Time to catch up..

Right,its back to service as usual. The holiday was great but now I need to concentrate on getting everything back in order. 

Rather than one very very very long post I am going to split them up over the next few days. 

So to start off I did plan a blog and took pictures before I left, but never got around to it.  

In the days before I went away, I thought it best to pick everything I could that was ready and do something with it. I had taken the time to grow it all but didn't want to waste anything. 

Off down the garden I went, with my very nice trug and this is what I ended up with 

What to make with Butternut squash, Tomatoes, Peppers and Chilli's 

Well Soup was the most obvious thing to do with the squash, and I could freeze it and have it when I came home. 

I decided to roast the squash and then use it to make a soup, with some of the Chilli's to give it a bit of a kick. 

When I cut into it, I was impressed with how dense it was, and how few seeds there were inside. The ones I buy at the supermarket, normally  have a big empty centre and lots of seeds. 

I got a bit distracted and forgot to take any more pictures until it was ready so this is what it ended up as.

I had fully intended to freeze the soup in bags but it was so nice, it only lasted 24 hours and it was gone. 

The tomato's and pepper's were easy, three nice dishes of my home made spicy tomato sauce, and I managed to use the remainder of my home grown shallots as well. 

We needed to do quite a lot of preparation work for winter. The main jobs being to paint the summerhouse and shed with wood stain. After a bit of debate we chose a colour and Jim managed to get some dented tins of Sadolin on Ebay. It was a really good way to get it, as it is normally very expensive but this way, we got perfect stain, just dented tins. Who cares what the tins look like, they don't protect the wood. 

So day one of the painting project. It quickly became apparent that once again, I was going to have to climb on the roof. Some of you, who have read the blog from the beginning, may remember that when we put it up, I had to do the roof jobs as I was the lightest member of our household.. 

Luckily this time it was a glorious sunny day and so wearing my sunhat and lots of suncream, I climbed the ladder and got on with the job. Its amazing how different things look from a rooftop. 

The area's that needed staining were small so I was going to have to be careful that I didn't make a mess on the roofing felt. 

I had a bit of a good idea, instead of using a normal paintbrush, I used a couple of artists brushes  and poured some of the stain into an old takeaway pot. It was easier to hang onto on the roof .

It was a slow job, but you can see what a difference it made. 

Whilst I was up there, I took the opportunity to survey my domain. I was very pleased with what I could see. 

The day after this, I went away and left Jim to carry on with the painting project. You will see the results in later posts.

So, thats all the pre holiday news. In the next day or so I will post again so you can see what happened next. 

Hope all is well in your world and thanks for coming back to my blog, after I swanned off and left you with no news for such a long time ..