We weren’t really tempted into the garden or onto the allotment last week.  When the weather was reasonable the condition of the ground wasn’t really conducive to any gardening activity.

We decided to have a couple of afternoons at Nostell which pleased Ruby as it’s one of her favourite places and the entrance staff now recognise her. I’m not sure that they would remember us if she wasn’t with us.

We weren’t the only ones to decide to visit as Nostell was the busiest that we have seen it. Until we left the popular areas we had to keep our wits about us in order not to come into conflict with riders of bikes and scooters which have the habit of approaching silently from behind us.

The temporary lake bore testament to the amount of rain that has fallen over the last few weeks. It’s size has increased each time we visit.  Some dogs were enjoying racing into the water after sticks. Ruby was quite bemused by this. She looked at us as if to ask if that was really allowed?

Ruby was also fascinated by the water rushing from the main lake. Another sign that the level of water had increased.

As I’ve mentioned before the meadows are just too soggy for walking and so we tried a different route to usual and walked along what is supposed to be a cycle track through a wooded area. Here the path was much drier and we decided that this would be a shady route in summer when the sun was blazing down. (How’s that for a wild imagination)?

I Managed to take some different shots of the grounds. Usually we would walk through the meadow on the other side of the fence.

Ruby is very patient when we stop to take photographs and will often sit and pose if the camera is pointing in her direction.The pair of swans were enjoying being able to put their feet up after a busy few months raising their young,
The Yorkshire Air Ambulance is based in the grounds at Nostell. It’s kept very busy as we see it taking off on most of our visits. A video of our walk can be viewed here.

We did pay one visit to the allotment as, Martyn wanted to trim some laurel but he didn’t get very far with this as we were rained off.Whilst, Martyn made a start on the laurel, I tidied around one of our clumps of rhubarb which had started to push up new leaf buds.The cardoons have also put on quite a lot of growth.We still have some vegetables stored at home so I only harvested a Savoy cabbage.

We had been planning to have a go at making our own ravioli and last week seemed like a good time to try our hand at this.Martyn made the pasta dough and manned the pasta rolling machine, whilst I concentrated on the filling, For the filling, I combined some of our pink banana squash, garlic and sage from the garden with ricotta and parmesan cheese. We used this recipe. Overall the ravioli was a success. The end produce was tasty and everything held together in the cooking. The only unsuccessful part was that the ravioli cutters that I had bought were absolutely useless. They didn’t make any impression on the pasta. They may have worked if the pasta was four times as thick but then the pasta would have been awful. In the end we used a large bladed knife as a cutter. Next time we are going to try a mushroom filling. The ravioli was served with a sauce made from our frozen tomatoes, carrot, onion, garlic and shop bought celery, As well as using our vegetables in the ravioli dish I made what was described as a vegetable paella. Ingredients included our onion, garlic, frozen runner beans and parsley.

Finally, I used some of our carrots in a Turkey stir fry.

That’s all for now. Until my next post, keep safe and healthy.