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!

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!!

Bath Time

Being in Bath (as opposed to the bath) is a new thing. Bf and I moved down from London last year and it has required more adjustment than I expected. Lots of things have happened since we moved, some wonderful and some very sad, and along with the new house, new jobs, new people and new city it has been a lot to take in. HOWEVER one brilliant thing about living here is that we have a LOT more space (to have people to stay and to store both 1. fun stuff and 2. bf's collection of ever so learned and ever so important and cannot under any circumstances be chucked out or accidently ruined and therefore oh dear might as well be got rid of  papers). Also, and even more brilliantly, we have a garden!

If you are in the UK you will know that we are currently experiencing an unseasonal mini summer (hopefully this is a taster of what's to come and not our actual summer, that would be +++ sad!). Sunglasses, flipflops and flowing skirts have been broken out and today there was a girl on my very humid train in denim hotpants so short that you could see her bum. The train was full and she was rubbing her bum against the back of my seat as the train swayed. The man opposite had to suddenly read this morning's Metro. I alternated between terrible jealousy and mild disapproval (I am nearly 30 after all. Everyone should shop at White Stuff, no? ;o) )

Anyway, back to the domestic side of things. We ignored the garden when we first moved in and got a bit of a shock when spring came, it defrosted and turned itself into the South West's answer to Wisley. It is quite nice out there and although I still view gardening as being almost as bad as housework we have had a lovely time out there over the last few days. Lots of flash BBQs, plus bf has been enjoying lazing around in a hammock that I bought from a pirate museum when I was 12. Massive bargain! Here's a pic of the hammock, plus BBQ which I think looks a bit like it's plotting to scuttle off somewhere. It actually belongs to the landlord so perhaps it wants to follow him to France for the summer (having wintered here in the shed hanging with the hoes; not much fun to be had for BBQs in the Alps over winter I would imagine).

Now we have a garden, we have done the predictable late 20's thing of trying to grow something useful in it. Here are our courgettes and butternut squi. They are babies here; they have gone supermegagiant in the three weeks since this was taken! Oh how quickly they grow up! Am so glad I have been here for this important time! Enjoy them whilst they're small, they'll never be that little again! Boil them and eat them! Hehehe!!

The kids on holiday at my mum and dad's house. Courgettes on the right, squi on the left. The courgs grew faster than the squash. That monster one started growing about 4 days after we planted it!

Age 14 days. He has definitely regained his birth weight!