Generosity Again!

It has been a very hot weekend indeed - the sun shone all day long both days & today I am typing this sitting in the courtyard garden being told off by the blackbird. He will likely get his own back, though, by eating all the cherries off the tree in a week or two as they become ripe, like he did last year.

When I went to the Hill yesterday, I saw that neighbour Jody has had a couple of dozen scaffold boards delivered, & he was sizing up where to put them - the immediate priority being to replace the old edging at the side of his plot on the other side of our shared path.

As he busied himself with that, I made a lovely discovery of a tray under some fleece in which were couple of courgette & three cucumber plants which Julie (2nd best plot) had left for me - I'd been bemoaning that it's not been a great year for me germinating seeds, & she seemed quite happy that she could offload some of her spares to a good home. Suits me just fine!

I had a planting out session with the courgettes & cucumbers, along with Ollie's sunflowers, FRENCH BEANS (triomphe de farcy, emperor of russia & early warwick), four pots of SPRING ONION (apache) & the last few PEAS (newick), then did a little weeding in the roots bed where the parsnips, & a few carrot have come up.

The peas & broad beans are looking good - tiny beans forming on the broad beans & there are flowers on the crimson flowered variety just starting to come out.

The direct sown climbing beans are not so clever, though - only coming through patchily, and some slug damage too. Tonight I've sown extras in pots where I have the seed - I think that in my pots-vs-sow-direct experiment, the pots have it.

Although digging in this weather is a bit daft, I wanted to get the rest of the strawberry plants out of the messy patch at the back of the plot & into the little veg patch at mum's.

I've already moved 25 into the square fruit bed & these are the left over ones - they are doing rather better than the ones in the bed, but I'm putting that down to the fact that these haven't been replanted, rather than me choosing weedy ones, or giving them some sort of kiss of death when I replanted.

I was overheating by this time, so took the strawberry plants to mum's to plant out, & in turn she not only fed me delicious ham sandwiches (home cooked ham & home baked bread) & chocolate cake fresh from the cooling rack, but even gave me half the cake to take home with me - result!