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.

CUT FLOWERS

There are lots of flowers around at the moment - lilies are a wonderful sight and scent in the garden this month.  I like Lilium regale best, as it’s very robust, with several blooms on each stem. It will grow from seed very readily and bulk up to flower within a couple of years.

I've been picking flowers quite a bit this week - for end of term and for the pleasure of picking - most perennials benefit from having their blooms snipped off as it saves them from the bother of making seed, a process that saps their strength (like having children).  Annuals need picking regularly or they will consider that their job is done and stop flowering.  If you don’t want to deplete your border of blooms while it’s in full swing, pick off the flowers as they fade - dead-heading will help the plant, either by encouraging more flowers, or directing energy to other parts.

HATCHING NEWS

                              

Egged on by a friend at the Wealden Times fair (“What’s six pounds for a bit of excitement?” she said to tip me into my purse) I bought some fertilised eggs and popped them under our broody hen. We placed bets on how many would be cockerels (there must be a natural law that guarantees more males than females, which is decidedly unfair in the chicken world).  Twenty one days after purchase five little heads poked out from under their stepmum’s feathers.  They are very cute, but it’s hard to catch them for a cuddle as their mum flies at us with much maternal flapping and squawking when we go near.  It’s too early to tell what sex they are yet, so we’re saved from the cockerel question for the moment.

Even more exciting, but at considerably more expense than £6, is the  imminent arrival of Meg’s puppies.  Our chocolate Labrador is due to give birth on 27th July.  My excitement is tinged with a little trepidation, as I’m her birthing partner and it will be the first time for both of us.  Let’s hope she’s not as fiesty as the mother hen over her babies when they come...