Six on Saturday 10/11/18

Best to start with the not-so-good things in the garden first.

  1. My 6 foot 2 inch son sat down with a bang on our tired garden bench last weekend and snapped the support bar.

The chair also needed a clean.

Husband pulled it apart this week, cleaned it, mended it with extra support timber and oiled it. It looks wonderful. In fact I’m wondering if I should include Husband in my Six as he has done wonders round the garden this week, mending said bench, setting up drippers in the berry house for tomatoes and berry fruit, rejigging the whole automatic watering system, taking charge of me and my efforts in the veggie garden.

Anyway, onwards…

2. After two weeks away from this garden, it needed cutting back and weeding post-spring. This is the first wheelbarrow load. We ended up filling the back of the ute with fallen timber and cuttings for the green waste at the tip. Yes, we should have composted most of it, but this was not the weekend to get the shredder out.

3. Much time spent in the veggie garden, taming it. Spreading composted soil, weeding, dragging out vermin potato seedlings, and planting other stuff like snap peas, sunflowers, carrots and beetroot. Climbing peas and beans will go in next week. After this shot was taken, I pulled out the broadbeans and began shelling them.

I boiled them for a minute, then hearted them and froze the hearts ready for this wonderful fennel and broadbean tart!

Now to the pretties:

4. I love the way the foxglove is growing through Bertie Blowfish and the whole is backdropped by C.Montana. This is Bertie’s first year with us and I shall continue to provide him with many engaging and eyecatching friends.

5. I absolutely love the exuberance of this clematis flower – variety unknown. It struggles in full sun on the fence, but I’ve shielded and shadowed  its roots with terracotta tubs filled with petunias and lobelia.

6. And isn’t the way the water pools and pearls in the nasturtium leaf a thing of beauty? This is another reason why that aggressive plant has a purpose in my garden.

And that’s it for me for this week as I look out into the garden and think that it’s actually beginning to look as if we care at last. Water is now reaching the dry bits, there are annuals planted for flashes of cooling white when the garden is dry and hot and I think we might have veg and berries in abundance. Which reminds me, I must order the second River Cottage veggie book – Much More Veg by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, to pair up with Veg, book One. Lots of delicious garden-driven recipes in both.

Have a look on The Propagator for many other wonderful Six on Saturdays around the globe. It’s a wonderful way to spend a weekend. I’m off to read the eighty or so comments!