A WEEK OF CHANGES IN MY LONDON GARDEN / EMMA'S SUNDAY DIARIES

Waiting for your food so nicely. A cup of blueberries as well because it is Saturday. Oh that's a nice little dinner. Good morning guys. Welcome back to my Sunday Diaries. My name is Emma. These are my Sunday Diaries. I vlog all about my little house here in South London, my little London garden. I do some baking, some cooking and take you out and about which is what we're going to do this morning. I'm very excited. We have woken up to blue skies and sunshine. It's nice weather today and it's quite early so I think we're going to go out to Morden Hall Garden Centre and there is a really beautiful rose garden there and I think I've taken you there a few times before but the roses have never quite been in flower and now they are in flower. So I'm really excited to show you all of the roses they've got because it is honestly gorgeous. It's so beautiful and they've just got so many different varieties of roses and they're always really colourful and vibrant. We'll go down there, grab a coffee, have a little wander around and then we're going to pop to the garden centre as well because I need to get some bits today. I've got a very busy day sorting out the alleyway of my garden so it's a Victorian terrace. I'll show you this later but it's a Victorian terrace and we've got like a side alleyway which we were going to extend into and not anymore and it just sort of needs looking after basically and weeding and sorting out so need to get some bits for that. Before we head out I just wanted to share with you the new collaboration that Wild are doing with Disney. These are their new incredible cases, so exciting. So we've got lots of Disney inspired cases here. We've got the Disney inspired Princess case, the Mickey Mouse inspired case and of course Disney's Stitch but yeah these are their new cases. If you don't know anything about Wild they're on a mission to stop us using single plastic in our bathrooms. They provide us with refillable deodorant, lip balm and body wash and with these beautiful cases so you can literally just refill these and just buy the refillables which is fantastic. You can also subscribe to have your refillables sent to your door so you don't even need to go to the shop to buy these. They have no nasty chemicals in it, no aluminium or parabens. They are natural, they also have so many different scents that you can choose from that smell really gorgeous. They're just a great alternative to using all of those products in the shop which have plastic containers that are single-use plastic and we end up just throwing away. For every product that you buy Wild will plant a tree which again just shows how sustainable they are as a brand. So if you want to get some of these lovely Disney cases or any of the Wild products you can use my discount code ALLOTMENT2026. You can also scan the QR code on the screen right now or visit my link below and that will give you 20% off all of the Wild products. I think they would make a lovely gift to someone and so go and check them out, click the link, have a little look through their products and what they've got available and get yourself 20% off. Right, let's head out. Did you know? Right, I'm back from the garden centre. What I actually ended up picking up, oh my gosh is it a mess behind me? No, it's okay. Okay, I've kept all the mess in this room out of the camera so that's a really good start. I went and I got some plants and these plants are for my planter because I've accidentally killed everything in my planter. So I've got a couple of these which are, are these pellets? No, geraniums. These are geraniums. It says they're geranium sunrise. How absolutely beautiful. So I've got a couple of those because I'm trying to sort of make it symmetrical. Then I've got a couple of these which are carnations. Carnations are really like hardy. I've planted them a few times and other than killing them when I don't water them, if I do remember to water them they do last a very long time and these are sort of to complement the pink. So we've got like the, the red and the pink together which I think would be really nice and then I've bought something that I think a lot of you are going to be like, what are you thinking? But it's this. It's called Indian mint. So it's, it's mint. It smells absolutely gorgeous. It's obviously trailing which is really good for a planter. I know you're not supposed to plant mint into the ground because it spreads like wildfire and you can't get rid of it but I thought because it's going into a planter, if it spreads around a little bit in there, I don't mind. But it's so beautiful. It's such a nice trailing plant for a planter without it being ivy because I'm not a fan of trailing ivy in planters. I really just don't like it. So I thought this would be a really nice alternative. Smells absolutely gorgeous too. Great to make a mojito with. I've never heard of Indian mint before but yeah it's lovely. So let me show you the alleyway. Well firstly let me show you what's happened to the planter. This is what I can see now from my window. So I've just forgotten to water it and now I'm just literally left with staring at dead plants. So I really need to do something about this. Right this is the alleyway just outside my house. As you can see it is so overgrown and just looking very very messy. So also just look how sad this poor planter is. Look how sad. These might come back to life to be fair but I don't think I've got the patience to wait. So I think we're just going to completely take it all out and try again. Yeah let's give this a really good tidy up. Okay time to sort out this horrendous planter. I think I'm going to be brutal and just take the whole thing out and start again and because I've got all the plants now so I