Saturday 29 July 2017

I'M THIRTEEN, YES, THAT'S RIGHT AND YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS? YEEHAA.. I'M A TEENAGER FOLKS,

And not one of my so-called fans or friends remembered! She remembered but she would, wouldn't she? I mean, I'm right there in her face or on top of her head nearly 24/7, there's no chance she'd forget. Besides, she puts important dates into her diary, isn't that what they there for, to put important dates in so one never forgets other people's birthdays, why don't other people do that?

But back to MY birthday. Well, there were no birthday cards for me, apart from the one she made out of edible stuff which was pretty clever, boohoo, so to be true to typical naughty teenage behaviour, I nibbled Claudia's basket handle whilst on our way to the allotments this morning.

Oh, sh12,  perhaps I shouldn't have done that, for it's much nicer going by car than trundling along in those two buses which take forever or two buses and a tube which still takes a good forty minutes.

Moving swiftly along.. Yes, so I am now a teenager! Oh, yippee, you should see the look on my mum's face. Poor old bat, she fears for her sanity, you see, I'm already pretty weird.. read daft.. at the best of times and who ever heard of teenagers being on their best behaviour all the time?

Even St. Dagga Parrot ate the back of her Queen Anne Desk, the less said about that, the better!

The day started off fine.. then the British weather came out to play and it turned from a fine drizzle into quite heavy rain, you could see everything growing by the minute. Luckily Shack is snug and dry and she opened the curtains and I watched these two lunatics weeding in the rain.. and Claudia is German! You can't even say she's daft 'cos she British!

There they were, these two nutters, annoying weeds, digging out stones, getting wet, mum was ok 'cos she had her waterproof jacket on but we do have to go to Streatham Hill to get Claudia a set of waterproofs, a jacket and a pair of pull on trousers, for it's not so much fun gardening with a wet bum.  Especially when you then have to sit in your wet trousers and drive for an hour to get home!

Tomorrow she ain't going anywhere! The Prudential Bicycle race  is taking place and typically, yes, the roads we must travel upon are closed! More BOOHOOS.. as she wanted to do a great deal of carpentry work, she is replacing the edging of several raised beds but it will be a flippin' nightmare with the amount of road closures.

So she's staying at home and doing, perhaps I'll just frighten her by mentioning the dreaded word.. housework.. and oh dear, there is much to do, for a start, there's a humungeous pile of ironing and the back room MUST be sorted out.

Ugh.. rather her than me, I must confess.

So there we are. Monday she will be busy seeing folks. For at 10.30 she is meeting her most beloved Pat for a late breakfast in Fulham and then she is having lunch with John at 12.30at Jaffa Bakehouse on North End Road.

Gardening  we must go on Tuesday, those new wooden frames for the raised beds are not going to construct themselves and time is surely a'moving on, we are almost into our third and the final month of Summer. In fact, shock horror! Tuesday IS the First of August! GULP.

So now you're all up to date.. and in deep dudu for forgetting my birthday. Shame upon you.

GeeGee Parrot.
July 29th, 2017.
Get your diaries or electronic organisers out and put in the date.. July 29th GeeGee's birthday.. then you won't feel so dreadful next year.

Friday 14 July 2017

FANNY'S LETTUCES & PORTUGESE JORGE'S MATTOCK.

They met when they were eight and were at Penderel school in Tenterden, a charming small town in the Weald of Kent. Apart from family members, Fanny is someone she has known the longest.

Having had an extraordinarily successful career, she took early retirement and now lives a very active life on a Spanish island. Speaking fluent Spanish and being fully intergrated with the locals means that her 'life' is there, not here so we don't get to see her very often but letters, yes, proper snail mail letters, and telephone calls mean that they're up to date in each others lives.

She knows my mum pretty well and had picked up on the fact that seeds were being germinated at home on our bedroom window.. put 2 & 2 together and arranged on-line for a marvellous electric propogator to be delivered in time for her birthday. Now that, Dear Readers, is when you know a friend knows you 'pretty' well!

