Being Creative

The wet stuff

We had almost given up hope of getting any rain. Since the end of May we have had very little in the way of precipitation and quite a lot in the way of drought. At first this was quite nice as temperatures regularly reached the mid twenties, the skies were blue and cloudless and I could shed the many layers of clothing that it had taken to keep me warm all winter. But the cold Spring - with a late frost in the second week of May - had meant we were already late getting started on the growing front. The clay soil of our allotment is wonderfully fertile but is apt to form an impenetrable crust when it dries out significantly, so we rushed around trying to get things sown and planted. This, in turn, meant that we had a lot of watering to do every evening just to keep it all alive. Even after the hot spell subsided part way through July, we still had no rain to speak of, just strong, dessicating breezes that dried everything further.

 

My in-laws in North Wales and my sister in South Wales were having a typical British summer mix of sunshine and showers the divide, it seemed, being an east-west rather than the usual north-south one. Latterly, weather forecasters have been predicting rain for us on an almost daily basis and we have watched aghast as dark,bulging rain-bearing clouds have sailed over our heads and subsequently dumped their cargo on the holidaymakers in Cleethorpes. Such are the anomalies of this country's weather.

 

So when it rained at four o'clock in the morning about ten days ago I almost jumped out of bed to go and dance in it! I was so thrilled by the novelty that when it stopped I rushed to the allotment with my camera and took this photo of our vine enjoying its first good drink in an age. Poor vine; as if the winter snow wasn't enough, the moment it began to yawn and stretch in the Spring sunshine the frost nipped off all of its emerging leaves. We really thought we'd lost it. But, like us, these well-established plants have become adept at adapting to the vagaries of our climate. Whilst I have become quite brown and lean from perpetual watering duties, the vine has flourished in the heat with a new crop of healthy leaves and bigger,if fewer,bunches of grapes. Having refilled the water butts, the benefits of that heavy shower were short-lived and we were back to watering again this week.

 

Tuesday was quite warm again so we decided to cash in on it and cut up the wood from the trees we decapitated last year in order to restore the orchard hedge. We worked well and stacked about half a ton ready for the colder days ahead so thought we would repeat the exercise on Thursday. I had some raspberries to pick first on an allotment we were minding for a holidaying friend so Si' began cutting up wood ready for me to barrow. I'd just come to help him when there was a loud rumble of thunder and the first telltale drops began. Luckily, Si' had spent Whit week putting up the shed we were given last Autumn and, though it sports a fetching silage-bag rain bonnet till we can afford the roofing felt, it is wonderfully water tight. It needed to be as we had to hide in it for a good twenty minutes while the heavens opened outside. Since then, we've had almost two days (and nights) of on-off showers and it would seem that the drought is over for now. Likewise I can break my own drought in the blog post department now my hands are not permanently welded to watering cans!

Egg-stra special

Easter can be a time of - excuse the pun - 'egg'-ceptional cost. Not only do we have the financial expense to contend with but also the cost to the environment of all that excess packaging. So well done to Marks and Spencer for coming up with the lovely spotty versions shown above. They are four and a quarter inches high which, to me, gives a better idea of size than saying they are eleven centimetres tall and they come just like this - no cardboard and no plastic to dispose of afterwards. You are just left with the aluminium foil to recycle. You could add it to your recycling bin but, when the colours are as lovely as this, it's just begging to be used for some craft project or other. If you are giving them to children you may have to strike a deal along the lines of you getting the foil - carefully removed and in one piece - and them getting the chocolate. I can't see anyone arguing with that, can you? Just remember to buy an extra one to enjoy in peace when they've gone to bed! Not only are these eggs beautiful but they are brilliantly priced at just 99p each. In addition, the Good Housekeeping Institute voted them top in their test of Easter eggs priced under a pound, rated on appearance, flavour,texture and packaging. Better still, they did a further test rating eggs for gift appeal, looking at those in the ten to twenty pound price bracket. Amazingly, in a blind taste test, this little M&S beauty beat three other milk chocolate eggs costing between fifteen and twenty pounds, one of which came from Harrods, no less! Once the word gets out I bet they'll be flying off the shelves so if you're within striking distance of an M&S food outlet tomorrow, it might be worth a visit. In the same vein of thrifty-chic, I have it on good authority that not only is M&S closed on Easter Sunday - as is the law - but on Easter Monday, too, which means three days worth of date-related food bargains at 4.00p.m. tomorrow. How much stuff there is will depend on how much the regular shoppers have bought up for Easter but if you recall my bargain turkey at Christmas you might just want to take a look!

 

 

 

Make It Yourself (M.I.Y.)

 
One of my mum's biggest sellers in her antique business is textiles and in particular tablecloths, traycloths, etc,that have been carefully embroidered by hand. Each piece bears witness to the time and patience of the person who stitched it and their desire to create something beautiful to enhance their surroundings. In the 1920s and 30s, women's magazines often contained embroidery patterns that could be marked onto the background cloth of your choosing and stitched over in embroidery thread. Skills, such as the various stitches techniques, were passed down from one generation to the other and either you made these things for yourself or you went without. My mother remembers wearing jumpers as a child that were knitted for her by her grandmother - and how itchy the wool was worn against her skin - but that this was all that was available at the time. This perhaps goes some way to explain why, when mass manufacture of these goods came into being later on, people like my mother were happy to embrace this alternative. As the general standard of living increased during the 1960s and 70s, so did the availability of ready-made jam, jumpers and tablecloths and you were able to save yourself "the bother" of making it yourself! By the 1980s, when I reached adulthood myself, conspicuous consumption was the order of the day and - by contrast - making things yourself was viewed as rather second rate, the result of too much time watching Blue Peter on the telly. Now, thirty years later, buying mass manufactured goods has become the norm, and many of the skills which encapsulate the 'home-made' and 'handmade' sections of this blog have fallen by the wayside. Before I get lots of furious comments from lifelong knitters, quilters and jam makers, I must stress that I am trying to describe a general trend here, which is that the majority of people no longer partake in these activities. More worryingly, I find, is the collective loss of confidence in being able to do so. I come across this particularly with making jam. I often get into conversation with ladies on checkouts who wonder what I'm going to do with the large quantity of sugar, say, or reduced clementines that I'm buying. When I tell them it's for jam/marmalade they often look at me with a kind of awe and ask "isn't it really difficult to make your own?" I'm not sure that they ever believe me when I tell them that it's quite the opposite!

