August in the Garden...

 The first part of this month was largely about scorching temperatures, not much rain and very regular watering being needed! (It's almost like we finally had a summer!) Thankfully we have managed to keep pretty much everything alive though, which allowing that we have been away for a couple of weekends in the middle of everything actually feels like quite a win. The water butt has been a godsend here too - the higher level of rain earlier in the year ensured that going into the warmer weather it was still lovely and full, and although we have used the hose just to make life easier when watering right round the whole garden, for just filling a can for smaller areas we've been using the water from the butt throughout. Lower temperatures and at least a bit of rain for the second half of the month was a bit of a relief though. 

As predicted, we've finally hit the point of a bit more harvesting of things this month. Our lovely chilli plant is still looking fantastic, with a decent amount of fruit on it, and still producing new flowers as well to our delight. Now it's just a case of waiting for them to arrive at the deep red colour which means they are fully ripe.

The tomatoes started properly getting their act together from the beginning of the month - the first little cherry tomato was ceremoniously cut in half and shared, but by the middle of the month I was picking a tub full each day and we were fully self sufficient for them. we've grown 3 varieties this year - all fairly mainstream reliable ones - "Minibel" are a little tiny compact bush plant - the seeds were as part of a "salad vegetable selection" and have proved excellent - good germination and a heavy cropper too. The other cherry tomato slightly larger "Gardener's Delight" - always a favourite, and always reliable, we've grown these many times before and they are always tasty. Finally there is "Moneymaker" - another reliable favourite we have grown before. As well as eating in salads and a handful for me with lunch most days, I’ve been including them in cooking too - including as part of the sauce base for a rather tasty lamb curry - so much tastier than opening a tin of chopped tomatoes! 

We noticed early in the month that the courgettes were still struggling - and a bit of investigation revealed that they were ridiculously overshadowed by our very enthusiastic potato plants! A bit of reorganisation of those, a quick shift of a grow-bag full of tomato plants, and some removal of the worst of the mildewed leaves from the courgette plants  has provided far better airflow and more light to the plants, and as a result they are now fruiting far better. A lesson learned from this year is around how we plant them in the future - the yellow variety we had this year need more space than we gave them, so the alternative might be to sow a climbing variety instead.

Cucumbers are still a success story - and while the three in the grow-bag are slowing down a bit now, the "extra" one we have grown climbing up a section of trellis is ramping up its efforts and keeping us supplied. We have come to the conclusion that this is definitely a crop we will grow as climbers next year - a single narrow trellis will take two plants, so two of those should keep us in cukes for the majority of salad season.

Beans too - both the runners and the bush beans have been producing a steady crop. You need to keep a daily check on these as otherwise they stop producing beans as they put their efforts in to swelling those that are ripening on the plant, which is not what we want! 

Herbs this year are still a bit hit and miss. My various sowings of basil are at last producing enough leaves to add to pasta dishes and that sort of thing, but nowhere near the amount I had hoped for pesto, sadly. The flat leaf parsley is flourishing now at least, and we're doing well with tarragon, rosemary and sage. My lovely trough of Coriander meanwhile started looking great, then promptly bolted before I could get so much as a leaf off it! For next year I am inclined to think that I may well consider buying herbs like parsley, basil and coriander in pots and just immediately potting on into bigger containers and see how that works, rather that growing from seed.  For the time being, I have given the coriander a haircut, and have sown a trough with half basil, and half coriander, to see if that will behave any better. It's also been covered with a sheet of wire mesh to keep the squirrels and pigeons from just digging it up! 

Overall the garden is still a source of constant delight, and it’s a rare evening or weekend morning when we don’t potter about out there for at least a bit - picking odds and ends, deadheading the sweet peas, or just marvelling in how productive we have already made the space. We’re feeding the birds of course, and get a nice variety down most days, and we’re seeing a good variety of bees and butterflies too which is a positive at a time when a lot of other gardeners are reporting a real decline in these vital little allies. Less popular mind you were the army of large white butterfly caterpillars which consumed our lovely nasturtiums down to the stalk in roughly 24 hours! Ah well, that’s gardens for you!

Robyn.

Local exploring...

During the lockdowns in 2020 and 2021, like a lot of folk, we did a huge amount of exploring our local area, both on foot and then once a small amount of travel by car was allowed, slightly further afield. Also like a lot of other folk though, once things were relaxed and life began to get back to some sort of normal again, we went back to doing all the things we'd done previously, and the local exploring got pushed aside again. There are habits we have stuck to - we still go for a walk first thing on any weekday morning when we are at home, but those walks tend to be constrained by distance, as usually MrEH has to get home to start work at his regular time.  A few weeks ago though while I was away at the Royal International Air Tattoo (might write a bit about that in another post, we'll see) MrEH went off to look at an area he had seen mentioned on several local birding forums/websites - the old Golf Course over at North Weald. He was so taken with it that he wanted to go back to walk around a bit more of it, and so recently, we did exactly that. 

