July Blog

Being at home all the time has provided the opportunity of seeing the wild life that we have managed to encourage into the garden. I was watering in the vegetable garden the other day and having discovered that someone was eating the lettuce I had netted them. In reality I had blamed pigeons, they will strip a bed of brassicas very quickly, so seeing the ends of the lettuce pulled off I had blamed them. However, I was wrong. While watering a male pheasant who struts his stuff in the garden, climbed onto the lettuce bed and tried to peck the lettuce, being protected by the netting nothing happened. At the end of the bed a lettuce was protruding so he walked over and proceeded to tear off pieces of the leaves and eat them, much to my surprise. I am used to protecting plants from pigeons and cabbage white fly and slugs and snails but pheasants.

The other recent surprise happened one morning. We had stopped for out 11am coffee on the terrace. When working in the barn we often leave the door open all day, especially if we are in the house or on the terrace, and on this day we had as usual left the computers and walked out leaving the door open. John had been writing one of his monthly articles and after coffee he went back to finish it. He gradually became aware of strange noises emanating from the library next door and went to investigate. To his great surprise he found a young fox had wandered in and was browsing the books, deciding he wasn’t a postal historian after all he wandered down to the end and went into the bathroom where he discovered some scales, clearly, he needed to know his weight, so he stepped onto them to check if lock down had increased his weight or if he had managed to maintain it. This is where he was found and photographed before hightailing back outside to find his family to tell them of his adventures.

I had been out picking the days produce and, on my return, when I looked at the two swans neck courgettes, some tomatoes and beans I thought that put together they made a perfect smiley face. We all need something to smile about these days. Growing vegetables is very rewarding as well as sometimes frustrating. We forget that vegetables start to deteriorate as soon as they are picked, most of the time we have no idea when the vegetables we buy were picked. When you eat something, which has just been picked the difference in flavour is enormous. Tomatoes, still warm from the sun, drizzled with basil oil and sprinkled with torn basil leaves and chopped chives is wonderful. Growing herbs does not take up a lot of space and fresh herbs add something special to salads. If you have a lot make herb ice cubes which can be kept in the freezer for use in the winter, or infuse a light olive oil with the herbs. Flavoured vinegars are also easy to make and expensive to buy and a very useful store cupboard addition.

The birthday bed has taken us by surprise looking quite wonderful. We like nicotiana’s, but most of them are quite short, the ones we planted in this bed lovely and tall and fill the bed beautifully along with the cosmos. New beds take a while to become mature and the roses will look better next year having had time to get their roots down. Gardens can be full of memories, reminding ones of places visited where there was a garden centre, nursery or an open garden with plants to sell. Nurseries have had a tough time this year with being unable to sell the spring bedding plants that they had grown. Covid has changed the way we do many things and we are yet to find out the full extent of those changes, more people gardening and enjoying nature, not harming it, would be a great outcome from this time.