MARMALADE MADE

Before the sweet bit a little comment on the joys of the garden and otherwise - watching a flock of long tailed tits on the feeders, standing by the cutting bed admiring my work having weeded and prepared it - versus doing it. 

Marmalade made, 
 

rhubarb and ginger jam with the last of the frozen rhubarb done. 

As regards Sadie's recipe for marmalade here it is though I did give it a while back, enough when done to last a year -

9 Seville (bitter) oranges, one sweet one and a couple of lemons, squeeze out juice, put pips etc into muslin bag, put peel and pith through a mincer. Shove the lot into a big jam pan with bag of bits hanging in it. Leave 24 hours.
Bring to boil and simmer till ring soft - say a couple of hours.
Add 8 pounds sugar (I warm it in the bottom range oven first) and stir over low heat till all sugar dissolved, Boil hard for 10 minutes and begin testing by taking off heat and putting a small spoonful on plate chilled in fridge. Push with finger and when ripples - done. You may need to repeat this a few times if not yet ready, boiling for a minute or two and then testing again.
You may need to do it in 2 batches depending on pan size. 
Put into hot jars and seal, label and eat.
(Actually I left out the sweet orange this year as an experiment.)

Just been out cutting back the buddleia around the septic tank for something to do - too early really - should be left to end February or March. Snowdrops continue to come.



Then I cut away the Miscanthus, not the Stipa, and I know all this is early but I have to be ready for moving the rose bed and so on.

The photo below shows the bed between the two paths that will have to be cleared to give the builders access when they come - not yet done so still scruffy. The self sown alchemilla can go in the woodland edge or somewhere.

When we arrive at our back door - the one at the side of the house, not the front door which is at the back, we are now assailed by the perfume from the winter flowering sarcococcus.

And the dawn still reminds us that it is only January and winter has a distance to travel. You can just make out rooks flying behind the trees after being fed by the ladies with the horses in the paddock next door.

And so to the campaign to eradicate alien grey squirrels and preserve the reds. This involves trapping and killing the greys (who breed like rabbits?) It is all a bit tough on the greys who were brought to the country in the second half of the 1800s and then there is a part of me that finds it hard to kill. (Just as well as I used to be a doctor!) The greys are bigger, more aggressive and carry squirrel parapoxvirus virus which rarely kills a grey but to which the reds have little defence.
Well, I suppose men made the mess so . . . . 

Today I braved the bitter wind cutting in off the back field and put six new asparagus plants in the bed where old ones had gone.
Of course no shoots from them for a couple of years - but then!