Clapping for Boris

I hope you all spent one minute , yes it was only one minute, out of your life to clap for Boris tonight . Whatever your political views and I don't want to get into, that you must agree that Boris has done his best to cope with what we are facing now. Would you have come out on your steps to clap if you had Coronavirus . But he did trying to keep spirits up when me and you would rather be curled up inside if we had been ill . I understand if we get stuck down we must drink a lots of liquids and rest. Rest is certainly what he has not been doing
I hope Boris will be soon back on his bicycle.That is when I first noticed him when he was Mayor of London. Although I have not met him personally I reckon he is quite a character . The nearest to having links with Boris was ,we had a clumber spaniel and the lady who bred it lived next door to Boris's father. . And apparently the sire of our pup was called Boris and named after his truly.
So hopefully with the care of the NHS and taking some rest he will be soon back in harness.  He reminds me so much of Jack ,the same sort of character too who when he had sepsis last year and had a 8 days stint in hospital was back working on the shoots with his dogs in less than 2 weeks after that .Pushing himself and maybe for both of them they should have heeded the doctors advice . But it is men like this who make the world the place it is. Photos and video as I was waiting for 8pm.

Gardening and how do your potatoes grow

Tt seems as if this Coronavirus is bringing out the green fingers in a lot of us . Having to stay at home and wondering what to do people with a garden like Kay is digging up her garden to plant vegetables. Jack is thinking of turning some of a field into a garden... ah yes but I reckon it will be Peter Rabbit thinking it is his birthday and Christmas rolled into one. We live too near the wood for us to grow prize vegetables .And green fingered we are not .But fear not my dad is so maybe we will try to grow some tatties but my Dad knows what he is doing . He has competitions with his friends to see who can grow the best, biggest and firsts of the garden.
"Mind thy 'ead"  as you go into the greenhouse to admire the potatoes ."I will have to get Robin Teasdale to come to prune the vine "said my Dad ..Now why he thought Robin could come as the restrictions were on I do not know. The secateurs were a bit stiff so as I couldn't find the WD40 to give them a squirt, so I poured some cooking oil on and hoped for the best.
I don't think I made a bad job .Lets hope that the vine produces as many grapes as it did last year less I might get the blame for  not pruning it right.
One is too sour for him and has pipes in . He has 3 vines.  I wondered if you can grow them from pips but he told me Peter Caselli his Italian friend had once told him you graft them like fruit trees. No doubt when my dad has time he will be looking up which are the best sweetest one on the

computer and a package will arrive shortly afterwards . And his rhubarb isn't doing too bad either . The pear tree is just coming into blossom lets hope there isn't going to be a frost

Dedicated to Lady Kingfisher better known as Sue Smith on Palm Sunday

Aren't we lucky to have the telephone .
When I was small you had to queue to get into the telephone box and you had to have 4 of those big pennies to make a call. Slot them in and when the person at the other end answered you pressed button A and if no one answered you could get your money back by pressing button B. And you could talk for ever until someone came and knocked on the door and  scowled at you or opened the door and said a few obscenities to you . And if you followed a person in who had been smoking while on the phone, which often happened in those days ,you had to hold the door open as it was on a tight spring with your foot while letting some fresh air in.
I have known Sue Smith for donkeys years. I remember talking on the phone to Sue when Mandy, her daughter, won the Yorkshire's Dairy Queen title and son Peter was the best sheep shearer in the country. There were sad times too, when Alan her husband died.  Jack always shouts down the phone if he knows she is on the other end "How is Lady Kingfisher..." and you can nearly see her smile at the other end remembering her time in the village play when she played the part. We used to share car rides to Bed and Breakfast meetings together which were of course arranged over the telephone.  I always remember when she picked me up one time admiring the stable door into one of my guests rooms. Soon after when Sue was converting some of the farm buildings into holiday lets she too added stable doors. her business grew and grew ,she had tireless energy and always had tales to tell of her guests and likewise me of mine. I remember how some guests complained as one of there cows was in bulling and had bailed all night. This was a real working farm, this is what happening .Calves aren't found under gooseberries bushes.

So when we were not allowed out as such at the moment , you get in touch by phone to your friends and after passing on news of what is happening in the world today, we go back to talking about the good old days .
So it wasn't strange to pick up the phone for a chat on Friday night. An hour can go by very quickly when you go back so far as we do.
Sue was very ill the other year and no one expected her to last the night but she bounced back thank goodness.She has retired from doing accommodation, only to speak with glee when she told me she has a part time job ...Really ....  really is a word which Sue uses quite a lot so I thought it was apt to add it here .... she is volunteering at the hospice shop in Helmsley for a few hours a week .

So you wonder why there is a photo of a bowl of fruit.... well we were on the phone so long I managed to clear the work surfaces ,wash the kitchen floor and then stew some fruit .... brambles for the Autumn ,some raspberries and blackcurrant and a few grapes. I had frozen them all separately on trays and then mixed them together and just take out a handful or two as I need them. Dont know when I will be able to have guests again so I am using them up . As we were on the phone I said what I was doing and said sorry I couldn't send them down the phone to her but would send a photo so here is the photo ,Lady Kingfisher and here's to many more years of friendship x

ps and a bit of palm from me  Dad as it is Palm Sunday

[ well Susan is local too and understand me saying me and we would never say my we would say me ..so it isn't a spelling mistake]

Do Re Mi - Covid 19 version A Saturday night special

Adam Jackson and his amazing Chocolate Brownies

With thanks to Adam Jackson who is executive head chef at the Feversham Arms in Helmsley . As it is the weekend .. it is time for a little treat and the only advantage of self isolating by yourself is you can eat them all. But isnt it nice to share so please save this recipe for when we can all be out and about again. I am happy to visit you when this is all over if you make some of these. 

