Greenhouse complete

We've been able to make sporadic progress on the greenhouse during November and today the final gaps in the structure, the sliding doors at one end, were finished. Not bad, considering it's nearly December. Here's a view through those doors of the inside, with Child #2 at the other end for scale. He's six foot three.*



The fears I expressed back in July have proved to be groundless - we have managed to get the structure up without the involvement of divorce lawyers (although my breezy estimate of 'a month or two' looks a little optimistic with hindsight). In fact the whole process has filled me with admiration for my husband's determination to see the project through. If it had been down to me alone I would have given up long ago, but Mike's refusal to be beaten (some might say his bloody-mindedness (I wouldn't say that - obviously)) has brought about this fine result. He calls it a 'giant Meccano set', but I don't remember Meccano involving working at heights with heavy drills in icy winds.

My role in the construction has mostly been of the magician's assistant variety. Without the glamorous hair-do and over-the-top make-up. Or the sequinned outfits, for that matter. Now I've just got to decide how we're going to make the best use of this space. To put it into context, I should explain that this is only the second greenhouse I've ever owned. Here's the first:


So basically I'm a complete and utter novice with a huge space to make use of. At the moment I'm contemplating putting a series of raised beds down one side of the house, with staging on the other. I'm not planning to heat the greenhouse (for the time being, anyway), so will mainly be using it to extend the growing season and as a place to start off seeds like onions and peas that don't mind the cold but don't like the wet. But, like I say, I'm a novice, so if anyone has any sage words for me, I'll be glad to hear them.

*This is not strictly true.

What? And why?

My self-imposed task today is to sort out our utility/mud room which has become a repository for all kinds of junk. Some of it (most of it) is our junk, but in my clearing-up I've also found previous-owner junk. This object is one such item. It's a small coat-hanger style hook, about five inches wide. I think it's supposed to be in the shape of a cow, but that is guesswork based on the fact that this used to be a beef-cattle farm.


What would/should this be used for? Clearly, someone put a fair amount of work into making it, which makes me feel bad about throwing it away, but I really can't think what else to do with it. Answers in the comments, please: and if anyone would actually like to own this object, please shout!

Ice wrappings

Very cold and clear this morning. One good thing about the shorter days is that you get to see the dawn more often than you do in the summer.


Usually, Mike takes the dog for his early-morning walk, but I volunteered to do it today, as I thought there might be some good photographic opportunities. The stream running down from the pond had frozen over:



There were small crystals of ice everywhere.


You had to be dressed for the -11°C temperatures though. Here's my Self-portrait with balaclava.

Electric blankets

The first snow of the winter fell overnight - just a centimetre or two. By 9.30am the solar panels were almost clear of it.

In front of the barn the young shoots of the garlic that I planted in mid-October are still visible. There's a blanket of hay underneath the blanket of snow, so they're pretty well insulated under there. I always used to plant garlic in the autumn in England, but have read conflicting advice here about whether it's best to do it in autumn or spring, so this is a bit of an experiment.

First sprinkling

Back home and it is cold. Not above 0°C yet and it's lunchtime. Any standing water has a thin film of ice over it. This morning we've had a few flurries of snow: enough to coat the pond with white.


The geothermal system is keeping the house a lot warmer than it was last year, although we're keeping it set at a fairly low temperature and are using the wood-burning stoves as our main source of heat. It really feels luxurious (and rather decadent) not to have to get out of bed into a cold house.

Where in the world...

...am I tonight?

Well, here's a visual clue:


You may already be guessing that I'm not in rural Ontario.

I'm on another of my intermittent city jaunts and, as usual, am mostly taking pictures of plant life. At home all the leaves have left the trees (and it even snowed a bit this morning), but here there are still some leaves attached to branches, although there are plenty more blowing about in a blustery breeze and coating the ground of the big park in the centre of the city:


This next view of this park probably gives my location away:


Yes, it's Central Park. Which somehow is a lot more rugged and wild-looking than I was expecting it to be. I've never been to New York before, but you see the city so often as a backdrop to films and news reports that it is instantly familiar. I'm trying to be cool about being here, but there's a small part of my brain that keeps jumping up and down excitedly and shouting out "I'm in New York, I'm in NEW YORK!".

