Chillies and cushion covers . . . . and weeds!

Well, we had a curry with our homemade chillies - whew . . . . hot, hot, hot.  I was on the phone when Bob cut them up and tried eating a piece raw!  Oh, it did make me laugh as he leapt around the kitchen with his tongue hanging out!  Is a huge gulp of wine the best way to cool down or would milk would have been more sensible - he opted for wine!  Anyway, the curry was very tasty.  The next two chillies are half red now, so I expect we'll have another curry at the weekend.  Talking of which, next weekend is my first one of my new contract at work which menas I have every other weekend off.  Wooo-hooo - whole weekends!  Try as we might, we haven't been able to treat my Tuesday/Wednesday off as a weekend and do proper weekend things, so it will be good to have occasional proper weekends.  We might actually get round to going for walks and exploring the area a bit.

We have now had all our scheduled visitors for a while finishing with Bob's sister and her chap last Sunday.  They stayed until Monday and we had a lovely time because the weather was just lovely - almost too hot for a beer on the beer bench!  Then Jan, Bob's stepmum, came later on the Monday and stayed over. 

So, while the visitors were here, the garden took off and everything has grown in double-quick time.  The nettles have gone from tiny things to a 3' tall mass ready to seed in just about three weeks!  As well as the weeds, the wanted plants have also shot up as though they are making up for lost time.

So, here is our weed garden!  Oh my, its quite daunting.
This year though we've given in and bought a big bottle of
Roundup.  The other evening I sprayed all of this and now we
have to wait a few weeks to see if it has any effect and in the
meantime resist the urge to pull anything up.

Both little apple trees have loads of blossom which is just
lovely.  Apparently a good apple crop is predicted this year
as all the apple trees are blossoming at once instead of weeks
apart so they should cross-pollinate well.  The plums and damsons
don't look so prolific which is a shame.

We have moved on to the next stage of our life here and have
made our first raised bed.  It is the first of a series of three down
this slope.  To start with we'll just put rabbit wire round this one
but eventually we'll fence round the whole area and have it as a
business like vegetable garden.  We have leeks growing in pots
which will be the first inhabitants of this bed when they are big enough.

This is a Grizzled Skipper in our garden - quite a rare butterfly and one of the rare
species found in the quarry.  We have never seen one before as we
weren't too sure what they look like, but it is very distinctive because
it is really, really tiny. 

Bob's workshop is now connected and he has running water! 
there is also an outside tap on the workshop which will be
handy for the veggies. 

and here it is tiled.  It did look far too posh for a workshop
when I'd just done it (we just happened to have enough tiles
left from the utility room to do this).  It does look better now
Bob has messed it up with junk!

And finally here are the cushions.  Bob's sister manages
a home interiors and gifts shop in a posh little town in Rutland
and she said she could easily sell the knitted cushion in her shop.
Very 'on trend' is what she said!  Don't think I'm a quick enough
knitter to make much of a profit though!!