A VERY TOUGH WEEK / LONDON GARDEN DIARIES

Good morning guys, welcome to the Sunday diary this week. My name's Emma, these are my Sunday home diaries where I just vlog from my home garden here in London, sharing recipes, things I've been reading, things I've been doing, places I've been going, gardening stuff, just whatever I can sort of think to film really. It's been a bit of an up and down week, not just with the weather, which has been really up and down. One second it's like this, blue skies and sun, and the next second it's like raining and quite cold. So proper April weather I think we're having in the UK at the moment, April showers. But also just up and down for me as well, just a really stressy week. I think I've spoken about it in my allotment vlogs this week, about how stressed I've been and just things have been up and down. I try and keep things just a little bit sort of stable and calmer on here. Because it's not a week I'm going to look back on and sort of particularly remember, nothing has happened, it's just been quite a high stress week basically. Sometimes they are, aren't they? And you can't really do anything about it, but I've got a couple of days now just to chill. The weather's looking okay, really nice at the moment, but who knows in five minutes it could be a thunderstorm. We just don't know. I've got a few things to do in my garden this week as well, which I'm quite happy about because I like pottering about and doing a few bits and bobs. I just wanted to say I've been reading Hamnet, and I can't believe I didn't discover this book sooner. This is so my book. It's written for me personally, it feels that way. It's just gorgeous to read. I know there's a film on it, but I'm holding out to see the film until I've read the book, and so far, I mean, this book is just absolutely beautiful to read. I love it. I'm loving every second of it. I'm not that far in, I'm about a third of the way into the book, and I just love it. And I can't believe that I just didn't pick this up earlier. I think people did recommend this book to me a few times, but I just was sort of like nah, maybe another day. The day has come. Yeah, it is a brilliant book, so it's definitely worth the hype. I can see why they've made a film. And also, I really love the book. I just love the front cover, and I love this bit here and stuff. It just makes me feel so happy every time I pick it up. Thank you if you recommended this, and I would definitely recommend it back if you haven't read this book. I haven't even read the whole thing, but I would definitely recommend. Also, before we go any further, because a few of you have messaged me about the Hello Sunday SPF products, I spoke about these last week. The link is still available, and the discount code is still available, so I'm leaving my link in the top of the description below. So if you want to go and grab some of these SPF products, I've been using this one pretty much every single day. It is the serum one, and it's super hydrating. It's like a moisturising serum, but it's SPF 50, protects against UVA and UVB. It's amazing. It doesn't have that sun cream smell, and it is just like a really gorgeous hydrating serum, which just feels so, so nice on your skin. It really just rubs in nicely and disappears, and it keeps you nice and hydrated. I just think they're great, and especially when we've got the sun coming in and out all the time. It's good to wear an SPF all the time, obviously. You want to protect your skin. These ones are great. So if you did miss the code last week, it's still active. It's below. So go click on my link and get yourself some of these gorgeous Hello Sunday products. You haven't missed out, basically. I've been using them so much. They are honestly great. I am sort of waiting for my food shop to arrive, so I've got my eye on my phone in case they ring me because I can't hear the door, but it's so nice out here at the moment. I want to do some gardening jobs. I need to tidy up a couple of the areas, a couple of the pots, water a few things, and then I also want to get some peas out, so we're just going to see how far we get and go for it. Look at this here. We've got the Tale of Two Cities, Tale of Two Pots here. We've got these. These were lovely tulips, which are sort of completely finished and need to be beheaded now, basically, and then we've got these ones, which haven't really fully opened yet. So just like planted at the same time, but totally, totally on different time zones, basically. Also, I don't know if you remember, I planted some summer bulbs, summer flower bulbs in between the tulip bulbs, and they are starting to come up now, which is fantastic. So as soon as the tulips die back and are gone, we will have summer flowering bulbs. This bed here under the tree needs just a little bit of a tidy up, so I think that's probably where I'm going to start. And then I'll also tidy up some of the pots as well and give them a bit of a water. Let's start with that. I'm just chopping off all the heads of the tulips that have finished. Tulips and daffodils that have finished flowering, and that's because I don't want them to make any seeds. If they make seeds, it takes all the energy from the plant, puts it into the seeds, and I want it to put all the energy into the bulbs for next year. So any that have sort of finished, I'm going to take the heads off. And then I'll leave all of this lovely foliage to die back, and that will also feed the bulb for next year. So hopefully, they'll come back stronger. Right, with a lot of these pots here, I actually couldn't remember if I'd bought perennial plants or just like annuals that were supposed to die back. So what I've done is I've left a lot of them that have sort of looked dead to see if they were going to grow back again. For example, this, whatever this was, if it was a perennial, I would have expected to see some growth in there now, but as there's not, I'm just going to get rid of it. These are weeds. They spread like wildfire, but they have really beautiful blue flowers, which the bees love. So I do allow some of it to come up in my garden, mainly in proper flower beds where it looks nice. That needs to come up. This is it. I've allowed it to come up in this bed at the back, just because it's nice to have a bit of bushiness at the back, but I will have to contain it and take some of this out because it does spread, but it is quite beautiful. Oh my gosh, look how much it's spread. These are all its babies. Oh my gosh. This is not good. These are my peas that have been growing for quite a long time, since February, I think, maybe end of Feb. I have already got carrots and parsnips in here, which are coming up really well, but I thought I could sort of secretly slip a row of peas along the back here. I just didn't really think about where they were going to go. I've sort of planted all this stuff and not thought it through. I wonder if I could move some of these. Actually, that's a good idea. You know what? You can move seedlings when you've sown them, if you're very careful. Let's see if we can just sort of slip them up like that. They won't have very long roots at the moment. And then just sort of slip them in there like that. No, it won't work. Scoop it up. Scoop it in. All right, and then the rest, I think, will be fine. So we'll just put our row of peas along here. Peas will be long gone before the parsnips are anywhere near ready to harvest. The peas will be grown, harvested, and then composted before the parsnips are ready to pick. So I'm not separating them as such because I don't want to sort of disturb them too much. They're growing so nicely. I'm just keeping them with their clumps of friends. They all stay together, guys. As long as you're happy, I don't care. All right, in you go. That's it. I'm just packing these grids over because the cat has decided to start digging in here. So cats don't tend to dig in places that are sort of overgrown. So as soon as everything starts to grow more, the cat will stop digging. Until then, we'll put some protection down. There are many, many more jobs that I could do in my garden today because it has been a little bit neglected compared to the allotment plot. I've spent a lot more of my energy at the allotment than in my home garden this year. But I'm tired. I am tired. It's been a long day. I've already been to the allotment for about four hours this morning. So I'm going to sit down, read my book for a little bit, and just try and de-stress because as much as gardening does sort of help me to de-stress, sometimes I really just need to stop and, like, stop doing stuff and sit and just, like, be calm in the garden. So that's exactly what I'm going to do. Just bring my nervous system down a little bit and hopefully reduce some stress. That's the plan. Good morning, guys. It's the next day. We are about to head out for a coffee. We found a really nice new place near us that just does really, really good coffee. And it's got a really nice walk around there. It's got, like, ducks and things and, like, nature, and it's a really beautiful park. So I feel like I need to get out this morning. The sun is coming in and out of the clouds, which is quite nice. So we're going to get out, have a nice coffee, and I'm going to take you with me on the walk. And then when we get back, we're going to do a little bit of baking. Right, we are back from the coffee walk. It was really, really nice there. It's exactly what I needed just to kind of de-stress a little bit and, I don't know, just, like, feel more myself. It was really nice to go grab a nice coffee, go for a walk. So sometimes it's the simple things. It's just all you need, isn't it, just to lift you back up. We're going to do a little bit of baking now. What I'm going to make is some really simple sugar biscuits, but I'm going to kind of make them like a sandwich. And I will show you exactly how I do it. I just really feel like making this recipe. It's super simple, really easy, guys. But let's just go for it, do a bit of baking, and I'll show you what I'm up to. This recipe is super easy. So it's 100 butter, 100 caster sugar, 250 plain flour, and then one egg. So then 100 of caster sugar. This is brown caster sugar, the brown golden caster sugar. But you can use white as well for this. It's just such an easy sort of biscuit just to whack together. And then we're going to use our hands to kind of mix this in together like breadcrumbs. Okay, so we'll add an egg to our mix. Guys, I'm so sorry. I watched some of that footage back just