 
For a while now, though, I've sensed that the tide is beginning to turn. Retail therapy and 'reality' television may have become todays national pastimes but how much satisfaction do we get from either and what exactly do we have to show for them afterwards? I am tempted to suggest 'credit card bills', for the former, as they are the most enduring part of leisure shopping! Our pleasure in our purchases quickly fades, as does the memory of the tv show, so that we are looking for a further fix soon after. I'm not being patronising here. I remember the feeling only too well; the joy of flexing that plastic being rapidly eclipsed by worry over how much I'd spent. The length of time it finally took to pay off my credit cards is still what remains uppermost in my memory. How much more satisfying then, perhaps, to find ways of investing our time, rather than simply looking for ways to spend it. Apparently, environmental and ethical concerns about rampant consumerism and its bedfellow, waste, have led to something of a resurgence in home and hand making but the greatest incentive, it seems, has been the credit crunch. Deprived of disposable income, the concept of making it yourself has developed a whole new set of followers and what might have started out as a way to save money has actually resulted in many other benefits as well.

 
Learning something new and becoming succesful at it can make you feel really good about yourself. I only began taking photographs with any commitment when I wanted pictures to illustrate this blog. Knowing that I couldn't ask Si' to spend hours snapping the shots I'd styled meant that I had a choice; I either persevered and improved or I produced a blog without pictures. There was no contest really and digital photography means that you need only ever save your best shots. I find, too, that once I have embarked on a session of making it myself - be it photography, cutting up peel for marmalade or sewing sock monkeys - I find myself totally absorbed in the activity and time seems to whizz by. Psychologists call this 'flow', a sense of totally 'losing yourself' in an activity; studies into this have reported that participants felt most satisfied and described themselves as happiest when engaged and engrossed with an experience. Looked at like this, the act of doing can be viewed as just as important as the result. 

 
Equally, in the course of everyday life, we come under a lot of pressure from the mass media to be perfect in everything we do. Not only is this incredibly stressful but it seems to me to be leading us all to 'sameness'. Mass manufacturing processes are designed to make lots of things to the same standard, which might be reassuring but they will also be exactly alike. Where is individuality and uniqueness in all of this and if we can all have just the same thing doesn't it rather lose its value and desirability? There are no rules of perfection in making your own, just the liberation of knowing that eveything you create is a one off! In her book, The Gentle Art of Domesticity, Jane Brocket encourages us to think of the home made and the handcrafted as the 'art of the possible'. We are not forced into pursuing them out of necessity, like our grandparents, and with the option to pick and choose that which appeals to us most and, with no formal training needed either, the pressure is most definitely off.

 
In the January issue of Homes and Antiques magazine, Katherine Sorrell suggests that "If the early 2000s was a time of buying, then the 2010s will be an era of baking and making, dancing and deadheading; of taking up nostalgic hobbies that involve those precious commodities - actual time and effort." Although we may all have vastly differing incomes, the one thing we all have in common is the same 24 hours in a day. And since time is such a precious commodity, perhaps it is the greatest gift you can give to someone else to show them how much you care. I have had more exhuberant thank yous - both verbal and written - from this years largely homemade Christmas presents than I ever did when spending heaps of cash on them in the shops. One of my aunt-in-laws rang me in the middle of the afternoon just before Christmas to tell me how delighted she was with the box of homemade sweets that had arrived through the post that morning. I had already had the most brilliant time making Turkish delight, fudge and marzipan logs - amongst others - so to hear her excitement on the phone really was the icing on the cake. 

 
So if you are new to 'make it yourself' and this post has inspired you to have a go, there is plenty of information out there to whet your appetite. Jane Brocket's blog 'Yarnstorm' is good, as she pursues a wide range of what she terms 'domestic arts' and as she has been blogging a while there are lots of archived posts to look through and her pictures are amazing. Similarly, the stylist Jane Cumberbatch has a blog called 'Pure Style' which has links to YouTube videos from her Make and Do series. The National Magazine Company has one site that encompasses all its titles called 'All About You'. This has a range of projects for home makes from beginner to more advanced. You may also want to pay a visit to your library. I currently have the book Homemade by Elspeth Thompson and Ros Badger on loan from mine. The projects are grouped according to season and many of the ideas are very conscious of cost. Other good authors are Jane Cumberbatch (sewing), Debbie Bliss (knitting), Gloria Nichol and Thane Prince (jam making), Kaffe Fassett (quilting/patchwork) and Peggy Porschen and Kate Shirazi (cake making/decoration).

