Wednesday, December 15, 2010

In the garden today

I'm very excited! My frangipani has leaves growing. 
Last year mum gave me a frangipani as a gift and I didn't plant it out as I was worried it may be too cold over winter for it so I kept it in a pot and wintered it on the deck. In the last week leaves have appeared. I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised as this winter was incredibly mild and just now we are having the hottest must humid weather ever. We're even having some much needed drizzle, with more rain forecast over the next few days.
 Frangipani leaves


 We have a whole bed of gardenias at the front of the house, they look a bit worse for wear but there is one huge flower. Some of the small dwarf ones are covered in buds so they are fine, it's the bigger ones that aren't looking great. But this one is stunning and the smell is absolutely amazing.

 I've also got quite a lot of lilies coming, I think I'll pick these and have them in the house.

And this is a red sunflower. I planted some of them round the side of the house and they are almost at the flowering stage now. I think I might plant more now that we have some rain forecast!

I've been very lazy for the last couple of days. Basically just sitting inside with the air conditioning on. It's been far too hot to do anything. Even just going out to feed the ducks and chickens turns me into a sweating blob. It's the humidity more than the heat.

4 comments:

  1. Just saw your comment on Charlotte's blog - yes we are giving the felting course a miss. ;-( Just got way too much going on at the moment, but def something to put on the 'to-do-list'!

    How is the cheese looking? I have waxed my gouda today, better late than never! We ate one of the camembert on Saturday and are due to try the next one tomorrow. It was good, but could still develop some more flavour. Didn't have full fluffy white mould on it either, kind of sporadic growth. But there was definite potential!

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  2. yeah, I thought you guys sounded pretty busy!
    Lloyds cheese is not so great. the camembert has gone slimy and a sort of rotten orangy colour and smells bad! And the gouda looks like a huge brie! covered in white mould with some black on it. Poor lloyd is a bit sad about it all!

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  3. Scrape the mould off the gouda and let it dry out on the bench to get a rind on it. Thats what I ended up having to do. Then 'wash' it each day with cheesecloth dipped in brine or water with white vinegar added (squeeze cloth out so that it is damp only). Once it has a rind, then wax it. I found that a container in the fridge was keeping it too moist. Our camembert has some orange mould on it (and thats ok) kind of looks like a washed rind.I remember Jean saying that only black mould was the bad stuff, and even then just to cut it off!

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  4. Oh Ta for that. I'll let lloyd know. His is still in the fridge. Dunno how it's going to dry in this humidity !! So perhaps all is not lost. Poor thing vies been quite sad about it

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Laura x