Sausages and Newspaper Pots

Ah, what a calm and delightful day it has been today.  I love Tuesdays because my lovely cleaning lady comes in an blitzes the house, and by the time she leaves it is fragrant and all sparkly clean.  I don't know why mess jangles on my nerves so, but it does, so Tuesdays are a real salve, especially as I know it will stay all clean and sparkly until the weekend.

Better still, the weather has been quite mild, which allowed me to leave the back door wide open, so I could enjoy the sights and sounds of the birds visiting the garden.  As well as the rowdy gang of goldfinches, a pair of collared doves, two blackbird families and the garden brawler, Mr Robin, we have long tailed tits that visit and fly close to the kitchen window to feed.  They are just the most delicate little things, and they make such a cheery noise that I can't help but smile whenever they turn up.

I looked up how to care for sweet peas, and they are now in the conservatory, as the kitchen is too warm.  I discovered that they like to make deep roots, so it was a mistake to put them into little seedling trays, but I found an excellent solution.  As I have about 100 germinated seedlings, it wasn't practical to find pots for them all, so I have been busily making paper pots this afternoon.  Yes, I know I should have been working, but I worked all over the weekend, so I figure that sloping off for one afternoon won't be too terrible!  There were two methods that I found to make paper pots, the simple version where you roll newspaper around a glass and then make the base by squishing it down , or the slightly more complicated way that uses an origami pattern.

I found the pattern here and though it took a bit of working out, as the steps weren't all clear, once I had started, my seedling tray started to fill up nicely with paper pots.  The great thing about this pattern is that the pots come out square, so they fit tightly together in the tray.  It also means that once I have transplanted the seedlings, assuming they survive, I won't have to disturb their roots again, as the newspaper will go into the ground with the sweet peas.  Yippee!  I love it when things are clever and save time and effort.

Apart from my butcher turning up bearing a scarily large bag of items - we had only asked him for pork and marmalade sausages and a couple of pork chops, there were not shocks or surprises.  On opening the bag, I did worry that I might have to go and get another freezer - there were three pork joints, six chops, pork and marmalade sausages, crushed black pepper and pork sausages and something else, but I'm too scared to look in the bag to work out what it was!  Still, His sausages have won national gold awards and are really scrummy and he only uses Gloucester Old Spot or Large White organic, free range pigs, so all the meat is dense, full of flavour and better than anything I've had from elsewhere.  He's going online next month, so I shall send a selection pack of his goodies to a couple of meat-eating friends as a treat - it'll be a bit different from flowers and chocolates!

It hasn't been an earth-shatteringly exciting day, but it made me feel really good and I'm sitting here with a large mug of tea and a gentle sigh of contentment - life is good.