 
As this blog is all about spending less, I'm going to echo Elspeth Thompson's sentiments and suggest you begin with materials that you may already have. Woollens that have felted in the wash, clothes that no longer fit but that have sentimental value or even some jam jars without lids can make great starting points. The ribbon - shown above - came wrapped around a present and the buttons were from a job lot I once bought cheaply from a box outside a sewing shop because I liked the colours. The bow took minutes to make and it went to adorn a basket of primulas in matching colours that I was giving as a gift myself. Once you get into the habit of saving bits and pieces like this you will soon have plenty to work with. Charity and secondhand shops - and even car boots - have boxes of buttons and knitting needles at a fraction of the price to buy them new, likewise cake tins and remnants of fabric. If you do need to buy new then it pays to shop around. Recently, my sister told me she was looking for some embroidery hoops. I was able to get her some from our local branch of Boyes for a fraction of the price she'd seen them on the Internet. Ends of lines are often reduced for quick sale on both food and non-food items. Between Christmas and New Year, I bought five boxes of cranberries from M&S that were reduced to 20% of their original price. They have all been weighed out and frozen ready for some muffins and a few batches of Ruby Grapefruit and Cranberry Marmalade.

 
As you can see, making it yourself ticks all the boxes for me - saving money, a sense of achievement, originality, caring and sharing, recycling. In fact, to coin a phrase, the possibilities are endless! My mission this year is to encourage as many people as possible to start making it themselves. Are you going to be one of them?

Winning words

 

Elizabeth B, you are the winner. Please contact me asap with your address so I can send you your copy of The Thrift Book by India Knight!

Earlier this month I held a little competition to celebrate the 50th post on Being Creative. I asked readers to contribute their best ideas for doing Christmas well on less. Thank you to the lovely people who did and I look forward to publishing these at the end of my last post, 'More dash than cash', in due course. Elizabeth B sent me several suggestions but I was particularly taken with this one, "I also try to make gifts - if I think they'll be better and cheaper than shop bought versions. My family are all very tall - and I knit -  so extra long mittens, for example, are well received." Although I carry around a mental list of which auntie doesn't like nuts with chocolate, etc, I hadn't actually considered that making things myself really allows me to customise the gift to suit the recipient. But it does, doesn't it? I mean, how many times have you seen something in a shop which would make a perfect gift if only it was more reasonably priced, had different buttons on or came in raspberry? So not only is Elizabeth B looking at better-made and less costly gifts for her family, she is ensuring that they are the right size and will therefore be used; so less waste of time, money and materials, too. Well done to you, Elizabeth! I wonder how many mass-manufactured Christmas presents have already ended up in the bin/charity shop  because they were of poor quality or didn't fit? I picked up just such a gift this morning and a button fell off. Good job I'm handy with a needle and thread!

More dash than cash

When I first started at university, I bought a book about how best to buy clothes on a limited budget. It was called More Dash than Cash and was published by Vogue. The idea behind it was that instead of shopping indiscriminately for what you wore, you bought a few carefully selected pieces which could be mixed and matched. I thought this was a really good idea at the time as it saved me wasting my student grant on many an impulse purchase. So now that I am in a similar position of working to a limited budget, we decided to employ a similar strategy for Christmas. Instead of going the whole hog, we looked at what things we felt really made Christmas enjoyable for us and concentrated on those. Where we felt cost was prohibitive, we looked at different ways of saving money and some things we decided to leave out altogether. As our respective credit cards are now strictly for emergencies only, we only spent what we could reasonably summon up in cash. With this in mind, I bought my sister's Christmas present when I saw it in the summer, knowing that it wouldn't be there later and - even if it had been - its price would have been inflated to reflect the silly prices people are prepared to pay in the pre-Christmas shop-fest! Granted that there were only the three of us here for Christmas and that we do not have a huge extended family to invite, or to send presents to, but if we did it would be all the more reason to put things aside throughout the year. And isn't it a sad fact that the high prices only prevail until after the big day itself, when the shops become desperate to rid themselves of their Christmas stock and slash prices accordingly? So now is the time to stock up on those cards and wrapping paper you coveted but were not foolish enough to pay full price for. Just make sure you put them somewhere memorable for next year! So with slim budgets in mind, I've put down some of the ideas that worked well for us this Christmas - tried and tested, if you like - and others that I feel work just as well at other times of year, for birthdays and other celebrations that potentially require a significant spend and/or advanced planning. As for Christmas, no routine is set in stone and it would be foolish to slavishly follow family traditions that demand excessive amounts of cash or stress. It really shouldn't be a test of anyone's abilities at martyrdom; if it doesn't work for you then I suggest you ditch it and try something else instead (with appropriate negotiations, of course)!

Shown above is our Christmas turkey, taken in close up so you can see the original price and what it was reduced to at 2.00p.m. on Christmas Eve. Now, as I've already said, there were only the three of us on Christmas day for dinner and I did have several joints of meat in the freezer, as Plan B, in case a bargain bird was not forthcoming but as you can see we hit the jackpot! It did help that we'd been into M&S once that day already to find out what time the reductions would be and also that we'd positioned ourselves next to the turkey shelf in the shop. We ate it over several days, had my mum to share some on the day she came back from spending Christmas with my sister and 'the boys' have been finishing up the last bits. I can see that this last minute gamble might not have paid off if you had been expecting half a dozen guests for a lunch and no turkey turned up so that's why it's always good to have something in reserve in the freezer. If we'd had guests we could equally well have had two joints of beef, a whole shoulder of lamb or a couple of large chickens, all bought on various reduction counters in the six weeks before Christmas.

