CLEARING UP THE MESSY CORNER / MY SMALL LONDON GARDEN

[Music] [Music] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] Good morning, guys. Welcome back to my garden diary. So, I vlog about my garden here at home in London every Sunday. Just about to say it's quite a quiet day in my garden. It actually is. It still actually is quite quiet day for a London garden. There's a little bit of building work going on. A few cars going past, but actually if you listen beyond that building work, you can hear some birds. I promise. It's also shaping up to be a really hot week here in the UK. So, I thought it's a great time to vlog my garden. Um, show you it in its full glory in the sunshine and the blue skies. You know, everything always looks better in the sunshine, doesn't it? So, I do have a bit of a busy week. We're going to go to an antiques fair on Sunday, which I'm really excited about. And I heard they've got a really good gardening section there. So, lots of really old-fashioned kind of gardening stuff. You guys are always telling me that the older tools and the older equipment is better quality. So, I'm really excited to see what I find there and hopefully a few pretty things as well for the garden. Who knows? But I will bring you along with me. And just with the weather being so nice, I think it's just going to be a really nice week for gardening. So, I'm going to be doing some gardening. I'm going to tidy up some areas of the garden that need tidying up and also I'm going to do be doing some more cooking today and I'm looking for inspiration right now. So, I'm using we order from Aardo and they always give us like a free little magazine with loads of recipes in. So, I'm just going to have a look through and see if there's anything worth trying this week. Especially if it's got ingredients that I can pick from my a lotment plot. That would be really good. And there's so many cucumber recipes in this one. Liking the look of this one. This looks like a really fun cucumber salad. You can have it with anything. I don't really eat a lot of meat. Um, but I was thinking like some grilled halumi. It looks very simple. Cucumber, some chili powder, red onion, lime, and caster sugar. So, I might give this one a go. There's also a spicy sweet corn and cucumber salad here, which looks amazing. This is not an ad, by the way. This is genuinely how I get my inspiration for cooking because I'm just not very good with coming up with new exciting recipes and I'm always like I always like to try new things in the kitchen. But yeah, I'm going to spend a bit of time going through these and seeing what catches my eye. [Music] Oh, [Music] heat, heat. [Music] Hello. again everyone. It's a few days later. It's a few days later now. Um, apparently this week is going to be a scorcher and I didn't actually know until the week began and I checked the weather that it's supposed to get up to sort of 30s almost every single day. So, it's going to be a really, really hot week. In fact, it is so warm and sunny that my little solar powered fountain is actually almost working, which is amazing cuz it hasn't worked since I got it. It worked for about 3 seconds and then it just stopped and packed in, but it's actually shooting some water up. I mean, it's not very relaxing and it's really struggling, but it's water is going up. We went to the antique fair at the weekend and it was really nice. Actually, I didn't end up buying anything at all. It's the first time I've ever been to one of those fairs, so there were so many stores there selling so many interesting things. And the store holders were all so knowledgeable about what they were selling, which was really, it made it really exciting. I'm really trying to be more like conscious of what I'm purchasing these days. And so all the things there, you know, they were all secondhand. They'd either been restored or sort of renewed or relved or whatever you want to call it. And it was just so nice. And everything had a backstory to it. And everything was really interesting. There had lots of old gardening equipment there and lots of pots as well. And the pots were so cheap. loads of really good quality terra cotta pots. It was fantastic. There was such a lovely range. I was looking for some pictures for my new living room, but I couldn't find any that I absolutely loved, and I really wanted to make sure what I was buying was something that I really wanted and not just a spur-of-the- moment purchase. But those places are just fantastic for secondhand things. I mean, it was fantastic and I'll definitely go back again. [Music] this front section here which is like a little alleyway. This is a Victorian terrace and you do tend to have these little alleyways just outside the kitchen. So that's the kitchen door just there. It always needs a bit of sprucing up. It's very shady and it's difficult to sort of know what to do with it really. I have some