Raspberry muffins

If you've got a glut of raspberries and you've done jam and crumbles, I recommend making some raspberry and chocolate muffins. The raspberry melts inside the cake and goes all gooey. Delicious.

Ooo matron what a lovely pear

Don't know if you remember my pear tree last year. The leaves had some wierd stuff growing on them. I moved it down the side of the house for its final chance. There have been a couple of yellow leaves this year that I have had to pluck off but it has managed to grow a pear on it.

It will probably be like the poisoned witches apple from snow white so I'm not sure about eating it though.

Tip of the day, please try drunken gardening. It is a good experience. Get out the watering can and a cold beer and enjoy. No pruning though please.

Poor Tina

Tina Turner is going to be so upset, she can't stand the rain against her window but I am very pleased with this weeks showers. Sorry Tina but my plants need a good soaking but it makes it super easy to pull out the shocking number of weeds that I 've cultivated.

I am on a mission to get things back on track weed wise despite the rain. On Sunday I had planned to weed my brassica bed but was shamed into doing the raspberry bed instead as the man in the plot next to ours was glancing over at my weed jungle. The wet ground made it an easy job and I came home all covered in mud.

This is the first crop from the allotment, I've had lettuce and salad leaves from the plants at the house but it's nice to pull something up from the ground, even if it is a radish.

Impressive Things

We went to London at the weekend. This is the wisteria at Kew Gardens. It is over 100 years old. They have trained it so that it forms a huge den that you can go and sit inside. How fantastic is that? It is slightly more impressive than mine. I started growing it last year, it is a spindly little thing, but in one hundred years time who knows, or dares to dream...

The children planted these tulips.

Oh yes, check out my prize winning parsnip. I haven't put soft focus on this picture by the way because I have fallen in love with the parsnip. Someone, possibly a small child put a big thumb print on the lense of the camera. But the parsnip is impressive is it not? It is good when you are as easily pleased as me, there is a lot to be happy about.

Blossom

There is blossom everywhere. I like it. The cherry trees at the back of the house are really pretty in spring. It is their way of giving us compensation for blocking out our sun for the rest of the summer.

Our cherry tree was on its final warning. Last year it was an embarrassment to us all. There was one tiny bit of blossom hanging off a branch and it has produced a total of 2 cherries in three years. We told it, you're getting the chop if you don't buck up. It has heeded it's warning. Our amateur pruning may have worked, we no longer have to hide our faces in shame when we come out of the front door. It may be too much to ask for to actually get cherries but we have the flowers so there is hope.

Do you remember my disgusting mangy disease ridden pear tree? I moved it so that it didn't spread its gross diseases to everything else and look, it has not only come back to life but has got blossom on it too. Fingers crossed.

When the wind blows all the petals from the trees behind the house fall all over the garden. It's like confetti.

I put my bean poles up too, including swirly bird scarers on the end which just look pretty and don't scare the birds. The world is good this week.

The spuds are in (finally).