All our seedlings have germinated!

Mini-aubergine plants

First the sunflowers popped their heads up, then came the red and yellow tomatoes (the yellow tomatoes seem to have done considerably better than the red ones with all of the yellow tomatoes germinating but only six of the ten red tomato seeds that I planted have germinated), a week or so later the aubergines appeared (very exciting!) and then just over the weekend the chillis have started to pop their heads up so now I have a full complement of all of the seedlings that I planted.

2012 seeds are in

It's taken me a few days to get around to writing this post but the 2012 seeds are in! The aubergines, red and yellow tomatoes, chillies and sunflowers have all been planted into the seed trays and left on the dining table in the sun to germinate. From reading the packet it looks like you plant the runner bean seeds straight into small pots in April and so I haven't done anything with them yet.

I've got my fingers and toes crossed that the aubergines come up trumps!

Seeds!

I have just ordered my seeds for the 2012 windowboxes. I am slightly later this year than I have been for the past two but hoping that this won't cause any problems... As some of you will be aware one of my "30 before 30" for this year is to grow an aubergine on the windowsill. This may be a tall order but I'm hoping that I'll be able to do it. The variety that I have gone for is the dwarf "Ophelia" plant. Fingers crossed they like sunny spots and will thrive on the windowsill. Only time will tell. To go alongside the aubergines I've gone for another newby to the windowsill - the dwarf runner bean "Hestia" and last but not least I have the old favourites which have done very well both years - tumbling tomatoes and some chilli seeds (another new variety of chilli this year - going to try Caldero).

Now just got to sit back and wait for them to arrive in the post!

January tomatoes

The window boxes did become casualties of all of the activity surrounding the wedding and honeymoon in the latter half of 2011 and as such got rather left to their own devices for the last quarter of the year.

However, one of the upsides of this is that with the mild winter all of the green tomatoes that were left on the tomato plants have been gradually turning red throughout December and January and every week or so we get another 15-20 red tomatoes to put into our dinner. My new favourite cookbook is Plenty by Yottam Ottolenghi and I used this lot in his Lentil and Aubergine recipe.

Very tasty indeed!

30 before 30

So... here it is, my 30 before 30. I thought that by drawing it out, making it pretty and sticking it on the kitchen door it would inspire me to do things and encourage me to keep planning through the cold winter nights after a long day at work. Here they are written out in a more user friendly list:

Food
1. Start a sourdough mother
2. Eat an oyster on Mersea Island
3. Make chutney with vegetables I have picked myself
4. Make a cassoulet
5. Catch a fish and learn to fillet it

Exercise
6. Run a 10k
7. Stand up on a surfboard 5 times in a row
8. Swim a stretch of the Thames
9. Walk the Ridgeway
10. Go skiing

Culture
11. Read To Kill A Mockingbird
12. Write a blog with a readership of over 250 people
13. Do an oil painting
14. Knit a Christmas jumper
15. Use my Tate membership card in all four Tate Galleries

Garden
16. Grow an aubergine on the windowsill
17. Plant a sunflower on International Sunflower Guerrilla Gardening Day

London
18. Walk the Capital Ring
19. Visit Highgate Cemetery
20. Eat a steak at Hawksmoor
21. Walk from our flat to the Olympics
22. Drink champagne at the St Pancras Champagne Bar before departing on Eurostar
23. Go to a live event (concert, theatre, sports match etc...) every month

Outside adventures
24. See a basking shark
25. Go skinny dipping
26. Watch the sun rise on the east coast and set on the west coast
27. Sleep under the stars

Miscellaneous
28. Give blood
29. Drive a car with nobody else in it
30. Spend some time volunteering

I am very excited at the prospect... Best get planning!

2011 highlights

So... whilst the blog didn't get written in 2011 we did try our hardest to keep the windowsill alive and kicking. Here's a few picture highlights from the year - more stories to come over the coming weeks...

It's been a while...

Well... it's been a very long while indeed since I sat down at my computer and updated the blog. I do have an excuse though, we got married at the end of last year and then spent a month on honeymoon where we moved around a lot and we planned the whole thing ourselves. The stresses and strains of planning a wedding followed straight after by a big trip like that sadly left little time for blogging and tending to the windowsill.

But now I'm back and looking forward to all of the excitement that 2012 has in store. They say that after a big event like a wedding and honeymoon where you have spent so much time building up to it that you need to ensure you have things to look forward to afterwards. So that, combined with the fact that I'm turning 30 at the end of this year (eeek!!) has led me to create a "30 things to do before 30" list. Which leads me nicely back to the windowsill and the blog as one of my 30 things is to:

"Write a blog with a readership of over 250 people"

So here it is, I'm back and ready and raring to go!