It's only about a 10 minute drive from home for us - and the parking is very easy, as the access is off a quiet lane, there is a small car park which serves the church, but in fact you could just as easily park on the road. Then it's just a case of going through the gate, and along a path leading to the golf course itself. Immediately the landscape opens up in front of you you are suddenly surrounded by wildflowers, butterflies and various bird calls. It's a mix of wooded areas, scrubland and more open heathland like spaces - I can only assume the bunkers have all been filled in as we didn't find any! There are also a couple of small areas of water, MrEH saw Reed Warblers around one of them when he was there the first time. The area is huge, and spans both sides of the busy A414, but handily there is a useful route under a bridge which carries the rushing traffic over your head - towards Ongar in one direction, and Harlow in the other. 

I can't recall ever having seen such a large number of wildflowers anywhere locally to us - with paths lined with  Bristly Ox Tongue, Ragwort, Thistles bearing their stunning purple flowers, Hawkweed, Wild Carrot, Teasels and much more besides. Right at the far side we emerged onto a farm field planted with beautiful blue borage - and regular crop locally, but always stunning to see. Of course with the flowers come the insects - crickets were absolutely everywhere, the entire walk was punctuated with the sound of them and I dread to think how many we must have inadvertently trodden on as we walked round! I don't believe I've ever seen so many Gatekeeper butterflies in one place before either, and that's before we come on to all the other varieties we saw!

We only walked just over 2 miles in the end, but there were plenty more paths we could have explored, and turnings we could have taken, and there was SO much stopping to look at things that just that short distance made a really good walk. There were deliciously ripe blackberries all over the place too -  we have already said we need to find a time to get back over there pretty soon with a box for some of those!

Robyn

Making good use…

 …of the things that we find..! I mentioned in my last post that we’d been doing a bit of foraging again, and that has continued this weekend with another batch of plums picked from trees literally just around the area we live. We’re lucky that when the town was planned and built, one thing factored in was lots of trees, and that included a LOT of plum trees, so within a quarter mile radius of home we were able to pick this lot…

I already knew I wanted to make another batch of plum sauce - this time a darker, more “Chinese style” version, so the first step was to find a suitable recipe. One for “Five spice plum sauce” seemed to hit the flavour profile I was looking for, although we hit an immediate stumbling block there when I realised too late we had no five spice powder - oops! Thankfully we DID have all the actual spices I wanted in there - cinnamon, cloves, allspice, black pepper and star anise, so we set to grinding them up where needed. I substituted a little over the half of the stated half-cup of water for light soy sauce, and left out the half teaspoon of salt that was called for as a result. Garlic - also not in the recipe - went into the mix, and once everything else was prepped we ended up with a pan-full like this… 

It was the simplest process from there - literally bring it to the boil, then turn down and simmer for 30 minutes or until the plums had collapsed, stirring frequently. Then pull out the whole spices - I had also used some rather elderly dried galangal root so we pulled that out too as it was quite fibrous-looking - before blitzing with a stick blender until smooth. MrEH had meanwhile been prepping the bottles for it - in our usual way, a thorough clean before pouring boiling water over bottles, lids and the ladle and punnet we were going to use for filling them, then it was a simple case of filling the bottles while they and the mixture were still hot. We got 4 decent sized bottles from a kilo of (free!) plums, with the other ingredients all being storecupboard stuff, and I reckon each bottle will do 4 stir fries, so this is feeling like very decent value indeed! The sauce is every bit as richly flavoured as I had hoped, with an underlying slight heat from half a teaspoon of (smoked, in our case) chilli flakes, and a depth of sweetness and umami from dark brown sugar and the soy. 

We still have at least another kilo of plums to use - so we will be back into the recipe books today to see what we might do with those! 

Robyn

July in the garden…

 Well, isn’t it just our luck that the summer that arrived here while we were away in May/June then departed again during a good chunk of this month! Chilly, windy and wet best describes the weather we had for the beginning of the month, meaning that we have seen far less progress with the veg beds than we would have hoped.  

Now discouraged in the least were the sunflowers, however.

Could that be any more cheerful? The wind did give them a few problems, we have had to re-set their stakes a few times, and even then it must be said that by now they are all leaning at different angles, but have been looking lovely and bright and happy, and all now setting seed which is excellent! 

