Homemade stuff

As per the perverse way of ugly plants producing fruit that nobody likes much, the rhubarb plant in the garden in Caversham had done extremely well for the last few years, producing loads of fruit, some of which is still languishing in bags in the freezer. Back in May Ruth made the decision to get rid of it in the interests of freeing up space to grow other things we might be more inclined to eat and, as I balked at the thought of yet more frozen rhubarb filling up the freezer, she got the idea to try and make wine out of the remaining fruit. This led to the purchase of a good deal of kit from a company amusingly named Bigger Jugs. Here's the initial stage of the chemistry, with chunks of rhubarb soaking in one of the supplied fermenting bins:

And below in its current state, which is a peachy-orange liquid. The space it's in just happened to be an available space in the kitchen, but it's perhaps unfortunately placed next to various cleaning products. Hopefully it will, in due course, taste better than those, but I'm not overly hopeful. Apparently it's supposed to rest in its demijohn for at least six months, so we're anticipating a sampling of rhubarb wine sometime around Christmas.

Second bit of River Cottage-type industry: the tomato plant we acquired earlier in the year has grown plenty of good-sized tomatoes, but they haven't ripened - Ruth thinks it might have been a variety that's supposed to be grown under glass. Picked the larger ones yesterday and looked for a recipe for green tomato chutney - I'm not hugely into chutney but remember making it from green tomatoes once before and it being quite nice.

Couldn't locate the recipe I used last time, so used this Nigel Slater one which mixes in some regular ripe tomatoes with the green ones. Not too sure about some of the ingredients (raisins?) and, contra Slater's assurances that it should only make a couple of jam jars' worth, I found it filled five jars - though admittedly there was quite a lot of liquid; perhaps I should have drained some of it off. Not too hopeful that the end product's going to be a treat, but you never know.

Catherine Howard

Have not yet blogged that in February, and following Beau’s sad death in December, we (well, Ruth) adopted another female rabbit as a companion for Harley – a young, pretty grey female who had come into the rescue centre with one or more siblings (I forget how many). As they often do during bondings, Reading Rabbit Rescue posted a video on their Facebook page of her and Harley in the ‘bunny moon suite’ during their stay. RRR hadn’t published photos of any of Harley’s bondings since his none-too-successful bonding with Lexie, so they were evidently feeling more confident about this one.

Sandra, almost in the same breath, praised Harley’s longevity, attributing it substantially to his being a house bunny, given his respiratory problems, and commiserated with us over our bad luck with our females.

The new bunny was referred to as ‘Greybun’ during her time at RRR and initially by us; on pressing by Sandra, we chose ‘Pippa’ as being a cute sort of name, so this was duly entered on her card. However, between ourselves we had taken to referring to her, wittily, as ‘Catherine Howard’, given that she is Harley’s fifth female companion. The nickname has inevitably stuck, though I’ve at least once exclaimed loudly in public something along the lines of “Catherine Howard let me stroke her this morning!” which could raise eyebrows. There are advantages to more traditional pet names such as Snowy, Fluffykins etc.

CH is the youngest bunny we’ve yet adopted, as she only turned one in April. As Harley is now around nine, we’re trying not to feel guilty over having separated her from her sibling(s) to come and live with an old man. She and Harley seem to be working well together, though perhaps inevitably she is livelier than he is. Here they are, with Harley in the typically subservient pose he adopts with females, presumably in the hope that they will accidentally groom his head while reaching to lick their own foot.

Pics of our five females below:

Lola	Lexie
Willow	Beau (with Harley)

Catherine Howard

In an idle moment we had a go at pairing the females up with one each of Henry VIII’s wives. Lola, our first female, would fit with Catherine of Aragon, we decided, given that she was with Harley for the longest - four years until her death in 2013. Spirited, wilful, furniture-loving Willow we decided would be Anne Boleyn; shy, short-lived Beau (in terms of her time with us – she was actually around five when she died) would be Jane Seymour, leaving thumping great bruiser Lexie to be Anne of Cleves. Obviously, we’re hoping not to get a Catherine Parr any time soon.

Walk around Blorenge summit plateau, 4.98 miles

5 July

Well, it's been a while. Did this little walk while spending a week's leave this last week staying at my parents' house. When there I always enjoy looking up at Blorenge, a cuddly-looking hill to the south of the town, and had been idly pondering a walk up it. This week got around to trying a route out of Chris Barber's The Seven Hills of Abergavenny, which includes four walks on Blorenge - I chose 'Around the summit plateau', which is a bit of a cop-out in terms of actually climbing the hill, as most of your ascent is done in the car driving up the B4246, which has great views and one positively hairpin bend.

Keeper's Pond	Summit of Blorenge (albeit I didn't actually climb it)
Looking down towards Abergavenny	Another view

Parked at the car park just off the B4246 next to Keeper's Pond at around 9:00 am - just me and a dog walker (and his dog) there - and took a brief stroll along the path around the lake, to admire the views. The little lake - which was glinting v. prettily in the sun - is apparently artificial; the book informed me it was constructed around 1820 as a water supply for the Blaenavon Ironworks and Garnddyrys Forge. From the pond I walked a bit further along the road to the Foxhunter car park, next to two prominent masts, and then took the pretty obvious path across the moorland that leads straight to Blorenge's summit. Had the summit to myself so stood for a minute attempting to think deep thoughts, and taking a selfie.

Followed the path onwards towards the edge of Blorenge's steep north east face which overlooks Abergavenny. Again, had the place to myself apart from the sheep. Admired the views for a while, then attempted to 'contour around the lip of the escarpment to the left', as advised by the book. Path initially not too obvious but became more so further on. Followed the path back to Keeper's Pond. It apparently joins an old tram road en route though I can't say I noticed the point where this happened.

The route as shown in Chris Barber's book