Green Girl Gardener

I’m just going to state the obvious to get it out of the way!

I’ve been in ice cold air con most of the day, which you would think would be a good thing, but in reality it means you spend the day freezing various body parts off and then it feels like you’re literally walking into a furnace when you leave!

Still, it’s not as hot here as it is on the continent. 44° in France according to my friend and colleague today! That’s dangerously hot! I was over there earlier this week. Luckily I left before the mercury topped forty, but it was still insanely hot! Incidentally, I’ll share my triumph with you. I had to drive all the way to Antwerp from home! It’s a REALLY long way!

I was a bit apprehensive about it. Actually I was a lot apprehensive about it. So much so that the majority of my preparation involved planning the journey rather than the meetings I was going for! I’ve driven on the right hand side of the road before, but only on holiday without any time constraints, never on my own, never so far and never in a right hand drive car!

However, I did it! I made it all the way there, and back, and I didn’t get lost, I didn’t drive on the wrong side of the road, I didn’t crash, nothing bad happened at all! It was fine.

Just recently our little Olive has worked out that she can jump up on our stairs banister post and boy does she look proud of herself when she’s up there.

Proper pleased as punch she is! That’s how I felt when I got off the Eurotunnel in Folkestone and realised I’d done it, and with a fair amount of aplomb too! This has opened up holiday possibilities. I’ve already looked up Disneyland Paris!

Anyway, on to the business of the day. Work all day, blah blah blah, but then came home and went straight out into the garden to check progress. I ended up doing some harvesting.

The Sweet Peas had gone mad again!

I don’t know how Monty Don manages to only cut them every seven to ten days. I’m doing them twice a week. It’s a good job really because they only last a couple of days once cut anyway. I understand now how my grandparents used to grow so many! They used to sell posies that they’d grown and cut at the top of their drive with an honesty box. I remember, as a child, the rows and rows of wigwams in their garden covered with Sweet Peas.

I also spotted that one of my Calendulas grown from seed had sprouted a flower. I’m not really counting these as a success because they’ve gone so leggy but I was pleased to see a flower.

I decided to cut it and bring it in to go with the Sweet Peas so I can enjoy it with some of the flowers that are still hanging in there in my arrangement from the weekend. We have another beautiful display, and the living room smells divine!

As well as the flowers, I also harvested the last of our potatoes, the Charlottes, and lots of the petit pois. It’s so satisfying growing your own produce.

I was practically skipping around the garden like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz (not wise in this heat – felt quite dizzy).

I dragged myself away from my outdoor haven to the kitchen to make use of some of my spoils. Despite it being fifty million degrees, we decided to forge ahead with our plan to cook chicken curry from my Pinch of Nom cookbook. As luck would have it, we’d run out of rice so I did Slimming World chips in the air fryer made with our Charlottes.

Amazing! They were so much nicer made with Charlotte potatoes than whatever Tesco baking potatoes are. They really tasted like chippy chips only less greasy.

I shelled my petit pois while the curry was simmering away.

Anyone know if you can do anything with the pods? I wonder if you can make a soup or a vegetable stock.

When the curry was nearly ready I popped a handful of petit pois in.

OMGeeeeeeee! It tasted amazing, if completely inappropriate for the heat!

I can see that this is going to become a regular in the Green Girl Gardener household! Thank you Pinch of Nom – I don’t know what I ate before you came into my life!

Just proofread my post. How many times have I mentioned the heat? British through and through!

Time for beddy byes (or more like time to go and lie in bed lamenting the heat, whilst keeping the duvet firmly over me, possibly with one leg out, because we Brits are far too prudish to sleep uncovered, until it’s time to get up again to go and complain that oh well, that was probably our Summer, until the next heatwave when I shall repeat from the beginning of this paragraph. Such is the nature of an English Rose!)