 
Of course the idea of entertaining more than a couple of guests can be a scary prospect when your budget is tight. If I knew I had the whole family coming, I think I would take up India Knight's suggestion in The Thrift Book of getting everyone to bring or do something towards it. It takes a bit of prior planning thinking of everything you'll need beforehand but if you were doing it all yourself you'd have to do that anyway. If guests only have to concentrate on one aspect of the day - say the pudding - they're more likely to remember it and make a good job and it will be less weight on your own shoulders if you are doing the main course and the hosting. If you know others are also on a budget then match your request accordingly; a basket of home grown veg would go down very nicely anywhere, I would have thought. Alcohol never really comes down in price so either everyone could bring a bottle, you could pick up the odd bottle on special offer during the year as funds allow, or you could cultivate your wine making skills before next Christmas! If you are not the host, always ask if you can help by bringing food. The cost is minimal if you make it yourself. My own signature dish is a huge pavlova which will feed a dozen and looks a million dollars, plus it is impossible to buy anything like it in the shops. Six free-range egg whites, some caster sugar, a pint of cream and some fruit - either your own grown from the freezer or acquired on the reductions counter and you have a dessert for 12 for less than a fiver. If there are also going to be children you could even make some icecream with the leftover egg yolks! On the subject of baking, both Christmas cakes and Christmas puddings are fairly straight forward to make and are often a good way to use up odd ends of packets of dried fruit and nuts before they reach their 'use by' date. Also making your own allows you to substitute one type of dried fruit or nut for another - if you want to include more of your favourites - as long as you do this weight for weight. If you have a branch of Weigh and Save near to you you can buy the exact quantities of the ingredients you need. They also do cake icing and marzipan by the block and should be able to advise you on how much you need for the size of cake you are baking. There is no getting round the long cooking time for a Christmas cake (although it is cooked at a very low temperature) but Christmas puddings can either be steamed traditionally or cooked in the pressure cooker, which is much quicker. The microwave is probably quicker still but you would have to consult your operating instructions to find out. If you like a rich, dark cake then click here for the link to Delia Smith's online version. (I would ignore the cost at the bottom of the recipe, which is presumably for the cake mixture alone, unless you're planning to buy your ingredients from Waitrose!!)! If your preference is for a more golden version then you could try the Miniature Christmas Cakes recipe on page 48 of the book Country Living Country Christmas (try your library;edited by Francine Lawrence). There are larger quantities of ingredients for this recipe but bear in mind that these amounts will make six 4 inch tins or two eight inch ones - one to keep and one to give as a present!

 
That brings us nicely onto gifts and their potential to lay waste to your entire budget. We must all have had the experience of receiving something which - however well meaning and costly - we feel is wasted on us. I don't like any sort of wine but I have received lots of bottles over the years and passed them on to Si' (who loves them) but you get my drift. My starting point for choosing any sort of gift is to think about what the recipient really enjoys or what interests them, what I can afford to spend and work from there. My mother-in-law is a keen and proficient cook and my father-in-law a real foodie so their present box from last year - shown above - was made up of smoked Lincolnshire Poacher cheese and locally milled flour (from the farmer's market), vanilla pods and muffin cases (both bought on offer), a cookery book (from The Works sale) and a selection of homemade jams and chutnies. My niece, Lil', enjoys birdwatching and so her present this year consisted of a bird calendar and a diary in which to record her sightings, a big bag of good quality bird food to attract them and some pine cones - collected from a wood where we walk the dogs - to make bird feeders from to hang near her window. Very often I buy books as presents for children of all ages, particularly those titles that my own children asked to have read to them again and again. I don't think it's important whether these books are brand new copies or not, as long as they are in good condition. I am often pleasantly surprised at the excellent quality of both adult and children's books on offer at car boot sales. The same goes for sets of Lego, Playmobil and the lovely wooden train sets by Brio, all hugely expensive when bought new (I remember; we did it)! Having run a library and being fussy about the state of my books, I have no qualms about passing on novels I've read as gifts to others, perhaps with a special bookmark or a note as to why I think the recipient might enjoy a particular title. If you're looking for a gift that you can almost guarantee to be unique then secondhand and antique shops can be worth a browse. There are many items which would make quirky gifts for very little cash outlay and, of course, antiques are green! Some people can be a bit sniffy about 'pre-loved' gifts but if you mention the words 'vintage' and 'original' it suddenly makes them seem the epitomy of chic! Then there is the thorny question of what do you give if you really have no money to buy presents to speak of. My first thought here would be to make some but that is the subject of my next post. Instead I'm going to suggest giving a voucher for your time. You can make this yourself and it can be for anything  from washing up or baby sitting to some skill you have which you could teach to someone else like basic guitar chords or baking bread. For the second year running I have given my mum a magazine subscription paid for entirely by my Tesco Clubcard points. My mum and Lu' don't have cards themselves but carry a keyfob version of mine and we always take a basket and reusable bags so we can maximise our green clubcard points, too.

 
Once you've got your presents bought, what about wrapping them? I don't think you can beat brown paper, which is strong, reusable and recyclable, though you will need to pick off any bits of sticky tape before it goes in the compost. You can leave it plain and jazz it up with coloured raffia or ribbon (again, reusable), potato print a pattern all over it, or use it as a base and wrap a slim piece of more costly paper just round the middle. If you want cellophane to go round a plant or some flowers then florists will often sell you some of the plain stuff off the roll. You can make this look really good by sandwiching a bright sheet of tissue paper (cheaper bought in bulk), between two pieces of cellophane then wrapping round your gift and tying with a raffia or ribbon bow. And if you can manage this then making your own crackers really is the next logical step; after all, shop bought ones are such a rip off. Perhaps they are called crackers to denote our state of mind when we buy them! You can use anything from newspaper to wallpaper for the outside, buy the snaps on the internet, save your toilet roll middles for a few weeks and personalise the little gift to go inside. Ditto, jokes. The paper hats in bought ones always rip or drop over the eyes so why not make your own party hat for Christmas dinner? My sister and her family do it every year and it's a wonderful excuse for gluing and sticking with children once they've broken up from school.

