A WEEK IN MY SMALL LONDON GARDEN / MAKING JAM AND POTTERING IN THE GARDEN

[Music] [Applause] [Music] Good morning guys. Welcome back to my little Sunday garden diaries. Um, this is my small London terrace garden. Every time I say it's small, somebody always corrects me and says it's quite big, but it actually does feel quite small. I'm trying to pack as many plants as I can into it and just make it a nice little oasis. It's quite a noisy garden, but I do my best. Just got a chamomile tea here um in my love it or hate it mug, which I picked up from Primark a little while ago. I love it. It's an orange basically. It's like a Is it an orange or is it a grapefruit? orange or a grapefruit? I think it's an orange. I absolutely love it. I know a lot of you hate it, but um each to their own, eh? Right. I brought something to do this morning. Um what I've always wanted in this garden is water and some kind of pond, but obviously, as I said, it's quite a small garden. So, I picked up a little mini pond and I'm going to put it together. And that's the first job I'm going to do today. And I'm very excited. Comes with all the palm plants and everything. This is exciting. Aquatic soil. Oo. Oo, irises. Those are quite a lot of plants. Cute. So, let's plant these up then. So, I think we just in that [Music] I already love it. So, the idea is just to arrange the plants where we want them, hopefully. I think this is a water lily. It's quite exciting. Which way does it go? That way. Goes that way. Got our irises. I put those at the back like that. So, that's our little display. So, then I think we have to just fill it in. So then I think to stop the soil from coming out, we have to add some stones on top, which I've obviously got plenty of. So it needs to stand on something cuz it's too it's too low down. Right. I've got this blue sie. I think that will work. Pop that in and that on the top. That's about the right height. Okay. Right. We'll fill it with water. [Music] Okay. And then I also brought [Music] a little solar powered fountain, which I'm so excited about. So, see if it works. What is that? Oh my god. Oh my goodness me. Why is it just spitting at us, guys? Is it cuz the sun's not out? Please be that. Come on. The sun's coming out now. You can do it. You can do it. Come on. Come on. That's it. There we go. There's our little fountain. Okay. So, it's very much dependent on the sun. It needs full sun, but I really like it. I wonder if I can push it in a bit more. So, it's going to need to be in full sun. Oh, don't spit on me. Don't spit on me cuz my full sun is like maybe there. All right, let's see if I can rearrange things in here. Hang on. I got one then. You can do it. Why is it suddenly broken then? Oh, it hasn't broken, is it already? Right, we've got full sun on it now and it's just dribbling. What is going on? Why is it broken? Why be broken immediately? Come on, you can do it. You can do it. Well, it is a little bit annoying that I can't get the fountain to work, but I tell you what, I do like it. I like the pond plants. I like that there's like it's like a mini pond. I do like it. I'm happy with it. Might look into a better solo powered fountain though. If you've got any recommendations, let me know. I think it's just getting blocked. I think it's just getting blocked. I might try it on a different setting or something. But well, let me know if you've got any recommendations. But that's my little pond. I like it. I'm really happy with it. [Music] [Music] [Music] Just had my lunch outside. I've just been reading this book. This is my latest book that I'm reading. It's called The Garden by Nick Newman. I'm not very far into it at the moment. Apparently, it's supposed to be a horror story, so it's supposed to be quite scary. I am 29 pages in. And so far, it's literally just been about the garden because there's obviously a garden in it. And I tell you what, the way it describes the garden is so beautiful. Like, it it makes me feel like I'm in the garden. It's just been so lovely to read so far. Obviously, it's supposed to get scarier, but I will let you know how it goes. But, um, let me know if you've read this as well. I'm always looking for book recommendations, so I thought I'd share that with you. I'm loving this so far. My fountain is still being very, very spontaneous in whether it wants to work or not. Sometimes it spits out some water and then it just kind of stops. It just keeps getting blocked. I think it's just a cheap fountain from Amazon, but this is what it's doing at the moment. sort of occasionally spitting out some water and then stopping. I think it's because all the um the dirt from where I planted keeps getting stuck in it. But I don't I don't really know what to do about that. Anyway, what do you expect when you spend £10 on Amazon to be fair, right? I'm going to do a bit of weeding around the garden cuz the weeds are really coming up now. I need to fall in love with my home again, guys. I need to fall in love with it again because at the moment I'm really not enjoying it. I think we've just not kept up with it. Do you know what I mean? We've not done the updates that the house has needed. We've kind of neglected it for a bit and it's made it feel a little bit sad. Sad and sorry for itself really. We have looked at moving and we've looked around about six houses and we just can't find anything that we like as much as our house. I do love it as Victorian. I love the high ceilings. I love the sash windows. Like there is there are things that I really like about our house and I really don't want to move. I've spent a lot of time doing the garden this year and it's made a huge difference. a huge huge difference because now I actually want to be out here in the garden and I'm spending more time and I'm bringing books out to read and I'm having my lunch and dinner out here and I wasn't doing that before. So just taking a little bit of time and spending a bit of energy doing the house up I think will make a huge difference and that's what I'm really trying to do this year. Right, let's do some weeding. