Easter Weekend.

Easter weekend I went down to see two of my sons and grandchildren in the London area.
The weather was BEAUTIFUL. It was nice spending some time with them for I have not seen them all for quite a while.

Two of my sons

We did shopping.
We did bingo, no we never won.
We did a car boot sale. Yes I managed to spend some money there.
We did a garden centre. Here we saw lots of animals.

The kids loved it. We also had a ride on a steam train.

All in all I had a lovely time. It made a nice change.
I then travelled back to Crete on the day of the royal wedding.
Since then the weather here has improved so we did a bit of gardening.
With there been so much rain this winter and early spring the weeds have been running riot on our small plot. Some of the grasses have been as tall as me.
We are winning I think. Yes we will soon have it whipped into shape. Got some seed potatoes and onion sets to put in.

What are you all doing now?

Cya,
Judith x

The Sun is Shining and the Garden is Growing.

Well,  in the middle of March  we set about getting our newly acquired garden ready for planting. I took before and after pictures as it was rotorvated and planted, but alas when I got home I found that I had forgotten to put in the card so no pictures. (SILLY ME)

Anyway here it is now

We have potatoes, tomatoes, courgette, onions, okra, peas, beans, aubergines, cucumber and beans.

At home in our little garden above the house we have lettuce, a few tomatoes, peppers, a couple of courgette and yesterday I planted some spring onions, radish and some carrot. The carrots I have planted have small round roots not long tapering ones as the garden is very stony and they would just fork.

I also have some lettuce seeds growing in pots. I only take a pinch of seed and only get about 6 or seven plants at a time, then a few weeks later I do the same again so we don’t get gluts all at once.

Oh! and I have some strawberries in pots and they are flowering away to themselves. So it will be strawberries and cream soon folks.

Well it looks like another shorts and strappy top day today. Must go and enjoy the sun with a nice cool drink.

Cya.

Garden news

 

Well its been a while since I mentioned my garden.  Things have been growing well. I have beans, courgettes, tomatoes, aubergines and peppers.

 

This is my aubergine. I didn't grow it from seed, bought it from a plant shop in Neapoli.

I also bought these tomato plants.  They are growing funny, only one tomato seems to be growing on a truss. Not quite sure why that is.

Some very yummy strawberries.

Some lovely beans growing up some branches. Didn't have any canes, but they are not bothered. they will use anything.

Some bell peppers

These are summer squash.

A patty pan squash. I grew the yellow one last year and used it like courgettes. Below are my courgette plants. Two different varieties.

Got to mention these again.

The walnuts are still growing strong. Think we will have a good harvest.

So all in all everything is growing well and I am looking forward to eating our own veggies again. There is something about home-grown food. It tastes better and you know what went into it. No pesticides to worry about.

Mish Mash

My post today is a bit of this and a bit of that. Just to keep you in the picture as to what we have been up to in the last few weeks.

This is my kitchen that is in the making.

Wow!! Look I have a kitchen sink! Isn't that great!

Very small, compact I think they call it. It still needs the doors fitted yet, but at long last I have somewhere to put dishes and food stuff. That's some more boxes that I have emptied.

The door that Geoff (Jude's husband. cariad in crete)made for us complete with handles.

These next 5 photo's are from my walks with Lucky, just around the village.

Someone's lean-to built into the rocks.

This is the seed head of one of these flowers. They look so pretty and they are quite big.

My quilt that I hope to finish this year!!! Just about 40 cms to go so it will fit our kingsize bed.

Remember the walnut photo's I posted a while back? Well just look at the size of these walnuts now.

The tree is covered in them, as you can see from the above photo,but the fact still remains, the tree is just far to big for this small garden and it still has loads of growing to do yet. Think I can see the chainsaw coming out after the harvest!

These are pumpkin seedlings that I have just planted. Notice the sticks? Cat protection.

I am using black polythene to try and save the water from evaporating as much. The above are courgettes. I am not sure how things will grow in this garden but if I feed them well I am hoping for quite a good harvest.

Sorry about the quality of this photo, but these globe artichokes have very, very sharp spines. In fact the whole plant has spines all over. Definitely a case of using gardening gloves when doing anything near them.

Sadly the beaches are no longer like this, alas the tourists have arrived.

That's it, I think I have brought you all up to speed on what's been happening here. Got to go, have some more boxes to empty.

WILL IT EVER END???????????

Fried Green Tomatoes and Chutney

starting to cook
Fried green tomatoes are something that we have not tried before and as we had lots of green tomatoes we decided to give them a go. I found the recipe while looking for Green tomato chutney.
The recipe sounded so simple so I got to it.

I sliced them about 1.4inch thick and coated them in flour,cornmeal and salt. Very easy.
Then I put them into the frying pan with some heated oil and fried them on one side till golden brown, turned them over and did the other side. Hey presto Fried Green Tomatoes.
the finished product
Yes they were really nice. One we will try again next time we have green tomatoes.

Green tomato chutney.

the chutney just stating to boil
Ian likes some chutney with his meat, so seeing that we brought plenty green tomatoes from the garden, I made some chutney. The recipe was easy enough. I chopped up the tomatoes,onions and apples. Put them into a big stainless steel stew pot and added all the other ingredients and let it boil away merrily till it was thick. I put it into sterilized jars and now we have a few jars for him to enjoy.

the chutney ready to go into jars
The chutney in jars

It says store in a cool dark place.......... Hmmmmmmmmmm. Ian's tummy I expect!

A Bountiful Harvest.

Yesterday was a lovely sunny day, so instead of going up to the house to do some more hard work we decided to go to the garden. As if gardening is not hard work too. The garden has taken the back seat a bit and has been seriously neglected these last couple of months. The order of the day was some tiding up and weeding. I cleared a small piece of ground and turned it over, if I can get some cabbage plants I will plant them there.

Ian cleared all the dried up weeds and we found that the tomatoes had been fruiting away to themselves. There were a few nice red ones and the rest were green. I set about picking these and chutney seems to be on the cards.

What with the weeding and the sunshine we got very thirsty but we had forgotten to bring along a bottle of water. Then it occurred to me the perfect solution! Pick an orange fresh off the tree. Oranges straight from the tree are delicious. Just the job....

I had a quick look at Judes (cariadincrete) garden and there standing like soldiers were her leeks.
Whatever you do don't tell her that I pinched 3!