A WEEK IN MY SMALL LONDON GARDEN / LONDON LIFE DIARIES

[Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Good morning, guys. Welcome back to my Sunday home garden diaries here in London. My name is Emma. This is my a lotment gardening channel and I also vlog about my home garden here in London and all the adventures that I get up to along the way. Let me just make you a bit higher. I feel like you're very low down. How are you all doing? I hope you're doing really well. Hope you're enjoying my little Sunday vlogs in the morning. I think so many of you are. I'm getting a lot of comments from you guys saying how much you're enjoying these videos which makes me very happy because I am enjoying making them. The weather has changed a little bit this week. Um, we kind of went from all the bright sunshine, blue skies. Now it's very overcast, a little bit drizzly, a little bit rainy. Kind of feeling, and I don't want to say it, guys, because we are only just in August, but kind of feeling like autumn time. I said it. I'm sorry I said the a word, but obviously as a gardener and I have an a lotment plot if you didn't know, but as somebody who grows vegetables and sort of lots of annual plants, you always have to prepare for the next season during the season you're in. So, I've been thinking about autumn for a very long time. Um, and planting and changing a lot of my pots to be like autumn kind of flowers, just like trying to prolong the growing season as long as possible. And now in sort of August time is the best month to start planning for your autumn garden. Making sure that you've got plants that are going to give you color throughout the whole of the autumn and into the early winter. Ders being one of my favorites. And as I discovered last week at the garden center, a lot of the dia plants are now on offer. So if you go grab yourself some dia plants that are already established, already growing, already quite big. Actually, some of these I planted are quite big. stick them into pots or stick them in the ground. Now, fingers crossed we could get daily flowers right into sort of November time, which would be lovely. And it just prolongs your growing season. Prolongs all the lovely flowers. I think the sun will be coming out a little bit this week. Uh not today, I don't think, but it's not cold. It's not cold, so it's not all bad. Got a few jobs to do in the garden this week. I want to spruce up this table at some point. Um I need to sort out the weeds. The weed situation's getting a bit out of hand. Got my cup of tea and um I think it's just start Is it raining? No, it's not raining. And I really need to mow the lawn. What I'm going to do is get on and mow the lawn now before it properly starts raining. And fingers crossed I can get it done before it does. So, let's do that first. Come on. Oh, is it is it raining more? No. Okay. Come on. Let's do it. We can do it. me. Oh, someone really needs to sort that shed out. [Music] [Music] Right, there we go. I mowed lawn. Always end up feeling a bit conflicted when I've mowed the lawn because I'm always in two minds. Like I want it to be nice and big and wild and free so all the insects can run around in it and do whatever insects do. Another part of me knows if the lawn goes crazy, the garden looks so messy and it's so hard to kind of keep it keep it under control. Do you know what I mean? Because this is my back garden and I've got flowers growing. I sort of want to show them off, but I'm always just a bit conflicted. However, it does seem to have come back to life after the heat waves that we had. It's looking nice and green again and alive. These lovely daisies, however, look like they've sort of had enough. But you know what? If I look beyond that, I can see another sort of batch coming through, ready to flower. So, what I'm thinking of doing is sort of chopping all the heads off of it. What do you think? It's actually quite early for these to be finishing. Normally, these flower the whole way through August, and I guess they sort of still are, but they look a bit sad and disheveled now. So, I reckon if I chop the top off, we might get another flowering. Let's just do it. Let's just go for it. Let's just go for it. [Music] [Music] Oh no, this guy's come. He's wondering where all the flowers have gone. Oh mate, I'm sorry. I've just chopped them all. Oh no, he's really not happy with me, is he? Oh my goodness. He's gone in the bucket. He's gone looking for them. Oh no. literally just chopped them off and he came by and he was so upset, wasn't he? Oh well. Hopefully they'll all have a second flower in now and grow back. Can I actually see any buds though? Was that all in my head? Oh no. I seem to have chopped some of the buds as well. But you know what? They have a chance. They do have a chance, right? Also, I think my sweet peas are completely finished now. All of my sweet peas this year lasted a very, very long time, but these are definitely finished. So, they're going to have to come out. It's going to look a bit bare here for a bit. But, you know what? This entire border sort of needs rejigging next year. You can see this beautiful flower here. I think it's called an anamone, Japanese anamone. It's absolutely huge. And what I'd really like to do is divide it and have two of these along the border. But, I've got too much scrunched up in the middle here and not enough sort of along the rest of the border. So, this whole border is going to be rejigged. [Laughter] [Music] [Music] Stays on him. [Music] [Music] Oh, guys, I accidentally cut this stem off of one of my dailies. It's my favorite dia plant as well. Do you reckon if I put it in water it might come back to life and flower? Let's try. I really don't think it will. I don't think they flower once they're cut. I'm pretty sure that when the stem is cut and you still got buds, they don't flower. But you know what? There's no harm in trying, is there? Right. Actually, we'll take off that dead one. Oh, just killed another one. Oh, it's a dead one. It's okay. Oh, so I've only got two two buds. Well, we'll see. Well, we we'll find out, won't we? I'll let you know if they flower. I doubt they will. Right. Welcome back to my slightly disheveled, messy kitchen. As always, we are in the midst of the summer holidays. In my defense, though, it does usually look like this. So, it's not much of a defense at all really. Right. From the a lotment the other week, I picked a load of tomatoes. I I've now got tomatoes coming out of my ears. So, it is time to start using them. And today, I thought I would try and make tomato soup from scratch. I have never made a tomato soup completely from scratch before. I have what I do when I buy soups sometimes, not all the time, is I'll buy a ready-made soup and I'll add to it. So, if I've got a tomato soup, I might add some corette to it and some herbs and some spices and things just to like jazz it up a little bit. But I've never actually made tomato soup from scratch. So, I found a recipe online. We're going to give it a go. It looks a little bit This bit is the bit I'm worried about peeling the tomato skins. So, I'm going to follow the recipe exactly and try and really get this right because I can see an impending disaster. But, let's give it a go. So, very first thing to do is to score the tomatoes. I guess take out the green as well. Just score them in a big Oh, that looks a little bit too deep. Big crisscross like that. I'm guessing that helps you to peel the skin. I don't think you're supposed to go too deep. Maybe like that. Oh, I fear I'm already making a mistake by making these crosses too thick, but we will find out. Okay, we also need freezing cold water with ice. So, do I have ice? Should have ice. Okay, there's my ice water. Then we need boiling water. Okay, in go our tomatoes only for a couple of minutes. Don't have many tomatoes actually. I don't know how much soup this is going to make, but it's all an experiment. It's probably not enough for tomato soup, is it? But it's only for me, so maybe it will be. Right. So, I've got to do a couple of minutes until I see the skin starting to sort of um how to explain it sort of tear up or something. Oh, look. I think I've made the cuts too deep. Oh gosh. Oh yeah, it's happening. It's happening. The skin is starting to sort of come off on its own. Right, that's ready. Then here's our ice water. So then we plunge them straight into the ice water. Oh gosh. Try not to splash everything. Okay, so the skins are literally falling off. This is incredible. I wish I had more tomatoes to work with, but this is amazing. This is great fun. Oh, this is great fun. This is exactly the kind of cooking that I really enjoy. Okay, so the skin should just Yes. Look at that. Look at that. Peeling a tomato. Have you ever seen anyone peel a tomato before? Now you have. That is absolutely fantastic. God, look. It's like a red nose. It's like a clown nose. Oh, that is fantastic. I can't believe how excited I am to peel a tomato. Oh, this is spectacular this is. This is I could do this every day. Can this be my job? I suppose it is because I'm vlogging it. So, yes, it can be. Oh, this is great. Right. So, we'll chop these up, right? Onion, garlic, butter, sugar, olive oil. Oh no, that's gone bad. Right, it's going to have to be a red onion. I'm sure it'll be fine. Easy. Garlic peeled and smashed. Oh, smashed. How do I smash garlic? It says smash the garlic. I've never heard of anyone saying smash. I've heard of crushed garlic and sliced. I'm guessing it just sort of means smash it like that. It's sort of what it looks like in the picture here. I've got So, okay. Never heard of smashing garlic before. Maybe that's just me. Okay, fine. Smash garlic. Right, here we go. So, we got our tomatoes, onion, and garlic. I might just put in half the onion. Yeah, let's do that. All the garlic, olive oil. I'm sort of trying to half the ingredients of this, but I'm not sure. Well, we're just going to go for it. That's the butter. Right, it's done. Are you surprised at all to hear that it's not actually enough for tomato soup? I'm not that surprised. I did not use enough tomatoes. I didn't realize how much they'd reduced down. This is what we've got. I mean, it's not enough for tomato soup for sure, but it tastes delicious. I just had a little nibble on it, and it is delicious. I'm going to chop up that onion, keep it in there, chop up the garlic a bit more. I'm going to put some pasta with this for my lunch and I'm going to use it as a bit of a tomatoy sauce. Right. When life doesn't give you enough tomatoes, make pasta sauce. That's what I say. I'm not worried. I think this will work perfectly well as a pasta sauce. Oh my gosh, it looks delicious. It's just covering the pasta like Oh, it's all sticky and oozy cuz it's been cooking for so long. Oh, it looks fantastic. Oh, I'm so excited to eat it. I'm very hungry. You know what? This could do with some basil. Let's get some basil. Basil. Oh, we've got to be quick because it is raining. But I'm going to go for some of this Greek basil. I think that'll work really well. Smells just like normal basil, but it's smaller. Right. It's not what we set out to make, but you know what? It looks absolutely delicious. The basil. Look at that. How about that for a lunch? Lovely. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] Good morning, guys. Welcome back. Um, I know it hasn't been any time for you, but it's been a couple of days for me. Um, it's a lovely sunny day, so I'm just having some blueberry. Oh, I nearly threw it on the table then. That was not clever. Having some blueberry jam on some toast for breakfast. Thought I'd have it in the garden while the sun's still out. I'm still surrounded by ladybirds. There's one sitting right here beside me. They are out in full force this year. Right, so plan for today. I've been to the a lotment plot this morning first thing, really, really early before I'd even had breakfast. So, I've done that. Everything's looking aokay down there. So brilliant. I want to make a corette and poppy seed cake because my corettes are popping off like no tomorrow and I'm getting so many huge ones like almost every day. So I'm going to make a cake. I also really want to make a start on this table. So this table is it's from IKEA and it's a wooden one, but it often needs like sanding down and like revarnishing and I really want to do that this year. So anyway, that is the plan for the day. It's gone really windy and cloudy. Why does that happen when I try and eat outside? It's like it knows. I went into central London the other day and I um took the kids to the British Museum, which is a brilliant place to go, by the way. It's incredible there. It's amazing. Kids loved it. I got lots of footage from there. And then we went on a late night walk to Bedington Park, which is sort of well, it's in Bedington. It's on like the outskirts of Cudden. It's a beautiful, beautiful park. So, I've got footage from there, and I thought I'd insert it here and show you a little bit of where we've been this week. And then we'll get on and make the cake, I think. Oh, I'm excited to make that cake. It's going to be nice. [Music] Oh, go away, Waspy. Go away. Do you know the last time I sanded this table out, my little boy came out and he was like, "Mom, what are you doing?" And I was like, "I'm sanding the table." And he goes, "Can I do it?" And I was like, "Yeah, if you want." And he sanded the entire table down, so one of the perks of having children, but unfortunately he's busy today. So doesn't want to get involved. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Right, we're going to make a lemon and corette and poppy seed cake. My kitchen's a mess. My kitchen's estate. I should be cleaning it. I'm going to make a cake instead. I don't care. I don't care. This cake is going to be epic. It's going to be a two-tiered cake because why not? Why not? Oh god. It's going really well so far, right? So, we need two round cake tins. And then we're going to line it with butter. [Music] And then here's one I made earlier. I'm going to put these little baking just baking parchment that I've cut into little circles to go into the bottom. Okay. 200 g of butter. 200 g of caster sugar. And I think we'll mix that together quickly. Three eggs go in. One egg. Three. Nice. Okay. Then we need to grate an absolute beast of a corette in. But it says 300 g. So what I'm going to do is just chop it. Uh cuz I just measured this and this is 800 g worth of corette. And nobody needs that much corette. That is still 500 grams of corette. Right. Hang on a second. Maybe that that is 300 grams of corette. Great. Okay. Got to find something else to do with the rest of it. [Music] And then we need a teaspoon of poppy seed. And oh no, that's a little bit more than a teaspoon. Now it's all right. Not too many fell in. We're all good. The zest of a lemon. Okay. So, give that a good old mix together. Okay. Then we'll add some lemon juice. Right. 