A white room and tulips

May 12, 2010

Very very late in getting this post out,  but  my fingers have been  racing over the key board writing text  for the book.  Driven by a  surge of fear and enjoyment  I plug into Al Green’s   ‘Let’s Stay Together ‘ and try not to be distracted by   You Tube  comedy clips and the latest  updates from THAT  volcano. The spewings of which,  we were lucky to avoid returning from Olhao, where,  hooray!  the  room on top is complete and wonderful.  Filipe Monteiro of White Terraces is the  architect of this little white  gem. From   simple  white wooden beams   to  curved detail  on the stairs up to the roof, he has  cleverly  interpreted  traditional Olhao building features to make the structure look as if  it has been there for ever. And together  with his gang of men, Mr  Martinho  is  the builder from  heaven.

In Olhao market, spring is here with the juiciest oranges billowing herbs and plump ‘favas’ broad bean pods. The fish market is full of fish because it’s Friday, and there’s the fresh ozone sea smell  rising from wet slabs displaying everything from the anonymous  ‘pescado’, 1 euro kg, so ordinary it doesn’t deserve a name,  to thick white fillets of corvina 16 euros kg. From their perches on cranes, and spires, the storks are gnashing their  great beaks in mating calls, sparrows twitter and the 11am  hooter whines like an air raid siren : the boats have come in.

In London the garden is  green and glossy, and the tulips are bursting out in bloom with more vigour than I remember. Maybe it was because winter was so long and so hard that all growing things seem to have extra reserves of energy to launch themselves into the new season.  Against all these signs of nature’s renewal, it is particularly sad and poignant to hear of the sudden death of mother, and brilliant   garden and interiors writer Elspeth Thompson.  What a great loss.  A fellow blogger, she was most encouraging to me.  At the very least she will live on through her evocative  words and thoughts.

I never quite know what will come up on the tulip front, and I’m really pleased that the black Parrot tulips from last season have reappeared. Watching them go through the budding bit  to  their unfurling into  a whirl of feathery petals the colour of dark beetroots is absorbing

Black Parrot tulips in bud and full frilly bloom

Unfurled ‘Blue’ parrot tulips, look  like striped fruit drops from an old fashioned confectioner or even a head of salad radicchio.  Where’s the blue?!  and  when they are in full bloom the striped effect fades into an all over fuschia pink.

New to the garden this year, and from another really good value bulb order from Crocus the single late tulip,  Violet Beauty, is more of a slender, elegant thing than its  more wayward and feathery Parrot  tulip companions.

Seaweed Prints and Sourdough

March 28, 2010

Only a few piles of dog eared admin remain before we can escape to Olhao and the new room on top. On the way to the post office, mimosa and forsythia are fizzing with yellow. It seems a little wasteful to be leaving behind the first budding and greening signs of spring but the draw of sand between toes and sardines are tantalizing too. And after more technology malfunctions (I won’t even go there) parking ticket angst, missed train connections, and near hospitalisation involving clogs on a down escalator, I’m ready to walk there, let alone fly .

Just have to get in a session of dough making for pizza (artichoke hearts, green olives and parmesan, is my current favourite) and other homemade creations (see here my sister in law’s divine rye sourdough bread) to illustrate my new book. The four legged paparazzo is enjoying the cooking sessions too, hanging around the worktop for crumbs, and helping herself to the subject matter of a flapjack shot when no one’s looking. It’s all go putting together the pages, and the deadline is no tiny speck in the distance anymore. But that’s good, too, because it means the weeks are slipping away until the backpacker daughter returns.

When I’m back first stop will be gorgeous fabrics at the V&A exhibition, Quilts 1700-2010. Might even get round to a spot of quiltmaking with pretty seaweed prints from the museum’s collection of archive printed cotton. Check out more print ideas from Printand pattern.blogspot.com and Liberty prints at knockdown prices in the new range for American chain store Target .

Spring garden notes:
Divide agapanthus: I have an extended family of agapanthus plants that came stashed in a suitcase from Spain and are now packed tightly in a pot like chocolate fish in a tin, which is how they like it. This year, though, division is necessary to keep the plants vigorous and I cut them down the middle with a fork and plant the new half in a fresh container.
Feed shrubs and climbers: I started with the standard roses, and have now worked in more compost and bonemeal around the shrub and climbing roses, and gorgeous pale lilac wisteria at the front of the house.

