MY SMALL LONDON GARDEN DIARIES / BAKING AND MOWING THE LAWN

Heat. Good morning everyone. Uh, how are you all doing? Welcome back to my home gardening vlogs here in South London. This is my home garden. I've got a Victorian terrace, so quite a small garden. I've been working really hard. My name's Emma, by the way. Um, I'd love for you to subscribe to my YouTube channel if you're new. I just vlog all about my a lotment plot and also my home garden here. And I also throw in some cooking, some little bits of home life, some garden center content. So, if that's sort of your jam, why not follow along? Over the last few weeks, I've been working on adding some much needed privacy. Oh, sorry, Sunflower. His sunflowers is a little bit dead, isn't he? Poor thing. It's been a bit neglected cuz we have had quite a few heat waves sort of one after the other. So yeah, over the last few weeks I've been working on a couple of things. Firstly, adding some much needed privacy to the garden. And one way I've done that is I don't know if you can see just there behind me. Adding some bamboo screening to the fence, which has made a huge difference, but you can still see through it. The light still gets through, but it's just added that little level extra level of like privacy in the garden, which I love. I've also been working on my pots. I've been obsessed with growing in pots this year. I've got hundreds of them growing into containers because oh, sorry, I've got some of my washing out today. So, please ignore that. Because I've got an a lotment plot, I don't tend to grow in a lot of containers. So, I've sort of got a bit obsessed with it this year. I've got quite a few pots here. These are my latest editions. Um, some lovely pots planted up there. And then I've even got a pond in a pot which is doing very well. You can see I've got some water liies here which are doing exceptionally well. I mean, they are throwing up new leaves. They just look so happy. And these lovely plants. I think these might be irises, but I'm not sure. So, I've even got a pond in a pot. And then I have some more pots over here. Just something I've eaten my hair. Just something I've been working on this year. Something I've just been really interested in just to see how much I can grow in pots. So, first job of the day. I'm actually going to mow the lawn. I haven't mowed the lawn for a little while because we've had such like dry weather and it's been so hot that a lot of the grass has sort of gone dormant. Because you see, grass sort of doesn't die when you don't water it. It It has an amazing ability to kind of go dormant and it goes brown and you think it's dead, but then you get a lot of rain and all of a sudden it sort of comes back to life. It's very hardy um as a plant grass, which is why we use it as lawns because we can walk around on it and jump on it and treat it mean and keep it keen. But it is slowly but surely starting to come back to life and um some of it's got quite big and bushy. So, I'm going to give it a mow. It's the first job of the day. Right, this little area of the garden here, it's right at the front. It's got my vegetable patch. It could do with a bit of a spruce up, I think. So, I always find it quite inspiring to watch other people spruce up messy areas of their garden. So, hopefully you'll find a bit of inspiration in this. Okay, let's spruce it up. Right. This is the vegetable patch in the garden. It's quite small, isn't it? But I've I've managed to fit quite a lot in here. We've got sweet corn, we've got no nesters, we've got a random cosmos which grew out of nowhere. And I've got some brassacas and a corette plant. So firstly, I think this nostian's died. So let's clear that up. See if we can clear a bit of space in here. And then if we take that a stersion out, we'll have a bit of room there. Oh, that's nice. So, right in here, just in front of a sweet corn, I think there's a bit of room to grow some carrots. And because this is a planter, the soil, I know the soil's really good and there's no rocks or anything in here. So, fingers crossed they should grow quite well. Also got lots of nesters seeds in here, but you know what? They can stay. So, if you wouldn't mind moving out the way a little bit, sweet corn. Thank you very much. Oh, no. Okay. In fact, I'm going to top it up with quite a lot of compost, I think. Right. So, because carrot seeds are so small, I'm actually going to water this before I put them in. If you water it after you put them in, it can drag it right down under the soil, and you'll lose them forever. So, with smaller seeds, it's a good idea to water it first and then put your seeds on the top. So, I'll show you what I'm going to do. So, the carrots we're going for is resistorly F1, which basically have been created so that carrotly don't like them. Not that I would have a problem with carrotly in this bed cuz I don't think carrotly can fly above a foot and a half or about a foot. Right. And I'm not going to sew in rows. I'm just going to have a little group of carrots here. So, we'll sprinkle and have a little patch of carrots. I think that will look really whimsical and nice. I think that will look quite charming with all the carrots coming up in a little