Having reached the dizzy heights of her middle sixties, she no longer sneaks a peek at presents and had not a clue what was in the box which was delivered to MailBoxEtc, which is where all her mail is sent to.. yes, it's boring to have to collect your mail but at least it's kept safely and you don't get those annoying cards saying "Your package was too big for your letterbox"!

It plopped out of its box and having "oohed and aahed" over it, she set it up, poured a little water into its base, put in the capillary mat, filled the two trays with a mixture of vermiculite, perlite and very fine compost, planted a mix of Oakleaf and Lollo lettuces, placed the trays onto the capillary mat, put on the rigid lid and switched it on.

And rang the Spanish island.. and got her ansaphone. She reached back in time to the days when she spoke a little Spanish and thanked her friend for her wonderful birthday gift. And.. the seeds are already up.. one tray has twelve little seedlings, the other has nine and we're calling them 'Fanny's Lettuces'.

We love lettuces that aren't gassed.. in fact, we love all our home grown vegetables and tonights' treat is a dish of a couple of our own Turkish Cucumber with home grown mint and home made yoghurt.

"Gassed", I hear you say. Yes, gassed, because you try picking a lettuce, or leaves of spinach or chard and expect them to be crisp and crunchy two days later, they simply aren't going to be so. Most vegetables are gassed. That's why she grows her own as much as she can.

She's a trifle stiff today, it takes muscle to wield a mattock and yesterday she did the big square bed where the old redcurrant bush used to be. It's a brilliant gardening tool and she loves hers very much. It was given to her for her 51st birthday by 'Portugese' Jorge. He was her driver and such a great guy.

He had a key to her allotments and after a call at weekends to check that she was there, he would regularly pitch up with Isobel, his lovely wife, to dig and help tame the wilderness and it was he that gave her the Perpetual Cabbage.

So that's where we're going folks. And in her basket will be a piece of pork wrapped up in tin foil. Its skin has been scored, rubbed in herbs and spices and it will cook on the little barbecue with a couple of sweet potatoes. They will be our lunch together with a few just-picked beans and salad leaves.

The pork will sit and cool in its' juices and then come with us for we are bidden to supper with friends and she said "I'll bring the main course".

In a few weeks time, we'll be able to share 'Fanny's Lettuces', we've already started sharing our Blackberries and very sweet they are too!

GeeGee Parrot.
July 14th, 2017.
PostScript.. Bastille Day. Look it up if you do not know its' significance!

Thursday 13 July 2017

OUR NEW TABLE.

You're shocked, how about me, she's a'tapping out two posts within a week, whatever next?

We had an extremely pleasant day yesterday, after a leisurely start with a delicious break fasting dish of eggs and all manner of exciting herbs and spring onions, we tube'd and bussed our way out to the allotments.

TO FIND.. oh, he is the kindest of men! Who.. What.. don't worry I'll tell you all about it!

This will fill you in on the story..

Having used one of the two tables in the Shack, she realised that the other would be perfect in the Machinery Shed, we're very 'long' on sheds but this left us with no table for the terrace.. hmmm. Well, the problem was very easily solved last week on Friday, for at B&Q she found a bigger than normal wooden table with fixed seats, you see them in parks and outside pubs.

It was in a kit form.. so back it went to the plots with other pieces of timber and three huge 125 litre bags of compost. She charged up her Bosch screwdriver's battery on Tuesday night as she planned to assemble the table, so yesterday, when we arrived at the plots, you can imagine how extremely surprisingly surprising it was to find it, the table, sitting up fully assembled on the terrace!

The kindest of men had gone to the plots early on Monday and assembled it for her as a birthday gift. How very thoughtful. He'll be getting a BIG bag of crystallised ginger, that's for sure!

Now we are off.. we are having a slooow start to our day, our supper with Leigh and Ossie was, as usual, delicious, "Thank you Leigh and Ossie" and poor Otto still cannot quite believe that Avian Hats exist!

