Garden Blogs

I’ve been a bit remiss with my updates and haven’t blogged for a couple of weeks now (bless me mother earth it’s been two weeks since my last blog…). This mid-summer time of year goes in a flash and every spare moment is spent outside. Each day brings new surprises in the garden and you can almost see the plants growing. It’s all very exciting you know: the first tomatoes are just turning orange; tiny bright yellow courgettes (hurrah - finally!) no longer than a fingernail are bursting out of the plant stem; pea pods are swelling with sweet, crisp, tasty goodies (if they get that far – a few have been eaten mange toute style straight off the plants); the runner beans are covered in beautiful bright orange / red flowers; ripe strawberries make great gardening snacks and the forest of purple sprouting broccoli has taken over the new bed. Equally as satisfying but not as nice to look at is the red onion patch with stems all laying on the ground indicating they are nearly ready to harvest, and the potato bags as the foliage starts to die off – I think I’ll empty out the first ones this weekend. I can’t wait for my fridge to be full of my own produce instead of plastic wrapped supermarket goods (though at least you have a vast range of local seasonal produce on offer at the moment – food miles and all that). As we head into July I’m rather relieved to be left with just a few packets of seeds that can be planted this late – I’ve run out of space and I’ve run out of “nurturing” time. I’ll I’ve done recently is tie up tomatoes, take out side shoots and plant out some Kale plants kindly given to me - apart from the daily watering ritual which sees me trotting through the house with wateringcan’s full of my bath-water…. This hot dry and sometimes windy weather isn’t helping much with daily wiltage visible in my potted courgettes (bought as a climbing variety but I’ve not sent them up anything so they’ll be trailing along with the others) and tomatoes in smaller containers so my other task for this coming weekend is to find bigger pots for those suffering the most. To add to my list of garden menaces (greenfly, slugs, cats, etc.) I can now add foxes. A clattering outside my window the other evening alerted me to something not quite right going on out there, but all was still when I peered into the dark from the front door. The next morning I found my trowel half way across the garden for the second time. I’ve seen a fox prowling around and know that they like anything leather, so can only assume that the leather strap on the handle smelt like a good thing for a fox to run off with, only that it was attached to something heavy, metal and noisy, and was duly dropped. Pics to follow…