The Good Life!

Another hot week - summer days, eh? Obviously I don't want to quibble, but a bit of rain would be good - although established plants are doing well, there's no chance of those seeds sown last weekend germinating in the dust.

But it would be churlish to moan, with long light evenings, glorious sunshine & new crops to pick at every step at the Hill.

I hadn't been at the Hill long on Saturday, picking a whole heap of flat peas to eat as mangetout, when rhubarb Brian drove up in his loaded truck and stopped to ask how things were going.

After giving me a tray of cabbage seedlings & 'I think that these are lettuce, but I'm not sure' seedlings (they look like brassicas to me), pointed to some scavenged corrugated plastic on the back and said, 'Guess what that is?'

'Er - corrugated plastic?'

'Aha, yes, but do you know what it's for?', he asked, beaming. 'It's for my CHICKEN RUN!'

I established that he wasn't going to keep chickens on plot 4A, but follow JB's example & have some ex battery chickens at home, & once he'd gone whistling off to his plot, I pondered on what the going rate is for barter of homemade wine v's the supply of eggs.

I planted out the cabbage & 'lettuce' seedlings in a spare bit of fruit bed. The red & blackcurrants both are looking fabulous - dripping with fruit - and I'd better get stripping the fruit this weekend.

Covering the bushes has meant that the birds haven't got there before me (with the grizzly exception of a fat pigeon who met his sad demise tangled in the netting - I felt terrible about this until I saw how the pigeons had treated any pea plants that had dared to stray from inside the pea frame) & I must check on how to prune the bushes which can easily be done at the same time as fruit picking, as I recall.

I dug up the last three POTATOES (international kidney), a bag full of BROAD BEANS (saved), and I was thrilled to cut the first baby COURGETTE (defender & jemmer) & also came home with a huge bunch of heavenly scented sweet peas - wonderful!

And strawberries & strawberries & strawberries, but that's another story...