After work wandering…

 I’ve been reading through the blog of a friend of mine recently. A lot of it I’ve read before - but a fair bit of it I haven’t for various reasons, so it’s nice to go back and catch up on her life a bit more. (For those wondering - it’s the lovely “Not Quite a farm” blog). One of the things I utterly adore about her blogging style is that she posts with masses of photos attached from her various adventures - it makes reading through such a treat! Anyway - this inspired me to take some photos on my glorious after work amble today - and let’s be honest, anything that encourages photo taking also encourages us to really look at our surroundings which is a good thing, agreed?!

First thing to catch my eye was these lovely Ox Eye Daisies. I love these - they seem quite content to grow in all sorts of places - alongside railway lines; in great drifts on motorway embankments; and here - on a patch of scrubby land just yards from the busy A12 dual carriageway. 

Next was this Vetch - another tenacious little plant, this grows everywhere in the area I was walking although it’s right at the beginning of its flowering season.

Comfrey is also growing in profusion- a useful plant this as it can be grown as part of a green manure system for veg growing. The leaves can be steeped in water to make Comfrey tea - a nutritious fertiliser (and a stinky one!) or they can be chopped up and dug into beds for future veggie planting. We may well be searching out some leaves later in the year! 

The area I had chosen to walk is Wanstead Flats - an area of parkland/scrubland which is also part of the corporation of London’s Epping Forest. It’s lovely to have it so close to work and a great place for walking or indeed running. It’s finally drying out a bit from our very wet winter and this was the first time I’d braved the mud so far this year. 

Gorgeous, isn’t it! You can see the mix of woodland and more open space - almost heathland I guess as the soil underfoot always feels quite sandy, although with enough London Clay to make it stick to your boots when wet! 

As you walk through the woods every now and again you come across a lovely shady little glade like this - with the trees through here now in full leaf it just felt unbelievably green and lush - and really brought it home that yes, finally, spring is here! 

In case a reminder of the proximity of Central London itself is required, look carefully at the shot above and you will just see the Shard way off on the horizon! 

Finally, after a couple of miles of gentle meandering, I found myself back close to where the car was parked. And as the sun was still shining, I was able to settle down at a bench in a nearby park to write this and then read my book while waiting for MrEH to get back from his working day, so we could head home. 

Not a bad end to a working day! 

Robyn 

Hebrides Countdown...

Well, we've not had one of these for a while, have we? I always used to do them, then stopped because I wasn't blogging regularly while we were actually away any more, and so the countdown felt a bit redundant. then I (mostly) stopped blogging much at all, but now I'm back to trying to blog at least semi regularly again anyway, and blogging with photos, at that, so actually, it felt like a nice thing to resurrect! 

So - we're off again shortly - staying in the gorgeous little Kettle Cottage up on North Uist. We missed out of booking Kettle last year as the timings didn't work for our "usual" slot, and there wasn't availability at another time we could make, so we made sure we were able to book it again for 2024 (and have actually already booked 2025 as well - we're not being caught out again, oh no!) As has been the case for a few years now, we are also stretching the trip out for a bit above a straight fortnight too - booking for a ferry over on the Thursday of our trip, and not returning until the Sunday at the end too - this is something we've managed to do for a few years now, and while no doubt there will come a year when it's not so practical, this isn't that year. (Hurrah!) So our first two nights will be spent in one of the glamping pods at our favourite campsite, and the final night of the trip will be there, too. 

As always, we've made NO definite plans for things to do while we're there - we don't, generally. There are things we undoubtedly will do of course - lots of walks on the headland where the Cottage is located and elsewhere. Lots of wandering about looking at birds of course, and time on various beaches too. Cafe trips, cake eaten, at least one stroll up our favourite little hill with the amazing views - Rueval. We'll probably book a boat trip again, and I will be hoping to get some photos of the beautiful White Tailed Eagles as well - it's always a treat seeing them. Whatever we see, and wherever we go though, just being up there, with no specific plans, and time to just relax, sit and enjoy the views, listen to the silence...those are the things that we go for, after all! 

Robyn

Here we go again...!

The "Suffolk Spitfire"

 The 2024 Airshow season started for me over the weekend with a lovely afternoon at IWM Duxford, and some new-to-me aircraft to photograph. It's always great when show organisers make a real effort to get "different" stuff displaying - and hats off to Duxford, they do a good job here. This was their first "Flying day" of the season - a shorter than full airshow programme with just 2 - 3 hours of flying, but they packed plenty in. Members also get free admission to these which is a nice bonus - and is definitely something which guarantees I will renew my membership each year. 