might as well. Sorry sorry guys I really just think I've killed them to be fair. So sometimes it's good just to start again. It really did just dry out so fast. I might just take off a layer of the soil. Okay so here is what I am thinking. Geranium, geranium, flower, flower, mint, mint. What do we think? No not quite right. No geranium, mint, flower. That's better. Geranium, mint, flower. Carnation I should say. Geranium, mint, flower. Geranium, mint, flower. That works better doesn't it? Yeah I think so. Let's just whack them in as is. Anyway that is looking miles better. I'm really happy with that. This bed here which is my herb my herb bed that also died. I think we just had some really hot weather and I just did not water enough obviously. I mean look what's happened to it. So I need to replace these herbs. That's a job for tomorrow. Good morning guys. It's the next day now. If you can hear water running it's because my husband has decided to clean the bathroom. So all the water's coming down there. Good timing. It's nice and sunny out today so I wanted to just start the video here. So I've got nice natural light which you know that I love so much and it's something that I'm really looking for in our next house. So as much natural light as possible please. Did quite a lot of the tidying and the alleyway out here yesterday but something that I really need to sort out is my herb planter because most of the herbs have died. So we're going to pop up to B&Q this morning and get some new potted herbs and I'm just going to replant the whole thing. I know it's not ideal and you should try and keep stuff alive. Unfortunately it has died and I really do like my herbs being just outside my kitchen. This is just such a useful planter. It's from Zest Outdoor Living and I was gifted this probably like the first year I ever started vlogging. It's one of the first things I ever got gifted and I use it pretty much every single day throughout the seasons. Well as long as I can keep the herbs alive. Unfortunately they've died so I'm just going to replace them with new herbs and then I can just pick them, take them into my kitchen, cook with them straight away. Oh such a shame that I've killed them all but hey-ho. There's no point crying about it because I really just like using herbs so we're just going to get rid of them. Get some new ones out here. God it's like properly rooted in. It's like living here rent free. Oh my god. Wow these have rooted in like no tomorrow honestly. I feel so sorry for them now. I'm sorry I killed you guys. To be fair this one was fever few and I never used it so there's no point having one growing that I don't use. The chives might come back to life because there's a bit green in there but the thyme, the thyme is gone. The thyme is dead. Let's top these up with some new lovely multi-purpose compost for goodness. Here we go the B&Q special. You always get sort of pots of herbs like this for quite a reasonable price I should say. These are 11 pounds and they're quite good established plants and I also got a couple of herbs that I love to grow that aren't in there so this is garden thyme and this I think is oregano. Yes oregano but it's hot and spicy oregano so we're just going to whack these in basically. There's not really anything to it. It is just so so useful just having pots of herbs right outside your kitchen like I keep saying but honestly the amount of times where I just pop out grab something stick it into my cooking it's just brilliant. It's so worth it. There we go. What do we think? Whole herb planter all planted out fresh and new. I'm so excited so I won't actually use any of these herbs until they've started to grow a bit and become established. I don't quite know when I'll know when that is but they just sort of get a bit bigger and look a bit more robust and they sort of um they root down so when I try and pull them out I can't pull them out anymore and that's when I know I can start picking them. But doesn't that look beautiful? In fact doesn't this whole alleyway here now just look so much better. It's clean, it's neat, the weeds are gone, I've replanted the window planter, the herbs. I think it just looks great now. I'm super happy with that. That is a job well done. Right so I thought I would show you what we're doing for dinner. I'm actually going to roast a chicken and we're going to have like a mini roast dinner and I know what you're thinking it's not quite the time of year for a roast dinner but I promise you this is quite summery. So it's like a bit of a spin on a traditional roast chicken dinner and it just works. I don't know why it just works. So let's start with the chicken. Okay so I've got this little dish here and we have got some mascarpone cheese and some tarragon and I promise you mascarpone cheese and tarragon together just goes so so well. It's so delicious. So this is going to sort of season our chicken and as it cooks it's going to make a really delicious summery sauce. So it's sort of like the gravy but it's not gravy or is it gravy? I don't know. What's the definition of gravy? So we're just going to chop up our tarragon which has the most delicious smell. If you've never had tarragon before I urge you to go and buy some just to smell it because it's just the most gorgeous herb. So the tarragon goes into our mascarpone and we're going to mix that up together. Might also stick a little bit of sea salt in there. Okay that smells delicious. Let's get our chicken. There's our chicken and then turn them the other way. We're going to just open up this bit here under the skin. So you just stick your finger in and do that and then we'll grab some of this. I find it a little bit easier to do with my hand. My hands are clean I promise and you just sort of push it under like that and then smooth it up