Hostage to feline fortune

Oh do not be beguiled by his winsome looks. This is demonic Artur in action.  I was in the potting shed doing a spot of watering. It was tipping with rain outside. (Happy days!).

After about ten minutes I needed to go back to the house. But no.  Somone had stolen my rain jacket.

That will teach me not to hang it up on the door.  The clever cat was not going to give it back.

So I pretended that he hadn’t won a small victory and potted on some of the dahlias and all the tomatoes.

It’s quite a crop I have in here.  I have planned to get everything planted out this week.

And with this fantastic rain, it will be perfect for potager plants.

I also spent a bit of time watering these amazing eragrostis. They are so pampered they look like super model pony tails.

Who knows? Maybe this week they too will go into the newly landscaped steep bank above the lawn.

That was what I started to do this morning. I’m trying to prepare the bank for the fence that I want to put in. 

It was scheduled for today, but it’s very weather dependent. That is, it can’t be tipping with rain as it’s a long fiddly job.

It doesn’t look that bad from a distance. Apart from the bare patches. But up close it’s a mess. And I just don’t know how long that poor chestnut fence is going to last.

I zipped back into the house (after my cat kidnapping episode) and started on a more indoor project.

Drying jostaberries.  With the berry glut I’m trying to come up with ideas on how to preserve them. And I will have made almost 40 jars of jam by the time I stagger off to bed tonight.  But I’m also experimenting.

We eat a lot of dried cranberries throughout the year. Mainly because I use them in my flapjacks.  But I am acutely aware just how much sugar is dumped on them before drying.

Mine seem to have worked in a very slow oven. But I will not take any chances. They are going to be stored in the freezer. Far better than preserving in sugar.