monday morning and sunshine

In terms of hope and inspiration, sunshine on a Monday morning is a blessing, especially in the middle of winter and following a spell of grey skies rain and snow. Cold as it is my mind is straying to spring planting and to clearing the garden, to eating outdoors. As always with us some of this will remain a dream for a while yet. Steve has the patio dug up. the yard and the entrance to the garden has piles of rock sat in large large pools of water the rock comes from the old broken and very uneven patio. The water used to run under the gate from the road and gather in muddy pools outside the back door, it now runs though a pipe but as yet the pipe goes nowhere and the water rock mud combination makes venturing into the garden a difficult and dangerous undertaking.

On the other hand the patio is shaping up well, I can´t wait for the first BBQ.

All the little finishing jobs in the downstairs cloakroom have now been done,( hence the start on the patio) and  we are determined to plough on with jobs  that will make us a bit more visitor friendly. time and finance might conspire against more than large project in a year but we have decided that we would feel better  if everywhere looked less like a builders yard, quite how we achieve that is another matter as we don.t want to throw anything away and building materials that will be used eventually have to go somewhere in the meantime.

In the garden

Well actually there is nothing really growing at all. My cut cabbage stalks, where we have already eaten the cabbage, are regrowing so we and the rabbits are eating the resulting green leaves. I have also got purple sprouting broccoli that has already given us a couple of pickings but has slowed down again because of the cold and that´s about it. Next year I am hoping that a bigger greenhouse will give a few more winter veg.

In the Kitchen


We still have salted beans, stored squashes and loads dried stuff so thank goodness we are not without home grown food

I am still finding ways to use the dried food. At the weekend with our curry I did make a raita with dried cucumber and dried mind and it was surprisingly good

It really doesn´t look promising, and that´s one of the problems with home dried goods`but I think that I liked the end product better than with fresh ingredients, It is really simple to make a spoonfuls of chopped dried cucumber half a teaspoon of dried mint salt and pepper and fill up the ramekin with yoghurt. Then you have to leave it in the fridge for an hour for the dry ingredients to rehydrate. the yoghurt thickens up quite a lot as the cucumber soaks up the liquid so I added a little lemon juice at the end. As Steve does not really like yoghurt salads I always have to make small quantities and this makes it easy


Next year I will dry more more cucumber s( assuming that we have a glut again) just to make this dish.

holidays

Holidays are never quite as planned are they. Not only has our mild winter weather turned cold (but beautiful) leaving the garden frost bound all day

Even our abundant nettles have a frosty coat all day

but I have been More or less confined indoors with a painful attack of sciatica unable to move or stay still with any degree of comfort. At least most people have had or know someone who has had sciatica so I am laden down with advice  most of which I cannot act on till the pain has subsided a little more.

Still my limps up and down the garden are glorious and the views more stunning than normal clear edged and sparkling on account of the the frost.

No snow here there rarely is but the distant hills are covered and no doubt we will see a little if the cold snap continues.

Plenty of people have have suggested interesting exercises for by back one of which was demonstrated in a Chinese restaurant on Christmas day much to the delight of the other diners. I will try them all and already have tried some.

On my hook

You would think that I have done nothing but crochet for the last week, But to be honest I have struggled to concentrate on anything but when the next pain killer was due. Miss Marple has come to the rescue though a friend give my a load of radio plays and I have been so thankful for them this week.

The couple of days though I have been feeling better, Sadly my shawl isn´t finish as I ran out of wool and I know that there will be no more in the shop till mid Jan. However I have been playing with flowers. Plenty of roses but more to come of other persuasions I´m sure as they are quite satisfying to produce                                                                                                                                           

Christmas is here

Christmas has most definitely arrived in the Hawkins household we even watched a James bond film on the television yesterday. Having said that we will be eating out on Christmas day because of the whole thing about large roast dinners for just the two of us, we have the most enormous joint of pork in the oven with stuffing, Yorkshire pudding and the works and we are eating out on Christmas day so we have as normal gone into overdrive. But honestly it is so nice to potter about thinking only about food and television and the odd walk to stretch our legs that I won´t complain.

