Walthamstow lunch recommendation and gardening therapy

We had a fantastic valentine's day lunch at our favourite place in Walthie, the Portuguese tapas cafe the Windmill: Portuguese (salt) cod cream, baked goat's cheese, piri piri prawns - yummy. We forgot the patatas bravas, but with bread and really good olives that was plenty - so we didn't really need a pastel de nata and a slice of their supremely good apple and cinnamon cake (for which I daren't ask for the recipe have fruitlessly searched t'internet) that we had with coffee anyway. That lot came to £30 with a tip, which is a lot for lunch but reasonable (ooh, it included a beer, too) since we were there for almost two hours and they're so accommodating - nay, welcoming - of tiddlers. Also, I'm particularly happy to splash on their tapas of a weekend because I sometimes take other mothers there for their bargain weekday lunch - £3.50 for a dish and rice - when we take up time and large tables and often only drink tap water, so they're really only making any money out the repeat business.

Anyway, I truly recommend it, and it's a real asset to this part of town.

Afterwards, we came home via the park, and because it was such a lovely day, we went straight into our little urban garden to plant the bulbs we bought on the cheap before christmas - reduced because they were almost overdue planting back then. Terry dug around in the bed in the back looking for stones to use for drainage in the the two aluminium window boxes that came from dad's, which revealed, among the cat shit, an awful lot of pruning and tidying to do. So we pulled out all the dead stuff and got rid of the fallen leaves, and pulled up the hundreds of weeds (there's a particular plant that's everywhere, red stem and lots of shoots. Luckily the rootball is small and shallow, so it's easy to pull out, but it's all over the bed), and hacked back the pyrocanthas and the other tree-bush and the winter-flowering jasmine, and then I attacked next door's ivy, which has completely, unassailably, covered the fence we share, and finally got back to planting up the bulbs. We had heaps of tulips and daffodils and croci, so I have the two window boxes and 4 or 5 tubs. Most of the bulbs looked like they were still good, though half the daffs had rotted down to blackness in their papery casings, so hopefully we'll get a little spring colour, even if it is a bit late and half-hearted.

Clearing one corner of the bed, I pulled and pulled, then jumped back as something moved. What I could see looked gross, it could almost have been cat turd, but there was something sticking out, so it really looked like a slug with legs - and then I realised it was a little toad. Poor little thing stayed as still as still could be, so I asked Terry what to do and he suggested I just cover it with some of the leaves. I did, and we left it. It was still there half an hour later when we were back over that side with weightier implements to attack the tree with; hopefully not paralysed with fear....

A little robin was about too. Considering the amount of cat poo in the garden, we manage to attract quite a few birds. I've seen blue tits and robins and sparrows and a jay among the ubiquitous woodpidgeons and squirrels. The robin was really fearless. He sat on the back fence for a while, only a couple of feet from us, and we tried to show Babs, but I'm not sure she clocked him. A little while later, as soon as my back was turned, he was off the tree and onto the beds, where I'd clearly revealed some worms, and he looked happy. We moved the bird feeder and put up another, so hopefully we'll see a few more birds in the next few weeks.



It was so nice being in the garden; I haven't really been out there since the summer. The endorphins got me so fired up I swept up in the back and then swept out the front, and I'm still a bit buzzy two hours later. There may be hope for our allotment dreams yet.