Season of very mellow fruitfulness

Hello from casa Bath. Hope you are all well.

I realised that I harped on about the garden quite a bit earlier this year, but haven't mentioned it lately. Let's have a quick recap.

In the spring, we went all rural and planted courgettes, butternut squi, big tomatoes, small tomatoes, a pumpkin (courtesy of Tom & Barbara of Bath), onions, chillis, lupins and sweet peas. Several of these specimins were given a distinct evolutionary advantage by being nurtured indoors, in special compost, in a seed tray under a clear plastic lid. We followed their progress with great interest and even took them with us on a two-week sojurn back to Hampshire at a critical point in their development.

Here is a quick update.
Big tomatoes: there is an acutal NEST of spiders living in the big tomato plants so I haven't got too close. No
enticing orange ones seen from a safe distance, though.

Small tomatoes: more luck here, despite unfortunate sun/shrivelling incident whilst we were at Glastonbury. Got about twenty red tomatoes. Unfortunately they have diameters of only about 1cm,and are VERY mushy. Major success (given the rest of the haul).

Courgettes: two of ten plants have survived the slug/snail pit that is our garden. So far, we have had four courgettes. Second major success!

Pumpkins: Well. I am not exactly an organic gardener. Have surrounded pumpers (and courgos) with slug pellets. Garden in the sunshine is now like some sort of post-apocolyptic action set. Dead snails and slugs giving off a peculiar odour, and massive bluebottles feeding off the corpses. This did mean, however, that pumpers was spared the ravishing of the snails. The vine has grown to about 8ft long. Unfortunately however, it is being overtaken by some sort of creeping mildew which kills the leaves one at a time, about as quickly as the vine grows new ones. It is not very picturesque. There have been three pumpkins, and all have rotted and fallen off when about 2inches big (small). Not major success. Tom and Barbara, however, have a sister plant that has grown two whopping pumpkins. Our garden unfortunately overly plagued by pestilance and fungus..

Chillis: Potential massive success! Have kept them inside. Got about eight plants here plus several branches of the chilli family in Hampshire and London all going strong. Our biggest plant is five feet tall and has five chillis on it.

Onions: Pretty much a disaster. The leaves all got eaten by slugs, and then a fox moved into the onion bed, dug them up and pooed in the hole. We don't talk about the onions any more.

Pre Mr Fox: i never knew onions flowered! Ahh.

So, there you have it, the highlights of our vegetable-growing year. The best seasonal things I have eaten recently have come from my parents' garden. Every time I have seen them recently we have come away laden with bags of tomatoes and green beans and apples. Spending less time fighting slugs and repelling foxes, and more time driving up the M4 to visit the parental Eden, might be a more fruitful way to spend next summer!

Bf savaging the parental beans and toms. Note I had already eaten half a bowl of soup. I love the wedding dress shop!!! (!)

Apple crumbles (but you usually slice it..)

Right, that's it for now! Lots going on here as always. I'm about to go to the gym to hang out with the elite athletes of Bath (ahem).. see you soon!

Country life

I know I live in a city. It does feel very countrified though, compared to Woolwich. I was lying in bed last night thinking about how life has changed since we left London. I have also changed. Am less anxious generally. Pleased about that! Here is a list of things that are different.

• The kitchen has more than one square foot of work surface. We can cook actual meals.
• Seating 10 people round the dining table is achievable and cooking for them does not involve balancing roasting trays on top of dishes on the floor.
• The dining table is a permanent item and does not need to be dragged into the middle of the living room to extend a flap when there are more than three people trying to eat
• Guests sitting at the dining table do not have to sit on piles of cushions on the sofa a la booster seats
• We own two sledges and have enough storage that I do not see them, stub my toe on them and curse them every day
• We own two sledges!
• I am interested in what the weather is doing as this affects what I might want to do
• I have eaten a vegetable from my garden
• I have a garden!
• We went to Glastonbury and got home within 45 minutes
• We went to Glastonbury and left our two front sash windows open about a foot each
• We went to Glastonbury and left our two front sash windows open about a foot each, got home within 45 minutes and NOBODY HAD STOLEN ANYTHING!
• The neighbours know our names
• The neighbours smile at us
• The neighbours do not seem to be selling packets of anything to people who roll up in cars with blacked-out windows
• I see bf a lot more :o)

There are downsides, but there are definate upsides to being in the bath!

Take care chaps

Three lovely things from today

A few interesting and pleasingly pictorial things today. Firstly, a vegetable update: my, how much they've grown! They were only yay high last time we saw them. Etc.

Here are a squash (in front) and courgette (shy, hiding behind). And a coffee pot and watering can. Squash has a purple pipe cleaner crutch as legacy of a terrible accident that befell - literally - it on the way back from its vacation at my parents' house. This plant was actually the sole survivor; many others were lost in a nasty coolbox-falling-sideways-out-of-the-car accident and it was touch and go for a while. But to look at him now, you'd hardly know.

I find it interesting watching things grow. Who knew for example that their first leaves are different from all their other leaves? Well, my mum says she knew that from her biology a-level but who ELSE knew?! Not me! They're called cotyledons. And what a good word that is! The cotyledons seem to shrivel up and die as the normal leaves get established. You can see them at the base of the stem here. They were quite juicy looking when the plant was young.

Squash and courge - six weeks old on Saturday. Party time!

Secondly, a fashion spot. Now, having just moved from London to what I consider to be 'the countryside', I am finding many differences in my daily exposure to clothes on the trains and streets of Britain. But today's spot is not a new thing. Oh no, these beauties are not unique to the South West - although if they were I would be more forgiving. If they were for example some sort of brilliant development in agricultural / farming technology (eg cloven hoofed appearence means they don't scare the cattle..), I would think them a little more excusable. But alas, I believe they first appeared last year in Heat on Danielle Lloyd, and toward the end of the summer people were wearing them in London. I don't know what they're called and refuse to google it but they are a sort of combination between a boot and a flip-flop. Perhaps they are called boot-flops. Or floots (which is also a good word but not as good as cotyledon). Whatever their name, their appearance is questionable and their practicality even more so. I find them quite yuk. But I am fully aware that if enough of them start to appear, they will begin to look normal, and then even desirable (ref. appearence of skinny jeans - crazy horrid things on the back of the bootleg 90s, but now entirely normal. Oh but we're back to flares again now, which look weird...). And then I will buy some. Such is life.

Floots, boot-flops, whatever, at the station. The two-way colour combo makes them even more desirable doesn't it?!

Finally, the best thing - have you tried a magnum double caramel?! AMAZING. I have always been a Feast girl personally. Magnums a bit too dull and vanilla-ee. But this one.. oh my god.. TWO layers of chocolate sandwiching a gorgeous gooey layer of caramel.. lasts for ages and tastes divine. Woop!

More nice things from the garden. I think you can just make out the double layer of choc and the gooey caramel bit. Mmh. I have just realised it looks a bit like mucus. It's not! It's lovely!!