I was probably most excited about seeing the lovely "Suffolk Spitfire" - pictured above, this beauty is unusually seen in a US Air Force scheme and in usual US fashion flies bearing a name and nose-art - "Porky II" in this case - although she also bears a more normal-for-the-UK designation of RW382 as well. I'd seen her on the ground before but not flying so this was a really nice treat. 

Also out to play was a Hawker Sea Fury that I don't believe I've seen before - indeed I have a feeling this a newly restored to airworthiness aircraft. As you can see we had an utterly glorious day for photographing aircraft - and my combination of mirrorless camera with it's new lens was a real joy to use coping well with all the changes in light that occurred during the afternoon...

Hawker Sea Fury

I like the Fury/Sea Fury - in the UK it "just" has WWII heritage, and indeed it has the distinction of being the final propeller driven fighter to see action with the Royal Navy. Because it was developed during the war years you can really see the influence of other aircraft from outside the Hawker "stable" with the streamlined shape being more reminiscent of a Spitfire than a Hurricane. 

Hawker Nimrod

My records suggest that I'd not photographed the Nimrod before, either - another Naval aircraft, and from an earlier time period as this one predates WWII by quite a few years. Compared with the sleek Fury it's a whole world apart, isn't it! Indeed, this one never quite even made it to the beginning of WWII, being replaced by the Gladiator before the conflict began. 

There were a couple more "new to me" aircraft at the show as well - but I haven't yet got to the photos of those, and will be processing those through the week no doubt, aiming to get them completed ahead of show No 2 next weekend at Shuttleworth. Here's hoping it's another lovely sunny day!

April in the garden…

 I like the idea of a monthly round-up type post to remind myself of what we’ve done in the garden, but have a suspicion that like so many of these things (on here, certainly!) this might end up being a one-off! Shall we see though?

Aquilegia- a clump transplanted from outside the flat.

It’s been the first month we’ve been able to make really solid progress outside since we’ve been in the house - partly due to the weather being too uncertain until this point. Obviously the big news here was our lovely new veg bed being dug out finally - a mammoth task which I have already blogged about. Since completing the work on that at the beginning of the month we’ve been making good progress with getting it planted and it now has a couple more herb plants (bronze fennel, and winter savoury) plus potatoes to add to the bits we put in that first weekend. Just space now for the Rainbow Chard once that’s ready to plant out, and then some companion planting (we’ve got calendula to go in around the place plus some sunflowers and other bee-friendly stuff) and I will probably use the very front for a row of Pak-Choi I think as well. The aim is that it will be a nice mix of practical and pretty. 

Patio rose in salvaged pot…

Good progress has also been made elsewhere with getting more herbs to add to our collection  - a second lot of basil and some coriander have been sown  and a rescued (supermarket) parsley plant plus a second sage - a purple one this time - have been obtained. I’m really keen to maximise the amount of herbs we can grow as I do use a lot in cooking - and would normally regularly buy things like parsley and coriander, so those are a particular focus. 

Pulmonaria - also from the flat.

I’m delighted with the way the few bits we brought with us from the flat have flourished - the aquilegia at the top is without question one of my favourite plants, not least because they self-seed so beautifully, they were all over the place at the flat just from my two original plants. The pulmonaria above has even more of a story to it - it was part of several clumps that were originally in Auntie D’s garden - she gave us some of it for the garden at the flat when we first moved in and it spread nicely until the building works in 2009 when the builders trampled it almost to nothing. We lavished it with love and attention and it sprang back to life, before being weedkillered by the council a couple of summers ago (no, we have no idea why they would weedkiller a clearly well  looked after bit of ground either, but there you go!) thankfully we spotted it fairly swiftly, and although a lot of it was clearly past saving there was one small area which we flooded with water repeatedly for days to try to flush the worst of the nasty stuff away…and it somehow battled back to life. I brought one big clump of it here with us, and split it into two, and both now look as happy as they have ever done and are flowering away cheerfully! 

Pretty “spinner” bought by a lovely pal! 

We’ve continued to do well on gaining more big pots too - our across the road neighbour has given us several that they weren’t using - those have been situated out the front so that we can all enjoy them. Then on one of our many tip visits across the last few weeks MrEH happened to notice a couple of smaller ceramic pots in a sort of sagey green colour. He managed to hoike them out of the big dumpster skip they were in, found them to be intact, and so brought them home to continue their lives - one now has a small but pretty patio rose in it (a budget supermarket bargain at £2.49) and the other ironically enough allowing for its colour has the original sage we bought in it. We’ll continue to keep our eyes open for any possibility of more pots, as we’ll always find somewhere for them to go! 

