It is official. There are NO Easter eggs in town. Andy and I nipped to do the weekly shop at the crack of dawn this morning and there wasn't a chocolate egg to be found. Luckily, I bought mine on Boxing Day ( well, not quite, but you have to be quick these days because as soon as one holiday or festival approaches, the supermarkets CLEAR the shelves of what you actually want in favour of something that you might want in three months' time...like sun cream - HA!).
Anyway, I fancied to make Mary Berry's Easter lemon curd meringue extravaganza for pudding tomorrow, and I needed some of those mini eggs to put in the little meringue baskets. There was one packet left in the store, and we only found that by default in the biscuit aisle, because Andy happened to glance in the right direction at the right time. We visited another supermarket as we passed by to go seed buying for the allotment, but they had no eggs either, and there were a lot of complaining people on frantic egg hunts who hadn't had the foresight to stock up in 1987.
Off to the allotment this afternoon. We nearly didn't go because it had been snowing on and off all day, but at the first spot of sunshine and because we are feeling super keeny-beany to get on, I flung some washing on the line, my disintegrating wellies on my feet, and off we went to have a bit of a dig and a weed and a preliminary tidy-up.
We pruned the raspberries and the blackcurrants. I sustained my first allotment injury of the season in the form of scratches up my arms where my gloves slipped down. We dug over one growing bed, and gathered up various canes and other debris ready to take to the tip. Andy decided to wash his hands in the river, and is now awaiting the onset of Weil's disease because he forgot he had a cut on his hand where a drill bit slipped on Thursday when he was doing a fracture repair on a cat. We are taking bets on who falls in the river first.
We were offered five red currant canes by one of our new neighbours. Isn't that nice? We found some potatoes left from last year. What I thought were parsnips turned out to be celery. Andy hoisted the netting up higher so we are no longer in danger of garrotting ourselves.
Back home, we made a sowing plan which is now on the pin board in the kitchen to no doubt be roundly ignored. I made the meringue extravaganza, which was a lot of faff so had better taste good, and Andy made a veggie Wellington, which does taste nice because he has made it before.
Clocks forward tonight. Extra hour of daylight on the horizon. Hurrah!
Easter Greetings to you all.
Nice to be outside on a lotty again, getting all mucky and muddy, but which is joy to the soul. I planted some donated raspberry canes but the chickens dug most of them back up again, and we still haven't ordered our seeds for this year. But we do have some potatoes, onion sets and garlic to go in, hopefully sometime before next winter!
ReplyDeleteWishing you and Andy a happy Easter.
Chickens are very bad gardeners. There was a moorhen eyeing up the allotments yesterday with some suspicious intent.
ReplyDeleteWe are very excited about being allotmenteers again. It will keep us in touch with the ground until we get ground of our own!
Easter greetings to you and Lester, too! X