Winter ingenuity!

So the snow arrived - and so did my bare rooted raspberries. At the very moment the ground froze to the consistency of concrete my precious stock arrived needing speedy planting. As our raspberries failed totally this year I'm determined to have more success (or,in fact, any success) next year so I was thrown into a panic as I feared for the lives of the hallowed canes.

I'm quite proud of my ingenious solution, I cut the top off a bag of garden centre compost and stuck the canes into the soil as a cosy, temporary home. Once the cold snap has finished I'll plant them out properly in our loving prepared, muck filled trenches. I've not visited the allotment since the snow fell but there's only Rainbow Chard and Cavolo Nero in the ground at the moment. I'm hoping the Cavolo Nero's OK but judging by the Chard at home, I'm expecting it to have turned up it's toes.

Continuing the sourdough theme of the winter, by co-incidence Adam has recently been presented with a 'Herman'. I've never heard of these but apparently it's a tradition which comes from either Germany or the Amish, depending on which website you read. It's a sweet sourdough starter which eventually makes a cake, it sells itself as a 'friendship' cake because the idea is you split the starter, keep a fifth and pass the rest on to friends. Willow's quite taken with the idea and is eagerly monitoring the regular feedings. I'm thinking of passing on ours to some of her friends at school although I am a tad concerned that the other mothers may be somewhat disconcerted when presented with a jar of white gloop. Hmmm.

I hope it's edible, I'm not sure Willow's social life would survive the white gloop, 10 days attention and feeding which results in a shoddy cake.