 I can always read about other peoples stress on the Internet, I know that for many Christmas is the overachievers nightmare. Somehow if magazine articles are to believed the reality never quite lives up to the fairy tale and for others the hype serves only to emphasise loneliness or loss, For me Christmas has always been good,  We never  went in for massive expensive present giving, We have the joy the joy of the birth of Jesus to give us meaning and hope and although we are away from family I know that we will talk and skype over the holiday.

I saw on there news that Yesterday was Panic Saturday in the UK with the shops full and expecting their biggest take of the year. I feel so far away from that and sure I miss Carol concerts and mulled wine but on the whole  I am glad of a quieter saner celebration.

The Garden,

We have developed a tradition of putting the garden to bed over the Christmas break. It started because the first year we were here our neighbours dumped a trailer load of cow manure on our drive. We has asked for it you understand it is just that it was Christmas eve before they got around to delivering it and so we were there on boxing day with our shovels. It became a tradition quickly and we actually look forward to it. Sadly this year our neighbours have sold their cows so we have have lost best source of manure. We covered the beds and then scraped off any of the un-composted manure into the compost heap and replaced it with homemade compost before planting. It sounds complicated but actually it is pretty simple as the top layer of manure forms a crust no weeds grow and the straw under the crust composts down.

 We still plan to cover the beds with straw and and chicken/ rabbit poo but this time come spring we will just move the straw aside and plant into little compost filled holes. Well that`s the theory.

The straw covered beds are the the tidiest that the beds ever are although I do weed at intervals the beds are still productive even if they sometimes look a bit chaotic.

 We have beetroot still growing amongst the (chickweed which we also eat). However, with the exception of cabbage and purple sprouting broccoli, we are at the end of this years garden. I have vague intentions of growing more year round stuff but am proving to be a bit of a fair weather gardener and am glad of the winter break. Maybe next year who knows.

Christmas creeping further.

I am pleased to report that we have done the Christmas shopping, booked a table at a restaurant for Christmas day (I never thought that I would be writing that, But it seems so wasteful cooking a great big meal for just the two of us). Tonight is the Christmas meal for Steve's job at the Academy the table is booked for 10pm, Spain really does dance to a different tune or clock as case may be. My girls have had their last lesson and given me a gift (much to Steve´s disgust, as he is the real teacher ) We even have decorations up. So all in all the holiday starts tomorrow, Steve never entirely manages a break as some of his students see a holiday as a chance for an extra lesson but all will be more relaxed at least.

In the village

The pictures that you see here are whats left of an area of woodland next to the house, Not belonging to us

I am always quite sad when woodland is cut down mostly because native oak and chestnut are invariably replaced with pine but also because the loggers leave such a mess. Still plenty of waste wood does our heating budget no harm.

On my hook.

Despite what I said the other day about hats, I still have some to upload ready to sell the next will be this baby hat.

The truth is that baby hats are so cute and I love the colour of this chunky little pom pom hat.

Creeping Christmas

I have never been one of those people who shop for Christmas in January or has rows of cakes puddings and mince pies lined up on the work surface of the kitchen in November. Here in rural Galicia away from the rampant commercial reminders of the approaching season Christmas really does creep up on us, so here we are scrabbling for presents and still undecided on how to spend Christmas day.

On my hook.

When I decided to reinstate my Etsy shop a couple of months ago, I rushed to make a pile of hats and scarves so that the shop would look inhabited quickly. I have had th

e shop for a couple of years with nothing much in it so I hadn´t even the new shop excuse for it´s sparseness. Having done that I realise that I want to focus on other things, maybe more original arty pieces or bigger things, blankets shawls, throws. The truth is I don´t know yet so crochet journey for a while will be quite eclectic.

At the moment I am working on a shawl. My aim is to make it simple and elegant but warm enough for a winter evening. The picture you see is a work in progress. I will post a better picture when I have a completed garment.

And the rest

 I have wasted yet another afternoon trying to make this computer do want I want it to do. Please tell me it gets better and that windows 8 is the best thing ever. I still cannot print,  explorer won´t let me blog (I have down loaded google chrome for the purpose) and I have to stop every 2 minutes to let the security software do something. At this rate I will be a bald old lady.

