Week 30 - Re-arrange the Wine Rack

When I started making wine, I used to put the bottles in any old spare corner in the garage. In hindsight, that wasn't that sensible - with the car taking up most of the room, the floor space for wine bottles is limited; and I think we can all see the dangers of me bumbling around in the dark recesses of a garage strewn with bottles.

So I put up a shelf and a wine rack and devised a simple system of putting the bottles which had been made longest at the bottom, the newer bottles added at the top.

When I'd drunk the entire bottom row, I moved everything down one, like a giant game of Tetris. The system meant that I could just grab the bottle lowest on the rack and not have to fiddle around pulling bottles out to find the next in line to be drunk.

This worked really well as long as I keep all my wines for the same amount of time (a year) before drinking. A problem arises, though, when some wines can be drunk before 12 months (tea bag wines in - say - three months) and some need longer (parsnip wine benefits from 2 years in the bottle) - so the little sticky dot I put on the top of each cork so I can see at a glance what it is, and the 'month made' don't actually reflect when I can drink the stuff.

So this week's Challenge has been to get all the bottles out of the rack, replace the sticky dot with one that gives the month to be drunk not the month made, then put them all back in the rack in order of drinking date.

It's a little thing, but it's so much easier to just be able to grab the lowest bottle on the rack and know it's ready to go, rather than squeezing past the car and having to take the torch out to read the labels until I find one that's had it's 'maturing' time.

So that's my week 30 Challenge done - cheers!

Week 29 - Make a Batch of Jam or Jelly

I'm not very good at making jams and jellies - it's the setting point bit. I guess that it's one of those 'practice makes perfect' things, but I don't practice very much as I'm not very good at it - a catch 22 situation. 

Instead, if I have lots of fruit that needs making into something, it generally gets turned into wine. I'm quite good at that.

But as a consequence of spending all day yesterday fighting the bed containing a 6' high currant hedge with a pair of loppers in order to turn it back into a bed containing four bushes, I ended up with an awful lot of redcurrants and blackcurrants. There's certainly enough for wine and redcurrant jelly.

The recipe I have is rather vague (it's one of those that says 'simmer until cooked', and 'until you reach the setting point' as opposed to proper times. I mean, am I looking for the setting point after 3 minutes or 2 hours??) so I looked online and found that the sainted Delia has a super simple recipe.

You cook the currants for about 10 minutes, squashing them with the potato masher to get the juice out; add the same weight in warmed sugar, stirring till dissolved; then a rolling boil for 8 minutes; strain the lot through a muslin square and put into sterlised jam jars.

Marvelous!

A slight downside to the method is that the jelly starts to set as soon as it is being strained, so you can't hang around waiting before you put it in the jars. I am also rather skeptical about how solid it is going to get - I suspect that it might charitably be referred to as 'soft set', but I'll see in the morning once it has totally cooled.

No matter how the set is, one jar will be entered into the Hill Annual Show in a couple of weeks - and even if it doesn't do well, I've no doubt that it will taste superb!

So that's my week 29 Challenge - done!

Week 28 - Make a Scarecrow

For the last couple of years at the Hill there has been a 'dress your shed' competition, which didn't take off with a huge bang. Notable exceptions were Chris from down the bottom who turned her shed into a beach hut, and cheery Brian and Pauline, who's shed always looks smashing anyway.

The only thing that I was likely to transform my rickety toolshed into was a pile of kindling if I slammed the door a bit hard.

But this year, some inspired person came up with. the idea of a Scarecrow competition - what an excellent plan! Low cost, not too technically difficult, and anyone can knock something together.

Now I've never been particulary 'crafty' in a Blue Peter kind of way, but I have not let that deter me, and over the past couple of weeks, Granddad George the Scarecrow has come to life.

I stuffed an old pillowcase with scrunched up newspaper, put a stick through for his arms. I dressed him in a pair of trousers which didn't survive the cut from my wardrobe clearout a couple of weeks ago; and an old sweatshirt donated by the Next-doors.

His head is an old cotton shopper bag, sown into a round and stuffed with newspaper. He's wearing my gardening gloves and wellies - and a flat cap which I found in the drawer, but I can't remember where it came from.

I gave his face a lot of thought (this (above) looking a lot like that episode of Dr Who where Maureen Lipman steals peoples faces, but Domino cat not seeming to mind).

Wool hair, marker pen eyebrows and mouth, cane topper nose, and a bit of Avon's finest blusher, and he's ready to rock.

Challenge completed - I wonder if I'll win!

Week 27 - Join in with the Work Party

A couple of times a year we have a Work Party at the Hill allotments where I am the proud tenant of half plot 16a, whereby all plotholders are invited to help out with the general maintenance of the site. This is met with heartfelt groans by all, of course.

The Work Party taking place at this time of year is because our site competes for the Thorpe Memorial Trophy which the City of Birmingham awards to the best allotment site in Birmingham. It would be remiss of me not to mention at this point that we have won this competition twice in the past three years.

Judging takes place from tomorrow onwards, so it's a general pitch in - primarily by the hardworking committee, frankly; and some other plotholders too - in order to bring the site up to snuff. It's not the individual plots that are judged, but the site as a whole, so the access road, car park and communal areas all need to be neat and tidy.