window box as you can see all the flowers have died. They will need replacing. I also have this little herb planter here which is sort of got a few herbs growing. I think this is sage. And then this here is parsley which I've allowed to flower which is quite pretty. This is some thyme. And then we got some violas in here. Not technically a a herb but you can eat them. Got a few strawberry plants but then there's a few that are empty as well. So that could do with sprucing up. Lots of weeds about the place and it's just not looking its best, is it? It's just all looking a little bit sad. So this is going to be my project for the week. But I thought I would start today by painting this. I want to paint it. This is a little greenhouse. I think it's from Zest Outdoor Living. I think I got gifted it a little while ago. It's still in great condition, and I did start lots of my seeds this year in it, but it's looking a bit shabby, a little bit sad, and I want to paint it. I'm gonna paint it the same color as my shed to match because I really like the color and the color is this one which is fresh rosemary by Croninol. So let's whack this on today. [Music] Right. What are we thinking, guys? So, I was going to do all the inside, and I was going to make all the inside the same color, but then as I was doing it, I thought, is it quite nice with the wood in the middle? I'm not sure. Should I paint the whole thing? What are we thinking? I do love the color and I think it is going to look amazing. Maybe I should paint the whole thing. Actually, I'm not sure. I'll let that coat dry and then I'll come out and do the second coat and I'll make my mind up then when I've seen it with fresh eyes. When I've seen it with fresh eyes, basically. Yeah. Right. Let's cook some dindins. Oh my gosh, look at the state of me. It's such a hot day. It's such a hot day. Right. I'm going to make a really simple dinner. It requires very little cooking, which is excellent. That's what we want. So, we're going to start with chickpeas. [Music] Can of chickpeas. [Music] Okay. We use a little bit of olive oil. Oh, drizzle. Shaky peas. [Music] [Music] Right. Kale. I do have some from the a lotment, but I um actually ate it yesterday and I haven't picked anymore. So, this is shop brought kale, but what we're going to do is we're going to take off any of the dodgy ends. I don't mean dodgy, I mean tough. So any bits that have got the the the stalk on it. Is it the stalk or the stem? Any bits like that we're going to take off because we're not going to cook this kale. We're going to eat this kale as is. And they can be a little bit tough to eat. So we're just going to go through it and any of the stalks like that stem stalk. Just take off. [Music] Okay, wash kale back into our bowl. And then what we're going to do, get some olive oil. Pop that over. Generous amount. Very generous. Slightly more generous than I was going for, but we're just going to pretend that that was that was how it was supposed to be. And then we're just going to like massage it with our hands. And what this basically does is means that it's easier for you to eat raw. So if you just sort of do this, you you end up sort of softening it. So we're just softening our kale. It also smells delicious when you put olive oil over it like this. It's absolutely delicious. Just squeezing it between your hands. And the good thing about kale in a salad like this is that it doesn't lose its like shape. So you can make this in advance and keep it and you'll probably be able to eat it the next day and it would be okay cuz it won't wilt and go to nothing. It sort of holds its shape a little bit. So it's a great vegetable to use in any salads. Right, there we go. You see how that's reduced in size. Right, let's wash our hands and check on those chickpeas before I burn the house down to cook. You could also do this in the oven, but I just find a pan so much easier. All right, they're doing well. They're doing well. So, while they're continuing to cook, get the next ingredient. Right, red onion. Oh god, this knife is so blunt. Great salad onion. It's a red onion. My fave. Let me just do half a red onion. Right. So, we'll slice this sort of as thinly thinly as we can be bothered to do. Basically, if you can get it thinner, well done you. Oh my gosh, it's making me cry. Right, that's probably enough. Actually, that's probably enough red onion. About that much. I'm also going to use an avocado. You don't have to put avocado in if you don't like it. People have a bit of a lovehate relationship with avocado, don't they? I love it, but you might hate it, and that's okay. Right. Ao. Spot the millennial adding avocado to flipping everything. It is a really delicious vegetable, I think. Is it a vegetable? Can't remember what the rules are on a vegetable and a fruit. I think it's got a pip. So, is it a fruit then? Oh, I don't know. Is an avocado a fruit or a