 
Notice that I have left the tree till last. As far as I'm concerned you can stuff the turkey (so to speak) and keep the presents; number one of my absolute Christmas must-haves is my tree. I know it sounds silly but if I can't see and smell my tree on Christmas Day then it's just like any other ordinary day with a lot of extra washing up! We normally have a really big tree - as our house has 9ft ceilings - but this year we thougt that if we had a smaller one we could put it in a table to give it extra height that way. However, when we went to get one on the 19th of December all the decent small trees had gone and we were left to choose from the 7ft plus ones that were too big for most houses. Thankfully, the tree was one of the last things we bought and having saved on other areas of our Christmas budget we decided we had to spend it here or do without. The local grower we buy from in a neighbouring village told us that people are buying their trees earlier and earlier and just keeping them outside until they are needed; so if we want a smaller one we should go earlier next Christmas. That said, we left our tree in water till Christmas Eve and in the week since it has barely shed a needle. I think I might just get a jar and put in a pound every week for next year's tree! Once this one comes down on Twelfth Night it's going up to the orchard to act as a bird feeding platform of sorts; you can't beat value for money!!!

I'm afraid this post has become rather lengthy but that's because I am so keen to show that Christmas really doesn't have to mean going into debt till the summer. I've actually only skimmed over what I feel most people include in the average Christmas but if you're still a little sceptical I hope my next post will soften your opinion...

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Now for a little competition . . .

This is actually my fiftieth post - and fifty posts is a lot of writing - so to celebrate I am offering a brand new paperback copy of India Knight's The Thrift Book as a prize. I'm afraid I can only run to posting within the UK but what I'm looking for are your most brilliant suggestions - left in the comments section of this post - on doing Christmas well for less. I'll feature the very best ones here so other readers can try them, too. You have two weeks from today - until January 16th - to get your entries in. So what are you waiting for.....?

Happy New Year 2010!

 

My very best wishes for 2010 to all the lovely people who read this blog and to the especially lovely people who leave me positive comments telling me how much they enjoy Being Creative. It gives me a tremendous buzz to hear that others have had success with the recipes, enjoyed looking at my photos and have had fun introducing a little more creativity into their own lives.

I've added a couple of photo albums this week for Spring and for Summer 09, so if - like me - you are having trouble keeping warm at the moment cast your eye over these and recall that warm sunshine. With the shortest day behind us now and the daylight growing little by little it won't be all that long till we're welcoming it back again. From where Zephyr is lying - upside down on the settee with his head in the sunshine - the future's bright. I hope yours is too and that you'll continue to join me in our journey of living so much better on less!

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Gutted

It was a quarter to ten on Monday evening when the phone rang. We were all watching television in the upstairs sitting room and Si' had to dash downstairs to get it before the answerphone kicked in. He missed it but brought the phone back upstairs in case the caller tried again. A few seconds later they did and the news was not good. A fellow allotment holder was calling to say that more than one of the allotment sheds were on fire. Si' asked if he knew which ones. I held my breath - one of them was ours. As we dashed downstairs to put on coats and wellies and collect the torch, two fire engines went tearing up the street, sirens blaring. As we arrived at the gates they had already located the nearest water supply and as we approached the sheds the crews were already dousing the flames and raking the debris away to get water to the heart of the blaze. The first day proper of the half term holiday, the second night since the clocks had gone back, enveloping us all in early darkness, and we were faced with this. All I could think of was how we were going to tell the elderly gentleman two allotments up from us that his shed - and all it contained - had been completely destroyed by fire. By the time we'd said goodbye to the fire brigade, after thanking them profusely, and walked round the site in search of the culprits with a member of the local police force, it was half past midnight before we got to bed. We were up again at seven in an effort to get back to the allotment before the early risers. It would have been a terrible shock - especially for our older members - to have discovered it for themselves, believing that we were unaware. Si' had to take the day off work as we set too to deal with the aftermath. Mr TB, who also lost his shed, said immediately that he thought he would give up. His entire crop of onions had been hanging in the shed to dry. We suggested that he think about it; particularly since he has already dug his plot in preparation for next year. We then visited the council - to arrange skips for the debris - and agreed a time for the local press to visit the site. The police had suggested that we ring those allotment holders whose sheds had been entered - but not set alight - to see if anything had been stolen. During these calls, Mr TB's neighbouring plotholder said he would be more than happy to share his shed - and any of his tools - with Mr TB. As we explained to the police, the allotments are not just a leisure facility for our more mature members but a central part of their day to day existence, around which the rest of their lives are organised.