Actually, there was not a bad turn out, and many hands do, indeed, make light work, and at the end of a busy couple of hours in the sunshine we had the car park hedges trimmed, the roadway weeded, accumulations of leaves swept up, and neat and tidy planted up troughs by the club house.






















A good job (and my week's Challenge) done!

Week 26 - De-clutter the Wardrobe

You do have to be in the right mood and have the good level of steely determination to chuck clothes out.

I reckon that this is partly because you've paid good money for those clothes and now you are throwing them away! That's like throwing money away!

The other reason is that those lovely clothes have been part of your life; maybe seen you through a job interview, or to a dance where you met someone special, or shared the trials and triumphs of growing food from the soil...

So when I had the required level of ruthlessness earlier in the week, I opened the wardrobe doors, and started. When did you last wear it? Does it go with anything else in the wardrobe? Does it fit? Is it still in good condition? Do you feel good it in?

And an hour or so later (trying stuff on is a must, doing this job) I had a slimmed down wardrobe and a hanger full of items destined for the charity shop.

An interesting mix, this - including

• some black velvet long evening gloves (when would you possibly wear these?) 
• a heavy arran tunic with short sleeves (so you can roast your torso whilst your arms turn blue with cold) 
• a leather lace up waistcoat (I have no idea why this ever seemed like a good purchase) 
• a mustard yellow pashmina (given up with sadness - I bought it on the QE2, and it's beautiful but I'm not a 'wrap' person and it deserves better than to languish in my wardrobe) 
• a soft viscose blouse (lovely to wear, but always makes me look scruffy and unkempt) 
• a matching silky cream nightie & dressing gown (a nice idea, but I don't think I've worn these more than about three times) 
• my brother's school tie (dating back 30 years no idea why I have this) 
• the red and black sash from a black taffeta skirt (similar vintage to the tie - no idea what happened to the skirt) 

...and various skirts and a couple of tops that have just fallen out of favour. All were bagged up and taken to the charity shop - I hope they all find a new lease of life.

Before:

After:

So that's my week 26 challenge - done!

Week 25 - Celebrate the Solstice

I could have taken the easy way out of this one and celebrated the winter solstice (= get up to get the sun up at approx 8.15am), but that felt like a bit of a cop out, so the Summer Solstice it was at approx 4.45am instead.

Anyone who knows me will be crying with laughter at this point as I am categorically NOT an early bird - my absolute pet hate is the alarm clock, and I can ALWAYS roll over and go back to sleep, no matter what the hour is. So getting up really early to see the sunrise on the longest day is a good Challenge for me.

I looked up online how one celebrates the Solstice, and apart from going to Stonehenge, or dancing round a maypole, there seems to be a lack of traditions.

So I made some up.

Aurora is the Roman goddess of the dawn, and in yoga, I know that there is a series of moves called Sun Salutation. So what better than to go to the highest point I know (just above the Hill allotments, 3 miles away) before dawn; and perform a sun salutation as the sun comes up, and drink a toast to the goddess. 

Brilliant!

The one problem with this scenario (apart from the obvious loony-alert of parking up in a lane in the middle of the night to do a spot of yoga in the entry to a farmer's field, then swig out of a hip flask) was that the weather forecast was very poor - black clouds and rain followed by mist/fog. Not much chance of seeing the sun come up, then.

My plan B was a compromise which would be to get up in time to get in the car to complete my challenge should the weather be fair, BUT if there was no prospect of being able to see the sun come up due to the weather, to do my observance here at home.

So come the Big Day on Friday, I was up and ready at 4.15am, and looked out into the gloom. It was misty and drizzly. Plan B, therefore, kicked in.

I padded downstairs, took a big towel outside and faced to look due east; and at just about 4.40am I stood and stretched and performed my sun salutation in the rain; then raised a glass of gin & orange in a toast to Aurora. Then I whizzed upstairs to the attic room take photos of the dawn (such that it was) as the sun (apparently) came up at 4.44am.

Well, you ain't getting pics of me doing yoga in the rain, but here's the dawn, such as it was (and the proof of the time!), and my toast.

I felt awake and invigorated for, I think, the first time ever at that time in the morning! That said, I went back to bed for a couple of hours - and could I get up when the hated alarm went off in the morning?

Could I heck.

Nonetheless, that's my week 25 Challenge: done!

Week 24 - Go Round a Maze

I don't know why it is, but I have always been fascinated with labyrinths and mazes - probably down to a misspent youth sitting round a big table playing too much in the way of Dungeons and Dragons with my big brother and his mates.

Every now and again in later Summer I'll be out and about and see a sign for a MAIZE MAZE where a maze has been cut in a farmer's field in the shape of a maze (or sown accordingly, I guess, so it grows into the shape), and wanted to check it out, but I have never got round to it.

So when I was away for a girls' weekend with my big sister Helen this week in London, we decided to spend a day in Hampton Court Palace. And what's at Hampton Court Palace? Yes - the world famous Hampton Court Maze. Hurrah!

When we got in, Helen had a Plan, and said 'let's always choose the most unlikely path - like the one going towards the outside and not towards the middle.'

Well, I said that that sounded like a really stupid idea to me, and would result in us going round and round and round until dinner time and we'd have to be rescued by the Staff.

But - and this was most irritating - she was RIGHT, and despite a couple of false turns, we eventually found ourselves in the middle! And here is Helen in the middle to prove it.

That was tremendous fun! And my week 24 Challenge - done!