Category: gardening
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Autumn and Apples, Barbecue and Baking
October. Apples. Cinnamon. Bonfires. Pumpkin Spice Lattes. Barbecues. Wait, wait? ABBQ (the extra A is for Autumnal…) Yes, I have gone a little mad. And yes, I have embraced the “all year” kamado cooking philosophy. I bought a pork shoulder and some beef brisket to smoke in my ongoing exploration of all things kamado. I…
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Le Weekend
A quick weekend update. Game update to follow. Cheers We have had two dodgy batches of easy peeler oranges from Tesco in recent days. They look and feel perfectly fine until peeled, then they rear their sorry-looking, dehydrated segments. Compost, then? Nope. When life gives you crappy oranges, juice them. Today they have gone into…
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Just Keep Digging (and Mixing)
Or should that be shovelling? We left off last time with a hole in the garden. It was a deliberately shaped hole, but a hole nevertheless. Almost a tonne of topsoil. And what do you do with a hole in the garden? Fill it in, of course. The first step was a layer of sand…
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Grass, Gardens, and Great Heights
The rain continues, but it has failed to (completely) dampen our spirits The deluge continues. The rain has been non-stop since the end of August. Well, that’s not entirely true. It has been start-stop. Showers followed by sunny intervals, but often of unpredictable lengths. It has made outdoor activities next to impossible to plan. There’s…
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The Arts (Cinema, Theatre, Gardening, Cars…)
Hamilton Fever No, it’s not typhoid. It’s time for another dose, or rather a double dose, of the Alexander Hamilton story. Given it’s massive profile, it’s hard to imagine not having heard of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s global musical phenomenon. Its profile was given a substantial boost by the release of the Broadway recording on Disney+ in…
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Reaching New Heights (Climbing that Ladder?)
A few short weeks ago I was looking out at a rain-drenched hodge-podge. Things have changed a tad. It has been weeks in the making and there’s still some landscaping work to do on the patio, but the frame is finally ready to use. The woodchips are laid to a depth of about 20cm providing…
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Garden Clearing and Good Food
The weather has been…interesting, as of late. Getting stuff done outside has been a challenge but thankfully the weekend brought sunshine. The latest project involves building a big play area which will replace most of the old patio. If you remember from last year, I lifted a lot of the slabs to build the base…
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Gardening and Virtual Reality
This year I end up doing so much outside that I barely leave myself any time to write about it. I’m going to cover everything from the great outdoors to the confines of a headset… Gardening One job that has been on the cards since shed clearing last year was manhole cover replacement. The old…
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Sun, Bagels, and Soil
Plymouth has had some stunning weather recently, almost making up for the wet week in Barcelona. That means plenty of time to get the garden organised. No Knead Bagels (Again!) I’ve cracked the no-knead bagel approach which is fairly hands off, adapting a recipe from Sally’s Baking Addiction. The only slightly fiddly bit is the…
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A Tight Shed-ule
One week to do a lot of groundwork, and still continue to attend my actual job… Once the trench was dug out and level(ish), I compacted the soil with the plate compactor before starting the single biggest job. Shovelling four tonnes of subbase was quite the back breaking affair. I had to change tack slightly…
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