Those of you who are keen gardeners will have shared with me the pleasure this summer and autumn have given. But along with the good weather have come so many tasks that, in the UK at least, gardeners have been rushed off their feet. Partly to make up for the past seven middling years!
And now we are into Harvest mode: digging up, gathering, storing, preparing, freezing, bottling, jamming etc. I do not have a huge variety since this is my first real vegetable haul, but I have three sacks of potatoes, loads of packets of frozen green beans, with ten purple sprouting broccoli, 100 leeks and 30 cabbages growing away in the veggie patch at the moment. I hasten to add that all those cabbages comprise four different varieties all supposedly ready at different times. Then there are also two large patches one each of Miners’ Lettuce and Winter Purslane, plus a tub of Rocket for winter freshness. I am still at the stage of working out exactly what species and quantities two people can eat, and what is worth growing in my small patch. I think I may have overdone it on potatoes but I can never have enough Brassicas. Carrots and onions were a wash out last year so I did not try them this, and I forgot to plant turnips and swedes. But again, the amounts we eat are small. My courgettes did better this year but the new patch of ground was not quite what they wanted and they got some kind of virus after a couple of months. So that new patch has been given a real going over ready for next year: sand dug into the heavy and wet patches, loads of manure, about eight sacks of leaf mould dug in, old wood ashes from bonfires and some calcified seaweed. It looks good anyway, but time will tell.
(Do click on the photos to get the full glory!!)
I am beginning an L-shaped compost heap along the end which I hope will turn into more cultivatable ground in a year or so.
The young Victoria Plum has given a huge harvest, probably means nothing much next year, and the young apple is looking good too:
September continued beautiful, with misty mornings
and glorious sunny days
I have even spotted the occasional Peter Rabbit amongst the cabbages: however, although I am not encouraging him, I will not put him in a pie! The lovely coffee and tea times sitting with the geese watching my ‘patch’ developing have been a treat.
Apart from all the horticultural activity over the summer we have been trying to catch up with outside painting. The last few bad summers mean that we were really behind with the wooden gutters and windows: there are also lots and lots of doors. House, shed, forge, stable, coach house (sounds grand but really a small cart shed!), barn and outhouse. There has also been a lot of family activity: two house moves, five birthdays – three of which were significant, two youngsters going off to University, a large number of journeys to a specialist vet for our dog who developed spinal problems which also included several weeks of trying to get on top of her pain which was traumatic for everyone, and of course hay making.
So, as for most of you I suspect, a really busy time here this summer. Apart from a couple of weekends away it has been very ‘full-on’ but I have been taking myself off for a few indulgent evenings. I have recently discovered Live Screenings of Plays, Operas and Ballet to cinemas. I have been to see Twelfth Night from the Globe, Macbeth from the Manchester Festival with Kenneth Branagh, Othello from the National and Eugene Onegin from the Met. And they were all superb. Absolutely superb. For a few pounds a time I have been enjoying top notch productions in great comfort just a few minutes from home. Of course I would love to be able to see them Live but that is never going to happen: too far away and too expensive. So I am really grateful for these opportunities: such a wonderful idea.
My list for the future includes Spartacus, Hamlet, The Nose, Frankenstein, Tosca. Falstaff. Rusalka, Don Giovanni, Prince Igor, La Boheme, Don Quixote, Richard II, Giselle, Coriolanus, Sleeping Beauty and Winter’s Tale (Ballet). I missed Turandot from the Met because I had flu but hope it might be streamed again one day: apparently it was the version with the Zeffirelli sets and had rapturous reviews.
Modern IT may have problems and frustrations, but my goodness, what horizons it has also opened for us all.
stopping by woods 