now of me making the biscuits. And the camera has gone really grainy and, like, terrible quality. And I think I might have just pushed something in my settings. But I've reset it now, so hopefully you can see me. The biscuits are out the oven. They have cooled down. Let me show you what we do next. Right, hopefully you can see these a bit more clearly now. I really don't know what I did on my camera then. But it just went so weird and grainy. Thank you if you stuck with me through that and you're still here watching. Okay, right, we will get there. So we've got some strawberry jam. Very simply what we're going to do is turn our biscuit over. Put a little bit of jam on it like this. And then stick it together with our heart. And that is our little biscuit sandwich. Simple but effective. And just a fun way of sort of sprucing up some really simple sugar biscuits. Are they called sugar biscuits or butter biscuits? I think sugar biscuits they're called. There we are. Some lovely, very easy to make little sandwich biscuits. Yum, yum. Okay, great. So that little drama with my camera setting then, that's just caused my stress level to spike really, really high. So that's fantastic, isn't it? Oh, I'm so happy. Oh my God, I'm trying guys, I'm trying. Hopefully it's just a little bit that's a little bit grainy. I'll see how much of it I can use. I think I'm going to mow the lawn now. I think I need to do something sort of exercise-y but also in the garden. So I'm going to give it a bit of a mow. Right, I know I can't go two weeks without showing you the floof, the little Pippin. I know a lot of you guys missed him last week, or you don't like seeing yourself in the camera, do you? Right, let me just move that. If he sees himself in the screen of my camera, he gets really freaked out. You think it's another bunny, don't you? Yes, you do. He's really molting at the moment, which is a bit of a nightmare. I'm brushing him every day, but look at this. Cat. You're doing your little late spring, early summer molt, aren't you? It's all just coming out. Oh my gosh, look at that. Oh my gosh, Pippin. He needs a proper groom. Oh, we're blowing it everywhere. I'm breathing it in. It's up my nose. It's in all our food. It's everywhere around the house right now because it is molting season for Pipps. So we'll give you a good groom a bit later. But I thought you might want to see him. What are you doing? Oh, he's going to sleep. Are you going to sleep? People miss you when you're not in the vlog. People miss you. Everybody misses you when you're not in the vlog. Everybody misses you. Yes, they do. They do. Oh, my friends. Can we please just all agree that I've just had a really hard week and I don't think I can finish this vlog. I had things that I wanted to bake and cook this week and stuff, but it's just not happened. It's just been a really difficult week for me. And I feel like I've just reached my absolute limit now and I can't do any more. So I'm just going to have to just cut it dead and end it here because I just can't do any more. It's getting to the point where I'm just turning hysterical now. And I don't even know what I'm saying to the camera. Some of the things I've said in this vlog are just so robotic. I just don't know what to say anymore. I think if I don't address this and actually try and calm down, I think I am going to have a heart attack. So I think I need to just take the weekend now just to completely chill. The camera doing that weird thing was just the icing on the cake, I think, for this week. And I just feel really panicked about it all. What is the quality like on these vlogs? Please let me know in the comments below. Or maybe don't. Maybe have mercy on me. Just don't let me know. Other than that bit where everything went really weird, what do you think of the quality? Because I am in a position now where I could start filming in 4K and I might give it a go on a couple of vlogs next week. And we'll just see what the difference is. Maybe we'll have a go at that and just see what it's like. YouTube keep telling me to film in 4K because I know so many of you watch me on your televisions. And I know the quality isn't quite as good on the TV as it is if you're watching on a laptop or a phone or an iPad. The quality is a lot better on my laptop and that's where I tend to watch YouTube. I don't tend to watch it on the TV but apparently a lot of you watch me on the TV and send me pictures on Instagram of me on your TVs. So I feel like I need to up the quality a little bit now if you're all doing that. We've all decided that we're watching me on TV now like I'm some kind of TV show. That's fine. That's cool. I'm hysterical. I need to go. I need to end the vlog. I'll be back on Monday at the allotment plot. I've already filmed all that stuff. I'm going to take a few days off. But I don't think the vlogs will be affected. If they are, I'm sorry. I'll let you know in advance. I need to de-stress. So I hope you've enjoyed what I've managed to film this week. I've given you a little garden update. We did a tiny little bit of baking. I showed you Pippin. I'll be back next week with hopefully more to show you. If not, it will be the week after. Anyway, have a lovely week. I will see you whenever I see you. Thanks for watching. Bye.