THE LAST WEEK OF AUGUST IN MY SMALL LONDON GARDEN / LONDON DIARIES

Oh my good lord! Good morning! Welcome back to my Sunday vlogs. My name's Emma, these are my Sunday vlogs where I vlog all about my life here in London. What I'm getting up to in the garden, what I'm cooking, what I'm baking, what I'm doing. Oh hello Pipps, you've come to say hello. Just got back from holiday, actually yesterday, and Pippin was so happy to see me. I wish that I had got his reaction on camera, so my parents have been coming over every day to feed him and look after him, but he's sort of been a little bit on his own this week because I haven't been here all day. He's used to having people around him all day, but when I opened the door I was so tired, we'd driven for about six hours, and I opened the door and I was greeted with my rabbit mid sort of binky, so he was sort of in the air halfway down the hallway with his ears stuck out. I actually thought he was flying, I was so delirious. I sort of opened the door, there's a rabbit mid-air, and then he just literally raced around the house like an absolute maniac for ages, which was so nice. Basically he got the zoomies and he was binking. I think he heard the key in the door and he, oh don't eat me Pippin, are you grooming me or are you eating me? Yeah I think he was just so happy to see us, so hopefully just to see me, because you're my rabbit aren't you? My bestie, my little bestie. So yeah it was so nice to come back to Pip's. I'm feeling very productive today, very productive. There's obviously lots to do, we've just got back from holiday, so there's lots of washing, lots of cleaning, and we've got to do a big food shop. I want to get some things for the allotment plot, so I'm going to drag my husband down to I think Bean Q, grab a load of compost and stuff to start mulching for autumn, so I feel really like productive. I normally do when I have a rest, I've had a whole week's rest from work, from the allotment, from life in general, just literally lazing on the beach, exploring amazing areas of Devon. It was so beautiful there, desperate to go back. I want to go to North Devon next time. I found a place called Woolicombe and it looks beautiful there, so I want to explore the north coast of Devon next time. In fact I just came down and one of the first things I did was just relax on the sofa for a little bit and open up my Readly app, which is like a great app where you get access to thousands of magazines, all different categories, so it's like loads of different magazines to look at. I'm always discovering new magazines and I was drawn straight away to all the holiday destinations, all the holiday magazines, all the travel and then also all the food magazines as well. They've got a great food and drink category on there because I'm just so inspired to like cook fish. I really want to cook like fresh fish because that's sort of what we ate in Devon like the whole time and it was so fresh. There are so many great features on the Readly app as well. I do talk about this quite a lot but it is a fantastic app and I get so much inspiration from there. So you can backdate episodes of magazines, you can bookmark specific articles so that they're saved in your bookmark section, you can refer back to them. That's great for things like recipes or jobs to do in the garden. You can also download your favourite magazines so you don't have to be on the internet to access them, you can read them when you're offline and of course it just saves on all those big paper magazines you know that you would otherwise have. So obviously much better for the environment and the great thing is if you do want to try the Readly app, I do say this a lot as well and a lot of you have signed up now, so many of you have signed up, it's amazing. So if you go below and click my link or the QR code on the screen now you will get two months free access to Readly. So two months you do not have to pay a thing, you get access to all of those magazines, all the features I talk about and you can cancel at any time. So if you don't like it and you think this is not for me, I don't want to stay subscribed to this, you can cancel at any time, it's so easy to do but you might as well go below, click the link, sign up for two months free and try it out because it's totally and completely free so why not? Giving out a nice little Sunday freebie, right I think we're gonna have to head out and do the food shop because we have absolutely nothing in. So I'm gonna think about some recipes, I've been using the Ocado magazine to sort of bookmark recipes and stuff. There's the washing machine as well, okay it's all go pips, it's all go. I think I want to make this one pan pasta because that looks really easy to make, so that's bacon, tagliatelle we've already got, spinach, duck, yeah okay we've got all that and then I really liked the look of this whole bream with ratatouille couscous, how amazing does that look though? Oh my goodness I'm so excited to overindulge in the autumn time, popcorn clusters, chocolate hazelnut mini bites, oh my goodness, oh my goodness look at this cardigan, all the dogs, look at this one and I really feel like I need this one in my life, that is so nice. Okay guys I'm back, I'm back from the shop so I need to stop shopping, it's becoming a problem now. I actually did buy some things which I'm quite excited about because I'm going to start running again, there goes the building work again. I'm going to start running again so I bought some bits for that so that's quite exciting, I felt like that was a good investment. I've just watered my garden, the building work has started which is quite frustrating and I'm going to have some scrambled egg for lunch and I'm going to top them with something fun and delicious. Right so we've got our scrambled egg on some sourdough and I'm going to top it with some spring onions or salad onions, whatever you want to call them, I'm going to put some of those on and then I'm going to whack on some pomegranates, I'm not sure if they'll go with this but I don't really care, I just really like them and I want the crunch. Salt