200 g of self-raising flour and a teaspoon of baking powder going in. Mixy mixy. And then we'll pour it into our tins. [Music] Oh, also while that's just in the oven, you know those ders that I picked that still had the buds? Well, lo and behold, and I did not think they did this, but they are starting to open. And I can't believe it. I actually can't believe it. I didn't think flowers did that when you cut them and they had buds. But looks like we're going to get little teeny tiny ders. So cute. Right, the cake is out. So, now we're sort of going to construct it. But I actually didn't buy anything to go in the middle. Well, did I? Hang on. Let's see if the the non-stick pan has worked. Feel like these are probably a bit small, but Hallelujah. Oh my gosh. Absolutely brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. They are quite flat. I was expecting them to have risen a little bit more than that, but heyi ho. Right, I think we're just going to go for buttercream in the middle. Is butter cream still okay? Yeah. Okay, fine. Let's have the rustic side on the top. I think we'll put a little bit more on the top. Not that it needed anymore, but we will just put some poppy seeds on the top for prettiness. Feel like I'm on the bake off and I'm showing you my cake. Here you are. I'll show you outside cuz it's better lighting. That is the lemon corette and poppy seed cake. How delicious. It's a little bit thinner than I thought it would be, but you know what? It's not bad. It's not bad. I'm super happy with it, and it smells incredible. Okay, the house is a mess again. Is there ever going to be a time in these vlogs where I don't apologize for my messy house? In my defense, it's the summer holidays. I think I've also said that as well before. Anyway, I've got the kids dinner on, and while it is cooking, I'm going to go out and varnish that table. I didn't want to do it the other day because we would use some rain. But tomorrow is the start of like a 5day heat wave in the UK. So if I do it now, then hopefully it will sort of dry overnight and tomorrow morning and then in the afternoon I can use it. That was my biggest worry with varnishing it is that I actually really like to use that table and I don't want it to be like out of order for a little bit. So I was sort of waiting for the the perfect time to do it. But I think now is the time. So, let me go grab the varnish. This is the one that I got. It's Rustin's outdoor clear varnish. Though, looking at the table now, I am thinking maybe it needs more of a woody kind of stain because you see down here, this is like the original color of the wood. And because the top has just been weathered and also sanded it, it's gone a bit of a gray color. So, I'm wondering if maybe it would be better with a color. But let's whack this one on first and see. I'm expecting it to have absolutely no change at all. Yeah, no change at all. You know what? It really does. It needs a woody stain, I think. But now, this is what I've got. So, I'm going to whack it on. Right, it's all done. And I don't like it. I don't like it. I don't think it's going to work on the wood. So, I'm going to revisit it when I find the right varnish color, I think. And we'll try again. We'll just try again. [Music] Right, I'm just plating up my dinner. And I thought I'd show you this cuz I wanted to prove to you that I don't cook all of my meals completely from scratch. Like that would be crazy. So what I am doing every day though is cooking corette. I just fried this today. Just put it in a pan and fried it. Very, very simple. might put a bit of sea salt on it. That's it. But we are pretty much having corette with every single meal at the moment. So, I've just got this ready ready to cook chicken from Marks and Spencers. Super super easy. Super easy to cook. I think it's got like a lemony kind of sauce on it, but it's basically just a bit chicken. That's pretty much the only meat that I'll have. This is like probably the only meat I'll have all week as well. I'm not a vegetarian, but I just don't eat a lot of meat. I just don't really like meat. Most of my dishes are vegetarian. So, we got the corette. And then I've also stuck in the oven some kale. This kale, this is just kale. I don't know if you can see it on the camera. It's quite dark in here. It's just some kale with a bit of olive oil over and then I crisp it up in the oven, which is really nice. So, we'll have some of that. Just dishing up with a spatula. I know. Keeping it real, guys. And that, my friends, is a very, very simple dinner. That's what I'm having tonight. So, I don't always cook everything completely from scratch. So, most of the time, it's whatever's in the fridge stuffed with a load of random vegetables that I've either roasted or like fried or boiled. Just wanted to keep it real for you at the end of this vlog. Right. I hope you've enjoyed my Sunday edition of my garden diaries. I'm not sure what I'm calling these. They're just they're just weekly blogs, I suppose. So, I'll see you again at the Aotment Plot tomorrow. Or if not, I'll see you again next Sunday at 9:00 a.m. for another Sunday edition of my life. A week in my life again. Don't know what to call them. Maybe they'll become my London diaries or my London home diaries. I don't know what they're going to become. I don't know what these are. But all I know is I am really enjoying making them and you guys seem to be really enjoying watching them. So, I'm thinking of lots of new ideas. I think over the autumn winter time, these are going to become really cozy, lots of baking, um, decorating the house, proper cozy cozy vlogs, and that's what I love watching in the autumn winter. I love gardening vlogs, but I also love these kind of cozy home vlogs. And I'm very, very excited to share that with you. Uh, so I will see you when I see you. Thank you for watching, guys. Bye.