It really is a fleeting visit - I'll be going back tomorrow - so I won't have time to do the proper touristy things. I did go past the American Museum of Natural History this afternoon, so here's a picture of one of the two festive dinosaurs outside it, for my son, who was very jealous that I'd be near the set of Night at the Museum.

Although, to be honest, I wasn't at all sure about the fact that the dinosaurs were holding a wreath each. It didn't seem like a likely activity for a pair of, well what are they, iguanodons? I suppose they were herbivores, but still...

Almond and raspberry tart

November is a famously depressing month (even without monster headaches), so comfort food is an essential, rather than a luxury. I made this tart on Sunday and it didn't last beyond that evening, but I'd left my camera cable at work so couldn't post the pictures until now.


This is really Nigella Lawson's 'Bakewell Tart with Raspberries' from her book How to Eat, but simplified (and it was already pretty easy to start with).

Ingredients

Shortcrust pastry

I use 250g flour and 125g butter, whizz it in the food processor and then add enough water to bind it into a big lump. To make this even easier you could use bought pastry or a bought pie crust, but the food processor version is so quick, it hardly seems any extra bother.

Filling

Raspberries
3 eggs
125g/4oz/1 cup ground almonds
125g/4oz/½ cup butter
125g/4oz/⅔ cup sugar

Put the pastry in the fridge while you make the filling. Melt the butter and take it off the heat. Beat the sugar into the eggs and then stir in the butter and almonds. Roll the pastry out and line a 10-inch/26cm dish with it. Prick the pastry with a fork. Scatter raspberries (as many as you have/like) over the base of the dish. I only had frozen ones, but fresh is fine too. If you don't have raspberries then a layer of jam over the base makes a more traditional Bakewell Tart.


Then pour in the almond mixture. It doesn't matter if some of the raspberries are poking through.


Cook it for 45 minutes at 200°C/400°F. Then it will look something like the picture at the top of this post.

Nigella says that "this is the sort of pudding people who say 'I don't eat puddings' have second helpings of." I don't think I know any people like that (not sure I'd be able to relate to such beings), but I almost wish I did, just to test that theory out.

Analysis of a headache

As a kid I always used to get a headache when my mother had served us sausages. I'm sure she didn't believe me and thought I was trying to get out of eating sausages, but it did happen. I've had occasional really bad headaches as an adult - maybe seven or eight a year, but I've never associated them with a particular cause.

Until yesterday, when the penny finally dropped. A headache slowly came on during the afternoon and I had no painkillers with me, so had to wait until I got home at 6.00pm. By which time the headache was a full-blown migraine and it was too late for the recommended dosage of ibuprofen to have an effect. I spent the evening in bed feeling utterly wretched, finally accepting that this was a migraine rather than a bad headache and trying to work out WHY it was happening.

Parmesan. I'd had rice with mushrooms and parmesan for lunch. Could it be parmesan that was causing this? So this morning, with a slightly tender skull but otherwise recovered, I researched 'parmesan headaches' and ended up discovering that yes, parmesan can be a trigger, but also (thanks to this brilliant article) that in women our menstrual cycles are a major contributory cause of migraines. When oestrogen levels are low (at menstruation and ovulation), migraines are more likely to happen.

So I feel greatly relieved at finally understanding these migraines and knowing that there are ways to avoid triggering them. The article also had some hope to offer: "Many women will experience an improvement in their migraine after menopause." So that's something to look forward to, then!

Image Migraine #2 by Arty Smokes on Flickr.

Joyeux Noël

No, I'm not getting all previous and becoming overly festive (although there are folks around here with their trees up already). Instead I'm referring to the 2005 film of this name which arrived in the post from our DVD rental company the other day.

Remembrance Day seemed to be the perfect day to watch this movie, which is based on real events surrounding the truces in the trenches at Christmas in 1914. It might be a bit sentimental for some tastes and probably wasn't anywhere near realistic in terms of the conditions in which the men were existing, but there was a message of hope, fellowship and mutual disrespect for authority which pleased me.

