Time to Tackle The Tussocks Again and a New Blog Header

The weather has been so lovely recently down here in deepest Cornwall and with the nicer weather comes a little relief from the pain in my knee. I don't know why it happens but as the weather warms up the pain eases and with the lessening of the pain, I always experience bit of extra motivation to set to and get doing things .... in this case, this meant tackling the garden. So, this morning, I started on the big patio tidy-up in preparation for the massive job of strimming it tomorrow. The plant pots have been stashed neatly on the storage shelves, I moved the picnic table to the side of the patio so I will have a clear run at the tussocks tomorrow and I gave the table top and the seats a squirt with mould and mildew remover. With a hefty dose of elbow grease and a bit of a scrub with an old nail brush it's come up beautifully. Truthfully, I'm quite surprised the table survived at all because it was cheap and cheerful and was made from softwood which tends to rot quite quickly. I did give it several coats of outdoor wood paint but even so, I'm surprised it came through the winter as well as it has. 

Table Under Construction Last Year

Three Coats of paint Later

I also washed the parasol cover. Over the winter it stayed outside, flapping miserably in the cold winter weather, basically because I kept forgetting to bring it in and as a result, it had turned a slimy green colour with nasty spotty patches on the bits that were exposed to the elements. After two washes, it was still green so I had to resort to drastic measures. I sprayed it all over with mould and mildew remover and quickly stuffed it back in the washing machine for a third quick wash. It came out clean as a whistle so I popped it back on the parasol frame to dry in the sun. I'm so pleased. I didn't want to buy a new one but I'm not sure I could have lived with the icky green slime stains. 

I've also been playing with my blog header. I have wanted to change the picture for a while now but I'm ashamed to say, I couldn't for the life of me remember how I changed it last time and I didn't want to mess it up and get stuck with no picture. Anyway, I was feeling brave so I made a new photo collage using my favourite photo editing site and decided to give it a go .... I'm happy to say it was really easy to change and I really like it. It makes me think of summer. What do you think?

What a Hectic Week!

It's been mad, mad, mad this week. I have been chicken sitting for my neighbours, one of my llamas has been giving me sleepless nights because of a cut on his leg, my youngest daughter is still home from uni for the Easter Hols and to top it all off I had to call out the RAC when the wheel on my car started to smoke on the way to the shops on Friday!! I'm shattered from all the running around and sorting and worrying but hopefully, things will now get back to some sort of normality because I'm rapidly running out of steam. I haven't had time to do any sewing for my Etsy-shop-in-the-making, the garden is looking like a jungle again and the dreaded tussocks are back (you can read about the saga of the tussocks here and here) so, as soon as my daughter goes back to uni, I am going to have to crack-on and get things under control again ..... I hate it when the house gets out of control. On the plus side, we did nip off to Looe to visit our favourite cafe for a cream tea which, although it has changed hands, was just as nice as ever, despite it now being a cash only establishment. I'm not very good at carrying cash in my purse, I always forget to go to the bank so tend to rely on my debit card. We spotted these lovely daffodil hearts on the hill behind the cafe .... someone has obviously been busy and I think they look lovely. 

I also whipped up a batch of shortbread. I had a craving for something sweet and as I usually always have butter sugar and plain flour in the house, it's my go-to-sweet-craving-quick-fix recipe. Simple as can be and you can be eating delicious shortbread in half an hour ..... less if you don't let it cool first ..... I have to say I do like shortbread that is still a little warm :-)

Ingredients

125g/5oz butter
55g/2oz caster sugar, plus extra to finish
180g/6oz plain flour

Preparation method

Heat the oven to 190C/375F/Gas 5.

Beat the butter and the sugar together until smooth.

Stir in the flour to get a smooth paste. Turn on to a work surface and gently roll out until the paste is 1cm/½in thick.

Cut into rounds or fingers and place onto a baking tray. Sprinkle with caster sugar and chill in the fridge for 20 minutes.

Pop in the oven for 15-20 minutes, or until pale golden-brown. Set aside to cool on a wire rack.

I know it says beat butter and sugar but I don't do it that way. I rub the butter into the flour then stir in the sugar and press it into the cake tin but either way works just fine. It's just that I'm a bit lazy and I usually can't be bothered to unearth the hand mixer. 

Tussocks!!

Following on from my recent patio post, I have a bit of an update on my tussocks! These are the stubborn clumps of ridiculously strong-rooted grasses that have taken up residence on my patio and are wreaking havoc on my joints as I attempt to yank them out of the ground ..... so far to no avail.

Because I don't want to use pesticides or weed killers, and using the patio knife to hack them into oblivion wasn't proving very successful, I had a look online to see if I could find alternative ways of killing the little buggers. There are loads of sites, with various methods, but, short of using a flame thrower, the general consensus seems to be either vinegar or salt or a combination of the two. So, this evening, armed with a bottle of apple cider vinegar, which was all I had in the cupboard, I marched out to the garden in my pyjamas and I sloshed it liberally over one of the tussocks. My patio now smells like the local chippy! It made the dog sneeze when he sprinted over to have a whiff of the new and very pungent odour in the garden and my extremely nice, very normal and relatively new neighbours came home just at the wrong time and caught me mid-slosh. They are obviously very well mannered people because they just smiled politely and scuttled off indoors. I fear I might be getting a reputation for being slightly eccentric but, if it works, it will be well worth the pong and will hopefully save me an awful lot of hard work :-)