Meruhen Kabocha

Just split open my only Meruhen Kabocha squash. Beautiful thick dry dark orange flesh. A tip-top fruit which tonight will be cooked with chestnuts, rice, sage, and butter. A recipe found on the internet.

Murder Most Fowl!

Jardin au Crépuscule

The weatherman predicts 0° tonight. We have shifted the lemon tree into the greenhouse.

Senescence

Time to recycle nutrients, but here and there, small pockets of resistance.

Still In Bloom

"Nasturtiums and other Indian flowers are still in bloom: a sure token that there has been no frost."
Gilbert White
November 11th 1772

The temperature has dipped as low as 2° at night this past week, but has been hovering between 8° to 10° during the daytime. Good weather for getting on with the pruning, weeding and tidying.

TPS

A few King Edward potatoes formed fruiting berries. Now harvested, cleaned, fermented, dried and stored.
Oh the possibilities!

Bird Bath

I have overhauled, weeded and removed the box edging (done in by the box leaf-mining caterpillars) in the central circular bed. And the birdbath - pieced together from ceramic shards I have collected along the Thames at low tide - is now sited in the middle on a plinth high enough to be clear of any feline intruders.
Motif inspired by Tom Waits.

I am distracted...

... from my distraction by a distraction.
I'm watching a little video explaining biochar and my eyes wander below the line where I read that if I want to see an albino squirrel I should look at the upper right corner after 35:35. And, yes indeedy, there it is...

Cabbage Wrap

The 'January Kings' that I sited on my hügelkultur started off with great promise. But as summer progressed they just sat, unblinking, hidebound. Above was the biggest - a scant 6 inches in diametre. I realize (a couple of mushroom blooms was a clue), that I didn't get a good balance of composting material in the mound and it must be too acidic. Something I am currently trying to redress.
The row of 'de Wädenswil' cabbages did very well in another part of the garden and I've got two 3 litre crocks of sauerkraut fermenting in the potting shed.

Hot Chili Peppers

... still going strong in the greenhouse

Annual Group Photo

A total of 53 lbs. of squash here. The big green hubbard up top is a 20 lb. monster, the picture doesn't do it justice.

Un-Earthed

autumn colours
  without a pot
    of red-brown soup

Matsuo Basho

And now to prepare the perfect recipe for sausage (as described in Tampopo) I must get a wild boar to eat the yams, butcher it immediately afterwards and then roast it's yam-stuffed intestines.

Some Potatoes

"It was one of those deliberately lovely Roman autumn afternoons, when walking is a climax of crisp joy with the thought of a cup of tea as the final finial." Hadrian VII Baron Corvo

Double Red

I've just put my sweetcorn plants into the ground. It seems early, but they got to a size that demanded transplant. Two varieties this year, 'Supersweet Mama' and 'Double Red' from Real Seeds. These look interesting with the red pigmentation extending right down into the roots. I have noticed (though haven't researched) that pests generally seem less interested in red varieties. The slugs will demolish all the green lettuce and leave the red for later. Same with the cabbage white and even the pigeons when it comes to brassicas.

Tiny, Darting Things

The weather spiked again this past weekend, reaching 27° with not a cloud in sight. Unless you happened to be in the Shetland Isles, which sits up there in the top of the map looking like Al Capp's Joe Btfsplk.
Beetroot seedlings are now about an inch high and potato growth has just become apparent. Below, another sample from the bog/fen/swamp (hey swampy) ...

There amongst the tadpoles are a crustacean/amphipod, a couple of nematodes(?) perhaps, and about a thousand other tiny, darting things.

Forty Winks

Squash 2018

The line-up for this season - Green Hubbard, Patisson Orange, Queensland Blue, Cream of the Crop, Chirimen, Blue Banana, Anna Swartz (Hubbard) and Gourd Gigantique! This photo is already one week old, they now have true leaves and demand to be potted on. Then I need to find space enough in the garden for their exuberance.
And here is the last of last year's just roasted.

Pondlife Update

Hairy-Footed Flower Bee

Temperature today hit 24° and will reach 25° tomorrow. Suddenly it's summer. The Hairy-footed Flower bee has been busy in the rosemary bush. Anthophora plumipes is all black with an exceptionally long tongue and doesn't sit still for a portrait so she is a bit blurry (whereas the rosemary is sharply in focus).

And I just saw the first Himmelblaue Bläuling of the season flitting around the back of the garden. On the downside, this sunny weather brings out Homo cretinicus in great numbers. Next door must sun bathe with a transistor radio that broadcasts, presumably, out of a hole torn in the space time continuum. I kid you not, while I had my tea I heard 'Like a Rhinestone Cowboy' followed by 'Daydream Believer' by the Fab Four - no, not That Fab Four, a much more fabulous foursome - The Monkees.

Need Money?

Monday I noticed this mass of glibber in the concrete bunker filled with stagnant water that we euphemistically refer to as 'the pond'. Of course, it is a heap of frog's eggs and in a few weeks I guess I shall see several hundred (?) tiny tadpoles swimming around. Unless something eats them.
I will post updates. (These posts are a bit like the buses, nothing for months and then two in the space of 2 days.)