Pickles

By shendyNo Comments
Once the chutneyfest had been completed, we moved on to pickled onions. In the end, our garage smelled very slightly of vinegar - I wonder why that might be? We did two batches of onions - one used bog-standard Sarsons pickling vinegar, the second used vinegar "enhanced" by us. My brother is the first to have tried some of these, and reported that while his sinuses were perfectly clear, he appeared to be missing the top of his head. Got them about right then!...
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Tomatoes

By shendyNo Comments
We cleared down the last of our tomatoes at the weekend, to get them in before any frosts. A lot were still green, but realistically there's no chance that they will ripen now. We picked the small matter of 28lbs of the things! This is what 28lbs of tomatoes looks like SWMBO has made a tomato sauce out of the ripe ones, but the rest are going into chutney - and that many tomatoes need a lot of vinegar, apples, onions and sugar! The brother has suggested that this beast, 1lb in weight, should be made into an individual batch of chutney - much like a single-cask whisky... A 1lb tomato...
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Llanerchaeron

By shendyNo Comments
The final stop on our Welsh trip was to Llanerchaeron, near Aberaeron - a John Nash house with an enormous pair of walled gardens. These were full of more fruit and vegetable plants than you could imagine.   Panasonic FX-37, 26mm equivalent, 1/500 @ f3.5, ISO 100 There is also a working farm, with some particularly inquisitive pigs!   Panasonic FX-37, 26mm equivalent, 1/500 @ f3.5, ISO 100 Some of the plants in the walled garden were covered with more bees than I've ever seen - I assume they've got a hive or two somewhere. There were also plenty of butterflies - I seem to have hardly seen any since I was a child (and that's going back some way now...). I was surprised by just how close I could get to it with the macro turned on on the compact camera.     Panasonic FX-37, 26mm equivalent, 1/500 @ f3.5, ISO 100 Having mentioned on a previous post about the fogged infra-red film at Dyrham...
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The garden (again)

By shendyNo Comments
Another one from the garden at home, with a bee collecting pollen from, well I don't know, some plant or other. I can identify a rose, a lily and a tulip and that's about it. We had loads of bees in the garden this year (I won't use the term "summer" as we didn't really have one), really good to see. Nikon D200, Cosina 100mm macro lens, 1/160 @ f6.7, ISO 100  ...
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The garden

By shendyNo Comments
These were actually taken on the same day as the previous ones, later in the afternoon. This is a courgette flower, in the evening sunlight at the front of the house. Panasonic FX-37, 26mm equiv, 1/500 @ f4, ISO 100   One of our lilys - I think the water droplets come from watering rather than rain. Panasonic FX-37, 26mm equiv, 1/200 @ f2.8, ISO 100   This one is much less arty than the others, but does show just how many vegetables we* were growing! The plants in the blue Ikea bags are green beans, runner beans, peas, mange-tout and petit-pois, while the stuff in the black buckets at the front are potatoes. The metal cages you can make out at the back are supporting the tomatoes. Some of the tomatoes are still going, 6ft tall and with massive fruit. We've already made two batches of green tomato chutney (one of them a huge batch) as well as tomato sauce and tomato soup. * That's the...
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