Going potty

Hello. How are you? I’ve had a mixed bag sort of a day, overall quite good. It’s been a lot about pots this morning.

My pots ordered from eBay had not been sent as their scanning had failed or something, so I have got a refund for those. I had the day off work so this morning I braved a walk to the local garden centre to buy pots there. It felt a little strange to be out without David after so long walking together all the time. The shopping experience felt even stranger, as I haven’t been in a shop at all for many weeks. I wore a mask but only a couple of other people did. I thought it was busy but I overheard another customer saying how quiet she thought it was, there being no queue to get in. Anyway, they had sold out of plastic plant pots and only had pot trays and coir pots left, so that was a bit of a disaster. I doubled back outside, ignoring the direction of the arrows on the floor, and the other people, and selected a couple of red geraniums in reasonable size pots. I have now planted up the geraniums and you can see them in the big blue pot above. I love geraniums and we don’t have any in the hanging baskets this year, so they’re a welcome addition to our little piece of England. The pots they came in are now fixed up to my veg patch wall and one contains spinach and the other a tomato plant. I found a third pot in the shed and put some lettuce in this one. I have realised Ocado sell pots too so I have plenty more on order now to hopefully arrive on Saturday. This is how the project looks so far.

This is all a bit of an experiment and I think if it rained heavily all the compost would slosh out of the pots at an angle, but they are OK for the time being. I’d like to cover the whole wall, if I can without it getting too heavy. I think it would look really good.

After a ready-made chicken and gravy pie for lunch in the garden, we thought we’d go and see Windsor Great Park and if not too busy to go for a walk there. I figured that Thursday would be a better option than the weekend. How wrong could I be? It was absolutely heaving with people and cars backed up everywhere. So we were disappointed but didn’t feel like taking our chances with the parking frenzy and the masses of other people, children, bicycles and dogs, and we came back home to do one of our usual walks around the estate. That means there is absolutely no point in trying to go anywhere else at the weekend. Dorney Lake, home of the Olympic rowing, is apparently overrun with antisocial travellers from out of town causing a lot of mayhem and issues for local residents, so we are also avoiding that area at the moment. Thank goodness we have the garden, out little sanctuary. This morning amongst all the people at the garden centre I couldn’t wait to get back home for coffee in my garden. Maybe I’ve become a bit agoraphobic in lockdown. I expect I’ll get used to going out again, with a bit of practice. I guess I’ll have to!

When we got home from our walk I felt a bit at a loose end so I made some damson jam tarts. Here are some of them.

They weren’t quite ready in time for tea, but I’ll probably have one for pudding tonight and then take a couple to work tomorrow to snack on at elevenses. A creature of habit, I usually have a cup of tea and snack around 11.00 am in the office, depending on work commitments, phone calls etc.

For dinner tonight it’s back to the Mary Berry book for her spaghetti bolognese. I haven’t made this before and would usually just make up my own recipe in a frying pan on the hob. Her recipe starts off on the hob but then goes into the oven for over an hour. Interesting to see what it’s like. I had to improvise a bit as it was supposed to contain chicken livers but Ocado were out of stock and I used red wine instead of port. It smells very good with the red wine cooking in the oven.

On the Italian theme, I keep meaning to tell you about this little self gift I got from Amazon for £10.95 just over a week ago. It arrived flat packed and you make up the cardboard stand and the little pots yourself, adding water to the coir. It’s exciting to see little shoots now in every category. I think this would make a great gift for someone else.

I hope you’re all having a good week? It’s a funny world we all now live in and unlikely to be “normal” again for some time, if ever. Here are some photos from the last few days, taken around our local housing estate. Catch you again Sunday xx