Ranunculus 

The front too is also doing well - my hydrangea has finally sprung into leaf, and all the gifted pots have now been planted up with another aquilegia, miniature pansies, some lovely bright cheerful Ranunculus, a Fuchsia, and another rose, all of which look to be doing well. I’ve done a liberal scattering of mixed flower seeds out there too and it appears that at least some of those will germinate and help to fill the space. 

All in all I’m pretty pleased with our efforts to date - the front now feels a lot more “us” than the entirely slate-and-slab covered area we started with, while still being practical and easy to look after. The longer term plan for that area will be to let it flourish into very much a cottage-garden type feel with some form of interest all year round, although that of course will take time. The back is well on its way to being the productive space we wanted - indeed it has already started contributing to meals with salad leaves, herbs and spinach. Our to-do list for May is written already - so off we go! 

Robyn

55 Broadway

 

Those who follow my Instagram account will know that over the last few years we have been thoroughly enjoying the London Transport Museum’s “Hidden London” tours - from the incredible history of Down Street, to the big and small screen connections of  Charing Cross - each and every one has been both unique and fascinating. The ”one that got away” however was 55 Broadway - for nearly 90 years the head office of London Transport and its forerunner and successor entities. Foolishly we had assumed that it would be a tour which would always be offered, and so we had put off doing it in favour of the more “directly involved” visits to actual stations - which meant that the announcement that TFL were moving out, and there would be no more tours came as a bit of a blow. Over the past few years I’ve looked on with envy as various social media influencer types have got to visit, all the while thinking that from our perspective, all hope was lost…

Just imagine my joy, if you will, when in the middle of March, we discovered an email saying that a visit had been arranged, if we might be interested…? Needless to say, we wasted NO time in responding,  and later that day had confirmed that we would indeed finally be getting across the hallowed threshold! I should add that I had in fact been into what is now the reception area many times as a small child, when my Nan took me in there to see this rather wonderful thing…

These are the old train interval indicators,  used to enable the frequency of the service to be monitored - until around 1989 these were in an area which just formed part of St James’s Park station and so were publicly accessible. I have to confess this was one of the things I was most excited about seeing - sadly they no longer work, but standing back in front of them I was astonished to realise that in spite of not having seen them for  well over 30 years, I could still hear in my head the distinctive noise of them recording the trains - a sort of “Swish-clunk” sound!  

Having met our guide in reception, we initially went outside to hear some of the history of the building - designed by acclaimed architect Charles Holden - at the time it was built it was the tallest office block in London.  Looked at from above the building forms a cruciform shape,  and from the ground the shape tapers upwards -  with the central tower culminating in a flagpole. It features sculptures on all sides, and various nice features like rainwater hoppers featuring the famous roundel. 

Back inside, and having heard a little more about the various materials used in the interior decoration - all very ornate, perhaps the nearest current tube station equivalent is Piccadilly Circus, we made our way to the upper floors. Unsurprisingly even the staircases are wonderful - with the most beautiful tile detail…

 The staircase then opens onto a lobby area from which the various wings of the building can be accessed, and also toilets, the lifts etc. Other features include  pedestal - probably for a vase of flowers or, as here, a plant - a water fountain and a clock. Indeed, there are clocks everywhere!  

We were ushered along a rather smart walnut panelled corridor to see the executive offices and the boardroom, and finally the Director’s office, which apparently featured the Director’s desk in the diagonally opposite corner to the door one had to enter through, meaning that if you had been summoned to see the great man, you faced an unnerving walk all the way across the office to stand in front of him! My favourite feature of the room was something I spotted as we walked out again…

That also gives you an idea of the beautiful panelled doors! Then, very excitingly, it was back to the stairs - or to be accurate this time, the lift and then more stairs…up to the very top of the building! The final couple of floors are purely functional, with plant rooms and finally a narrow steep metal staircase to reach the “flagpole level” - quite a climb but, oh, how worth it…

There you go - choose a London landmark and you can probably find it there somewhere - from Wembley Stadium to the Houses of Parliament, across to Epping forest in one direction and the Crystal Palace transmitter in the other - the whole city is laid out in front of you - genuinely one of the most breathtaking views I have ever seen. 

We were incredibly lucky to be able to do this - not least as the building’s conversion to a hotel is due to start imminently, our guide said that he had a feeling that we really might have had one of the final opportunities to visit the building “as it is” although as it is Grade 1 listed the changes will need to be done sympathetically. Massive thanks to the London Transport Museum Friends who arranged the access, and to guide Ed, the TfL Heritage advisor and a thoroughly nice chap.

Robyn 

First pickings!