Sow seedlings half hardy under cover: Nicotiana and zinnia seeds saved from last year are germinating in a tray on the windowsill. Sow less than think as a pinch of seed goes a long way.

Prepare trenches for beans and ‘chitted’ potatoes and dig in muck or compost (on another sea salty note, I remember my grandmother lined her bean trenches with seaweed and newspaper to conserve moisture).

Sweet and utilitarian

March 1, 2010

Bother! I’d hoped to get my post out before the end of February. I am diverted from my laptop to equip the eldest daughter with ‘wedding ring’, door wedge, extending washing line and all the other stuff for the gap year female traveller. It is like losing a limb when she walks through Terminal 5 departures, but I can get in the bathroom now. And in the way that life sometimes seems to synchronise itself, my new book contract is signed and the deadline is just about the date she returns. Publication is next spring, but I’ll give you some sneak previews along the way.

Some design notes:I won’t ever tire of gingham, it’s a really inexpensive way to add a spot of spring colour to the home: a simple pull on chair cover ,say . My temple is MacCulloch & Wallis who sell online as well as from a shop crowded with young fashion students in central London. Look out, too for enamel alphabet letters and numbers from Hyperkit, more timeless simple design. RIP Lucienne Day one of our great designers, known for her painterly and simple Fifties’ fabrics. I also have a passion for the stacking Polyprop chairs that her husband Robin Day designed, and can still be picked up from secondhand shops and markets.

There are walking babies, crawling babies, sicky babies and back-up babies modelling shoes in the house, and so I escape to the garden. It’s looking spare (an understatement) but crocuses like bright fruit drops are pushing through. I prune the roses with vigour giving the 4 standards the equivalent of a military short back and sides. But they will flower well and spread without looking wild and untidy. They have a good feed with shovels of rich earthy compost from the bottom of the bin. It’s so cold I can’t be bothered to dig it in, but it’s raining so the nutrients will wash down to where the roots need it .

The room on top in Olhao is nearing completion after the builders have ducked and dived the thrashing winds and rains of the Algarve’s worst weather in 30 years. It’s a whole new vista up here. In the distance, a band of cobalt sea beneath a grey blue sky, tv aerials, flapping laundry, a silver winding mesh of homing pigeons, the fizzing pink of an almond tree. And all with the Olhao soundtrack of dogs barking, bells, and the strains of a fado song on next door’s radio. NB The dearth of photographic evidence is due to further gadget malfunction, this time, my newly acquired i-phone, a marvellous invention, when it works

The blues and greens of the seaside are exhilarating but no less than the rolling hills and valleys on the drive to see my Dad in Somerset: a mossy palette as if from a Farrow and Ball paint chart. And then there is more heavenly natural colour at the Van Gogh exhibition, where my rushhour Friday stress melts before the artist’s drawings and paintings of French gardens and vegetable patches

What with all the backpacking details I almost leave the marmalade making too late, but am saved by the last boxful of Sevilles at the local greengrocer. Soon the kitchen is a bittersweet aromatic fug and the mind only focused on the job. No wonder DH Lawrence said “I got the blues thinking of the future so I left off and made some marmalade.” I read though that 80% of marmalade eaters are over 45. Don’t you think we should champion the young to get boiling and stirring? It’s such a pity that marmalade has that fusty old major at the breakfast table image.

I pot the marmalade in recycled jars that I save and store under the sink. Holding one’s golden efforts in a simple glass jar topped with a cellophane lid and decorated with a homemade label is pure pleasure; so, too, is a slice of bread topped with marmalade and a spoonful of creme fraiche.

Tulips and wild garlic

May 7, 2009

Horrors. Some beastly person took a chance in our side passage and nicked my bike. Simple. I had neglected to lock it. I take a walk outside and let the beauty of the curled and furled parrot tulips take the edge off my frustration. The feathered buds seem to have been dipped in blueberry juice, clasped together like the furled wings of some exotic bird. In fact, more birdlike, than the the parrots’ beaks they’re named after. Soon they will unfold in a riot of undulating and frilly petals. Some will be white, others blue (actually a fuschia pink) and black ( not black, black, but more a deep burgundy black).

