Catch Up

I was away in the Isle of Wight last week.  We had fabulous weather and the hotel was very nice, the food was good and the staff friendly and helpful.  The only criticism I have of the hotel was that the pillows were horrible, one was so heavy I could hardly lift it.  I hate using pillows that other people have used and these looked like something from about 50 years ago - horrible.  I tried to find a shop that sold cheap pillows but had no luck.

We bought a day ticket so that we could use the railways for a day and visited the steam railway as well as their electric railway.  The carriages on the steam railway were the ones that had separate compartments and plush seats and were original (but spotlessly clean), some dated back to 1912 on the train we used and they do have some that date back to 1864.  The electric trains were ex London underground trains.

The most disappointing trip we had was to Alum Bay, it was over commercialised and horrible.

Shanklin Chine was well worth a visit, I could just imagine the Victorians strolling around.

I have got some pictures but haven't downloaded them yet.

Since I got home I've been crocheting.  A tea cosy and fingerless gloves are supposed to be at the top of my agenda but I bought a crochet magazine that offered some free downloads on their website.  One pattern was for a doll cardigan and I'm part way through making it.  It is so complicated that I had to type out the instructions in a simplified way so that I could follow them and I've only done six rows of it - a bit of a challenge for me as I only know the basic stitches.  I did finish the tea cosy though.

My polytunnel is doing well.  There were a few tiny caterpillars on the broccoli but they were easy to get rid of, not like the infestation we usually get on brassicas outside.  The cauliflowers are doing well, I should be able to have one with our Sunday dinner tomorrow.  Also the beetroot are doing much better than they did outside last year and we had some with salad the other day.  Peas and Broadbeans are almost ready.  Oh and we had carrots the other day too.  Still cropping the cut-and-come-again lettuce leaves, I thought these had white fly but there is no sign of it now, I think they had white fly at the garden centre when we bought them and had been dealt with.

The outside strawberries are over now and it looks as though the fox used them as bed while we were away, note to self: rig up a barrier so the fox can't get onto the raised bed.

I only have a few potatoes plants this year but the ones I've dug up have been lovely, really easy to scrape.  I like to scrape new potatoes if possible.

My tomatoes are slow again, even though they are in the polytunnel.  I'm trying a beef tomato plant this year but so far nothing has set.  We could do with some decent sunshine I think, things would be much further on if it hadn't been so dull recently.