patch. Yeah, that'll look really nice. Also, while I'm here working on this bit, I've just looked over and seen that little bit of bamboo I put across the fence. And I actually hate it. I actually hate it. I'm going to take it down now. I don't think it looks right at all. Also, I've just noticed some blackberries growing here, which is fantastic cuz I really want to make an apple and blackberry pie today. So, yeah, they look really good. Let me get a container. Okay, so I'm going to make an apple and blackberry pie. That's what I've been craving this week. I do like crumble, but I thought I've made a crumble quite a few times. So, we're going to go for the pie today. And we're going to start off by making the pastry. Okay, so pastry is super simple. It's basically just butter and plain flour, but we're going to throw in some icing sugar because it's going to be a sweet pastry for our sweet apple and blackberry pie. Right. 375 g plain flour. 200 g of salted butter. I've gone for this one. Look at this. So, I saw it in the shop and I thought that's really cool. All things butter. Lightly salted butter. Isn't that such cool packaging? Such a sucker. I don't have to measure this because it is exactly 200 g. So, this bit would be a lot easier if you have a food processor, but I do not. So, I'm going to do it by hand. And we're just basically going to turn it into bread crumbs. which actually is quite satisfying doing by hand. It takes a bit longer, but so what? So what? 50 g of icing sugar. It sort of looks like bread crumbs now. So in goes the icing sugar. And we'll just mix all that in. Right, we need a couple of egg yolks. And I absolutely hate doing this. This is the worst job ever. But I did sort of figure out how to do it. And that is to move the yolk from shell to shell. Seems to be the best way. Yolk goes in there. Okay, cool. All right, let's see if we can do this one. Cold water. Right. So over that goes. So then we want one, two. So, one bowl and then a slightly smaller ball like that. Roll them together. And we get my least favorite substance in the world out. Substance material. Cling film. Oh gosh, this stuff honestly. All right. Are we going to have a fight today or are you going to just No. Okay, that was all right. Well done, cling film. Right, we're going to wrap them up and we're going to chill them in the fridge for about 30 minutes. We're going to cook the cooking up or down to make like a puree. So, let's put a little bit of heat on there. Put all of our apple in. Squeeze the lemon juice. A bit of water. Fabulous. While that is cooking, we're going to cut up some eating apples. So, they were Bramly apples. These are eating apples. So, we're going to chop these up. Just little chunks. Right. Let's get our blackberries washed. The chopped eating apple. There it goes. and our blackberries. In they go. And I'm going to add a teeny bit of caster sugar just to sweeten it a little bit. And that is our pie filling. How delicious does that look? M. Smells amazing. Okay. Oh no. So I think the only thing we can do is go really quickly. No. Oh no. Go on. Go on. Oh no. This is an absolute disaster. Oh my goodness. Pasting it together. I mean, I still think it will taste amazing. So, it'll be a very rustic looking apple pie. Okay, I was right. It doesn't look It doesn't look amazing, but it smells incredible. And I bet it tastes even better. How about that for an apple and blackberry pie? It smells incredible. It's bubbling. Oh my gosh, the sugar is glistening on the top. It just looks so delicious. But I appreciate it's not like an Instagram worthy pie. But you know what, guys? Sometimes what you cook doesn't have to be Instagram worthy. It just has to taste good. And this smells. I mean, if this tastes half as good as it smells, it's going to be incredible. So, I am super happy with that. I've done a little bit of a spring clean. uh spring clean, summer clean in my house and I found these little labels. I thought I'd label all of my herbs because my husband loves to use them, but he's always asking me which is which. So, I thought I'd label them, make life easier for him. I must have got these ages ago with the uh intention of being super organized and labeling things and never quite getting there. But they're quite sweet, aren't they? I love them. I even have some pens in here, too. Right. I really wish I had really nice handwriting so I could make these look super cool. Unfortunately, it's just I mean it's legible, isn't it? You can read it. Heat. Heat. The most unsuccessful uccessful flower picking that I've ever done in my garden. The thing is with the sweet peas is I've cut them all back now and I've got another flowering out of them. So, they were starting to go to seed. I've cut them right back. They are flowering again, but the stems are so short. So, I don't think they're really for cutting. I think they are just for leaving on the plant and allowing to flower. And I was going to pick some other flowers. I've got some ders and some daisies and all sorts of things. But I I also want them to be in the garden. And I'm worried that if I cut them and put them in a vase, I'm not going to have that many flowers in the garden. So, I'm just going to sort of