 

Well here we go, just a week after talking you all through our new garden, I have just eaten our first home grown produce of the year! Just a small side salad of cut-and-come-again lettuce, spinach leaves (both grown from seed) and some of the sorrel leaves I mentioned last week too, but there’s always something a bit special about the first time in the year you can go outside and pick an actual component of a meal. When it’s the first time you can do that from your own garden, ever, then even better!

We were down in Devon last weekend - visiting MrEH’s family- and while we were there we had a wander around Totnes. It’s a nice little town anyway, but as we were walking back to the car I saw something I just had to go and take a closer look at…

Yep - that is a planter of strawberry plants, and there were more too - look

Salad - various different leaves and lettuces, some salad herbs like chives, and all inviting people to  make use of them. How wonderful would that be for folk without gardens? And come to that, I just bet it works to encourage some of those who do have gardens to do a bit more with them, too - there would be plenty of people who would think “well how hard can it be?” having sampled a few leaves, enjoyed a tasty strawberry or two, or had a good sniff of some of the tempting herbs as they passed by. 

There you go - that is the full line up of them. Don’t they just look tempting and lush? We had to chuckle though- the white flowered thing in the front planter there is Three Cornered Leek - absolutely the bane of our lives in our teeny tiny little patch of garden at the flat. It’s incredibly invasive - a small patch one year will easily double in size and more year on year, so for the last 20 years, pretty much every year we have pulled up as much of it as we could deal with, only for it to reappear the following year as prolific as ever! The real irony here though was that until a couple of years ago we literally had NO idea that it was also edible! At least we could have got some use from it had we known this sooner! 

I think my favourite planter may well have been the one with a wide assortment of herbs in it -  mainly because I could imagine this being something that might make the biggest difference to the people who pick from it, but also because I absolutely love herbs and can’t imagine my kitchen without them. Fresh herbs just lift food to a new level - while a handful of chopped coriander in a curry, some chives snipped over a bowl of soup, or mint leaves in with peas or buttery new potatoes are just a small thing, they change a quite ordinary food to something far tastier. Indeed, it was no accident that one of the first things I did in the garden here was to start adding to my herb collection, both with bought and sown from seed options.While I might not have a range to compete with the lovely Totnes planters, if all goes to plan fairly shortly I will have Rosemary, mint, sage, parsley, chives, coriander, thyme, sorrel, oregano and basil to choose from. (Lavender too - but that won’t be going anywhere near anything I might want to eat!) My plan is to be able to be self sufficient for herbs at least during the summer and autumn months, and hopefully to be able to preserve a fair amount to keep us going into the winter as well. 

I have seen planters like the Totnes ones elsewhere, but never as well stocked, or appearing to be as well used as these. Perhaps it’s because Totnes is a town where there is less vandalism than in some places, or because it does have quite a “foodie” heritage but regardless, I just love the idea that there are options even for those living in flats with no outdoor space at all to be able to pop by and pick a handful of leaves for a salad, or a quick pesto, or perhaps even a tea! 

Robyn

Where are we at, then?

Well, it’s been a while (again), no? Here we are having been in our glorious new house for SEVEN FREAKING MONTHS - how did that happen? Well anyway, we have, and so here we are at just the right time to start focusing on the garden! 

First up - some scene setting. Our sellers liked being “in” the garden but also liked it being fairly low maintenance, so we inherited some plants (the most fabulous campanula, a large and possessive lavender, some ornamental grasses (bleurgh - not a fan), a very pretty jasmine, some foxgloves, and invading through the fence from next door a winter jasmine (hurrah - as our cuttings brought from our old one which in turn was originally bought in memory of HRH The Cat and Jazzlet-Doglet didn’t survive) and what might be a honeysuckle - we’re still waiting to see on that last.) We also inherited some gaps where some of their favourite plants used to be, and a fair number of quite determined weeds… there is a small lawn, and then quite a lot of patio - far more than two people who enjoy sitting outside, but only need a relatively small area to do so, needed, so a plan was hatched… 

A couple of weekends ago, lovely-Steve-the-Handyman came round with an assortment of tools and a good deal of determination, and cut/prised/bashed away at a roughly 4’ x 12’ area of patio - to create a new vegetable growing bed. It turned out to be a little more challenging than he (and we!) expected - in places the concrete base was over 3 inches thick, and there was more hardcore and rubble than you would even believe underneath it! Eventually though after about 4 hours of his time, one ever so slightly poorly drill, a fair bit of swearing, several chunks of slab and concrete that even he and MrEH between them struggled to move, and a further 5 hours of our time the following day involving a lump hammer and brick bolster, plus 4 tip-runs (and several more still needed) we ended up with a hole in the garden that would shortly swallow what felt like sufficient compost to keep a small garden centre going for months. And THEN, we ended up with this…

