Nov 29, 20212 min read

Primavera

Spring arrived before we were ready, we hadn’t even finished our winter jobs! We did manage to get a step and lintel on the temple and the roof on the container shed in time for the Sheffield Garden Club to tour the garden in early November. They gave some lovely encouraging feedback. Our hard work is starting to show results, finally!

Alex filmed a walk around just catching the tail end of Spring. It gives an idea of the layout and shows the areas still under development. I think everything looks much nicer in real life though, you might need to book a visit and see! Garden tours are free with teas and cake pick ups.

I painted a garden map for future visitors. Some areas, including the Oriental garden and new potager, will require some imagination for a while yet so it's nice to see them 'finished' on paper.

Alex also filmed the sheep having their jumpers removed for the summer.

Besides keeping busy with garden maintenance I’ve been making sourdough bread from wild yeast starter - which I collected in the vegetable garden - and kombucha and milk kefir with a scoby and grains given to me by a friend. I also decided to grow my own scoby from a bottle of unflavoured store bought kombucha and converted an old scoby to coffee kombucha. I flavour the coffee kombucha with citrus, vanilla, and nutmeg to create a kind of cola drink which dad happens to like.

I also made lilac syrup which turned out to be delicious with the kefir - I think the amount of sugar rather diminishes the health food status of the kefir though! I'll keep it for cocktails since I'm not sure if its possible to make a cocktail less healthy than it already is.

My sister Lisa dealt to some artichokes recently. They are a lot of work but they are so meaty and delicious that it is all worth it. They were cooked in salted water then sautéed with butter and olive oil, and finished with a squeeze of lemon.

I had planned an Easter themed tea for Spring but unfortunately Covid made an encore appearance. The uncertainty of lockdowns and general reluctance to gather outside of a ‘bubble’ sadly meant we had to cancel. Rather than creating public events in a restaurant setting I decided to stick to private tea parties. I managed to snap a few pics at a couple of these parties recently, I usually always forget.

It’s looking likely that Christmas will also be disrupted so I think I will just look forward to 2022 and hope that VdV can open properly for guests in the not too distant future.

Dad had his 70th birthday in September so I made a vegetable garden and a sunflower for his party.