Igenlode Wordsmith

I can't believe that I managed to forget to put out the food recycling *again* this week, despite (as last week) remembering it several times during the preceding evening but delaying actually doing anything about it, then falling asleep... Fortunately this time I remembered it with a jolt at about 8am instead of only when I heard the dustmen actually passing by, and did some very hasty bundling-up-in-newspaper (fortunately the kitchen caddy had been so full that I had already emptied it into two separate newspaper parcels that week, so there wasn't that much in there) and rushed out in my lightweight hot-weather pyjamas. I was horribly afraid I'd left it too late, since I never heard the dustmen arrive, but when I went out later I discovered that the bin had in fact been emptied, though after two weeks of stifling heat it was of course crawling with maggots and pupæ :-( I have managed to scrub it out, although I hope this doesn't now result in flies pupating inside my sink outlet...

I have just been vacuum-cleaning the stairs for the third time in the last couple of weeks, in a fairly vain attempt to keep on top of the clothes-moths; the stairs have never been so clean in their entire existence! The hope is more that this will destroy the eggs than of killing off the actual moths, although another dozen or so of those were disturbed in the process -- once they reach adulthood and hence reproductive age I assume it's a bit late :-(
Of all the stupid places for clothes-moths to choose to infest, the stair carpet (now with significant bald patches) seems the most improbable, given that it offers no cover from either light or trampling -- there is literally nothing for the moths to hide under. It is completely exposed. I think they are probably living down the sides...

My first two towel-tomatoes have ripened (and been eaten). Very intense in flavour, and with no seeds -- at this stage I'm really not surprised. On past precedent, fruits that ripen later on in the season will eventually be fertile. (For what it's worth, this particular plant was, unsurprisingly, from the batch I sowed first rather than from the 'good' towel-tomatoes, but I don't honestly expect it to make any difference.)

The sweet peas have almost finished flowering, and my dead-heading efforts appear to have been unprecedently successful this year in that I can't find *any* escaped seed pods to harvest from :-O So I shall have to hope that I can get the last few flowers to set seed, which ironically they don't seem very keen on doing although all their predecessors seemed to turn into seed-pods almost immediately...
If the worst comes to the worst, I still have some saved seed left from last year, now that we know it seems to breed true -- the two-year-old commercial seed seemed to germinate, although at a lower rate than the fresh seed.

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I had a second attempt at making syrniki, using the left-over cheese from my first attempt, when I made them rather too thin and burnt the outsides by using too hot a pan:

This time I sweetened them using my elderflower syrup, which meant I then ended up adding extra flour to counteract the liquid content! This time round I made them into little balls rather than little rissoles, and got better results -- though by the time they had finished cooking they weren't very spherical any more :-)