Our First Harvested Leek Of The Year!

                                                      Vegetable  garden art.

 I lifted our first leek on Sunday morning with my trusty garden fork.

This particular specimen like most of our vegetables I grew from seed and planted in a cut down IBC tank filled with topsoil and well rotted fym.

Seeing that it is soup season down here on the Irish Riviera.  We decided to make a pan of leek and potato soup for our din dins:

Yep. Another soup post!

Home grown and home made Leek and Potato soup.

Lovely!

Smallholding French Onion Soup.

Another soup post.

We lit the stove in the front room last night to take away any chill.  We are only burning wood at the moment.  

Solid fuel smokeless coal is very expensive and the carbon taxes don't help. At least living in the countryside next to the sea we can light a fire or stove. 

 It's cheaper to make a pan of homegrown and homemade soup:

 When I was tidying and weeding the polytunnel the other day.  I found and harvested two big plastic buckets of our Snowball white onions:

We grow and eat a lot of the Alliums family in our house.

We bought the onion sets in Spring in Lidl.

Apart from weeding and watering them.  All they have had to feed them is well rotted fym from the rabbits, ponies and pigs.  Muck and magic!

I worked in the veg plot on Saturday morning weeding, repotting and topping up potted shrubs and perennials and I also made some new plants by division.

J made us some French onions from half a Snowball onion, our garlic and some gravy browning to give the soup colour:

Our homegrown and homemade French onion soup.  

I ate (drank) it with four slices of brown bread.  I don't like white bread but some one still buys it.  

There are some members of our household that don't like certain vegetables, onions in particular!  I eat any vegetable.

Anyone else making soup?

Polytunnel Big Tidy Up And Making Soup.

 I gave the polytunnel a big tidy up this week.

We harvested all the tomatoes and I laid the green and yellow ones out on two tables.  I also filled two buckets of green tomatoes.  We gave one bucket to my brother to put in his greenhouse to redden.

Four buckets of green and yellow and orange tomatoes.

I laid some out in the polytunnel.  Some of them kept rolling on to the floor.  They don't mind getting wet when I turn on the hosepipe sprinkler tap.  

Strangely enough.  No birds or four legged  creatures are attacking them.  Perhaps they are colour blind or they don't like tomatoes?  

Any one have any recipes for green toms please?

We also froze a few bags of red tomatoes for our curries and chillies this Autumn and Winter.

We made some red tomato and onion soup.  The only other ingredient was a chicken stock cube and a good dollop of curry powder.

Our un liquidized soup m.  I had four slices of brown bread with mine.

There was a bit of tomatoes residue at the bottom of the soup bowl.  I put this in the pig bucket and they scoffed it all down in one go.

Anyone else getting into soup making season yet?

Harvesting The Purple Rain Potatoes.

 I dug up the Purple Rain potatoes that we grew in my new plastic fym filled cut in half oil heating oil tanks.

They looked muddy and pebble like.

When we washed them and cut them in half.  They looked completely different:

More like beetroots. Not bad taste either.  Although I loved the early Home guard and Britisg Queens this year.  We have been harvesting them since early May and we still have a few meals to dig.

We have also got a glut of tomatoes this year.  

I grew them from seed and potted them on and planted them in the ground in the polytunnel.  I gave this plenty of well rotted fym earlier in the year. 

No liquid bought tomato food.  Just muck and magic and sunshine and well water from the sprinkler.

The tomatoes and potatoes and onions and now the swedes are providing us with Vegetables accompaniments every day.    Next veg to taste will be the leeks.

Organic vegetable growing is all all about muck and magic isn't it?

Have a good weekend!

Transplanting The Leeks Into Their Growing Baths.

 I have been bust emptying plastic fish boxes and emptying baths and filling them with soil and sowing seeds into the polytunnel and planting leeks that I have grown from seed and moved and transplanted into baths outside the polytunnel.  I am always on the look out for free or cheap containers like old plastic heating oil tanks and baths to fill with topsoil and fym and make more raised beds.