Please still heed #StayInStaySafe as hard as it is.  To put it bluntly it is only ignorant ,selfish people who flaunt the rules.

  Chocolate brownies . Can we gluten and dairy free . 4 med eggs beaten

200g green and blacks 70% choc it’s got no dairy no soya and only a tiny bit of sugar .
250 g pure spread or other dairy soya free spread
130 cocoa powder make sure it’s dairy free some are not .
300g
Caster sugar
60 g of s r flour or gluten free s r flour .
Weigh out all ingredients with the kids sift the flour and cocoa .
Pre heat oven 180 deg f
1 melt spread and chocolate in a bowl over simmering water . Leave yo cool enough that the kids can touch bowl .

2 add beaten egg mix well

3 . Add sifted flour and cocoa
Mix in
Put in to lined sandwich tins and cook for 10 mins at 180 drop temp to 165 and cook for a further 10-15 mins . Not an exact science but you looking for a risen mixture crusted and slightly cracked on top gooey In the middle . If it rises and soufflé up and cracks it’s too cooked .

Leave to cool and eat 😋😋😋 this makes 2 x 8 inch cake tins . Make with kids easy 

Clapping for the NHS

Last Thursday night I stood outside and clapped in appreciation of our wonderful NHS staff. I rang my cousin, Gillian, later and everyone I spoken to afterwards said how emotional they felt. I couldn't hear anyone else clapping and so tonight I decided I would walk through our fields towards Wass which is a mile down the road.
As I walked all I could think in this mile was this is how long the London Nightingale Hospital is.  It is almost too large to contemplate. And there are more hospitals like this going up around the country. How all these people working to get them up need to be applauded too .Everyone doing their bit but that is the British Bulldog spirit that lies in the majority of us. So tonight just before 8pm as the sun went down on another day I took this photo. Byland Abbey in ruins beyond the village and a deer grazing undisturbed until the clapping started.
We live in a beautiful part of the world and hope when it is all over you can come and see the area for yourselves. We should all  be eternally grateful to all the NHS who are working so hard to fight the battle.
As it reached 8pm the villagers, I could hear but not see, came out of their houses and even some banging pans .I just hope this Coronavirus doesn't like noise as it certainly wont stay around for long if 70 households in Wass came make that sort of a noise, goodness knows what it is like in more densely populated area. Noise is a good vibration .We must keep our spirits up . I sang all the way home, thankful for a host of things. Even this thistle showed how nature goes on. 

Grow your own fruit and Father

Well he may be 97 but he still knows how his garden should be laid out.

Recently I planted strawberry plants, with father sat on a stool giving instructions. I had then gone home  to get some jobs done here. He is so particular, they have to be put in dead straight rows and so far apart. Well he is a perfectionist when it comes to his garden and then when you finished you rake over the soil so no one can see your footprints. He gets unbelievably pleasure from working in his gardens yes gardens he as more than one . I do it as a chore.
 The first garden as you go through the kitchen garden gate now has strawberries nearest the house..as well as some raised beds a bit further down. His idea is as we have cats, they tend to hang around the hedge and when I throw some scraps out, this is the nearest place to relax in the sunshine and nearest to the kitchen door they then  dart through the hedge. And with them being there it tends to keep the blackbirds off the fruit.  After I had gone he had planted 50 onions, then there is a cabbage patch and then he has a line of grafted twigs which I think are fruit trees and then 3 rows of rose bushes . Honeysuckle  climbs over the stone wall here. The next garden to the left Jack has been over and rotovated in strips and is ready to work and plant more vegetables  and here he also has a rows of sweet peas . To the right is the walled garden in front of the main house ,which leads a to a summer house and a rose garden and further through are orchards all enclosed in the main walled garden .A lot of the stones came when people could go to Byland Abbey and take the stones from there in the late 1800s when the house was built. The grass is ready for cutting as Nicholas s ducks spent half the winter escaping on to it but their droppings have certainly fertilised the grass. Round the edges he has his bedding plants, his 100 year old rose bushes that smell divine and his newly planted peach tree. He did have a banana tree which I bought back years ago from the Lost Garden of Heligan but after a couple of winters it died off. There is also a pampas grass in the corner. Dont think it was a sign of him been a swinger in his earlier days ...wasn't that the secret sign in the1960s or so they say .
This garden in its hey day had a cast iron fence round it and there is steps that lead into 2 further vegetable gardens. Nearest to the wall he plants runner beans so we can reach them easily when we have to pick them as from the flower garden we have a 3-4 foot advantage. They grow up for Jack to escape up the beanstalk.  The rhubarb grows on the hedge side here and there is then an opening into the bottom garden where his green houses are and cool frames and eucalyptus tree .This is where we were working today . Raspberries canes must last for years as he said the ones that were nearest the green house that had belonged to his cousin,Billy Buckle,who was the head keeper of the local estate and he died at least 50 years ago !.

So I dug the holes and he held them in straight with his walking stick on the roots and then I filled them in. We will have to wait for these new ones to have rasps on till next year. .

t