and pepper and just for fun a little bit of mayonnaise because that just seems like the weirdest combination ever but it's what I want for my lunch so look how pretty that looks. Bog standard scrambled egg on sourdough toast, so beautiful isn't it? Right I'm going to try and sit outside and eat this, I'm sighing because I that building work is going to start up the second I try and sit at the back of the garden but I'm going to do it anyway. I have got a new book, I actually bought this, what is that? It's our washing machine trying to escape. I bought this book a little while ago and I never got around to reading it because other books kind of caught my eye, it's called Sunstruck and it looked really good and I was thinking because this is like the last week of August I better get reading because it's a bit of a summery read so I'm going to read this book and I'll let you know how it goes basically. Also thank you for all your book recommendations, so many of you now message me with recommendations, I am starting to get through them and order some of them from Amazon so thank you very much, keep them coming and I'll let you know how this one goes. It's an aeroplane now, well and truly back in London. Look at these gorgeous dahlias that started to bloom, also you see on this one here one of the petals is streaked ever so slightly with pink, how amazing is that because they're obviously not really supposed to be pink. Isn't that so lovely? Got lots of them flowering now, lots and lots of dahlias and then the other dahlias are actually doing okay, they're actually getting bigger so I have a good feeling that I'm going to get some flowers out of these. Also the peppers have survived which is fantastic, these are getting nice and big. Oh look, look I've got one, oh wow this might be a chilli actually, I don't know if they're chillies or yeah longhorn, I think these are chillies, how beautiful is that? These are my lemon drops looking really good, getting so many on this plant. These are my tangerine dreams, this one is definitely ready to pick now, how gorgeous and I've got a couple more growing here, oh three more growing here, how beautiful. So yeah all the chillies and peppers have done so well this year which I'm sure we're not too surprised about with the weather, being nice and warm for them. These here that I thought were courgettes, I've got one trailing now right up this trellis which is doing really well, these are still not giving me any indication as to what they are so I think they're courgettes but there might be pumpkins, I might have mixed them up by accident but not one of them is producing anything at all so I have no idea what they are still, they are so healthy, they're so happy and they are getting a lot of flowers but for some reason they're not giving me anything, I think they are too viney to be courgettes, I don't, oh actually hang on a second, hang on a second, I think we found one, now this could be the start of a courgette or it could very well be some kind of long pumpkin or butternut squash, I think maybe courgette, that whole bed is doing really really well though, thank you so much to my mum for coming over and watering it while we were away and then this bed in here is looking very alive, firstly that celery that I'm trying to regrow is regrowing, it is very much alive and giving me new leaves, it looks so healthy and then we've got some of the chard which is really coming up big now, we've got the leeks behind behind the chard and then over there we've got spring onions and lettuce all coming up, just looking great, very happy that the garden has survived me not being here for a few days, it's looking really really good, I think I might need to get some more flowers for the pots over the autumn time just to add a little bit more autumn colour and keep it a nice place to sit but it's looking great, good morning guys, excuse my face, I've literally just woken up and got out of bed, I think this morning the plan is we're going to go down to, hang on a second, where's my sun cream because it is a little bit, it is nice and sunny outside, I think the weather has cooled down but it is still quite sunny outside, I really hope you can't see all my crap on the floor, oh my goodness my room is such a mess since I got back from holiday, I need this whole house just needs a serious tidy up today, it is Sunday today, happy Sunday everybody, I've got a few jobs to do to get ready for the rest of the week, tidying, sorting things out, I'm going to go down to B&Q today and maybe a garden centre and get a few things for the allotment and for the garden because I do feel positive at the moment, since taking a break and going to Devon for a week I have come back feeling slightly more positive and hopeful about it all but I also, I've come back with a bit of a determination to, I've just knocked the camera and I think it's funny, yeah I've come back with a determination to do the allotment properly and to really invest some money, some time, some effort, some energy into it and basically put my heart and soul back into the allotment plot and see what I can do with it in the next year, it's going to be sort of my make or break year, like I said in the week, I'm just going to really really go for it. That is what I have decided to do and it's made me feel quite uplifted and hopeful and excited about it all again but as you can hear I'm very very tired so the first thing we're going to do is go down to the coffee shop and get some coffee, there is a really nice independent coffee shop that's opened, we have, where I live we have so many chains and I really don't like coffee chains, like I'd much rather spend my money in like a small independent shop or coffee shop or like just for anything, I've just, I love independent shops and we've finally got an independent coffee shop that's opened and it's about a 30 minute walk from us so we're going to go for a nice long walk and get a coffee at the end of it, what the perfect reward really for a nice long walk and the weather is just looking perfect, so that's how I'm going to start my morning and I