specialist might like to take a look. So last week I went to the ENT department and was very pleased to be told that it was only a cyst, and it could either stay or be taken out; my decision. As I noticed it because it was annoying and it's unlikely to go away by itself I thought it best to get rid. So I was straightaway taken to book a suitable date and have my pre-op notes done. (I must say it all seems remarkably efficient. My initial appointment was for 11.30; we got there a bit early and I was examined, notes done and appointment booked all within an hour.) It was only when I got home I realised that my chosen date (on my day off because we're short-staffed at work) needed to be changed - I had to be at an important function the following day and didn't want to be the Guest From Hell! So that's all rearranged (for another day off) unless it decides to startle everyone and disappear of its own accord.

Anyway, here it is.

Your scarf it was apricot

My little apricot tree is blooming beautifully. That guarantees a few more hard frosts to kill off the chance of fruit.

I still haven't found what I'm looking for

Specially for Mally, the (very obscure) answer:



It seems even more appropriate now; an interloper tune for interloper plants. I wonder what they really are. Definitely a flowering climber; I'll wait to see what the parent plant does this summer before I consign them all to the compost heap.

Sweet sweet, the mem'ries you gave me

Back in the autumn when Harry was injured and we were having to manhandle him through to the sitting room every evening so that he didn't feel abandoned, we rolled up and stored the nice rug to protect it from his unconscious incontinence; the situation was quite stressful enough, thank you. The horrid carpet that it was hiding (and had been in situ when we moved in 20 years ago) didn't matter, so life became a miniscule iota easier. Then it was a case of 'out of sight, out of mind' and after Harry left us the rug stayed rolled up in Boy's room out of the way until last weekend when, after the loss of Beattie as well, we thought we really needed to try to get back to what passes for normality around here. So we carried the rug downstairs and laid it down in the sitting room again.

It was heartbreaking to see Piglet pressing his nose to it and inhaling deeply, wagging his tail in joy at the scents of his remembered siblings, then drooping disconsolately when he looked around and realised they were still missing.