Monday, July 06, 2009

Day trip to Brighton with Great Auntie Averil


Brighton merry-go-round, originally uploaded by Racmol.

We had a lovely day out today, taking the train to Brighton with Great Auntie Averil. Sofia had an ice cream, a sausage and two merry-go-round rides so she was happy. William had three bottles and a sleep so he was happy too. I bought lots of things so I was happy too.

Here's a picture of the great aunt in action.



My first jars of raspberry jam


Raspberry jam, originally uploaded by Racmol.

Clearly it is time I went back to work, before I start knitting my own socks. These jars of jam were made with 17 of our own raspberries and £4 worth of raspberries from the farmers' market. So I'm calling them homemade AND homegrown. Technically there may well be at least one homegrown raspberry per jar...

Saturday, July 04, 2009

Garden update, triathlons and celebrity spotting in Queen's Park



I pulled up my first two potato plants today and I think it's fair to say it could be a lean Heath Christmas this year. The prize for the world's smallest potato goes to this guy, sitting next to a small Braeburn apple for scale purposes.


Also harvested five red onions (small) and a handful of very small raspberries. To think I saved some jars specially for making raspberry jam...Still the blackberries are rampant as usual so I guess we can make blackberry jam instead.

The pears, apples and tomatoes are all doing very well and our cucumber plant has five babies while the red pepper plant has four. The butternut squash plants (2)are growing well and today I put a pumpkin in the raised bed that I pulled the potatoes out of. Also to go in is a chilli pepper bush - I figure it's a good idea to grow things that are expensive to buy.


My friend Alison and I are planning to do the Tri for Life triathlon at Eton on 6 September. You swim 400m in a lake, bike 20km around the edge of it then run 5km. This morning we went swimming at the Parliament Hill lido which is 60m long and unheated - it was lovely on such a hot day. Now I just need to hire or buy a wetsuit for the lake swim and a triathlon suit for the rest of it. And of course get back on my bike, which I haven't done since I fell off when I was pregnant with William.

In other news, I met Cillian Murphy in the cafe in the park today. We were both going for the napkin dispenser to wipe our accompanying child's face clean of ice cream. I wanted to say I really liked Breakfast on Pluto or whatever that film is called, but I couldn't remember the title so I shut up. And last week Tamsin Greig from Green Wing held the gate to the playground open for us so that's two celebrities spotted in a fortnight.