Now it's useful

From an eyesore at the bottom of the garden

To very useful edging for  new raspberry and strawberry beds - just need to add compost and more soil on the deeper strawberry bed and by happy (but expensive) chance we've got to have a new concrete hard standing for a new oil tank so there will be some dirt dug out and it can be put here.

Also enough for edging for the bed we re-claimed from grass. The long rails were exactly the right length to cut to make the four sides, how handy was that!

Much better than cutting it up for firewood!

Day 4 of painting the living room and I was shuffling round the floor on my bum doing the skirting board of the walls so far painted. I needed to get this done so as to move the dresser base back to where it was so that I can do the wall where we moved it to.............if you follow! Two more bits of walls were sanded down, washed down and holes filled. I do hope you're enjoying this daily update of my painting achievements!!

A few weeks ago I wrote about the flying ants in the kitchen, well I've been hoovering up ants every few days since. There's no way to find the nest as it must be somewhere under the floor or in the brickwork of the old chimney behind the range cooker. I was thinking ........this is going to be annoying every summer but then at Wimbledon yesterday there were plagues of flying ants everywhere, something that hadn't been noted there before and they said it was "Flying Ant Day" when the queen leaves the nest. Our ants the other week were a bit early but hopefully this means it's a really bad year (or good if you are an ant!) and hopefully we shouldn't see many more.


Back Again ASAP
Sue

Surprise...........A Useful Cookery Book

Looking through my window sill full of cookery books, I don't think any have been bought new. There is just no way my common sense can justify the cost of huge celebrity cookbooks at £20+ a time and even smaller books frequently cost more than a weeks food for one person.

My cookery books - even the big HFW ones- come from charity shops and car boot sales and a couple secondhand off Amazon but most of the recipes that I use all the time have come from library books and free supermarket magazines. Photocopied and put into my own folder on the left they cost me virtually nothing to add to my collection. I've borrowed several cookery books over the last few months from the library and returned them without even copying out one recipe.

So when I say Surprise............A Useful Cookery Book, of course it's a library book and of course I'm not going to buy it! and I've photocopied 12 recipes to file so far and may do more before the book goes back. That's why I call it a useful book.

This is the book I borrowed and it uses just the food you can buy in the discount supermarkets.



The author says that the way to make the most of Aldi, Lidl and the like is to change your recipes to fit the ingredients and that way you won't have to go elsewhere.

I made Cashew Chicken Stir Fry but as I wasn't going shopping (discount supermarket or otherwise) I used what was already here.

I took out a couple of ounces of cashews from a bag of mixed nuts, defrosted 2 frozen chicken breast fillets, chopped part of a green cabbage (tough stalks removed)instead of spring greens, no garlic, half an onion instead of spring onions, a small teaspoon of ginger powder instead of fresh ginger and half a red pepper and a pinch of chili powder instead of two red chilies.
Then we added cooked noodles and a sachet of spring onion and oyster sauce ( Aldi).
So actually I didn't follow the recipe much at all!
But it was delicious and a little different to our usual stir fries.


Yesterday was day 3 of living room painting, I'm getting round slowly. Two thirds of the ceiling and coving done in brilliant white silk and just under half the walls. It's the only way to do it and still live in it. Professional painters would have heart failure! I've got used to the Lemon Tropics so that's OK.
Col finished fitting the new loo, it uses much less water which was one reason for replacing but it also had a hairline crack and the seat was horribly stained underneath - I'm glad to see it gone.

We had our first runner beans yesterday but there don't seem to be many more coming due to pollen beetle pinching the pollen so the flowers don't set, same with the courgettes and aubergine flowers. Very annoying.

Back Shortly
Sue

We Have Orchids

Mid June we spotted these pretty little purple/pink flowers down in the long grass of the meadow. They are pinker than the photo shows and I've made it a bit blurry too - hopeless photographer!

 We've only cut the footpath bit and left the rest to see what came up. This is where we'll be planting trees in the Autumn.

 We looked on line and found THIS PAGE   with all the native British Orchids and I guess ours is the Pyramidal Orchid. Quite common throughout Britain but still a treat to see here.

Yesterday was Day 2 of sanding down, filling and painting while watching Wimbledon. The living room is big so I'm having to do it in bits. I've gone for a bright yellow silk finish .........perhaps a tad too bright? I'm not sure about it but anything has to be better than the very dirty, dark, matt finish yellow that sapped all the light out of the room. Colin has started replacing the downstairs loo which sounds straightforward but wasn't due to age of old loo, amount of concrete used and the way the drains go, which is why he didn't get it finished in one day.
 The garage roof is getting sorted by two young blokes who are doing it between their proper work which, at the moment, is restoring an old bungalow about a mile away. Two other young guys came and put up scaffolding and had a huge industrial radio playing and of course the first thing the builder blokes took up to the roof was a similar giant music machine. When I eventually get builders to make an en-suite in the corner of the bedroom I think the first thing I'll ask is "do you play loud music?" If they say yes I'll find someone else!
Yesterday we  exchanged our huge ride on mower which we bought off Mrs F, for something a bit smaller that I can use. The big one was complicated too and I need something simple.
We are trying to get as many jobs finished as we can because when Col goes into Addenbrookes hospital for the donor stem-cell replacement ( now probably mid to late August/early September) he will be there for up to 6 weeks and we don't know how he'll be afterwards.

Thanks for your comments on the last few posts.

Back Soon
Sue