Into the swing

Despite having failed dismally so far, I have decided to get back  "into the swing" of blogging that is. I have a new computer, my beloved mac have passed away peacefully in its sleep a week or so ago. Alas the new machine is a PC and I have entered the ghostly world of windows 8 persuaded by a 700 euro difference in the price of  the relative machines and am already certain that if I had the said 700€ I would willingly have handed it over. But then I like Astin Martins but rarely loose sleep over my lack of one.

The house.

Our official project at the moment is Steve`s study which is making slow progress and will get a boost over Christmas when Steve has a bit more time.
I am always a bit irritated by the fact that we never quite finish a job. As soon as a room is usable we stop and move onto the next project and with this in mind I had a bit of a brainstorm during an unscheduled visit to Ikea. I take my hat off to  the Ikea shop designers, on entry to the shop your mind is infected by no-,end uninvited and expensive thoughts ,(enough to end a marriage if some of the overheard comments are  taken seriously) I decided that we would finish the cloakroom. I bought towels, pictures and a candle holder with that in mind. Considering the size of the room which is barely big enough for a toilet and sink I thought that a weekend would do the trick, how long can it take to hang a picture and change a towel. How wrong I was, I should have known that nothing is that simple.
The walls, or at least two of them, are stone as  they dry out tend to leak dust, sand like and in quite large quantities. We had heard that it is possible to seal them with a dilute solution of p.v.a glue and set about to give them a quick clean before applying said glue. We also had a vague recollection that you had to brush the glue mixture onto damp walls. We obviously  h.adn`t  made a great job of cleaning the stone before we pointed it in the first place. We ended up with neatly sealed in streaks which were so obvious that could have been going for a zebra theme. I have to say that PVA does an amazing job of sealing stone because it has taken the best part of two weeks to get rid of the streaks.
The worst thing is that we haven`t finished even now we have a window to fit and shelf to put under the sink. Both jobs were left undone because we hadn`t a clue how to tackle them in the first place, the door does now have a working lock though so that's something at least.

The animals

 

Let me introduce you to our new head of rodent control. He followed me home last week and since he followed me for a good 3 kilometres I hadn´t the heart to turn him away at the door. At the moment he dosn´t seem to know the difference between mice and socks so we have a good number of dead socks. I am however hopeful for the future. His name is Franky we have put the word out that we have him as someone might be missing a kitten. He unlike, the normal barn cats who live around here is used to people and likes attention. I hope he gets to stay.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Despite the departure of the house martins a few weeks ago I still have a selection of fat sparrows sat on the balcony. Our sparrows are so fat and round that a guest thought they were a different species of bird altogether. They feed on the grain that we put out for chickens and ducks and live in abundance in the garden. They too nest in the roof and we will take measures to prevent that next year as they wiggle in through the smallest space right under the rafters. I love having them though, they chatter all day in the most cheerful manner.

We are still trying to reduce the amounts of bought feed that we put out for the poultry. They have a pretty big space to range in and we also have surplus veg in the veg garden it seems silly spending money where we don't have to, and no I don't want to introduce sparrow proof feeders that seems a bit mean. Really I want an environment where we can be if we need to be self- reliant we can be so inducing as much home grown food into the diet of the animals makes sense. They get any leftovers already of course although years of fairly frugal living mean that we have very little left over in terms of bought or cooked food.

The Autumn here means mushrooms, Frades the village where I live is famous for its mushrooms. This is both a blessing and a curse. We know that mushrooms grow here but so does everyone else so the lane is full of cars especially at weekend and basket toting mushroom hunters are in the fields and woods all around, city dwellers have now a renewed interest in foraging and restaurants love wild mushrooms and will pay especially for ceps. To make things worse the habitat is disappearing the last five years of economic depression mean that native woodland is losing ground to the more economically viable pine and eucalyptus
 As the young people move away there are fewer animals to graze the fields and less need of pasture.

Still there is little need to worry yet a rather pleasant walk this morning means that we get mushroom stroganoff for lunch a treat at any time.