Some late night gardening and banana bread

This week I finally got around to changing jobs. I have been threatening to do this for a really long time but somehow have just never quite managed to do it before. There has always been some reason or another why staying put was just easier and safer than moving and therefore the most sensible thing to do.

On Tuesday, in honour of my last day at the job that I had held for 5 years I made and took in some banana bread. It's my mother-in-laws recipe and is always reliable to produce the same lovely flavours each time it's made. This time with the first batch (I made 2 to ensure that there was enough to go around to all of my colleagues) I forgot to add the eggs in the correct place in the recipe. I only realised just in time and added them right at the end. Both batches that we made turned out exactly the same which was a relief but also yet another good thing about this recipe.

They were lovely - I got plenty of compliments about them - 3 of these 4 went in the day and one of my best mates from work even asked for the recipe. The other was enjoyed today by all of the family when my Mum, Dad and Nan came over to visit & celebrate Father's Day.

I have thoroughly enjoyed my first few days in my new job. I feel like I have learnt more in those last 3 days than I did in the last 5 years in my old job. I am being given a lot more responsibility and asked to run a lot of projects to improve processes within the company. My ideas are already being taken on board and listened to. I think that this job will be a lot of hard work but all or my efforts this time will actually be worth it. I can't wait to get my teeth stuck in and to know enough to be able to start working on some of these things. My boss is even being really reasonable and helping with my long commute to work and back each day by letting me work hours that fit in around the traffic. I can honestly say that I am actually looking forward to going into work tomorrow morning which I think really has to be a first for a 9-5 day job.

Yesterday I was instructing all day so was pretty tired when I got home, especially coupled with a few days of early starts for my new job but it was still obviously the best idea to go out shopping for compost and plant pots so that we could plant out the herbs and the veggie plants that we had got to try and grow this summer! That's what we did anyway. We got a nice long pot for the herbs so that could go outside the front door and some grow bags to fill that and also to grow tomatoes, cucumbers and a strawberry plant in.

We are not sure if these will work but hopefully they will. Henlow should be very pleased if they do grow. I'm sure that he will probably end up with more tomatoes and strawberries than we do! We have also started to try and grow a green bean plant as well. We put this one in one of the tubs that we already had. They are all very much an experiment and therefore if they don't work it's not the end of the world. Hopefully we can learn why and do better with some plants next year.

The herbs don't look too bad in their long pot. They are a little wilt-y for now but hopefully they will pick up when the sun comes out on them over the next few days and they get a good amount of water. We did plant them at about 8pm last night so I guess we can't expect too much of them yet. Again these were just supermarket bought plants so if a few of them grow then that would be good, otherwise we might have to look elsewhere for some better plants to try and grow. They are already starting to look ever so slightly better than they did this morning when the photo was taken. Well I think they do anyway.

We have also planted a runner bean plant in a tub that we already have and we have 2 tomato plants in the grow bag nearest the fence and a strawberry and a cucumber plant in the other grow bag as well. 

Fingers crossed that they all start to grow and we can enjoy some lovely home grown veggies in a few weeks time. The tomatoes at the minute aren't looking too healthy but hopefully they will come back to fighting fitness shortly. We'll have to wait and see - as with all of them we will not be too upset if they don't make it as they are a bit of an experiment and we're not too sure what we are doing with them but it would be nice to have some of our own fresh veggies to eat. I love all of these kind of things straight off the plants when they are home grown. I am not sure how many will ever make it to any kind of cooking pot. They will have to get past both me and Henlow first!