I’ve got to get replacement wheels, immediately. Not a pretty sentiment for someone who’s always banging on about the evils of self gratification, but the cycle bug has bitten and I’m fretting that I can’t hook the dog’s lead over the handlebars and let her take me at a cracking pace to the park, or nip to the Turkish shop for a bundle of early mint.

Justification swims around in my head for quietly siphoning off the family’s holiday money to fund the purchase, from petrol saving, to the health benefits that will stave off some horrendously expensive operation in my old age. I will make it up to them, I think , feeling like a wife who plays bingo with the housekeeping, on my way to Recycling at Elephant and Castle . And thank goodness, that in the third bike crammed aisle is a reconditioned classic sit up and beg, Raleigh, with my name on it. After a short test cycle under the grimy railway arches of one of London’s most gruesome interchanges (although developers have grand plans for it) the deal is done. Not the bargain rate I got in the wilds of Norfolk, but not a bad one either.

I”m back in business,and doing more making up to the family, by tearing up leaves of Jonny’s father’s wild garlic to strew in a gorgeous soup made with leek and potato. This is the season for wild garlic, ‘Allium ursinum’ or ransoms, and you can find it in any damp, shady woodland, or even a suburban garden, which is where mine came from. The flowers taste delicious, like garlic, too, and you can toss them in salads along with the leaves.

Living with all this white, is great because the location shoots that come to the house want a space that is light and airy, which is just the kind of feeling exuded by a white painted room. It doesn’t have to be a very specially mixed kind of white either, just a qood quality paint, in white. Dulux brilliant white matt emulsion is always reliable.

I can’t resist new colour though, and have taken the opportunity to spruce up the wood panelled attic, now my son is at university, with Paw Print’ a lovely muted stone shade from the environmentally friendly paint range by Earthborn.

Petals for pudding

April 15, 2009

Pedalling past marzipan scented broom and blazing white magnolias in Battersea Park each morning put my head in the right place, for 4 days hard study at the botannical painting course I attended last week. The freesia is not my first choice to put in water on the table (maybe because the modern hybrids are too uniform in shape) but I began to appreciate its structure and complexity as our teacher Elaine Searle calmly guided the group of aspiring plant painters to observe, sketch, and watercolour the specimens.

The final painting now stuck up on my noticeboard, is far from brilliant but I’m pleased with my efforts. What’s best is that I’ve been given the tools to be more confident at painting herbs from the garden, the best escape from a dismal tasks like appealing against parking tickets. NB I must return the magnifying glass,needed for the course, and on loan from the local newsagent whose heavenly home cooked lunch time curries waft comfortingly around his shop. I’m so enthused by my nascent painterly skills I shall go out and buy my own lens even if it does make you look slightly odd peering intently at a lone tomato.

The sprouting seed nursery in the office is getting under my feet as the fledging plants make their break towards the light. I have transplanted the zinnias into peat pots, which can go straight into the ground later on, as I they don’t do well with too much handling of the roots. I have a passion for the riotous pinks and purples of this frilly late summer flower, which looks so colourful in the border and as decoration.

The basil is brimming nicely and that will be next in line to pot on. I might even put the sweet peas outside next week, covering them with a bit of fleece to be on the safe side. CH Middleton an old school BBC garden expert from the thirties whose book An Outline of a Small Garden, I picked up for 3.00 from a junk shop suggests that the best way to get fine big flowers , is put them at least six inches apart in a deeply-dug and well manured soil, and give each one a good long cane or stick to support it; then as they grow, nip out all the the little side shoots as soon as they appear, leaving the one stem to each plant. In this way you will get very tall plants and extra fine flowers.
I am also really hoping that the sprouting leaves of night scented stock will be successful. You hardly notice it during the day, but on a summer evening it entices you outside with its powerful scent. I shall grow it in pots near the garden table so we can enjoy its scent on one of those calm balmy nights which are possible in this country if the isobars on the weather map are wide enough apart.

Out digging in more manure, and weeding last weekend, I noticed a garden regular, the blackbird with an albino patch, having a feast on unfortunate worms revealed by the earthworks. And sometime later the cat struck lucky with a mouse that she laid separated from its head at the bottom of the stairs…… to greet me first thing Monday morning. (Wild)life is tough on the flowerbeds in suburbia.

