Sleep Interrupted

Yesterday was the Wokingham Horticultural Society Summer Show. They hold four shows a year, Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter, and it is a chance for members to show of their vegetables, fruit, flowers and domestic produce in various categories. I entered three categores, from the Domestic Section, a cherry cake, following the given recipe, and some ginger biscuits, 5, any recipe. Well, the cake turned out okay, but sadly when cut open by the judges, all the cherries had sunk. Not sure why as I had coated them in flour which is supposed to prevent that. Tasted pretty nice though. The ginger biscuits were a bit of a disaster. The first recipe seemed good, placed the little balls of dough on the tray, only to find they had spread to the approximate thickness of a sheet of paper, and refused to be lifted from the tray in one piece. The second recipe and batch were better, quite crumbly, but not gingery enough. No prizes there either.

The final category was for peas, 9 pods. The flower had to be attached, and the pods arranged on a plate, with tail ends facing out. I have to admit, my peas looked pretty good on the plate, I had chosen nine of the same size, nice even colouring and no blemishes. They did however look quite small next to some of the other entries. But they did alright, and I got a Third Prize for them. My little certificate is now going to be pinned up in my shed. I am feeling quite proud. The next show is in September, by then Andrew, Ben and Jessica will be fed up with eating fruit scones, as that is the challenge of the Domestic Section, and I intend to perfect my recipe.

Well, for the most part, the vegetables are doing well. The recent rainy weather has been great, saved me loads of watering, but has also meant the tomatoes are taking their time in ripening. Still, can’t have it both ways I suppose.

The carrots are looking really good, very tall, bushy green leaves, just hope under the surface carrots are growing. I did have a bit of a sneaky dig and saw a glimpse of orange, so I am fairly sure there are carrots there. The remaining parsnip plants are looking good too, they have been really tricky to grow. The beans in pots have had a spurt recently, and today I saw they have some pale purple flowers. So optimistic for them now too.

The pumpkins are a tough one. They grew really quickly from seed, and once planted in the raised bed have just gone mad. I have completely underestimated how much room they will need/take. Reading on some vegetable websites, you can let one plant spread itself over about 100sq feet. Sadly, I have about five squashed into a small space so not sure how they will do. Have already got some female flowers on their, but once the fruit start to grow it is stopping them from rotting which is the next problem.

And finally the peas. They have done pretty well. Although not quite as tall or as leafy as I thought they would get, they have had a fair few pods on. And the peas inside are perfectly form, and without disease, which is good. I have been picking a few when they look ready, and immediately freezing the peas to preserve taste and quality. Except now the children have decided they much prefer eating raw peas straight from the pod - they are very sweet. See more about my peas in the next post.

Hmmm. To Facebook or not to Facebook? It would be my third social networking presence after LinkedIn and last.fm. Well, if it keeps me in contact with friends and extended family I reckon I can deal with the plurality.

Time passes.

There, done. Will upload a picture and blurb a bit later.

Last Wednesday I took the day off from work (only two days after coming back from a week’s holiday!) and we took the kids to Legoland Windsor. Now normally this is a fairly expensive — adult tickets are £33 a pop — but Louise got discount tickets through her toddler group. Well, I say “got”. She organised the whole bulk buy thing. But anyway…

I’m not sure what I was expecting but I was really impressed! The place is big — we didn’t even get across the whole site in a day, although we weren’t exactly marching. We got there at 10am, opening time and I didn’t even look at my watch until after 3pm. We stayed until closing at 5pm and we were busy the whole time.

It’s really well set up for young children, although a majority of the attractions have a 0.9m minimum height. It turns out that Jessica is about 0.905m tall, so we had a very hit-and-miss time depending on how slouchy she was feeling at any given moment. So, measure your kids before you go.

One final thing to note for the cost concious: There’s basically no competition in the food that’s sold so it’s not cheap. However, there are plenty of places you can have a picnic, which is what we did, so you can save (more than) a few pennies that way.

The week before last we went on Holiday to Exmouth for a week. Louise has uploaded lots of photos to Picasa Web Albums, so by the magic of the intertubes you can take a look.