Tumble weed, bindweed

I can't keep up with myself. My desk has 8 heaps all requiring attention, which they are getting, it's true, but other things are falling by the wayside.
I know this, but I'm not sure I like having it rubbed in my face. So when I went into the polytunnel this evening to pick shallots, courgettes, french beans and corn cobs to go with the supper of salmon fishcakes, I did a comedy doubletake when the rakes and hoes caught my eye.
Spiralling round them in a romp of green is a bindweed that should be nicknamed Prefect or Jobsworth, perhaps Tattletale or Longbacon. So I've been told, proper. Nature is turning against me; I've had a yellow card wagged under my nose.
I stuffed my colander with the vegetable goodies and ran into the house. If the triffids invade, I'll only have myself to blame.

A golden thing

Those holy hand grenades of Antioch, as our golden globe courgettes are known, have attracted something extraordinary. It might be bog standard to those who know, but I don't know so it seems all the more mystical and otherworldly. This gilded thing, this glowing preciously metalled, wrapped in gold leaf insectish creature was sucking goodness from its host veg. What happens now? Is it a butterfly in the making?
What is it? Click on the photo to enlarge.

Sweet corn

Two years ago I moaned and fretted about the bizarrely polkadot affair that was my homegrown corn on the cob. How nature has improved itself.
Can you spot a gap? Are they not perfect? Could you nourish yourself and armfuls of friends with this harvest? Oh yes.
So whilst the celery succumbs disgustingly to the slugs, I take comfort in my corn, my tomatoes and aubergines, my outrageously fecund cucumbers and the spherical yellow courgettes, known as the holy hand grenades of Antioch. The turkeys, much grown, are kept well fed on the surplus.

Polytunnel toad

I do like a toad. Even when they come hopping into the house to watch the ten o'clock news, as they do. These summer evenings the doors are left open and as the toads emerge from behind the damp greenness left lazily and deliberately unweeded from round the doorway, they hop into the boot room or venture more daringly across the kitchen, drawn by the BBC news headlines.
The polytunnel is home to another batch of toads. They hunt beneath the crush of courgettes, the thicket of tomatoes, the panoply of peas, relishing the damp soil, the flies, slugs and other edibles.
This is a photo of the polytunnel-toad; not as large as the news-at-ten-toad, but a charmer, all the same.



The polytunnel is looking very green, apart from the sweet peas, that produce a big bunch of pink, lilac, purple and red for the table every evening. But I want it to look even more colourful, full of flowers, and that's just starting to happen. The courgette blooms are there but you have to dig deep under the huge raspy leaves to see them; the tomato flowers are also shy, and their fruits are completely green for now. The spherical yellow courgettes are only just starting to fruit and bulge.
There is one baby aubergine, already purple, and the mass of peas are, to be fair, dotted with white flowers. The french beans are thinking about flowering. Another week and I'll be rewarded.

Learning from your mistakes

I eat a lot of lettuce: rocket, little gem, lamb's lettuce, butterhead, Romaine/cos, Chinese cabbage, Webb's Wonder, salad bowl, even the universally chomped but sneered at iceberg. And though there's a polytunnel in the veg garden, I've not yet attempted to grow lettuces in it over the winter. So, in the not so productive months, when I can't resist a crunch of fresh green, I have been known to bite my lip about the food miles and buy imported salad.
But I should know better than to buy it from Spain. I can't remember when over the last few years a well-washed Spanish lettuce hasn't given me gut-churning spasms and worse. But very occasionally I forget to look at the label, or I think I'll just be extra careful with the washing. But no. Whatever it is they do to their exported salad delivers a swift and painful dose of food poisoning.
I've never found a slug in an imported lettuce; if I had, I could at least be reassured that it hadn't been blasted with a chemical cocktail containing bleach and who knows what else. And I could enjoy the extra protein for free.
Apart from exotic fruit such as mangoes, bananas and pineapple that don't grow in the UK, I am going to swear off imported foodstuffs, even if it's being sold in the local market. I know that seasonal is how it should be; that's how I eat 90% of the time, so I'm just going to have to swap my lettuce for leeks and parsnips, which are still there for the pulling in the veg patch. Complete with slug.

Glut and gluttony

It's been a weird growing year; all that water and not enough heat has suited some stuff and not others. So the orchard is heavy with apples but nary a plum, gage or damson in sight. Sloes are conspicuous by their individuality; literally one or two on a tree rather than the usual laden branches. I've been blackberrying three times now and perhaps it's a little early to expect otherwise, but although there's been enough for a fool and a crumble, I have yet to find the trug-full required to make the pots and pots of jam necessary to keep the household happy year round.
The polytunnel has been the star of the show: my aubergines are the best ever; the chillis will have to be dried or they will rot on the plant (you can't chomp on them for breakfast, lunch and dinner); the big boy tomatoes are gracing salads with their accompanying basil; the yellow courgettes are this month's staple; the cucumber surplus has gone to the pigs; the peas are still going (that's a long pea season in my book); and the pak choi was brilliant. Outside, the hispi cabbages have been forfeited to pigs and hens; the slug damage has made them beyond the human pale/pail. The onions did ok and today is the day for stringing them up. The swiss chard, artichokes, parsnips and red cabbage are all thriving, but it's the raspberries that have once again cheered the days; huge, sweet, beautiful and creating a jungle of unruly canes.

Thou shalt have a fishy

When you rear your own sheep and pigs and have access to neighbour's beef you can overdose on red meat. Lamb on Monday, gammon on Tuesday, pork chops on Wednesday, mutton stew on Thursday, steak on Friday....you get the picture. Free game is plentiful in the winter, and then there is duck, chicken and goose.
But woman wasn't bred to live on meat alone. No matter what mountainous platter of leafy green veg is served alongside, you know that variety should be spicing your life, and as I don't do red wine (and so don't benefit from its antioxidant effects) I need to be conscious of ringing the protein changes.
Tuesday is market day. Dan the fish man is always there with his quips, his flirt mode turned on high, and a grin for all. His traditional multicoloured painted signs are things of beauty and utility. Every last fish, crustacean and mollusc is caught in the South West. Today's crop of lovelies included plaice, sprats, mackerel, lemon sole, grey mullet, conger eel, prawns, mussels and skate wings.
Brain food on Tuesdays then, served with the first of this year's purple sprouting.

The veg patch

click on the picture if you want a better view to guess the veg.

I'm no Monty Don but....

After my rant yesterday I am calm, and focused on the veg patch. Red cabbage casserole (buckets of it) are cooking in the Aga, anointed with red plonk, wine vinegar, demerara, Blenheim Orange apples from the orchard and sultanas, and once cooled I will bag it and freeze it for serving later with pork, goose and duck (probably not all at the same time).
I have also unearthed the first of the celeriac - not as large as I would like but an improvement on past year's golf balls - to be mashed as an accompaniment with partridge this evening, larded with streaky bacon from the pigs and roasted. Partridge sounds very posh but they were freebies from the local farmer's shoot last winter (perhaps that makes it sound even posher).
Celeriac are bonkers vegetables, I mean, just look at them - a kind of vegetable version of an octopus. But they are delicious boiled and mashed with a bit of butter and black pepper and can be used in place of spud mash if you are avoiding potatoes.
I can hear the weeds call; it's therapy for the furious.