Thinking about the most delicious things I’ve eaten in the last 48 hours, the lemon cake was good, after our trip to Tate Modern to see Roni Horn’s exhibition, but not as good as the fork biscuits, made by my friend, Fiona .The recipe involves little more than flour, butter, sugar, lemon zest, and a fork for making ridged patterns on each round biscuit shape. I think they’ll be good for tea on Easter Sunday, and less sickly than all the chocolate that will be scattered about. I like to decorate eggs, and am excited with the acrylic colours I found in Green & Stone , one of the most fabulous art shops in London. See how easy it is to do on my Youtube Make and Do series.

Sowing seeds

March 24, 2009

It’s been snowing blossom. Our suburban streets have been turned into bridal avenues of trees laden with white and pink scented petals. Even the faceless housing estates look more inviting with clumps of daffodils and flowering cherries planted in the communal spaces.

Yesterday I was up early and staggering outside with a weighty bag of seed compost to get on with sowing. I tend to pick up seed packets on a whim rather than on a preordained expedition. I know more or less what I want, but like to gather together elements of my summer garden bit by bit. It gives me breathing space to mull over ideas. It’s not that I’m a procrastinator, rather that I enjoy the adventure of coming across surprises, like the chilli seeds raised by Latin American chilli lovers at the local community allotments.

When I was visiting my father in Somerset a couple of weeks ago, I wandered into a typical country high street hardware shop brimming with tools, and, inspired by the equally well stocked racks of seeds ,bought packets of zinnias the colours were so irresistible. And summer visions of salads tumbled with leaves aromatic basil, meant that there was no alternative but to ditch smelly cheese, for two varieties of basil from the artfully packed range of Italian Franchi seeds at the local deli cum cafe cum veg shop.

So back to the garden, and a balmy Sunday morning filling plastic trays with handfuls of compost and various seeds from little black specks of nicotiana ( heavenly scent on a summer evening) to peppercorn sized sweet peas. I soaked the seven year old sunflower seeds in water, gathered from our garden in Andalucia , and prized open the tough striped casings to remove the seeds. They look healthy enough, but I’ll know in the next 10 days or so, whether there’s still potential in them.

The trays are lined up, like cots in a nursery, in my office by the window on layers of newspaper and an old door so when I water them it will not soak the floor. I sit writing, glancing maternally at the potential garden offspring beside me.

I like a bit of architecture in my garden. Not waterfalls, giant urns or grand gazebos, but wigwams. Wigams of willow sticks , that is, and I’m very excited to have discovered the English Hurdle company on the net, who swiftly dispatched two bundles of willow sticks which I have bashed into the earth with a mallet and tied together at the top with all purpose hairy garden string. These twiggy structures are placed at the four corners of the flower and vegetable patch (my informal version of a traditional potager) and will support the climbing beans and nasturtiums. Until this year I’ve used cane pea sticks for my wigwams, but the willow looks more earthy and organic, and although its more expensive, will last longer than the canes.

My son is back for Easter and wants to know where to take his girl friend for lunch. Somewhere suave, mum, he says. How did I raise a boy with such expensive taste? Maybe he’s winding me up but then, he is a child of the boom time when expectations were high. Without extending his student overdraft even further , I think there may be a solution more in keeping with these straitened times. Ok, Brixton market, might not be the capital’s most romantic spot, but at franca manca wedged between stalls selling yams and Rastafarian bonnets, there’s the romance of eating the most heavenly sourdough pizzas baked in a special Naplese wood fired oven. And it won’t cost them more than ¬¨¬£20.00 to eat sumptuously, in the word’s of one reviewer ‘the best place to eat pizza in the UK’

Spring has sprung with many of the season’s new frocks decorated with pretty florals. I have always fallen for buds and blooms and they needn’t look girly if you mix them with blocks of colour. And just as you don’t want to look like a flower border so you should also use florals in moderation around the home – as accents rather than all over floralness. Sprigged prints on lampshades are a good starting point if you want to introduce some simple country style in a plainly decorated room.

