Blue Umbrella

I wiggled the rhubarb jelly and it seemed set enough, so I made some "crème patisserie" - egg custard thickened with flour. The idea was to make a trifle that would stand up by itself, so I could serve it in slices.

Unfortunately, it turns out that two sheets of gelatin doesn't set half a pint of fruit juice enough to stand up. The crème patisserie was fine, but the jelly just went FLOP as soon as I served it.

The end results tasted absolutely fantastic, even if they looked a little dubious. It had all the zing of rhubarb and custard, in a form suitable for the hot hot weather we are having during the rhubarb season. Who wants to put the oven on for crumble when it's baking hot?

Next time I try this recipe, I'll sieve the rhubarb better - the jelly was a little grainy. I'll also set it better and use slightly less flour in the crème patisserie. If the whole thing finally stands up on its own, then a bit of cream on top and it will be spot on.

A few weeks ago someone gave me a big bunch of rhubarb. I stewed it and put some of it through a sieve to give some rhubarb juice, which has been in my freezer ever since.

I love jelly, but I don't like all the artificially flavoured ones from the supermarket. So I've decided to make some proper jelly from the rhubarb juice, and use it make a Minimalist Trifle.

This morning I bought gelatin and strawberries (two big punnets for £1!). I have pureed some of the strawberries, which hopefully will take some of the edge off the rhubarb. I heated some of the rhubarb/strawberry juice, dissolved a couple of gelatin sheets in it, mixed in the rest of the cold juice, and the results are setting in the fridge.

Will it set? I have no idea... the gelatin packet is pretty vague on how strong the stuff is. I'll find out later!

Now the weather's a bit warmer the frogs are coming out of the pond to sun themselves on rocks - so far we have counted six big ones and one tiny one.

There's still a lot of tadpoles, so soon there will be frogs everywhere!

Tia the cat likes to sit by the pond frog-watching (so do we!). She hasn't shown any signs of wanting to play with them yet, luckily, although that may change once there are tiny frogs jumping around the garden.

Another trip to B&Q, some sawing, bashing drilling and nailing later, and we have a pergola. Now we can dust off the giant garden candelabra we found in a bush, hang it up and have a tealight-festooned "sitting room" outside.



Mini has plans to buy some clear plastic sheets and put a roof on it so we can sit and enjoy the garden even when it's raining.

I've dug all the weeds out of the borders, and we now have roses under the window at the front and some new heathers at the back. Plus one border that was already planted but is now also de-weeded and mulched.

The four day weekend has been an opportunity to get stuck into the gardening for the first time this year.

Mini's cut out nearly all the tree stumps along the edge of the garage (previously known as "rubbish tip") and we've dug it over and seeded it with grass seed - what we didn't manage to seed last year, anyway.

Between the two of us we have a lot of shoes! There's a handy space behind the front door that was obviously made just for this purpose, so now Mini has installed four shelves there:

Our bedroom has a large built-in wardrobe with a corner shelf next to the head of the bed. The shelf is very useful for putting glasses, alarm clock and so on, but the only place to put the rest of the normal stash of bedside paraphenalia is in a pile on the floor.