vegetable? Leave me a comment below. Let me know. A bit of audience participation involved in this vlog. Right, bringing back the kale. We've got our red onion to go in. Lovely. Then we've got our avocado. Lots of avocado. Wow, those onions are really making my eyes water. My eyes are watering. I'm literally sitting here. I'm standing here crying. I'm literally standing here crying over a salad, guys. Chickpeas. all that together. Looking absolutely delicious already. Looks like I've been crying over a salad. It's just the onions, guys, I promise. Right, this is where it gets a little bit It depends what you want to do. So, there's loads of different dressing ideas for this. You could use like tahini and do a tahini dressing. You could make a lemony dressing. You could use Dijon mustard with English mustard. um some lemon juice and whisk it up together. That would be really nice. A little bit of apple cider vinegar on it. I'm just going to make it quite plain because I'm a very boring person. To be honest, there is quite a lot of flavor within this already, but I'm going to add a little bit of lemon juice. Just like that. And then some fine sea salt just over the top. There we go. And that, my friends, is the kale salad that I'm having for dinner. And just to let Oh, hang on. I'll show you in my messy fridge. My husband will be having a roasted chicken breast with it. I'm just going to have it as is. It's got chickpeas. It's got avocado. Maybe you could put some tofu with it. You could have chicken with it. You could have maybe a salmon with it as well. It's sort of a just a throw everything in. But what I really wanted to show you was just how to like eat raw kale. So just massaging the kale with some olive oil makes it so much nicer to eat raw. So that's sort of what I wanted to show you. But yeah, you can put this with anything you want. Hopefully that's a nice little dinner idea for you. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] Just been sprucing up this little courtyard bit of the garden and I think I found a place finally for my Irish luck plant. This is Irish luck. It's usually grown for kind of coverage like a hedging um because it grows quite big and it sort of like blocks things out. So it's quite good as like coverage or hedging. Coverage I think you know what I mean like privacy. It's called Irish luck. It's a beautiful plant, but it hasn't been very lucky in my garden so far because I can't find a place for it to go. I think I finally found a place for it to go. So, I'm going to whack it in. But last time I whacked it in the ground, I just stuffed it straight in, watered it, and it died. It sort of started to die back. And I think a lot of you said I didn't ruffle the roots. It's been in this pot for quite a long time. So, need to sort of break the roots up a little bit before I put it in the ground. Just like this. We're just breaking the roots. And as we break them, they'll reach out to try and create more roots, gives them a bit of a head start, basically is when they're in a pot for a long time, they sort of grow round and round and round themselves, and they don't know there's a wider world out there. And we need to show them there's a wider world. You see here, that is very potbound. So, we'll just break it up a bit. Let's try this again. [Music] There we go. We'll see if Irish luck is lucky there. I think it should be quite nice. I want it to grow quite big and bushy here. Create a little bit of privacy at the front of the garden. Cool. [Music] [Music] Right. This little alleyway at the side of my house is looking a little bit better now. I pulled up the weeds. Giving it a sweep. Giving it a bit of a spray with the hose. I did decide to paint the inside of that in the end. I came out after my dinner and I just thought, you know what, it needs painting inside or it just doesn't look right. And actually, I think it looks okay now. I've not covered every single tiny bit of wood. You can still see a little bit of bare wood there, but I think it looks okay. I think it looks quite quite nice. put my little herb garden back up here on the window sill, which is really nice. And also cut back these. I think these are what are these called? Chrysanthemums. Um, they came back this year, but I've just deadheaded them a little bit and they're looking really nice. Just need to get a few more plants to fill up this little herb box here. Um, which is really nice. Oh, there a little caterpillar there. Can you see him? So many caterpillars in my garden at the moment. I'm actually not sure if he's okay there. Might need to move him in a minute. Um, but he's been munching on my strawberry plants, which is absolutely fine. I mean, I love little caterpillars. They turn into butterflies, so it's all good. I'm absolutely melting. It is so so warm today. Um, I think we're going to get up to like 32° and it should it might get up to 36 at the