I have been making the most of this Indian/Irish Summer and clearing and weeding and preparing for Autumn and Spring crops next year.

Leeks In The Bath. 

Old second hand baths that are made of plastic and I made drainage holes in the baths along with the plug hole.  

Maybe not aesthetically pleasing on the eye? Yet the vegetables don't seem to mind growing in them.  

Like I often write on here.  You don't have to own a garden or rent an allotment to grow your own organic vegetables.

I shovelled many shovels of topsoil and well rotted fym into the baths.

Then I used an old wardrobe hanger pole for a dibber and made wide and six inch deep holes and dropped the leeks in and puddled them in and filled the holes with water from the watering can.  It's back to the mizzle and rain today!

The water washes a bit of soil around the leeks roots.  It will also ensure the holes blanch the white sock and they will gain girth with the thickness of the planting hole.

We ("me!") have planted lots of leeks.  I can't wait for leek and onion soup this Autumn/Winter with homemade/baked soda bread.

Anyone else growing leeks?  

Some More Of The Oxford Places We Saw And Visited..

My last Oxford post left of my trip to Blighty:

We went on a bit of a wild goose chase jumping on an off busses trying the find Wolvercote Cemetery outside of the city.

I noticed Sir Roger Bannister middle distance(four minute mile) and his wife's grave.

My friend is a big follower of Cardinal Newman who founded the Oxford Movement. Cardinal Newman was an Anglican vicar who converted to Roman Catholicism.  Our first visit of the day was to visit The College Of Littlemore.

The sisters kindly showed us around the buildings.

I was interested in the herbaceous borders and pointed out the Michaelmas Daisies.  The parched lawn shows how hot it was.

Cardinal  Newman's Chapel

The college.

Cardinal Newman bust.

Sign to the JRR Tolkein grave.

A yellow Rhododendrons type flower.  Is it a Linodendron?   It flowers around September.  I have seen them in Cornwall many years ago.

Thomas Cranmer and the other Protestant Martyrs were burned alive near the Martyrs' Memorial.  The Book of Common Prayer is said to be the work of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer.

JRR Tolkien grave.  I have only read The Hobbit.    One of my favourite English Prog Rock bands: 'Marillion ' were named after his book The Silmarillion.

The Oratory church.  This was JRR Tolkien's church where he attended Mass and Gerald Manley Manley Hopkins was a curate here.  We attended the evening mass.  It was different to anything I know but I found it beautiful and very very peaceful.  There are so many fine and some ancient churches in Oxford.

Ornamental fountain.

More homeless sleeping in graveyards.  I have mentioned homeless people three times on this latest visit to Blighty.  

Yet another fabulous ecclesiastical building.

Posh and expensive housing being built near Wolvercote Cemetery.  Google them if you have got plenty of money?

This concludes my series of trips to England posts! It was very tiring but we got to lots of different places and we took in two music festivals and a Chris Isaak concert.  I don't know when I will see a rock band for a long time.  

A vegetable growing post tomorrow!

Two Oxford Pubs With Literary Connections And A Moan..

We passed this pub at least 6 times both walking and by bus.  C S Lewis and JRR Tolkien often met here with The Inklings.  

I featured the pub on here on a previous visit to Oxford and Cropredy in 2022.  They affectionately called it " The Bird and Baby".  It still looks empty and it's shame it's not a pub at the moment.

Immediately across the road is the Lamb and Flag.  

This was open but we didn't visit because we presumed beer prices would be like Bournemouth and they would be charging seven pounds a pint.

I never thought I would reach a time when an ordinary man like myself could not afford to go in a pub and buy a pint or seven.  

Refreshingly there is a chain over in England that lets me charge my phone, gives me a Freedom breakfast for 4.44 and a pint for 2.74.  It begins with W.

Over here rural pubs especially are dropping their shutters like flies.  

5.50 a pint is too dear but they won't drop their prices and the government won't subsidise taxis or provide public transport.  