Marketing and the male mind

My crop of Winter Luxury Pie Pumpkins is all safely tucked away in the basement now, but I have run into an unanticipated problem with actually using them. Child #2 (aged 9) has decided that he hates pumpkin. He won't touch pumpkin soup and refused to even try the pumpkin pie I made for Thanksgiving (which, with the right kind of pumpkin, was a vast improvement on last year's, by the way). So I have started researching other ways of using them up.

Yesterday's attempt was pumpkin bread. But such is his aversion, that I cunningly informed the children that the dish was known as 'Autumn Loaf'. We all tucked into the bread and everyone agreed that it tasted fine. Child #2 happened to be sitting next to the recipe print-out and I (stupidly) pointed it out to him before offering another slice of the loaf.

"No, I don't like pumpkin."
"But you liked the first slice."
"I'm not eating it - it's got pumpkin in it."

And that was it, he utterly refused to eat it any more, despite our remonstrances.

I wanted to give both the children a slice of the bread for their packed lunches this morning. The conversation with Child #2 went like this.

"You liked that Autumn Loaf I made yesterday didn't you?"
"Yes."
"Would you like a slice of it in your packed lunch?"
"Yes, please. It isn't pumpkin bread?"
"No, just full of crushed up autumn leaves. Is that OK?"
"Yes, that's fine."

And I got a big hug in return for my blatant lie.

D'you think he's going to have big therapy bills in the future?

Winter coats

The asters and goldenrod flowers are now sporting their woolly winter outfits, forming a browny-greyish swathe where only a few weeks ago they made a splash of colour.

Now:


22 September:

A succession of workmen inside the house (first attending to the kitchen, then re-wiring everywhere) has limited our outdoor activities to weekends, with the result that work on the greenhouse construction has effectively stalled since September. On Sunday we managed to get back to it. We spread out the polythene layers that will cover the structure and started to pull the first of them over the frame. It wasn't particularly windy, but even the relatively light airs that arose were enough to lift the sheet up like a sail, which was a bit alarming. So we gave up and waited for a still day.

I kept an eye on the wind-speed during Monday and noticed that it started to drop at about 3pm. We tried again and this time the sheet went over without trying to take itself and us off into the skies. The second sheet went over even more easily than the first and then we managed to secure them at the ends and fix down the sides to the wooden battens.


There's still quite a lot to do - the ends, for instance - but it is beginning to feel like a structure now, rather than an interesting piece of garden sculpture.

Chinese Hallowe'en treats (again)

It turned out that Child #1 got the wrong end of the (broom)stick last week and that the Chinese treats should have been made for Hallowe'en itself, not for last Friday's school Hallowe'en party. So could I please make something Chinese for this Friday too, please. One for each member of the class (30 children and two teachers), please.

Several deep breaths, countings to ten and further internet research later, I came up with another recipe: this time for Chinese sesame cookies. I harbour doubts about the authenticity of this recipe and as the school is 'nut free' I had to leave out the almond extract, thereby rendering it even less authentic. I also had to do some additional research to check that sesame seeds don't count as nuts. Apparently people can be allergic to them, but they're not in the same class of foods. Though whether the school will know that, is another matter. I suspect I'll be receiving another parental black mark tomorrow.

So all-in-all I think I can be forgiven for feeling a little jaundiced about All Hallows Eve this year. But just to show willing I did carve one of my home-grown pumpkins this afternoon (my sole concession to Hallowe'en decorating). As (unlike others) my blog is woefully short on adorable little kitties, I thought I'd better make amends.

Compost comme de l'art

This installation took me seven hours today. I'm thinking of selling it: I'm sure I put just as much thought and effort into it as many more conventional artists put into their work.

I recycled the posts and wire that the cucumbers had been grown on for two of the three sides, then filled the structure by clearing up the remains of the squashes, tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, corn and beans.

We needed to work on the drainage of the lower vegetable garden, after this July's tomato disaster, where the entire area became waterlogged. I realise that I've never really explained what is where in the garden/barnyard, so here is a not-to-scale diagram to record the current layout. There is a gentle slope from north to south.


Today, Mike dug a trench along the southern end of the upper vegetable garden and connected it by porous piping to the trench that he dug in the spring to the east of the lower vegetable garden. We're hoping this will divert some of the excess water away from the eight vegetable beds that are periodically drowned.