 
We have learned from past experience not to lock our sheds. We live with the fact that we get occasional night visitors who rifle through the contents. If the doors are locked they rip them off in the belief that something valuable is stored within. Nothing ever is, as we take our better equipment home with us, but a door torn from its hinges takes more repairing than one left swinging in the wind. For us it was not just the loss of the shed itself and its contents but all the other things around it that were ruined by the heat. You can see at the top of the picture above how the heat melted not only the adjacent waterbutt  - standing on the bricks to the left - but the plastic dustbins alongside it and all three of our compost bins. Si' was looking forward to a few days working in the orchard this holiday but, after the skips arrived on Thursday, we spent two days barrowing all the debris into them. Just as we'd started yesterday, I could see Si' talking to a man and a little boy just inside the gate. I thought that they were there to ask about an allotment but it turned out that he'd come to offer us a shed - if we wanted it - and also some tools, having read about our plight in the local press.Talk about restoring one's faith in human nature! After that we had a constant stream of people all day coming up to give us their support, including the man and his little boy again, this time with arms full of tools. They left with the promise of allotment bounty in exchange! We didn't see the article in the paper until we got home. I'd deliberately contacted Chris - the journalist who wrote the article - as we'd worked together when I was Press Officer at the school and I knew he would deal with the issue sensitively. He did not disappoint us. It's a bit of a shock to see yourself as front page news but if it has helped to raise public awareness and to encourage plotholders on our own and other allotments in the area to be more vigilant, then so much the better. When Andy - the photographer - asked if we could stand in the middle of the debris to have our pictures taken, I asked him if this was to create a visual metaphor; that of the phoenix rising from the ashes. Because we have absolutely no intention of letting this dent our spirits or forcing us to give up. Albert Camus once said, "What doesn't kill me makes me stronger". And he was absolutely right!

Getting the timing right

I am becoming meaner. Actually, that's not entirely true; as Si' will tell you, I am happy to part with my time, share my possessions and lend my ear. What I do begrudge these days, though, is paying over the odds for things and - in particular - for food. In fact it has become a matter of personal principal never to shell out for food that I could have got cheaper - or for better value - elsewhere. Hence I know that the cut-price supermarket chain, B&M, sell the cheapest milk and sugar in town and that my local greengrocer sells the most reasonably priced free-range eggs. This may sound like an awful lot of trekking around, visiting lots of different shops in order to save a few pennies here and there but really it has much more to do with timing. I have admitted in the past to shopping more than once a week for food but I never ever have to do the weekly shop I once loathed. Rather than planning a menu and accompanying shopping list in advance, what we eat each day is determined by what I can get for less. I actively hunt for special offers, 'BOGOFs', and store reductions and freeze what I can't use immediately for other days. Or I might buy a lot of something reduced - like tomatoes - that I'll make into pasta sauce and then freeze the surplus in portion-sized amounts (former plastic 'take-away' boxes are brilliant for this). So how do I go about bagging these bargains in the first place then? Well, the first two of my tried-and-tested methods involves supermarkets and getting to know their routine. Our Tesco branch begins reducing perishable products - fruit, veg, dairy - by about 25% on the morning of that products sell-by date. At about 4.00p.m. they will reduce them by another 25% or sometimes more. In our branch they do seem more likely to sell the fruit and veg at rock bottom prices than the meat but my maxim is that if you've saved on one you've got a bit more to spend on the other! In our Marks and Spencer, they only make one - quite significant - reduction at 4.00p.m. on weekdays and 1.00p.m. on Sundays. Whereas in Tesco all the reductions are in one or two central points, in M&S, staff spread the reduced items around the shop within the relevant sections. Last week, I bought bottles of fresh orange juice that normally retails at £2.43 a bottle for just a pound. I have also had beautiful lemon sole and smoked salmon pate for less than half price. But beware - competition is fierce, know that some shoppers do not exercise their good manners and make sure you get there on time as everything gets snapped up within minutes! If you can't go at 4.00p.m. in the week then go on Sunday; if you have a weekly shop to do then combine the trip. Even once in a while can deliver a basket of bargains that you did not pay full price for elsewhere! Sometimes there will be lots of stuff and other times very little but not knowing what will come up is what makes it exciting. Also, don't get carried away with the treats; it's easy to stack your trolley with cream cakes but they don't freeze, are not good for you in quantity and will undermine any savings you might hope to make.

My second idea is that instead of buying the same things week in, week out, get into the habit of stocking up on those items you use regularly that are on offer. This involves a little flexibility with your monthly budget. The first week you might stock up on toilet rolls, in addition to your normal shop. The following week it might be washing powder. The third week could be butter but since you don't have to buy any toilet rolls or washing powder this week you can stock up on butter with the money saved. I only buy Anchor Spreadable for general use and I only buy it when it's on offer. So I almost always have some stacked up in the fridge until the offer is on again and I very rarely run out. Likewise with Twining's Earl Grey tea and Ecover washing powder. Sometimes a supermarket offer might look good but it's always worth checking the price per 100 grams/per litre,etc which must be marked on the shelf with the price. Surprisingly, bulk is not always cheaper. I also make a note of the date the offer will finish so that I can buy more at that price if I need to. This is good with, say, double cream when I'm making ice cream; I can only make so much at once but may want to buy fresh stock for further batches. Currently - at our store, anyway - Tesco have pint pots of cream for £1.00 instead of the usual £1.68 until October 13th. Good news if you're entertaining or making ice cream yourself!

If you have a weekly market near to where you live it's worth buying your fruit and veg there. You always pay more for pre-bagged stuff in the supermarkets and market stalls are more likely to have good deals on seasonal produce which supermarkets rarely do. When my allotmenting colleagues and I are drowning in runner beans or in rhubarb the price remains firmly top whack in Morrisons and Tesco. From mid-day onwards stall holders often reduce more perishable fruit like bananas, nectarines or strawberries, especially on Saturdays when they might not be doing another market until the following Tuesday. If you buy regularly from the same place they might be prepared to get you bulk quantities - say of Seville oranges - at a considerable saving. Equally, at the end of the day after the stall has packed up, they are an excellent source of boxes, stackable mushroom baskets and even material for the compost heap. And if you were to come across 9lbs of apricots in good condition that would utimately end up in landfill then it would really be your environmental duty to bring them home and turn them into jam, wouldn't it?

