Thanks to  that wonderful blog, 'Down to Earth', which I seriously think is one of the best simple living blogs I have ever read so far, I have been inspired to pull myself together and finish making my sloe gin. I've had a lot of language teaching work in the last three months, which has put a lot of things on hold, but due to some root canal treatment which has meant I've had to cancel teaching for the rest of the week, I have some time on my hands. So having finished preparing all my next immediate lessons this morning, I decided to hit the gin. (In the non-addictive manner, of course. I'm
on penicillin, after all ;))

It's a very simple matter of decanting the gin through a sieve through a funnel into pretty bottles. It has been sitting still for three weeks since I stopped turning the bottle and its contents upside down and right side up for two months, every day. Write and stick nice labels on the bottles (thanks to Lakeland Plastics for those) and hey presto!

Sloe Gin

Went for a walk with a friend this morning to pick some of the last sloes left on the whitethorn bushes bordering the woods at the back of our home. There were just enough to make a whole bottle of sloe gin, for which you need:

1 bottle of gin,

175g sloes

125g sugar

Wash and prick the sloes all over with a fork or something similar. Decant the gin into a convenient jug. Fill the bottle with the sloes and sugar (a funnel is helpful for the sugar) and then pour as much of the gin back into its bottle again as will fill it. Screw on the lid tightly. If there is gin left over, use a screw-top glass jar for any remaining sloes, more sugar and the left-over gin. Screw the lid on well, and turn bottle and jar upside down one day and right side up the next for the next two months. Then once the sugar is all dissolved and the alcohol has taken on a deep red colour, strain the contents through a clean cloth into a bowl, and pour into a jug. Clean the gin bottle of any residue, and pour the sloe gin back into its bottle - or into other clean bottles. Nice idea for presents.

I have managed to weed and dig over the potato bed

 - have dug up all the potatoes, which are really scrumptious,  

 and have cleared the sweet peas out. I've also sowed lambs' lettuce in four of the squares under the mini-greenhouses. The lambs' lettuce which I sowed three weeks ago is just beginning to show in the greenhouses and I'm really glad I sowed it there because 

these are the tracks of deer left behind on what was the sweet pea bed after I weeded it on Tuesday. I'm quite sure they would have nibbled away anything I'd sown before, had it not been under cover.

 Let's hope that the roast venison I've ordered for Channukah will be the guilty culprit.

Everything is TIDY! Yippee!

Square Foot at Sukkoth

October SFG

I've done quite a bit in the garden recently, tidying up and preparing for colder weather and it all looks great. I'm looking forward to the arrival of two more mini-greenhouses for the other two 2x4s in which I hope to sow and plant some winter salads - lambs' lettuce particularly. I've sown some in the 2x4 under the first little greenhouse, as well as some oakleaf lettuce and a bit of curly kale, in the hope of getting some winter vitamins.

Well, I'm getting geared up for our holiday away - it turns out that it was a good idea not to grow tomatoes again this year - it has been so wet and cool that they would never have ripened on our terrace, as I had suspected, just like last year. I was wearing winter socks and a fleece jacket yesterday! It's a lot warmer today though, and I went out and pulled up the fence around the potato patch and weeded what was beginning to look very untidy. So that's done. The potatoes have died back, so I could start harvesting any time. I'm glad I didn't put them in pots on the terrace. No-one will have to water them for us while we're away. My lovely son Ben helped me put up the poles - I strung yellow washing line up and along them,; I'll make another video shortly, so you can see how it looks; photos don't really show it clearly enough. The Butternut Squash is coming along nicely, but I actually think that I left it too late - we'll see how much it's grown when we get back, but I don't really think it'll have any fruit. I'll just have to try again next year, much earlier this time.

Next year, I'm also seriously considering growing asparagus in the bed where the potatoes have been. It'll take a couple of years before I can harvest it, but that's no problem. Maybe I will be allowed to dig another potato bed - we'll see.

The sweet peas are at last coming into flower - they smell heavenly - a bit like Eau de Cologne, I think!
I picked a big bowl of mangetout this morning, and blackberries too. The plum tree is bearing wonderfully this year - the first time since it was planted -  this is its fifth year, I think, which remindes me of this scripture: “‘When you enter the land and plant any kind of fruit tree, regard its fruit as forbidden. For three years you are to consider it forbidden; it must not be eaten. In the fourth year all its fruit will be holy, an offering of praise to the Lord. But in the fifth year you may eat its fruit. In this way your harvest will be increased. I am the Lord your God. (Leviticus 19:23-25). Fascinating. It's absolutely true. It was true for the new cherry tree as well. This year was the first time it bore any quantity of fruit, after it was left for four years.

I couldn't resist taking a picture of this beautiful hibiscus flower, below, which isn't growing in the Square Foot Garden, but on our terrace. The label says that it should bloom from May through to October, but its first flower opened this week, and I was so happy, as I've been really looking forward to it. Maybe it just doesn't get enough sun there; still, it's a lovely patch of blue, and I planted a blue hydrangea which I was given last week, underneath it. Thank you Lord, for making so many wonderful flowers!

 

Made some bread this morning, and a big bowl of muesli - with dates and cranberries and pecan nuts. Should keep us all going for four weeks.

Four more Nails in the Coffin of Climate Change

More good news. The fight for truthful scientific research has gained some more ground.

It's interesting how polarized (no pun intended) the arguments are, even among some with whom, on other issues, one might agree. Obviously, there has been something increasingly odd, even alarming, about the climate and weather for the last nearly 30 years. Some put this down to global warming, others to global cooling. But I remember how, in the UK, 27 years ago, a new Christian magazine came out, called Prophecy Today (now called Sword Magazine) which clearly showed, through its solid biblical teaching and prophetic message, that the nations are increasingly under God's judgment, and that the abberant weather events were the signs thereof, pointing towards the return of Jesus Christ, and that it was urgent that people turn away from their own ways, to God.

It was only around 20 years ago that global warming began to be discussed and it is indicative of how successful the mainstream media's propaganda has been when one thinks of how normal most people now think it is to buy those ugly energy-saving light bulbs and think about trying to reduce their carbon footprint. I have also got so used to hearing about it all, that the message about God's judgment rather slipped into the background.
How clever of the enemy to bring out such a scientific-sounding argument to counteract the biblical warnings that Christians were publishing. Naturally, most people would believe the scientists, with their reasonable message and apparently proven hypotheses: The Tree of Knowledge triumphs again over the Tree of Life.
Things didn't look quite so good for the global warming lobby when the news broke about Climategate in November 2009, that scientists had been caught fiddling the data. Yet governments continued to plug the old line, especially in the UK, where it had been the policy since Margaret Thatcher's government (the former Prime Minister has a BSc in chemistry)  to increase the UK's scientific influence politically.
Now it seems that the lid of the climate coffin has had even more nails hammered into it.

Climate has always changed. This is to be expected. But weather seems to be getting more extreme everywhere, whether it's droughts causing harvest failure or catastrophic rainfall causing flooding... Maybe we should stop putting our trust in scientists, who are, after all only human and apt to moral failure, and put our trust in the God who created the universe and earth we live on.

'The earth is the Lord's and everything in it.' (Ps 24:1)
 '... to the LORD your God belong heaven and the highest heavens, the earth and all that is
 in it.' (Deut. 10:14)
 'Who has a claim against me that I must pay? Everything under heaven belongs to me.' (Job 41:11)

'If My people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin and will heal their land.'
(2 Chron. 7:14)