Do you need a shield from the weapons

We went to the allotment today.  

I really wasn't feeling it, and I got up reluctantly and mussed my hair and put on my gardening gear. 

I'm glad I did though, as soon as I walked into the mulchy leaves and sun dappled trees, i felt better. 

I pulled up all the dead sunflowers, and all of the sweetpeas.   And then I pulled the last of the cornflowers.    I love these flowers and cornflower blue is my absolute favourite.


We planted more onions  - about 80% of the onions we planted at the start of October have started growing and about 5% of the garlic, but we weren't expecting the garlic to start doing anything til after the new year. 

We cleared another bed, and lay black sheets down. 

I pulled out all the baby sweet corn stalks.   

the place looked a whole lot better and I felt a whole lot better. 


Himself and I talked for quite a while about how I could extract the colour and use it to create him a tie-dye t-shirt.  He was absolutely not on board with that.  But he humoured me and we agreed that boiling the petals would be the best thing. 

Then we hit on the idea of making paper and staining it with the cornflower blue. 


SO I pulled all the petal and put them in water, and switched the heat on

and watched as the blue disappeared in a matter of seconds, and the petals turned pink and the water stayed like water. 

I boiled them for 20 minutes, hopeful that maybe a change in termperature would inspire blue.  Then I left them on the side for cooling down, also hopeul that they would turn blue.   Nope.  It never happened. 

All my beautiful blue.  Gone.  

In better news. 

Himself made me Chicken Kiev for Dinner (Kyiv) and also potatoe leek gratin.  I  feel like a pig now. But I also managed  to stuff down my Rice Pudding with Sultanas, Nutmeg and Clotted Cream. (My Baking)