vital functions

[kaberett]

Reading. Made In India, Meera Sodha. Apparently this one contains 130 recipes. I marked (having just counted) somewhere over 25 of them as Of Interest, which means that this is one of those frustrating cookbooks that has multiple chapters that are of zero practical interest to me (because vegetarian) but otherwise a fairly high hit rate. At some point I will have a go at working my way through the marked recipes, and see how many of them I like enough to want to make again.

mauve, Simon Garfield. Started this in late Feb, got distracted by Suddenly Library Hold Queues, am now picking it back up and amused (as noted yesterday) by its direct relevance to some of my current nonsense.

And I FINISHED A Slob Comes Clean, by which I mean "I'm up to the present day and given that most of her blog posts over the last year have been notifications that she's released another podcast episode, which are not of interest to me, I am Probably Done". I have definitely got several useful bits out of that archive binge but goodness I am glad to be finished with this particular completionism.

Making & mending. The fruit cage now really and truly has TWO DOORS, and I should probably wrangle the hinges of the older one, but it basically works. Next step: actually get a bunch more wood chip in along the path(s).

I did not actually get a sewing machine out to fix a seam we ripped on a useful storage bag, but I thought really hard about it.

Growing. Chillis continue to hatch! Including two of the Trinidad Perfume, which -- as noted last week -- I was particularly hoping for! Now all I have to do is keep them alive.

I am hardening off the first batch of tomatoes (... whoops, should probably in fact get them in...), and once they can be driven to the allotment again (the access road is being resurfaced, which means that motor access is currently a no, and I have very little desire to carry 24 3" pots down a temporary road surface even if it is much flatter than it used to be) I shall actually prick out the next lot. (Purple Ukraine still doing nothing, alas.)

I am also making my FINAL ATTEMPT at growing Passiflora edulis from seed no REALLY. Nine seeds in some compost in the warm box.

At the allotment: yacon are starting to suspiciously poke leaves out above their compost! (Well. One was, and I went very gently digging for another, and then restrained myself from doing so in the other two pots...) I have discovered that the gooseberry has also self-layered, which is very obliging of it and saves me a job. The Ribes are all very enthusiastically putting out leaves, at this point, so I felt slightly bad about digging up the number of self-layered jostaberry plants I did, but OH WELL. (My mother wants three; I decided to see if I could shift the rest on Freecycle between now and when I vanish to deliver hers, and the answer turns out to be EXTREMELY YES GOOD GRIEF would I like to get rid of more because THERE ARE MORE TAKERS. So that was gratifying!)

I thiiiiink that's it for this week.

Observing. A group of Very Yell Small Brown Birds were having a tussle while I was wrestling jostaberries into my pannier. There continue to be foxes; we have not yet spotted the bat, partly because I'm not really coping with having curtains open and partly, I think, because while they do generally wake up around now it's been quite damp and windy. Soon, though, hopefully!