I also dug some sand into the tomato bed (the only one of the eight lower beds that's empty at the moment) to bulk it up a bit and improve the drainage. This was suggested by one of the solar panel guys (who happens to be an organic farmer), but I also took heart from reading Kate's article about using sand, even though the soil here is not clayey like hers (and the comment about sand plus limestone making concrete did give me pause, but what the hell). A big heap of fine sand was left over from the pipeline-laying that the solar panel work needed. It's been well watered by the dog, but I'm guessing that dog urine is probably good for the garden too. Sorry, was that too much information?

Leaf mould and Dan Tat

The leaves are falling so fast from the ash trees that it looks like a snowstorm. I really need to get out there and start raking them up. The leaves I put into the leaf store I made last year decomposed beautifully and have now been put around the asparagus plants as a mulch, freeing up the container for this year's supply.

First, however, I had to make Hallowe'en treats for the school bash tomorrow. This task has been complicated by the need to make the treats relevant to my daughter's recent project on Canada's trading partners (exciting, eh?). Her chosen (or allocated, not sure which) country was China, so we spent some time the other night doing internet research to try and work out whether there was a Chinese treat that we could easily make and that would keep for 24 hours.

To my surprise, it turns out that egg tarts ('custard tarts' in Britain) have become a traditional Chinese treat. In Chinese they are known as Dan Tat (蛋撻). I found a straight-forward-looking recipe and got baking. They are usually served hot, but I hope the children at the kids' school won't be aware of that!

Rather too much Marmite

Well I suppose it serves me right for my earlier post, but this is how my 500g jar of Marmite looked when it got to me yesterday from England (exactly as predicted by Lucy). The mess was confined to one Tesco bag, so the exploding container didn't cause too much collateral damage. I found my husband trying to salvage the remains by spooning them into a jam jar, but I decided that I didn't love Marmite enough to want to risk eating small shards of glass, so it has all been thrown away now. Looking on the bright side, he also brought me back two festive containers of Twiglets (which I have never seen for sale here), so all is not lost.

Flash mob

The collective noun for starlings is either a murmuration, a chatter or a scourge, according to one online source. None of these quite capture the complete racket that this bunch made when they descended on our front lawn this morning. It was deafening. I'm not sure what they were finding to eat out there, but I hope it was a lawn pest.

Tunnel of gold

New England seems to have taken possession of the "see our lovely leaves" travel market. I've heard a number of British people express a desire to see New England in the Fall - some of whom, I'm fairly sure, have only a vague idea of where New England actually is. Well, if it's gorgeous autumn colours you're after, then you can spread your travel net a bit wider than just the northeast corner of the USA. It's been a spectacular autumn across eastern Canada too.

I took the picture on my drive home from Deseronto this afternoon. I wasn't actually driving at the time, I feel I should point out. I stopped the car and hopped out to take the picture. I'm just trying to imagine doing that on a drive home along the A56 to Sale from my old work in Manchester. Not that there was anything particularly attractive to photograph on that route. But I would have been lynched by the other drivers if I'd tried, that's for sure.

This is one of our neighbour's maple trees. Glorious.

Marmite and murder

The toast was ready, the butter spread upon it. All I needed was that salty, savoury Marmite kick to start my day off to perfection. But the measly 125g Marmite jar (the biggest you can get in Canada) was not in its usual place. A frantic, fruitless search of all the food cupboards ensued, but no luck. I had to resort to marmalade instead. On toast which had become cold. There's nothing wrong with marmalade, of course, but when your taste buds are primed to expect Marmite, it just doesn't cut the mustard (and I see that even Paddington Bear has been converted to this point of view).

The suspect in the Mystery of the Missing Marmite was sitting in the kitchen watching my increasingly irritated search. My mother-in-law. A lovely woman, with a helpful habit of putting things away. Often in unexpected places. She maintained a steady silence throughout my traumatic breakfast and I was fairly sure that she had secreted the sticky brown substance somewhere. Interrogation was pointless, as by now she had no recollection of ever having touched it, but it was a dangerous five minutes. If I could only have found where she'd put the sharp knives, she might have been in mortal danger.