weekend. So, pretty warm. I'm going to the garden center on Saturday and I'm going to get a few more plants for my herb box here. Couple of plants for some pots up there and also some kind of tall plant for privacy up here. This might be a little bit controversial what I'm gonna say right now, but we have quite a low fence at the top of our stairs and I'm gonna try and get something to grow up there and just give us a little bit of privacy. This is the fence in question here and it would just be nice to be able to walk up the stairs and just, you know, just have a little bit of privacy going up into our own garden. So, I'm going to find some nice tall plants to go there. I don't know if it is controversial or not saying that, but it feels a little bit I'm absolutely sweating and I cannot stay in the garden any longer. So quite happy with what I've done today. Going to call it there. [Music] [Music] Hi guys. Welcome to the last day of my vlog. I think this week has actually been quite difficult to vlog my garden because the the weather has just been too hot. I've just not been able to get out here and do hardly any jobs at all. It's been up in the 30s almost every single day. It's a proper heat wave. And apparently it's Friday today when I'm filming this. This weekend it's going to get up to 34 to 36°. So, got the paddling pool out ready. Filling it up now. Hopefully my son will appreciate that when he gets home because my kids are coming home from school so hot and sweaty at the moment. And I just can't wait for him to jump in the pool. To be honest, that is also one of the reasons why I still have a lawn in our garden here. Because if I had it my way, I'd get rid of the lawn and I'd just have like a pathway through and I'd have all growing beds everywhere. Might even have some vegetable patches there and stuff, but I can't do it yet. My kids are too young. They still need the lawn. They still need the space. So, it's all good. Anyway, didn't get much cooking done this week either. I've mainly mainly just been eating salads and stuff because again, it's been so hot. But, I thought before I end this vlog, I just want to show you an update on our living room. I have shown it a couple of times in these home videos and I know I asked if you guys wanted to see more of it and most of you said you're just sort of interested in the gardening stuff which is fine by me cuz that's that's where my passion is. But just at the end of this vlog I thought I would just show you a quick update if you are interested. Let's go. So we decided to change up our living room this year just because we felt like a change. Um it had never been plastered. This is a Victorian terrace, but you can see how small and sort of dingy our house can be. So, it's really important to us to have a room in the house that's sort of done up nicely and nice and bright and airy. And that, I think, is what we've managed to achieve in here so far. So, this is where we are with the room now. It's such a huge difference because this whole wall was really dark blue and we had it taken back to brick and then replastered. I've gone for this really nice off-white and then this pinky color. And we've done the cupboards the same. And then you can just see how bright and airy and nice it is in this room. We've also because it's a Victorian terrace, the ceilings are very tall. So, we've added some coving and a picture rail to it. Um, got a nice little light fitting up now and it's really just helped the room to come together. Um, this is our new sofa covers. Got a new sofa arriving later today. Um, and this is the color of the sofas. Kind of this off-white beigy color. Got very off-white beigey. Tell me you're a millennial without telling me you're a millennial. Everything is beige with a little bit of pink. Um, but I'm absolutely thrilled with the room and it's really made such a huge difference. And we are getting the window replaced as well next week. So, that's exciting. Got all new plug sockets in. Yeah, this is my new living room. This has been the cause of all my stress over the last few weeks. [Music] Anyway, that's a little update on my little living room. I did mention in another vlog that I am trying to sort of fall in love with my house a little bit more. So, I am really working on like redecorating and just making things feel nicer in here so that I just like my house again and we don't have to move cuz who has the money to move house these days? We definitely don't. Anyway, I'll give you another update when the new windows in and the sofa's up and it's all been decorated and stuff. Until then, I hope you've enjoyed my vlog today. I hope you're enjoying these little Sunday vlogs. Um, I'm really enjoying just taking the camera out and vlogging wherever and whenever I can. And I will be back again with another home vlog next Sunday. So echoey in here. See you next Sunday, guys. Thanks for watching. Bye.