I buy my beer from the supermarket and my social life is on here most days!

Any road:

 When I got back here to Hibernia I Googled the pub and learned that Jude The Obscure was wrote here by Thomas Hardy.

Some Inspector Morse episodes also were filmed there.

Oh well.  Perhaps I will visit the pub  some other time?

I found this video of the pub on You Tube.

Is it Tish time tonight?  Go on open that can or bottle and the ingredients will say "Tish" to you!

The Final Resting Place Of A Literary Hero.

 After we visited The Kilns.  We asked a local lady directions to Holy Trinity church in Quarry Road Headington.  She was very amiable and gave us excellent directions.

It's about ten minutes walk away and you cross a busy main road.  Then you walk into a very quiet suburban area and find the church after a nice man washing his car again pointed us in the right direction.:

The great man's final resting place.  

He died on November 22nd 1963.  Thirteen days before I was born.  It was also the day of President Kennedy's assassination and Aldous Huxley (Author) also died that day.

CS Lewis was/is liked and followed by Evangelical Christians and interestingly he believed in Purgatory.  So I am tending to think he was more High Church.  

He used to attend the eight O'clock Sunday morning service because there were no hymns and he didn't like the vicars sermons.

The church was going through renovations and the Narnia window was boarded up with plywood.

I attempted to ask a foreign sounding workman which pew CS Lewis sat in?  He looked puzzled so I said: "C S Lewis the famous writer?"

He shook his head:

"No I do not understand.  I speak little English.

I suppose my north country colloquialism didn't help.  I didn't say " nowt or summat" I don't think?😃

We both laughed and I waved goodbye.

More Oxford pics tomorrow.  

The Kilns At Last!

 We caught the bus to Oxford and booked in at a cheap Travelodge next to a Park and Ride.

It was great to charge my phone, shower and sleep in a bed after 11 days sleeping in a tent.

On the Monday we got all day bus passes and went searching for Cardinal Newmans college and CS Lewis's house The Kilns and his grave and  JRR Tolkiens grave.

We will start with Cecil Staples Lewis.  I have been interested in his Christian writing since my early twenties and I have watched the film 'Shadowlands' twenty four times.  J watched it again while I was there and when I had sent her pictures of his house.

It's probably my favourite film of all time.  Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger are amazing.  They should have been given Oscar's for their performance.  The film is heart breaking and yet so beautiful.  There's a northern English lad in the film who says "We read to know we are not alone." I would say we writers write to know we are not alone"!

Here is the Shadowlands theme tune:

This is one off my "to do" on my bucket list.  Helpful bus drivers and members of the public pointed us in the direction and here are some photos I took:

A sign up a street in Headington, Oxford.  The houses looked to be nineteen thirties semis.

The Kilns.

Next door neighbours house called "Narnia".

My Kansas band hero Steve Walsh and Steve Hackett the great guitarist who we saw at Cropredy in 2022.  I saw Steve with Kansas  in 2014.

There isn't an eight acre garden any more.  There is how ever a nature reserve for people to walk around.  My friend and me were the only two visitors that Monday morning.

The upstairs windows paint work is peeling.  It's up here where C SLewis wrote all his famous books.

I think I have seen these pictures in Shadowlands?

The lodge is an old clay quarry and The Kilns is where the bricks were made and then became the Lewis residence.

* PLEASE note*:

If you ever go there be sure to research how to get to these places first.  A lot of the bus stops are not situated in bus stations and distributed around the city.   

We met a few problems and it was a bit of a wild goose chase at times but we did eventually reach our destinations!  Maybe someone could print some leaflets and communicate?

We stayed at the Pear Tree Travelodge next to the Park and Ride.  The first bus is about six in the morning and the last is 11.20 at night.  It's the bus 300 and only costs two Pounds or you can buy a all day ticket and jump on and off the bus all day! It's definitely worth a two days and nights stay.  

More Oxford photos tomorrow!