thought I would take you with me, just trying to look a little bit more awake this morning because I do know that I look so tired in my hair, look at my hair, this is my hair every morning, it's just an absolute mop, like a bird's nest, anyway we will try to do something with it, maybe just brush it to be honest, I say something with it like it's really dramatic, I'm just going to brush it, I actually have a really big week, by the time this goes up this week will be over and I'll have more of an idea of what's going on in my life but this is actually a huge huge week for me, I just can't tell you what it is yet or tell you anything about it but it's like it could potentially be a huge life-changing week and it's nothing to do with the house, it's all about me, but yeah it's looking like it's going to be quite a momentous week potentially with lots of big very adult decisions to make and I just I feel it's really weird because normally if I have a week where there's a lot of decisions to make and things are changing very quickly, I normally feel quite anxious and nervous, I actually feel really happy and excited and really kind of ready for anything that's coming my way, so yeah I feel I feel pretty good, I feel I'm just feeling really really good about it, so we're going to start the week with a coffee walk, so let's go. So just come out into the garden to have a little scout around as to what I might need, my Japanese anemone has started to flower which has really made me very happy, I think I'm going to get a few bags of compost and some plants and sort out this little planter here which is looking very very sad, this is just literally because of the drought and the heat waves that we've had and basically I haven't watered it so it's just all died, this all needs to be taken out, I'm going to replant this I think and then the pots are looking okay but they could do with a little bit of a compost top up I think and also the veggie beds as well because the compost level is sort of going down a little bit and I don't want that to happen, so I think I'm going to top these up as well, so I think we'll have a little nose around the garden centre and just see what they've got and if we see anything else we might pick it up as well but we'll just see, we'll just see what they've got, let's go. Okay back from the garden centre, sorry if this vlog's a little bit all over the place, I feel a little bit all over the place, we've got a lot to get done today, I'll show you what I got quickly, went for the Westland compost, just got a few of these for the garden and then we've got this, got an Aster Indigo which is so so pretty, I think mine have died in the heat wave so I've got one of these to replace which I think would be really nice, I've got a couple more of the Anemones just because I love them so much and I also went with a Rudbeckia because it flowers all the way till October so I thought that would be really nice. So now, now we're going to pop to Robert Dyess to get a hose because the hose pipes in the garden centre were too expensive so I'm going to grab a hose pipe from Robert Dyess and then take it down with some more compost to the allotment plot, that's the plan, so let's go, told you I'm very very busy today, very very productive. Here at the rather dead looking allotment plot as you can see, mine looks particularly dead, more dead than other people's I would say, not that we want to compare too much let's be honest, it is what it is and I've done what I've done. I've got the hose and I've got some compost, Dave is here to help me with it and this is sort of where he comes in handy because he's very strong and he's going to bring all the compost in my wheelbarrow, the only problem with my wheelbarrow is under this bit cardboard it's very very rotten so whether it's going to survive all the compost we're about to find out, so I'm going to take this to Dave and we'll see what he can do with it. Look at the size of these sunflowers, that is absolutely phenomenal, that is absolutely insane, that sunflower head, look that's my hand, that is crazy. Dave's not happy with the overgrown area here, you're stuck, you're doing a good job, that's it, that's it, you okay, oh are you okay, you're filming me and asking me if I'm okay, content, you can't do that, content, it's not all content, I've got feelings right we're putting it all to the back in the hope that nobody takes it but who knows, who knows right I don't think you want any of this in the bowl, should I tip it out for you, should we just get rid of the bowl, should we just not have a bowl anymore, yeah is that better, okay, I think the bowl might be the problem, I think we don't want the bowl do we, no we just want to eat off the floor like a wild rabbit. Hey look who's turned up, it's Percy the pigeon, Percy the pigeon has turned up today, hello Percy, right let me show you what I've been doing in the garden, oh my gosh look at that sun, do you know what I'm really doing my best to try to enjoy the end of summer and not like complain about it and not look forward to the next season too early, it's the last week of August and I'm really trying to just soak it all in as much as I can and because as soon as the winter comes, winter is very long in the UK, oh my gosh what is Percy doing, winter is very long so I'm really trying to just like embrace this season, this is what I've been doing, I have replanted up this planter basically, I put in one of those Westland compost bags on the top and then I've really really soaked it, like proper soaked it and I've basically just dotted these plants about, they look quite nice I think and then at the front here I've cut all of those big daisies back because I think they were all sort of dying, I'm really hoping that this flowers for a long time because these rudbeckia, these should flower into sort of October time, maybe even November and I know that asters also flower quite late in the season and also these anemones, they flower quite late as well so hopefully this will be really nice all autumn long. I've just been at the back of the garden, I've just filmed a short