Monday 21 January 2013

Golden harvest

The garden is still flourishing, and we are still enjoying the fruits of my labours (even if it sometimes feels that those labours were simply to put a seed into the ground and watch what grew...)

I panned for edible gold this weekend, digging into the second of my potato grow bags. Whilst there were only a few large potatoes (large here being defined as big enough to cut in half and still be visible in a roasting tin), there were enough middling sized ones to fill my collecting bowl, and we should get four meals out of them. There is something deeply satisfying in burrowing into soft soil (made nicer by the fact that, as they are in grow bags, I know that I'm not going to be digging down into an ants' nest, as I did when I grew potatoes on my allotment) and sifting out the glowing nuggets from the darkness. The largest of the potatoes made up part of our Sunday roast, along with peas, mangetout and the first of the runner beans. The flavouring on the chicken was also from the garden - my thyme bush which was on the verge of giving up the ghost a few weeks back has now bounced back into life.

The weather has been a bit topsy turvy over the last few weeks - torrential rain, followed by days of glorious sunshine and temperatures well into the twenties. My tomatoes are adoring this, and have exploded with fruit, to the extent that I've had to tie up outlying branches, as they have been tipping the pots over with their weight. It's also been nice for me - I've had a few days off from wandering round the garden with my watering can, and has the added bonus that I get nice surprises the next time I'm out when I see how much has grown in my absence.

Some of the surprises which greeted me this weekend have been the flowers which have sprung up. Mainly weeds, but a few deliberately planted as well - principally the sweet peas. They have been so plentiful that I have had a vase full constantly since Christmas, giving the room a subtle fragrance. Today, I was able to add to the vase: pink geraniums, purple lavendar, white Japanese anenomes and the stunningly orange crocosmia (I still can't really accept that a flower that beautiful is a weed, and my heart breaks a little every time I pull up a stem complete with bulbs at the end. But, if I don't want it swamping every thing else in the garden, I have to control it somehow!)


Whilst the nights are drawing in, and we are sending the sun back over to the northern hemisphere, it is still Summer here, and my garden is giving me great pleasure.

2 comments:

R J Adams said...

Hi
Sorry I haven't been around for a while. Just catching up on everyone. It's amazing to think your summer is drawing to a close, while we still have four feet of snow and more on the way. Your garden is looking great. Crocosmia may be a weed to you New Zealanders, but to us northern hemisphereians(!) it's a prized specimen!

Jo said...

No worries, RJ - it's not as though I've been posting a great deal recently! It does amaze me how many plants here are weeds (even noxious ones - budlea is really disliked, even though it is one of my favourite plants. Fortunately, we have the swan plant instead, which does the same job of attracting the butterflies...)