Tomorrow I'm going to be picking apples from the orchard to take to Stamford Apple Day to be identified on Saturday. We took some of the cookers last year but many of the eating apples didn't fruit so this is our opportunity to find out just what varieties we have growing there. I'm really quite excited after all the work that's gone into getting them to this stage. I'm also looking forward to a few home-made apple pies in October accompanied by my own vanilla ice cream, made to Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's River Cottage recipe. Click here for the link, remembering that you can get your cream to make it from Tesco for £1.00 and your vanilla pods - currently on offer -  from Julian Graves. Yum!

A bevy of beauties

In March, of last year, I wrote a post about growing dahlias. In it, I challenged myself to overcome my habit of buying tubers that never actually made contact with a growing medium, never mind the light of day. My intention was to replace the flowers I had unquestioningly bought on a whim, whilst working, with something more cost effective and home-produced. Why - I reasoned - would I want to buy blooms flown in from foreign fields that would last a few days at most when - for a fraction of the price - I could invest in a tuber that would supply a succession of flowers for several months of the year? I had intended to report back in late summer, heralded by a fanfare of trumpets, because when you've announced to quite a lot of people that you intend to do something, you really have to live up to it don't you? And I did live up to it but never got round to telling anyone. The plants were a bit late going from pot to border but flowered their little hearts out for a couple of months before an unseasonably early frost blackened the foliage at the beginning of October. So, inspired by last years efforts, I grew even more this year and it is now that they are really coming into their own.

The photo above was taken last year, in early August, and the dahlia shown is the cactus-flowered 'Nuit D'Ete'. I planted the dahlias in a mixed bed with roses and other plants but found they overwhelmed their allotted space quite quickly. Also, not being able to reach each plant from all sides meant that routine tasks, like feeding and dead-heading, were difficult. This year they are in a bed of their own - with three feet between plants - and this makes them much easier to manage. I started the tubers off in pots of compost in my tiny greenhouse at the end of April, keeping a careful eye on the weather forecast for night-time frosts. Some tubers are bigger than others so you need an assortment of pot sizes; the tuber needs to sit comfortably inside and still be able to fit compost around it and under it. My smallest tubers will fit into 2 litre pots but I pot the biggest into 5 litre ones. Also the tubers will grow bigger each season. They only need to start into growth in the pots and then they can be planted out once the risk of frost has passed at the end of May. So if you clean your pots straight after planting the dahlias out they are all ready to start again next year.

When I plant them out, I hammer in a stout stake - prior to planting so I don't damage the tuber - and mix plenty of compost with the soil as I firm it back in around the plant. Dahlias grow best with plenty of moisture at their roots but enjoy having their heads in the sun. I find the best thing for fastening them to the stake is the cut off leg of a pair of tights! The stretch in them allows the plant to move a little but without the sharp jerks caused when you fasten with string that can cause brittle dahlia stems to snap. Water them really well once a week in dry weather and I also feed about every 10 days with dilute manure water. Dead-heading helps to keep the flowers coming and I also nip out the two small buds - either side of the main one - to encourage bigger flowers. You can leave your dahlias in the ground over winter if you mulch them well but last winters frost and snow turned several of my tubers into a soggy mush. One of the ones I lost was this Fuschiana, pictured above, so this year they're all coming up after the first frost kills the foliage. Sarah Raven has a good chapter on dahlias - including growing, managing and storing over the winter - in her book Grow Your Own Cut Flowers. There's also a very useful chapter on sweet peas, another favourite of mine.

Colourwise, dahlias come in a wide range of hues although I believe someone has yet to breed a blue one. Their palette ranges from the soft and muted to the truly retina-scorching. Some varieties are bi-coloured, most often with white, while others have subtle variations of colour like this Black Narcissus, shown above. It is quite a dark dahlia yet full sunshine illuminates all its red tones. I am particularly fond of these almost-black varieties as they combine so well with other colours and prevent the paler shades from looking too insipid.

In size, they range from the tiniest miniature ball - with a diameter of just two inches - to those with blooms the size of a dinner plate. In fact, they are often described as just that -  'dinner-plate dahlias! Rip City - above - is one of my favourites. It has flowers of six inches and more across with gorgeous velvety petals of deepest maroon black. I struggled to find this one but I've noticed that Peter Nyssen Ltd  will be stocking them next year and you can order a catalogue online. Hide your bank cards whilst perusing it, though, as all their prices are so reasonable the temptation to buy is - almost - irresistable! I have one called Lavender Perfection which has the hugest of blooms. Sometimes, I find that it may take a couple of initial flowers before the plant establishes its true shape and so the two samples I've had so far of this variety have been an odd shape. Fingers crossed for an improvement with the next few!

Sadly, sometimes they are not what you ordered/bought. This one is supposed to be Pontiac but is much more like Geerlings Jubilee from the same catalogue page (NOT Peter Nyssen)! I think you'll agree that it's very lovely though, especially against the shadowy background? Not too much of a loss there, then. Also on the minus side, dahlias have no scent as such, only a strange peppery smell but with all that amazing shape, colour and an abundance of blooms, who's to notice?