for Wild, I'm working with Wild this week and it's like a really quick flash sale so I had to run to the back of the garden and quickly film it and it is so quiet out here today, it was so awkward, I kept like stumbling on everything I was saying and I had to re-say it over and over again, I was just thinking if someone is like sitting a couple of gardens away they can just hear me repeating myself over and over again, it must be so annoying. It is genuinely such a good discount that I just had to, I just, I really wanted to be involved with it, it's like 30% off instead of 20 and I love the Wild products so I just, I was like determined to do it but it's like so quiet in the garden, I love it, I love it. On the note of trying to enjoy sort of the end of summer, I'm trying to enjoy summer right to the end of summer, I think I'm gonna have my dinner outside and I'm gonna sit out here and read my book because it like, it's just, it's so peaceful today, it's so peaceful. There was a little bit more gardening I wanted to do but it's getting a bit late now so I think I'm just gonna throw in the towel in the gardening, I'm gonna make some dinner and I'm gonna sit out here and do some reading. I'm not really enjoying that book by the way, I'm not massively enjoying it, I need to read a bit more to get into it I think but if I can't get into it I think I'm just gonna move on to another book because I really want a book that I can get into, I really, I find it really annoying when I can't enjoy a book straight away, you know, I'm just, I'm very impatient. Morning guys, I haven't really shown you any cooking in this vlog which is a shame, I haven't really done very much cooking, I did cook the fish yesterday but I cheated and I bought some sort of homemade stuff with it, it's a homemade couscous that was already done so I didn't sort of feel like showing you it really, I just feel like I've cheated this week, it's been quite busy so far. We have done quite a lot of gardening though, I'm going to top up some of my vegetable beds now with the compost because I think the level is getting too low so let's go and do that and also let's explore some of those parsnips because I'm slightly worried because of this heat wave, I'm worried the parsnips are dying, they are dying at the allotment plot so let's see how they're doing here. This is the bed I'm most worried about, oh one of my beetroots has been pulled up, that's quite good size isn't it, that looks fantastic, we'll cook that tonight. Yeah look, the pumpkins are not happy in here, they've just not got enough goodness, enough nutrients, to be fair there's probably too many of them, I might need to sacrifice one, you in the middle, you might need to be sacrificed. And then these are the parsnips, the level of soil is too low, I'm going to pull one up and see what's happening. Everything has suffered this year, absolutely everything, but it will be good to know in advance if I'm actually going to get any parsnips at all. Right we'll pull this one, right that's not a good sign, that is teeny tiny, oh god, what's that gonna be, what is that, oh my god what is that, oh my god what is that, what is that, no I can't cope with this, I can't cope with this, oh my god this better not be what I think it is, oh my goodness mate, oh my god, no, no, no, no, no, no, oh my good lord, what the heck is that, oh my god, it's got flipping teeth on it and everything, crikey what on earth, what is this doing in my bed? So that if you haven't guessed already is an animal skull, it's a skull of some kind of animal, I don't think it's a bird because it's got those teeth, it's some kind of small animal, I don't know, it must have been buried by the fox, those teeth are seriously scary, look at that, that is both honestly the most fascinating and the most disgusting thing that I've ever found in a raised bed before, I can't believe I didn't notice it before but I've just been watering here, I haven't really been paying attention to the parsnips, oh my goodness me, my son's going to want to experiment on this and have a look at it or at least investigate it, so I'm gonna have to keep it for him but my goodness me, wasn't expecting to find that, ew, and that is a side of gardening I do not enjoy, right let's just top this bed up with some more compost, right all the building work has started up again outside, so someone is using like one of those pneumatic drill things and it has just given me a headache, so I'm gonna have to put my headphones in for the rest of being outside today, I actually really just want to go in the garden, put my headphones in, switch off for a little bit and just do some gardening, I'm trying to remember why I started gardening in the first place and one of the big reasons why I took on my allotment plot in the first place was because it gave me some headspace and being out in nature and just growing stuff and dreaming of this beautiful garden and trying to bring it to life really filled me up and I'm trying to kind of reclaim my hobby basically, I think I might have got carried away in trying to make it all perfect and trying to make sure that I grow enough stuff to show you and everything and actually deep down it was just all about the love of it and just the love of gardening and putting stuff in the ground and seeing it grow, so with that in mind I'm going to end the vlog here, I hope you've enjoyed watching it this week and let me know if there's anything in particular you like seeing in these Sunday vlogs and I'll be sure to include them, I'm never quite sure what to vlog for the Sunday vlogs, I just kind of put everything in that's not massively to do with the allotment plot, it started as like a home garden vlog and it's evolved into just me rambling and taking you out about and showing you what I'm up to, bit of the garden, bit of cooking, bit of, I don't know, just my general life in the week, so if you're enjoying that, great, let me know, leave me a comment and let me know if you're still enjoying these vlogs and I will still put them up, I will see you again next time, thank you so much for watching, bye!