and it just means that we'll get all that lovely flavour and it'll flavour all of the skin of the chicken but it won't burn. So if I just put that straight on top it would probably burn and this is just a better way of doing it really. I think that's the reason anyway. I've just always done it this way so why stop now basically? Why stop now? Right we're putting a really good amount under there as well. We can use our spoon and just push it into the cavity but also I'm going to put some of our tarragon in there as well which will help to keep all of that in as well. I think a lot of people tie their legs so I don't really bother to do that but I think you can do that. Okay I'm going to stick a couple of spring onions around my chicken. So normally when I do a roast chicken I would put you know potatoes or like onion, carrot, things like that around but we're going to sort of spring it up or summer it up a little bit. So we're going to use spring onions and I'm just literally putting the whole spring onion just around the side. I think we'll do four like so. So sort of sitting around our chicken and then pop a bit of olive oil on the top. Smushy that into our skin. A little bit of salt and pepper over the top as well. A bit of salt, a little bit of pepper and that's that. So we're going to put this into the oven uncovered and then after about 45 minutes, 50 minutes I'm going to put some tin foil over the top to stop the skin from burning but we'll put it in uncovered first of all. So in goes our spring chicken, summer chicken, whatever. Okay so then I thought we would try those crushed potatoes again. So basically like roast potatoes but you kind of crush them at the and re-cook them in the oven and they go super crispy. So I thought we'd try those just to sort of give a twist on a traditional roast potato. I did try them before and they didn't quite work but you know me, try, try again. We got it right with the gnocchi that we did a few weeks ago so maybe we'll get it right with the potatoes this time. Sorry my peeling skills are just really not, not the one today. I don't know what's going on. I seem to be really struggling to understand how a peeler works. Okay sorry about that. We'll chop them a little bit smaller this time, see if maybe that helps our crushing technique. I'm just popping them into some cold water because we're going to parboil them until they go a little bit softer. Okay we'll parboil them on that one out of the way. All right we'll just give them a quick check. So my fork doesn't go the whole way through but it goes almost the whole way through so that is officially parboiled. So we'll just tip these out. Okay so to crush them somebody suggested I try using a glass and because I was trying to use a potato masher last time but the holes made them go a little bit funny so I use a glass. I just want to, they're just not going to crush. I don't know how people do this. Not one of them wants to crush. I don't think I'm ever going to be able to make crushed potatoes. I don't really know why I want to at this point because I think they're pretty much just the same as roast potatoes but a bit crushed so I don't really know why I'm trying that. You know what we'll just leave them as is. Put some olive oil over them, a little bit of salt pepper. I know I always say try try again but you know what sometimes you need to know when you've tried enough. This is the best thing that I ever bought from M&S. It's roast potato seasoning. It's basically durum wheat, semolina, sea salt, ground black pepper, yeast extract and dried onions. It basically smells like gravy and you put it over your roast potatoes and it just makes them have the most amazing flavour and I'm really liberal with it. I do not hold back on the seasoning. Roast potatoes, you know what would go with this meal because we're trying to make it a bit summery, new potatoes but I just really felt like roast potatoes so that's what we're doing. Okay chicken's starting to go a bit brown on the top so we'll just cover it over with some foil. Okay so chicken is out. Let me just show you. I've obviously chopped into it to make sure it's cooked because I don't want to give my family food poisoning but it smells gorgeous. We've got all that tarragon and all of that mascarpone cheese so it just smells really fresh and nice. So that's our chicken. Let me quickly show you the potatoes. Here we go, super super crispy roast potatoes. I wasn't going to do roast potatoes but I've ended up doing roast potatoes but they look pretty good don't they? Nice and crispy. So I'm going to throw on some veg, throw on some Yorkshire pudding because my kids love them and I'll show you the finished plate in a minute. Okay just showing you outside because the lighting's a bit better. Here is the finished dinner. So we've got our roast potatoes, our chicken, some broccoli, carrots and a Yorkshire pudding because why not? I might stick a little bit of gravy over this but yeah it kind of feels quite summery doesn't it? I know it's a roast dinner but it doesn't feel like a traditional kind of winter roast dinner. I don't think so anyway but let me know what you think. I do hope you've enjoyed watching my vlog this week. I know I'm ending it a little bit abruptly but after that roast dinner I really didn't feel like cooking anything much again for the week so all of our dinners have just been very very basic and simple and I haven't done much gardening this week which is a bit sad but the gardening that I have done has been really good and I've got a lot done so I'm very happy with that. Don't forget to check out Wild and their new Disney inspired cases and grab yourself 20% off with my code ALLOTMENT2026 and I will see you again when I see you guys. Thank you so much for watching today, see you next time, bye!