leave them. I think I want to go and check on my tomatoes. I do have tomatoes growing in this garden. Right, these are my tomatoes growing in the garden. I've only got three plants and they're in pots. They're not doing as well as the ones at the a lotment, but then to be fair, they're in a greenhouse in the ground, so I would sort of expect them to do better anyway. They're doing okay. I've got some tomatoes on the plants, which is an excellent start, but they've never been fed, but they've never been fed, and I haven't topped them up or anything with extra compost. So, I'm going to do both of those things today. I'm also going to see if they need pruning at all. I don't think they do. I could take some of the leaves at the bottom off, though, to be fair. I think I shall take some of the lower leaves off, um, just because I feel like that's the right thing to do. Right, I've got some of this allpurpose liquid plant feed by Evro. I think that will do the job. I cannot believe all of that bird food has gone. I filled that entire thing to the top. That's madness. Either the wind has blown that out or the birds have been absolutely ravenous. Right, I better get some more just in case. Heat. Heat. Guys, the weather has taken a turn this week. Honestly, we kind of went from blue skies and sunshine to just rain and cloud. Actually, I'm really thankful for it because it's cooled down enough to actually do stuff now. I've done like the biggest tidy up on my whole house, which has really been neglected because it's a Victorian terrace, like I keep saying, which does mean it is basically an oven. So, when it gets really hot, it really gets hot. And also, in the winter time, when it gets cold, it gets really cold. So, we are kind of two extremes in this house. Anyway, look how dark it is. I'm going to have to put lights on. We're going to have to do it. It's only 1:00 in the afternoon and it is this dark. I'm going to make some carrot cake cupcakes. Now, I did really want to use the carrots from my a lotment plot that I harvested, but they're not big enough. They're not big enough to make the actual cake. So, I'm going to use them for something else. And also, my rabbit is going to have a couple of those, too, which he will be very happy about. And yeah, I'm going to make carrot cake, but in cupcake form, so we can just have a little little cake every now and then. I have a new found respect for carrots. So, when I look at a carrot that size, I genuinely think, how on earth did that grow in the ground? And how does someone pull that out the ground and it was that big? I mean, that is monstrous. I just I don't know how people can grow carrots that big. Fingers crossed one day I will. Maybe fingers and toes crossed. Sorry to interrupt your afternoon snooze, sir. I was just wondering if you wanted the top of this carrot. Yeah. Okay. These are silicone little cake cases, so you can reuse them again and again. You just wash them out. And um I've got them in these little pastel colors which are so cute, but I just reuse them all the time. Just saves buying the paper ones and you just sort of throw them away. We can see if they're done by poking in a knife. And if it comes out clean, it's done. And if it comes out with stuff on, it's not. Oh, they look done. Clean knife. That means they're done. These smell insane. Oh my goodness. Right, I've just got some vanilla buttercream icing. You are sort supposed to use cream cheese, but I don't have any. I can't be bothered to do all that. So, I'm just going to put the icing on and then just eat them. That's where we are today, guys. That is where we are. I'm not even going to pipe them on. I'm just going to spread them on. Right, I'm showing you here in the garden super quick cuz believe it or not, it is the middle of the day and it is so dark. It's dark out here as well. But these are the finished carrot cake cupcakes with my terrible icing on it. But you know what? Tastes delicious. I had just sat out here in the rain and had a cup of tea in one of those cakes and it was so nice. I've got my little um what's it called? Parasol. Umbrella. Parasol. I guess it is an umbrella at the moment. I've got it up and I was just sitting down here at the back of the garden and it was just so peaceful. It was so so nice. There is something so calming about sitting outside when it's raining, but it's not cold, so you can still sort of sit out and it's just lovely. My wisteria just over there is doing really well in the pot. Um, not sure if it is a pot loving variety. We will just have to find out to be honest. I did buy it on a bit of a whim, didn't I? I didn't really think it through. It was sort of a last minute purchase. Got some blueberries growing behind me, which are not quite ready yet, but that's going to be exciting. And yeah, everything's had a really good drink because of the rain. So, the garden's looking it's looking good. It's looking good. Right, I hope you've enjoyed my little Sunday morning vlog this week. Um, I will be doing another one next week. So, I'll see you again next Sunday or I will see you at the a lotment plot this week. Monday, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. See you then, guys. Thanks for watching. Bye.