Rhubarb Rhubarb

March 3, 2009

Against the park’s winter wreckage, tiny citrus-scented white and pink flowers on the witchhazel are optimistic signs of spring where only four weeks ago children whooped and played in the extraordinary snow. I marvel at how the bulbs push up new centimetres of green. We have had a few good days feeling the sun’s weak rays. After months of nature’s inertia, suddenly everything seems possible and there’s a sense of urgency to get out and start planting. But late February and March can be a dangerous and deceiving time, taunting us with false starts.

Regardless, I have been wielding the fork and spade to prepare my vegetable patch. One irritating aspect is that the cat and dog think that it’s for their benefit, a new and soft litter tray. My deterrent against the pets, and the squirrels is some fine netting. I really felt like an old time gardener as I dug in bucketfuls of our home grown kitchen compost. It’s not all perfectly rotted, but eggshells help drainage and any alien bodies, like the knife I lost last summer, and mouldy oranges which shouldn’t have been put in the compost anyway, I put aside.
In a few weeks I’ll plant out my ‘chitted’ potatoes having left them in a cool light room. Warmth and dark will only encourage your seed potatoes to start towards the light, and you want the ‘eyes’ to be firm and holding the nutrients before they go into the ground. I’ve also got some garlic and shallots which are an experiment this year.

It’s gratifying to use last summer’s French bean seeds. I collected the dessicated pods dangling from the last trailings around the cane wigwams and stored them in plates on the old kitchen dresser. I plan to germinate them on the window sills in old eggshell trays filled with compost. I shall also see what comes of my own heirloom sunflower seeds which I collected five years ago from the farm where we lived in Andalucia. The important thing will be not let the seedlings get too leggy which is what they will do if exposed too long to the light and heat.

Do you know north Norfolk? If it’s not on your agenda, then add this eastern English rural backwater to experience space: wide open skies and flat fields spreading and fanning in the distance. As the light fades, the vast horizons here glow spectacularly in the last blasts of sunset and the huge sands by the sea at Holkham will revive most spirits.

North Norfolk remains a back of beyond place where old men in caps dig bean trenches in cottage gardens, and you can walk in solitude for ages with only blackbird song or the sudden flexing of a deer as it bounds through a hedge. I have often come back loaded up with herby lavenders, which do so well in this dryer part of the country or utilitarian country things like a traditional pestle and mortar or old folding card table from one of the unassuming secondhand shops in the small towns.

Last week I was there visiting friends, and on their advice, looking for a cheap bicycle. It is so much more scenic than looking for bikes, probably nicked, in a Brixton back alley. We drove past fields where white barn owls skimmed the hedge tops, and mounds of knobbly sugar beets were piled in thick sucking mud.

At Pode’s, a cluster of wooden sheds stuffed with old bikes and unrelated parts, a woman came out of a caravan on bricks and pointed us towards the possibilities. And there it was, a burgundy Raleigh Cameo (checking the online Raleigh Fans Forum I discover it is an eighties’ model) in good shape with two new wheels. After a quick wobble around I put my money on the counter including ¬¨¬£1.49 for a bell. Back home at the local accessories shop what savings I’d made on the bike were soon swallowed up in lights, lock, helmet and so on. But I’m happy enough with the deal.

WORTH A VIST

Out and about, in between meetings, and gasping for a caffeine hit, I came across Tea’s me around the corner from Ladbroke Grove tube. This teapot-sized boudoir-style cafe with big print wallpaper, tinkly chandelier and one informal table to sit around is a joy. There are elegant white cakes stands of gingerbread men, wobbly scones and flapjacks. The espresso here is exactly strong enough.

This is the season for rhubarb and so here’s my recipe for a crumble. I add orange and lemon for some interesting flavour.

Crumble:
300g plain flour,
175g unrefined brown sugar
200g unsalted butter, cubed at room temperature
Filling:
500g rhubarb cut into small chunks
150g brown sugar
juice and rind of l small orange
juice and rind of 1 lemon

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4.
2. Mix the flour and sugar in a large bowl then rub in the butter, a few cubes at a time, until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs
2. Place the rhubarb, sugar, orange and lemon juice and zest in a 24cm ovenproof dish
3. Spoon over the crumble mix
4. Bake in the oven for 40-45 minutes until the crumble is browned and the fruit mixture bubbling
5. Serve with cream, icecream, fromage frais and maybe, if its the weekend or you want to be more decadent a glass of sweet moscatel wine