And yes, we’ve already started planting in it! In true “EH Style” we’ve gone as frugal as possible - and our planting is designed and planned to provide us with foodstuffs which either we use a lot of, or which are expensive or difficult to buy. In the back right corner is a redcurrant. We had one at the flat, and briefly debated whether we could move it, but had to decide that it wasn’t going to be practical. The new one was acquired from the half price section at our local branch of a large orange DIY chain, and doesn’t seem to have objected to the lengthy delay in planting it’s had to face while we got our act together with the garden! The other large plant in there is, as you can probably spot, a rhubarb - high on our list of “plants we want when we have space”. Along the edge there are a couple of small sorrel plants. - which won’t mind the shade that the rhubarb will undoubtedly (hopefully!) end up casting…

Sorrel…

… and a thyme, which should quite enjoy what might end up being a fairly sunny and liable to be dry spot in that corner, as well as clambering around the edges of the slabs a bit to soften things. The other end has courgettes - three plants, which from past experience is enough to leave us needing to eat a LOT of courgettes AND casting around trying to find folk to give them to. We’ll also be getting some potatoes in there (excellent for breaking up the soil in the bed’s first year) and also probably some rainbow chard - we’ve grown this before and it’s a really good versatile leafy summer veg. I will probably also be adding some more bits here and there round the edges - almost certainly more herbs - I’d like a fennel for the back left corner, and I already have thyme seedlings on the go ready for more edge-softening… the back “might” get raspberries - that one still requires thought. 

Elsewhere in the garden we have also been busy - and busy reusing resources we already have so far as we can. Having removed a big chunk of patio in one place, we’re now increasing it’s size a little elsewhere - a line of reclaimed slabs along the “top” end now have herbs in pots on them…

…and some more are being used at the bottom end to widen the path there and make the area more user-friendly. It won’t be the most aesthetic result, but it will be functional. More reclaimed slabs have been used to line around the edges of the compost bin - we had a bit of an annoying vermin issue there when we first arrived - and the whole and part bricks and blocks we dug out of the new bed have been used to make a rough and ready “wall” across the back of the new bed to avoid any risk of a garden fork skewering the electric cable that runs there. Three gooseberry plantlets carefully dug up from the flat are all settled in and doing well, sadly it’s starting to look like the Bay we also brought with us might not have survived, although we do still have a spare in a pot if needed. 

Lots of sowing of seeds has also been happening - the mini greenhouse (bought for a bargain price in Wilko’s closing down sale - the price was so good we bought a spare one, too!) is full to bursting…

…masses of potted-on tomato plants, sunflowers, a big pot of miniature round carrots, various herbs (parsley, choices, that thyme, coriander, lots of basil) and various other odds and ends. 

In one of the raised beds on the other side of the garden we have a little thicket of Broad beans - SO nice to be able to grow those again as they are one of my favourite veggies! 

Meanwhile a trough of cut-and-come-again salad leaves and spinach is going great guns on the patio table - we’ll be able to start lightly harvesting from that soon, and I will be getting another trough of each sown at some stage too I think. The table is enormous, was left (with our agreement) by our sellers, and is far bigger than we need, so we’ll be using a good bit of it for now for various pots of salad we think - hopefully it might keep them out of the way of slugs and snails and will also make them super-easy to harvest too. 

Still to get sown in a few weeks will be more beans - runners this time, and back to our long standing favourites “Polestar” there. Most of our seeds were bought at the end of the growing season last year for very reduced prices - we’ve always favoured this, and as long as they have enough date left on them to enable them to be sown the following year it can be a good way of making home-grown even more affordable. Once the shops want to clear the space for other goods, they often sell seeds at rock-bottom prices so it’s well worth keeping your eyes open. Other little money-saving ploys in the garden include using the run-off from water for washing up (our boiler is in the loft so it takes an age to run through hot) to fill watering cans - as we are now metered we are paying for it, so I’d sooner it went on the garden than down the drain! 

So there you have it - your whistlestop tour of our little fledgling garden. It’s not huge - just an average sized town garden really, but it’s plenty for us to be getting on with while we get back into the swing of having proper growing space again. Just so you know, this entire post has been written sitting in the garden too which has been rather delightful. From my comfy seat in the corner it’s rather nice to survey the space which is hopefully going to go a good way to feeding  us, as time goes on - and yes, of COURSE I’ve been enjoying a cup of tea, too! 

Robyn.