Sunday, 6 June 2010

Garden magic

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It was glorious in the garden yesterday, hot but cloudy, so I could get lots of planting done.

“Take it easy” is my motto in the garden, plant a couple of plants, then do something else, no stress on the back by staying in one position for too long.

The foxgloves are wonderful, they are self-sown and come back year after year. This is the country garden border I started last year, I think Dad was expecting a 1 metre wide bed, um, more like 4 metres!!! It is full of lovely perennials, biennials and lots of roses and climbers. I have popped in some annuals amongst the permanent plants to give some colour. This is very experimental for me, with the hard winter, I’ve lost some of my perennials, but know that I will collect more plants to fill in those gaps (if I can find a gap).

The roses are fantastic this year, they are wafting their scent on the breeze, you can’t fail to take in a lungful of the fantastic aroma whenever you walk past the border.

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At the back of the bottom picture is a perennial gloxinia, it is a new addition, that’s the trouble when you go to garden centres and then fall in love with plants. Even our daughter has caught the bug and is spending her hard earned cash on plants for her own garden. Over the last couple of weeks, clematis, jasmine and variegated jasmine plus hydrangea’s both shrub and climbing have fallen into her basket at the garden centre. Then the osteospermums’s and chrysanthemum’s, hollyhock, delphinium and night scented phlox. I’ll take photos of her garden and put a special blog on about her exploits.

Time to sort out the greenhouse, there’s an escape committee operating in the bean family, the tomatoes want rehousing and will be contacting the plant welfare officer if I’m not careful, so time to drag another grow bag in and then get the bamboo canes in the garden to start the beans on their skyward climb.

Happy gardening!

Saturday, 5 June 2010

Ready, steady, barbecue

I’m very fortunate to have a husband who loves shopping for food, he has an excellent eye for bargains and knows his way around a store by the reduced bins.

Last night his bargain bag contained, a fresh ray wing and some smoked bass, now normally I’d cook these in the oven, but due to the heat today, out comes the gas barbecue and I’m in a dilemma, what to do with the fish, time to experiment methinks.

Ray wing in barbecue sauce

I made a barbecue sauce (thank you to my old school file).

1 small onion (finely chopped)
2 tablespoons tomato sauce
25g butter
1/2 tablespoon of vinegar
1/2 tablespoon of worcestershire sauce
4 tablespoons of water
salt & pepper

Put all the ingredients in a small pan and simmer for 10 minutes.

On a sheet of foil, put 1/2 the barbecue sauce, then place the ray wing on top, finish with the rest of the sauce and the seal the fish in the foil parcel. Pop on the barbecue for 10 minutes.

Smoked buttered bass

Debone the bass, then place a knob of butter on a piece of foil, then the bass fillet then another knob of butter, seal the foil parcel. Pop on the barbecue for 10 minutes.

The results were brilliant, will definitely cook this way again.