Great good funding news

Dear All

We have reason to rejoice!

A funding request submitted to the Scottish Public Health Network has been successful.
This means that we will soon have another £2000 towards sorting out the "Top End" of our garden.
Well done everyone involved in submitting this bid and many, many thanks to SPHN!!

Cheerioh for now!


PS:
We're also hoping for some good news on a funding bid submitted to Awards for All. We'll keep you posted...

... and the Winner Is –

Dear All

Remember the Sunflower Competition that we kicked off at the Oban Charities Day in June 2010?
Well, the winner has now been officially identified based on photographic evidence and we can name him as

Conor McPhail

a young boy from the Oban-Glencruitten area.
His was sunflower no. 8, and he will be given a cash prize of £10 shortly. Well done, Conor, congratulations!

Here's the link to a clip showing the winning sunflower as it looked on sunny 8th October 2010 (apologies for your having to view it sideways – I wasn't thinking when I recorded this with my wee digital camera):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwQNNyXZTGM&feature=&p=D155929C3AA2DE21&index=0&playnext=1

Competition was very stiff, with a few contenders doing well later on, which you can see here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJZZtNByi6k&p=D155929C3AA2DE21&index=5&playnext=2
and here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwQNNyXZTGM&p=D155929C3AA2DE21&index=6&playnext=3

Sadly, some people have no respect for plants and several of the participating flowers were decapitated. Also, the recent storms blew rather too strongly for the thin poles helping the sunflowers to stand. So things look a bit bedraggled just now. Some flowers are still in bloom, however.

More news soon, hopefully! Cheerioh for now – enjoy the gorgeous autumn colours.

Winner of the Sunflower Competition

Dear All


We take great pleasure in announcing the winner of the sunflower competition launched at Oban's Charities Day on 12th June 2010:

For his sunflower (no. 8) Connor McPhail will receive a cheque for £10 (in lieu of the promised ticket to Oban Cinema which is, sadly, closed for the duration).

Congratulations!

Autumn in the Garden

Autumn has officially begun. A few visual impressions:

Artichoke flowers.
The artichoke is a perennial plant and produces delicious flower bulbs.

Recipe for steamed artichoke (one fist-sized bulb serves one):
Clean the bulb, snip off the prickly tips of the outer leaves, cut off the stem and base of the bulb. Place upright in a steamer or in steam tray in saucepan. Add adequate amount of water (we don't want to destroy the pot or pan, now, do we?)
Squeeze juice of half a lemon over the artichoke. From other half of lemon, cut a few rings and place on top of artichoke. Put lid on and steam gently for 15 to 20 minutes. Allow to cool down before starting to remove outer leaves.
While the artichoke cools down, prepare the vinaigrette: two table-spoons of freshly-squeezed lemon juice, a pinch of salt, some chopped or scissor-snipped fresh herbs (anything that comes ot hand including parsley, chives, thyme, a little mint or sage, oregano or marjoram), four table-spoons of extra-virgin olive oil.
Eating an artichoke is a hands-on affair, so make sure your hands are clean before you start:
Dip bottoms or fleshy part of leaves into the vinaigrette. Place fleshy part of the leaf between your teeth, holding on to the tip, and pull. Allow time between morsels to catch the typical artichoke flavour to rise from the back of your mouth.
When you've pulled off and enjoyed the flesh from the leaves, take a very sharp knife and slice off the cover of hairs inside (which would grow into the actual flowers) to reveal the "heart". Pull out any stringy bits left of the stem and make sure none of the "hairs" are left on the heart. Cut it into small pieces and toss into the vinaigrette. Eat slowly, piece by piece.


Zucchetti flower. They're still going strong but the near-frosty nights aren't terribly good for them.

One of the sunflowers in the Sunflower Competition. Not necessarily the tallest but it's got a beautiful flower.

Lorn Garden Club Flower Festival at Ardmaddy Castle Garden

Dear all

Lorn Garden Club had booked a fabulous day for their Flower Festival at Ardmaddy Garden. Here are a few visual impressions:

Some of the veggies on offer at our table: carrots, beetroot; French beans, runner beans, broad beans; radishes, green peppers, small green chilly peppers; followed by a colourful nosegay with sweet peas, spearmint, real marigolds, cornflowers and red clover:

Our informative posters attracted quite a lot of attention. We "recycled" them from the Oban Charities' Day in June.

More veg: fir apple potatoes, onions, zucchini with blossoms, kale and sugar-snap peas; the highlight is provided by a few nasturtium blossom.

The weather was simply perfect: warm, sunny, with just the faintest of breezes. This is nearly the end of the day, when the landlord of Ardmaddy Castle, Mr Charles Struthers, called out the winning numbers of the raffle.

Flower Festival – Lynnside Community Garden at Ardmaddy Castle on Sunday, 15th August 2010

Dear All

Just in the nick of time, here are a few flower photos from our garden to celebrate the ongoing Flower Festival. Tomorrow, Sunday, the Lynnside Community Garden will join many other flower-related activists for an afternoon at the stunningly beautiful Ardmaddy Castle gardens.

Stunning red-orange-purple Osteospermum daisies. Our gardener, Graham, has planted several varieties of them, ranging from pure white to deep red via pale yellow and bright orange.

Above, a kale flower with a honeybee; below, the flower of a pumpkin. We'll see how big it will get.

This photo of a deep red sunflower was taken "blind", the camera being held above the flower facing straight into the sky. The ladybird was an unexpected bonus.

The lovely veggie patch with real marigolds and a couple of bright red poppies glimpsed through a gap in the wooden fence along Dalintart Lane.

 Your blogger had this fabulous salad for a late lunch/early tea today. 

The recipe? With pleasure:

Take a good handful of tender cut-and-grow-again lettuce leaves. add a few rocket leaves, pluck the petals off a couple of marigold heads, chop in a few small carrots, a couple of organic tomatoes, perhaps half an avocado, and LOTS of fresh herbs – chives, sage, marjoram or oregano, parsley. Sprinkle on some crushed sea salt and about a teaspoon of balsamic vinegar and add a generous squirt of extra virgin olive oil. Toss the lot gently but thoroughly and garnish with as many nasturtium blossoms as there are people to share this bounty with. Bon appétit!

No meal is quite complete without a pretty nosegay. This one consists of two sprigs of purple and one sprig of red sweet pea blossoms plus a sprig of flowering spearmint. Ah, the fragrance is exquisite!

Sunflower competition

Hiya

The Lynnside Community Garden committee decided to embark on a Sunflower Competition. Seeds were paid for and planted on 12th June. Three weeks later, the plugs were nearly ready to go into the ground:

And now, mid-August, the young sunflowers are trying to reach the top of the wall at the top end of the garden. Here are just a few of the nearly fifty plants in the competition, with what looks like a fairly strong contender for first prize: