Writing, Gardening and Cooking

Very successful writing session this morning. I wrote a thousand words and solved the problem of how to reveal the heroine's dilemma.

The weather forecast was bad but this morning it was mild and the rain held off. I'm growing first early new potatoes and second early potatoes in large containers. As I added covered them with more compost I remembered an incident with my late husband,  who knew nothing about growing fruit and vegetables.

I was chitting new potatoes i.e. waiting for them to sprout before I planted them. "Strange," I thought, "where are they?" So I asked my husband. He shifted from one foot to the other like a guilty schoolboy. He had cooked them for lunch.

Anyway, today I put my runner beans outside to harden off during the day before I return them to the   greenhouse for the night, re-planted my bay tree and stood the pot on the doorstep, I also planted
out a new hosta and put organic slug pellets around each of my hostas. Next I did some weeding and picked flowers for the house as well as  picking the first broad beans of the season and Swiss chard,
which has cropped since last year in the early summer.

I steamed the baby broad beans in their pods, and when the were ready cut them as I would cut French beans, and I steamed the Swiss Chard. I also cut the stalks into 3 quarter inch pieces, cooked them quickly and served them in a white sauce flavoured with parsley from the garden, salt, pepper and English mustard. Yummy.

Asparagus and New Potatoes

An enjoyable day today. I went through another 50 pages of the galley of The Captain and The Countess, which will be published on the 21st February by MuseItUp Publishing. I then went out shopping for clothes with my daughter.

I didn't find any clothes I liked, but we ended up at Tesco where I bought 6 asparagus plants and some seed potatoes - first early salad potatoes called Charlotte. Last year I grew my first, second an maincrop potatoes in containers and in the ground. The former did best to I shall grow them all in containers this year. I've decided to grow some expensive vegetables this year so the asparagus will be a welcome addition to my vegetarian cuisine, and so will the globe artichokes which are in small pots in the greenhouse waiting to be planted out.

When I returned home the contractor phoned me and we agreed work on my new kitchen will begin on the 18th of February. I am really looking forward to the job being completed by the beginning of March.