Currant thoughts

Here we are at last. If you have been calling back to Being Creative in the past two weeks, wondering when this post would finally materialise, then thank you for your patience. In the dry months of April and June I had feared that we would have a very meagre harvest of all our crops this year but it just goes to show how impossible it is to predict, as everything has arrived in abundance. And once it has arrived it needs dealing with - in one way or another - asap. I want to write about the growing part in my next post but - suffice to say - this summers bounty, whilst providing me with food for thought (and body), has contrived to keep me away from the computer!

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I am very fortunate in that I inherited most of my currant bushes with my allotments. They are easy to grow and require very little in the way of maintenance. Unlike seeds - which we tend to fork out for on an annual basis - you only have to pay for them once and they will give you a return on that investment year after year. Blackcurrants, redcurrants and white currants are rarely offered for sale and when they are the cost is usually prohibitive; at last months farmer's market, our local fruit farm were asking £2.50 for half a pound of blackcurrants. Sadly, with 2lb needed for my jam recipe, preserving them at this price would be just too costly to contemplate. In their defence, they have to pay someone to pick them and they are quite time-consuming to harvest. However, I find picking my own currants to be the perfect excuse to sit outside on a sunny day - on an upturned bucket, cushioned with a kneeling pad - and letting my thoughts wander whilst systematically stripping each branch of ripe fruit. After several years experience I have found this method to be much kinder on the back than picking them standing up!

Each year I pick about 20lbs of blackcurrants. I thought it would be less this year, as I'd pruned the bushes quite heavily in the winter and because of the lack of rain after they'd flowered, but they still yielded just over 21lb. For the first few years we didn't bother to net the ripening fruit but the rise in the pigeon population over the last couple of seasons has made it something of a necessity. We've knocked in posts around each group of bushes with horizontal crossbars nailed on and these form a permanent structure. Then, once the vulnerable period approaches, we only have to tie the nets in place to protect the crop and remove them again after harvest. I'm always very aware that birds and other small creatures can easily become tangled and perish in netting so we try to get it as taught as possible - by weighing down the bottoms with heavy objects or tent pegs -  and we also check it regularly. The fruit is ripe when it gives a little when pressed. Most of my blackcurrants have quite a dull, black appearance when ripe but the later ones are quite shiny. I can't recommend a variety, as I didn't plant mine originally, but if you're considering growing them yourself you can extend the season by having early, mid and late season varieties, just like apples.

I first picked blackcurrants when they grew in our our garden in Devon and I made my first ever jam from them. They are very high in pectin and are brilliant for first time jam as it is pretty much guaranteed to set. The sharp flavour of the fruit gives a jam that is not too sweet and it is always the one that earns the most praise. As I've mentioned before, I prefer to freeze my blackcurrants after picking and make my jam when the kitchen benefits from a good warming and not when all the windows need to be wide open and the smell beckons every wasp in the neighbourhood! I never bother removing the remains of the flower from the top of the currant and if you're careful when you're picking them you can pull them off the bush without any green stalk attached either. I wash mine before freezing, let them drain for a while in the colander and then turn them out onto trays lined with old tea towels. Don't use your best tea towels as the juice stains badly. Then I open-freeze them on flat baking tins lined with greaseproof paper and, once they're hard, pack them into boxes, label and return to the freezer. If you'd like the recipe I use for Blackcurrant Jam, you can access it by clicking on the title or I've added it to the recipe section in the right-hand column above. Blackcurrants also make very useful additions to smoothies, as they are high in vitamin c, but do use them sparingly as their strong taste can overpower.

Redcurrants are equally easy to grow but if you want to harvest any crop at all from your bushes it is imperative to net them as soon as the fruit starts to swell, never mind turns to red. I think it's possibly blackbirds that love them so much but in their eagerness to eat them most fruit falls to the ground. We have one bush that we continually forgot to net as it is the only currant planted amongst several gooseberries. This year we got the net on just in time and harvested several pounds from that one bush alone. They are fiddlier to pick than blackcurants as their skins are softer and burst much more easily. They grow in clusters - like the blackcurrants - attached to long 'strings'. I pick them by the string, wash and dry them as for blackcurrants, and then open freeze them with the strings still attached. Once solid, you can strip them easily of the strings, without bursting them, before returning to the freezer in boxes.The taste of red - or white - currants is not as strong as that of the black and they can be eaten raw as well as cooked. If I have some particularly large and beautiful strings of berries, I leave them on the strings and use them for decorating pavlovas, or ice cream, as shown above. They are easy to eat then, straight from the strings and they do look wonderfully opulent! If you are using them to make redcurrant jelly, then you don't need to bother about stripping the stalks as they get left behind in the sieve/jelly bag along with the fruit pulp anyway. One of my favourite recipes for this soft fruit is Redcurrant Ice Cream (click title for link). It produces an ice cream with the characteristic dry aftertaste of redcurrants and, to me, it epitomises summer. You can use this recipe both with or without an ice cream maker and you can use the same recipe - with the same quantities of fruit - with either blackberries or raspberries, though I haven't tried either of these myself yet.

Redcurrants are rich in pectin and their juice can be used to help jams to set that are low in acid/pectin without detracting from their flavour. For maximum effect, it should be added before the fruit is cooked and at a rate of 150ml of redcurrant juice per kilo of fruit. Redcurrant jelly can be served with greasy meats like lamb or duck  or it can be used to add a glaze to fruit tarts for a professional finish. I also think they make a good alternative fruit to blueberries in the Very Wonderful Blueberry Muffin recipe. 

I haven't got a whitecurrant bush myself but was given these by a friend on the allotment. Don't their translucent skins make a wonderful contrast with the opaque ones of the blackcurrants? I think I may invest in a bush for their stunning visual quality alone!