Pomp..

The vegetable garden is in its pomp.

72kg of food through the scales so far. Too many courgettes to weigh.

This part of the garden really is a joy and I treasure my time spent there. Gatekeeper butterflies are plentiful on flowering marjoram.

Turks Turban squash..

…peering from within the bean tripod.

Squash are hanging heavy and bulking up by the day.  A Turks Turban variety has mysteriously appeared and glowers wonderfully, peering from within the bean tripod. Big beetroot bask, lolling in the warm soil. Seasonal soups are currently including ten or more home-grown ingredients. The apple harvest looks promising. We’ve a few really big wasp nests.

Birds are emerging from the moult and beginning to sing and call from the surrounding bushes and trees again. Around forty swallows gathered on the wires overhead during my pre-breakfast walk today.

Most years our friend swings by and ‘inspects’ us around this time. That he’s probably the leading vegetable grower in the county adds a certain frisson to his visit.

Inspection…!

Having him approve of our self-sown parsnips and get his fingers under the haulm of our potatoes and pronounce them as ‘clean’ and having no scab was, as they say, affirming. Kind things too from this man-of-the-soil about the compost I’d turned out onto an empty bed, ready for end-of-season mulching. He deserved his two pieces of cake. Thanks Bill!

It is a delight when folks say kind things about the place. On the same visit organised through the National Garden Scheme:

‘You are in such a unique place that some of your visitors found it difficult to work out exactly where they were-behind those gates you are in your own world!

You have so many things to look at and already they are asking if we could come again in the spring.

One lady said she felt completely untwizzled in your calming space’.

Discovery

promising on apple cordons..

Our self-catering holiday venture “Waxwings Retreat’ is proving popular too, being booked from now and almost thorughout September.

Folks have been so kind in their comments.

We’re heading into potato harvest now. A much-anticipated opportunity to get the hands into the soil and to experience that special magic of revealing golden tubers as the haulm and roots are twisted out. A job to enjoy with the grandchildren … if I can drag one of them away from the new football goal.