But on the way home, we fell amongst thieves returning to their home and we were bidden in for coffee and nougat! Now who can resist nougat? Not us, that's for sure, so we sat and chatted slurping good coffee, eating fresh dates and nougat until a long way past midnight, which accounts for why we're not 'very quick' this morning!

But now we are up and about, we have another tale for you too about Fanny's Lettuces but for that you will have to wait 'cos we've got things to do and places to go.. PipPip folks.. Chocks away!

GeeGee Parrot.
July 13th, 2017.

Wednesday 12 July 2017

THE USUAL SUSPECTS FORGOT HER BIRTHDAY BUT SHE HAD A VERY HAPPY ONE & WE CELEBRATED IT ALL WEEKEND!

Boy, oh boy! What a time we've had!

Her birthday this year had three sevens in it.. 07.07.17 and she always seems to have an extra happy time when these three sevens appear.

There were many jovialities and much to'ing and fro'ing! She was busy all day on her birthday and then we went out to celebrate it with friends who live near-by.

On Saturday, the next day, she went to the allotments and had a bbq lunch with plot neighbours and came home early as she was going out to supper with Tereza and her two pretty daughters (HOW these girls have grown) at Colbert. Then on Sunday, we went out to the allotment and had another bbq lunch.

By now, I was completely full of fresh air and my latest passion, which are courgettes, raw or stir fried are equally delicious and she'd received cards and unwrapped some lovely gifts from friends spread around the world.

Some of which were from the following:

Pretty cards came from: Tom in NYC, his came with a loving message about how much he appreciated her in-put into 'our boy' Bob's memorial service (how she wishes she could have been there in person.. Darling Caroline from Exeter with a note that made her choke and also from sweet John, with whom she worked at Trinity, he has the most beautiful hand writing you are ever likely to see!

Dearest darling Pat had made for her the most exquisite jacket in the colour of a purple bluebell. Probably her oldest friend Fanny had bought on-line and arranged for an electric propagator to be delivered. And one of our Lebanese friends, Raja, gave her the most glorious of books 'A Little History of British Gardening' by Jenny Uglow, the updated version.

Monday was a rest day for me, I stayed at home whilst she went about her business, which, I might say, included eating Baklava icecream with two naughty friends in the Maroush Bakehouse on the Edgeware Road! And delivering truly delicious yumyum to her sweet homeopath.

And yesterday.. it rained! Not just a spitter-spatter but a lovely GOOD downpour of rain! It started at 1.00pm yesterday afternoon and continued throughout until just after 05.00am this morning. How wonderful! Especially as there has been a hosepipe ban issued by the authorities who run our allotments!

Because, and we'd like to know which idiot it was.. a cretin has been using a sprinkler and leaving it on all day! Hello? How dumb can you be? Apparently, VERY and stupid as well as dumb. Never mind, God waters with much better stuff than tap water and so all of our trees and plants got a really good and long 'drink'.

She had a long telephone call yesterday morning from The Wizard. He was calling to give her the news that he is just about to become a father.. now how about that for happy news, dear Rob, he is such a nice man and we wish him and Melanie all the very best of best wishes.

This morning is overcast and we are having a slow start to the day but she has to shake a leg or two and take some books back to the library and pay fines, for she mislaid the books! There were found yesterday where she'd put them by mistake with books that are due to go down to Pewsey! Grrr.. she does hate wasting money!

Then we are going in the afternoon to the allotments to pick yumyum and roses for we are bidden to supper with Leigh and Ossie is a very good cook, we always have scrummydumptious things to eat at their table!

And poor Otto, a beautiful Russian Blue, has to watch me stand upon my mama's head, he's seen it for many a year but still finds it hard to believe that such a thing exists.. an avian hat.

So there we are.. I know, we aren't posting every often but if you could see our allotments, well, you'd understand why! There has been a huge amount of work done in the past six weeks and they'll soon back to how they were circa 2009! Which was very productive, very pretty and extremely tidy!

Many chirps to you all.

GeeGee Parrot.
July 12th, 2017.