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] What I thought I'd do now is actually give all my house plants a little bath. So, once every two weeks or so, I like to get all of my house plants together, put them in the bath, and give them a shower. Basically, it waters them really well. It puts all water on the leaves. It dusts them cuz you got to get the dust off your house plants. I don't have many house plants, but I'm trying really hard to keep the ones I've got alive. Go there. This one looks like I've already killed it, but you can go in there, too. Let's get the Monttoaura. Come on. This way. This way. Come on. Come on. This way. You are absolutely humongous, my friend. Right. Here you go. In you go. Okay. Obviously, I do not look after my house plants as well as I look after the ones in the a lotment plot. As you can see, they're all dying. Um, this Montauri is absolutely Is it a Montyuri? Monttosaurus. I think Montyur is a nursery, isn't it? Montaurus is absolutely huge. I think I can take cutings from it, but I'm a little bit scared of doing that because he's grown so big. Such a beautiful plant, but he's just grown so big. I'm so scared of like killing him. Um, well, I mean, I am doing a good job of that at the moment. And then I've got this one here from IKEA. No idea what it is. And this is a lily. Um, so let's give them a little shower. It's been a while since they've had a shower, right? Okay. Wonder if they'll perk up now. They usually do. Whenever I do this, they usually suddenly come back to life. I think because they're house plants, they like it to be quite warm. They're sort of like tropical plants, aren't they? House plants. They like it to be moist in the air. It's like humid and warm all the time. And I think the idea of giving them a shower like that is that you emulate like a monsoon. Where they actually grow, and this could be complete crap, by the way, so just don't quote me on any of this. I'm pretty sure I've heard before that where they grow the way they would get watered is by humidity in the air or by like a sudden rain shower like a monsoon. And that's the idea. That's why I've given them a shower. But hopefully come back to life. I think I might cut off some of the dead Yeah, that's coming off. Some of the dead leaves. Dead bits. Dead bits. Dead bits. Jeez, this Montasaur just keeps like falling over. It's so big. I don't know what to do with him. I don't know what to do with you, mate. I really don't. [Music] Right, back in my kitchen again. My little tiny, very, very messy kitchen. I know. Keeping it real for you guys. We've just had dinner. I'm absolutely exhausted. I'm in my comies already. So, I'm feeling nice and cozy and I think I'm going to make some pudding for everyone. So, I'm going to make rhubarb crumble. Now, I don't actually have rhubarb from my a lotment yet, but it's well on the way. It's well on the way, guys. Imminently there will be rhubarb. Until then, I'm going to have to use the shop brought stuff. Um, but hopefully it'll taste just as nice. And hopefully soon I'll be making it with my own homecooked rhubarb, which would be incredible. Right. Okay. Might need a little bit of a mix over. Pair our rhubarb. Chop off those knobbybly ends. Don't like those. [Music] All right. So into this we'll put a little bit of water. So I'm just going to drizzle maybe like two tablespoons over. And then we'll pop in some caster sugar. Um maybe sort of three or four. That'll do. And then we'll pop that in the oven for about 10 minutes. [Music] Right. 150 g of unsalted butter, which I'm going to chop into little cubes. Um, we need 200 g of plain flour. So, where's the [Music] 200? [Music] And then demorer sugar. And we need How much this do we need then? 110 g of this. Quite a sugary dish really. I suppose it is a dessert, so we can be forgiven, can't we? I'm sure you guys know what what's coming next. You're going to basically turn it into a crumble with your hands. Just get stuck in there. Crumble it all up. God, I just love crumble. And it's just such a great way of getting rid of loads of different fruit as well. You can just do any kind of fruit crumble really. But I do like rhubarb a lot. [Music] Where is my other bunny? Where's my other bunny glove? Where's your friend? Where's the bunny glove gone? Oh, lost my bunny glove. Okay, that's annoying. Oh, that's looking lovely. Look at that rhubarb. Right. I'm going to put a little bit of ground ginger in here. Not too much. I don't want it to be too gingery, but just a little bit. And then it's really hot. I'm just going to mix it in. So, it's got a nice little little kick to it. Little gingery kick. Goes the crumble. Crumble. Crumble. In my opinion, the best bit of the crumble is, believe it or not, the crumble. Absolutely loads of it. Right. And then this will bake for about 45 minutes until it's nice and bubbling and hot. Look at that. Look at the way it's bubbling. Oh my gosh. Delicious. [Music] You're very [Music] Right, guys. I'm going to try and make some strawberry jam this