HENRY MOORE

We’ve been harvesting the maincrop potatoes - Pink Fir Apple is the variety I always grow.  It has a wonderful taste and waxy texture (doesn’t fall to pieces when you boil it like the floury ones can).  It tastes more like a new potato than a maincrop.  the potatoes are long and knobbly, often very peculiar in shape - Sam and I found a potato family - mother, father and baby.  Laid together they look like a Henry Moore sculpture and we can’t quite bring ourselves to eat them.  Luckily they keep well...

HOOLIGANS ON THE LOOSE

I was given some wonderful pumpkins (thank you Fiona) called ‘Hooligan’
this year and I should really have guessed how rampant a pumpkin with such a name would be. I planted them in my 3 sisters bed (growing these  3 sisters - sweetcorn, climbing beans and squash together is an ancient American Indian way of companion planting and allows 3 crops that might otherwise take up a lot of room to be planted in one space).  They are now rampaging through the veg patch with gusto, not very companionably either.  Their saving grace is that they seem to be very prolific and are producing lots of fruits.

DRY

It feels like the end of summer already - everything’s taken on that dry, tired and careworn look.  It will all perk up once the hay’s been made and some rain has fallen on the garden - I hope.

It’s difficult in the veg patch at the moment.  The runner beans are ok, but the french beans have been dismal, despite the bean trench I made for them earlier in the year.  I have been watering too, but obviously not enough for them to want to make lots of juicy pods.  I don’t water much as a rule - just crops that need moisture to swell their seed pods and fruits, so - tomatoes, squash, beans, peas and also celery (which likes very moist soil).  Everything just seems so much later and smaller than usual. Ho Hum.

FAIRY CASTLES

The picture shows the spent flower of an early summer flowering bulb called Allium nectaroscordum.  It is a weird looking thing when in flower, brownish in colour, drooping with little bobbles like a 1970’s ornament.  As the blooms fade, each small seedhead grows a cap like a minaret, straightens and turns upward until the whole thing resembles a tiny castle.  A perfect home for the fairies, Alice and I like to think.

LABRADORABLES

Meg has had 6 gorgeous little puppies - all chocolate - 1 boy and 5 little girls (actually some of them not so little).  Mother and pups are all doing very well.  They are a huge distraction from gardening tasks, but I sense that I’m superfluous to the whole business;  while we stand about and gaze at them, Meg gets on with all the housework.

I must make the most of the calm before the puppy rampage starts though - I've been clearing space in the veg garden, ready to sow some autumn and winter crops.  I’m trying not to disturb the Bullfinch in the Bay tree, but it’s in the middle of the path, so I’ve been climbing through the beds, which is fine - until they’re planted up.  It’s a good excuse not to have to go in there too much, although there’s suddenly lots to do before the season changes and autumn starts creeping in.