I later found the missing jar in the fridge. My mother-in-law is now on her way back to England. Well, not because of the Marmite incident, but perhaps it was fortunate timing. She is with her son, who will soon be returning with an ENORMOUS jar of Marmite for me. Which will be hard to miss, wherever it gets hidden.

Smiling skies

This interesting upside-down rainbow was produced by the late-afternoon sun shining on some high clouds directly over our house. Not something I've ever seen before. I took it as a sign of approval for my morning's activity of helping my daughter tidy up her bedroom. This was a two to three hour task which took all of my archival organisation skills (and a LOT of patience) to complete. Her worldly possessions are now sorted and neatly stacked in boxes or lined up on shelves. For the record, the categories of a 10 year old girl's goods are these:

• Barbie
• Books
• Boxed games
• Hard toys ('miscellaneous', really)
• Littlest Pet Shop/Polly Pockets
• Soft toys and baby doll paraphenalia
• Tat (possibly the largest category: this ended up in a garbage bag)

Her floor is now visible, though how long this state of affairs will last, I do not know.

I was rewarded with a lovely sunset last night, too.

Mystery object revealed

We moved our woodburning stove as part of the kitchen renovations. Here is how it looked on the first day we saw the house (April 07):


The cupboard to the right of the stove has been removed and the stove is now in its place. It seems that nothing about the original location of the stove was 'to code'. It didn't have enough non-combustible material in front of it, it was too close to the ceiling and the door and (worst of all) the chimney was for an oil furnace, not a wood stove. All those things are now fixed and the stove has a shiny new chimney, which now goes straight up instead of in the dog-leg that was required by its previous position.


The photo I shared on Wednesday was a view of the sky as seen through the new flue, before the stove and the lower part of the chimney were attached. I figured it would be my only chance to take that picture! I think 'the ms. s' was the closest, in that she guessed that I was looking up when I took it.

Hutterite Soup Beans

We had a slight frost on Tuesday morning which was enough to put paid to the squashes, beans and potatoes, so I pulled up the Hutterite Soup Bean plants and we spent half an hour this morning picking off the beans and shelling them.

Earlier in the week I made I made a vegetable soup with some of these beans, together with some carrots, potatoes, tomato pulp, kale and my first leek. They were very good and I'll definitely grow them again next year, although I will put in more plants as I don't have a huge number of beans from just the one row. I hadn't really thought about it, but you do need more plants for dried beans than you do with the beans you pick and use as pods, simply because the plants stop producing new beans if you're not picking them. I'll also give them something to climb up, as they ended up in quite a tangle on the ground, even though they were supposed to be bush beans. They'll be easier to pick that way, too.

Photo quiz

I have a mystery object for you today. What is depicted in this photograph?

Like a cat that's got the...

Yes, cream! Real DOUBLE cream! From Canadian cows!!

Sorry for the flurry of exclamation marks, but this is a milestone moment for me. I've spent a lot of time grumbling to anyone who'll listen about the quality of dairy products here (and cream in particular). I've even had to resort to making my own double cream using ancient family heirlooms, for heaven's sake. So my delight at seeing tubs of double cream (containing just cream!) in the Smiley's supermarket at Trenton was untrammelled even by the strong suspicion that this was probably a Thanksgiving-only sighting.

I had a stroke of unexpected and undeserved good luck in the garden today, too. The broad (fava) beans that I sowed ridiculously late have somehow survived the heat of the summer and now that the weather is cooler are producing delicious beans in respectable quantities.

Oh, and my kitchen was finally finished yesterday. It's fabulous and I can't believe it's actually mine - it really does feel as though I'm cooking in someone else's.

One's bittern, always shy

Look, I know it's a completely rubbish photograph that could be portraying absolutely any large brown bird with long yellow legs, but you'll have to take my word for it that it's an American bittern. We've been seeing this bird around the pond all summer but it flies off as soon as we approach, making it difficult to identify (for novice bird-watchers like us, anyway). This is the best picture I've been able to get and it was only today that I finally worked out what the bird is. My Birds of Ontario book says that it is "uncommon or even rare to actually see one", so I'm particularly thrilled to have finally identified it and taken this photo today, even if it is rubbish.