Reduce, reuse, recycle

It is becoming easier and easier to recycle. Our council has just increased the number of materials it will collect for recycling. We now have a fortnightly collection for paper, cardboard, glass, cans, some plastics, textiles and garden waste. This is a big step forward and will reduce the amount of stuff going to land-fill. However it does mean that recycling has become an easy option and it can seem ok to produce waste as long as it will be recycled.

Rather than concentrating on recycling, reducing the amount of stuff and its packaging coming into the home is the first step. Using reusable bags is something that seems to have caught public attention and people are becoming more aware of the amount of packaging used, especially food packaging.

Reusing seems to be the stage that gets neglected.

I have been trying to find new uses for things that I usually throw in the recycling bin without thinking, so here is a new (semi - serious) use for an old can.


I lined it with absorbant paper and am growing rocket sprouts to add to salads. Not a great deal of salad from one can but now my mind is thinking about a range of different salads in cans along the kitchen windowsill!

Blue fields

A few weeks ago at the beginning of June, I posted pictures of the fields at the lower end of the village looking like lakes after heavy rain.



The flooding quickly went down but as I was passing earlier this week the fields once again looked like lakes but this time because of the lovely blue flowers of the linseed (flax) that was growing.

The picture doesn't really show just how blue the fields appear, blue seems to be a difficult colour to capture in a photograph. It really is a very pretty crop.

Summer soup

Soup is something I don't make much when the weather is warm but watercress soup is an exception as it is quite a light summer soup. I often use American land cress which I have grown on the allotment instead of buying watercress. It is similar to watercress but has a stronger flavour being hotter and more peppery.

I sowed some land cress many years ago and let it go to seed and now I never need to sow it as there are always enough self sown plants around. Each year I make sure to leave a few clumps to go to seed so that I know I will have plants for the following year. In fact, it seems to grow better if left to seed by itself than when I have planted it!

The soup I make is very simple. I saute chopped onions in olive oil. When they are translucent but not browned I add garlic, cubed potatoes and chicken stock (or vegetable stock) and simmer until the potatoes are almost soft. The land cress (a couple of handfuls/litre) is added about five minutes before the end of cooking. Once the potatoes are soft and the land cress is wilted I use a blender to make a smooth soup. I like to have the cress chopped but still visible as green flecks in the finished soup.

We have been having salad for lunch most days recently and so this weekend soup was a welcome change.

At the allotment

When I was buying my vegetable seeds earlier this year I decided to buy a packet of flower seeds to add a bit of colour to the plot and to attract bees. I couldn't decide what to choose and in the end bought a packet of mixed seeds called North American mix. I planted a couple of short rows (with some dwarf french beans between them) and they are flowering now.

A large proportion of the mix seems to be Californian poppies but there are some other interesting flowers as well.

The edible side of the allotment is growing well as we move through the season. This week we had the last of the mangetout and also the last picking of the rhubarb. I will make sure the rhubarb now gets plenty compost to feed it ready for the winter.

I have been harvesting my dwarf french beans and there is a very good crop on each plant. As I made three plantings a few weeks apart we should have beans throughout the rest of the summer.

I have been picking blackcurrants again. I have two bushes ripening at the moment. I don't know the name as I bought them as cuttings from a village plant fair but I think they might be quite an old variety. With my early blackcurrant bush, the berries all ripen within a short space of time and I know modern commercial varieties are bred for this characteristic as it makes for more efficient picking. Old fashioned cottage garden varieties used to ripen slowly over a few weeks, more convenient for the house-wife who got a steady supply of ripe berries but not good commercially when the whole crop needs to be picked as quickly as possible for processing.

These two bushes have berries at a range of ripeness so we will have fresh blackcurrants for a while yet.

The sad story of this years courgettes continues. After all the first plants were devoured by slugs, the second batch have been trying to catch up. My neighbours have been picking courgettes for weeks and I have been really pleased when walking towards my allotment to see the bright yellow flowers. However all the flowers so far have been, without exception, like this one - male flowers!

I am beginning to wonder if I am actually going to taste a homegrown courgette this season.

A quiet morning

This morning I was in a rush to buy birthday cards. I had forgotten that my nephews who both have birthdays next week would be away on holiday on their birthdays. I had to post the cards today so that hopefully they will get them before they leave. I walked down to the post office as soon as it opened and chose the cards. I then looked round for somewhere to sit to write them so that I could post them straight away. I found the perfect place.

This open space in the village is called the Fairground after the horse fairs that were held here twice a year before the First World War. It is a lovely large open space to have in the middle of the village, and perfect for quietly writing cards!

Perhaps because it was quite early there was hardly anyone about this morning even though it was the first day of the school holidays.

After writing the cards I looked at the village ponds. We have two ponds and the water level was low in both of them despite the rain we've had this summer.

The second pond had slightly more water but still not much. Early last century this pond was much larger and during severe winters used to freeze completely and be very popular for skating. It would be a bit small for skating now but then we don't really get winters that are cold enough for it to freeze solid enough for skating anymore.

As I was taking these photographs I realised that I have never really taken any pictures of the village. If I visit somewhere new I always take lots of photographs but because I see my immediate surroundings every day I don't really think about recording them.

So, a couple more photographs,

the cricket pitch

and a nice shady seat underneath an oak tree close to the ponds.

I think I might make a little photographic record of the village this summer. If I'd been a bit more organised and bought those birthday cards in plenty of time I would have missed out on this pleasant wander around a corner of the village.