morning. I am getting so many strawberries at the moment. Uh, which I'm loving, but I'm getting more than I can actually eat and use up. So, I thought I'd make some jam with them. I've got about 400 g of strawberries. So, I'm going to use 300 g of jam sugar. Brought some actual jam sugar. This is made for making jam with um which I don't normally use. I have tried to make jam a few times and it's really nice, but it's it's never really gone like jam. So, I'm really determined to get it right this time. So, 400 g of strawberries is about 300 g of sugar. Boil it up and we'll give it a go. Why not? [Music] Right. Some of the recipes I found say to mash mash the strawberries up and some of the recipes say don't mash the strawberries up. So, I'm sort of going to half mash them up in the hope that somewhere in the middle is actually right. I don't think I can muck this up too much cuz if it doesn't go like proper jam, then it'll be a nice sweet strawberry sauce and I'll have it over some ice cream or something. So, I don't think whatever I do to these strawberries, it's not going to be a waste. To be fair, it already sort of looks like jam, which I think is just an excellent thing. That's a great start when it already looks like the thing you're trying to make. Perfect. [Music] Right, we'll pop the heat on. And then it also said lemon juice. So always got Oh, I've actually only got lime juice. Do I not have any lemon juice? Okay. So, that' be a bit of an experiment. We'll try it with some lime juice. I think that's just to add a bit sharpness to it. Always fun to experiment with recipes, I think. Right. So, mix this all up together. Oh my gosh, it smells delicious already. We've literally just done this and it's already looking absolutely delicious. I would already had that over some ice cream. So, whatever we create today, it's going to be delicious. [Music] So, there's a test that we can do to see if the jam has set. We get a little bit of our jam. You put it onto a cold plate. This is a really cold plate. We wait for it to cool down a bit. Okay. And then we sort of push it back. And you see how it's sort of together? That jam is now set. I mean, it's pretty obvious it's set cuz it's like jelly. I mean, that's really, really set. Um, but it should sort of stay together, hold its own like that. Look like jam, basically. Let's try a little bit. [Music] Oh my goodness. That's the best jam I've ever made. Oh my goodness. That is the best jam I've ever made. I'm so surprised. No one is more surprised than me that that worked. That's incredible. That is absolutely delicious. Oh my gosh. I'm thrilled. I'm a jam expert. That is unreal. Three ingredients, guys. Sugar, strawberries, and lime juice. Is lime juice the secret ingredient to the best tasting jam ever? I think it might be [Music] Box. [Music] rabbit out this morning. This is my pet bunny, Pippen. Got him out in the garden today because we've got someone here fitting some doors so he can't be inside. All he's trying to do is escape and destroy that box that I got for him. What are you doing? All he does is try to escape. That's all he does for a living. I think that's his job is just trying to escape from me. I haven't made the lawn, so it's nice and long for him. So, he's having a lovely time munching on that. Aren't you, Pips? I think the weather's going to change this week. I think it's um looking really humid and then we're going to get a lot of thunderstorms. So, yeah, it's already feeling really quite humid and sticky and just like you can feel like the humidity rising and I think it's going to bring with it a lot of thunderstorms like I said. So, I think we've got a yellow warning where I am in London for thunderstorms which I'm going to take quite seriously I think this time. We're going to an antiques fair on Sunday. I'm going to try and find some antiques garden things, but that will be in my next Sunday vlog. I'm really hoping it doesn't rain and get like rained off or thunderstormed off or something cuz that would be annoying. That's all the drilling going on in our house. Lovely. Right. Are you having a nice time or are you hating it out here? I can't tell. He's just trying to escape. I think he just wants out. Just trying to get away. [Music] What a cute. [Music] [Laughter] This is going to be a really silly question. This is Scabia. Scabius. Scabia. Um, really beautiful flower. I love it. But is it a trailing plant or is it supposed to be up tall like this? Cuz I can't sort of quite tell. I don't know if I should let it trail down or if I should try and stand them up. I've sort of stood them up for now, but it doesn't look very nice when they're stood up. Um, but I can't sort of stand them up nicely cuz they've got these horrible supports and I've got twine around them. I don't know whether to invest in some nice sort of support for them or just let them trail down. This one seems to be standing on its own very nicely, but this one here looks like it sort of wants to flop over. I'm just wondering if I should let it. Right. Well, I hope you've enjoyed my little Sunday edition of the vlog. Um, I'm going to be back again. That was pimping. Oh my god, I was like, what is that? It's a rabbit. I'm going to be back again at the a lotment plot on Monday and back here in my home garden next Sunday. going to be making something with Kabi next week which should be exciting and going to the antique fair which apparently they've got a really nice gardening section there. So I'll see you there. Thank you so much for watching. See you next week. Bye.