We have had a couple more small courgettes, but have also learned a lesson about planting them quite as close both to each other, and to the potato crop, as we did this time round, as lack of good ventilation around the stems is meaning some powdery mildew, slow ripening of the fruits, and also a tendency for the flowers to not drop off as they should, go soggy and cause blossom end rot. We’re mitigating some of the issues by being careful to check for flowers needing removal, they are being fed weekly being careful to avoid leaves and stems and not water too close to the base of the main stem, but there isn’t much more we can do. The sunnier warmer weather towards the end of the month has definitely helped as well, and we're hopeful that August is going to be an excellent courgette harvesting month! The weather has also delayed the tomatoes massively - there is a lot of fruit set, but it's just not ripening. I suspect when it does start going we're going to get an awful lot of tommies all in one go, so I'm standing by ready to roast, sauce or whatever to preserve them best for future use! 

The big news this month has been cucumbers. I have a vague note that we have grown them before, but neither of us can recall actually eating home grown ones, so I wonder if in fact they all got slugged/snailed or whatever when we had a previous attempt. This time we have been mostly effective in persuading the molluscs to leave them be - we did have to do one re-sowing as we only ended up with two viable plants from the 4 we originally sowed, but that second sowing gave us another 2 plants and should extend our cropping season as well, so all good. I have to say too that they are a winner of a crop - they just demand feeding weekly, and plenty of water, and are now producing regular and utterly delicious cucumbers, far smaller than shop bought ones, but SO much tastier! 

Our one chilli plant has been flowering happily with the most gorgeous purple flowers, and is now setting fruit too - that joins the toms, 'gettes and cukes with a weekly feed but is otherwise fairly undemanding, and looks like it will give us a nice crop of beautiful mild flavoursome chillies too, all being well. It is a "Hungarian Black" - from seed gifted to us by an old neighbour (who commented at the time of the handover that writing "Hungarian Black" on a plain white envelope and sticking it through our letter box made her feel like a drug dealer!) and is the most gorgeous plant as well, green leaves with a faint purple tracery all over them, so pretty! 

Not quite garden news (and no photos, because a lot of this happened while I was elsewhere!) it has also reached the time of year for some foraging to start too. We started with plums - the first small batch made plum sauce, which has already proved to be a tasty addition to a stir-fry. Then MrEH went out for a whole load more and made a batch of plum jam, and another of plum chutney, both of which are now stashed away in the cupboard. We're planning one final trawl for a few more plums, and another batch of the sauce although I want to do it slightly differently this time round to get a darker, stickier result with more sweetness to it. If there are enough then there may be the opportunity to stew some for crumble, too. Still to come are blackberries and apples of course - more crumbles there hopefully! 

Robyn

June in the garden…

Well being away for the last week of May/first week of June was always going to be “interesting” - that we knew. My lovely Mum popped in a few times and watered as needed - which thanks to some rather unseasonal weather, wasn’t as often as we suspected might be needed. And of course more rain than expected also meant that everything GREW - we came back to a main veg bed that looked like this…

Plus a lot of weeds everywhere and a patch of lawn that appeared to have decided it was a very small meadow…! 

In terms of  “damage”, sadly our entire planting of Broad beans had succumbed to blackfly. Not a particular surprise - there were signs on a few plants before we went away, and quite honestly we should have been tougher on that when we first saw it, so a learning curve there. We finally gave in and pulled the plants in fact, as we clearly weren’t going to get anything edible from them. The Pak Choi - just tiny little baby plants when we left - had clearly been delighted at being planted into the main bed as that had bolted as you can see from the picture. Some of the leaves are still useable, but obviously it’s not quite what I’d intended from it! Other than that, the only casualties were the runner and bush beans we had sown before heading off - whether they never germinated, or just got eaten as soon as they did, we have no idea, but apart from one single lonely seedling, there were no sign of those. More bush beams were sown immediately, and we bought runner bean plants which are already going well.

From as soon as we were back we were able to start harvesting salad leaves, the first few radishes and some little baby carrots too. A few Pak Choi leaves went into a stir fry, but our first notable harvest came in the form of the first courgette on the 19th - and very tasty it was too! 

We’ve had a couple more since, and with plenty more on the plants we are hopeful for them forming a solid part of our eating for a while yet. 

The cooler weather through May and into the early part of June has unquestionably held everything back which is annoying. I’m still needing to buy herbs as needed, although mine are starting to grow with a bit more enthusiasm it’s not what I had hoped for really. I think parsley and coriander may well be on the list of things to buy from the nursery next year, just to get an earlier start on things. We are still harvesting lettuce leaves but there will be a gap before the next lot of cut and come again is ready. Cucumbers are setting on both our surviving plants - two more have been sown and should be ready to plant out soon, but whether those will catch up remains to be seen. 

In terms of the floral side of things, next door’s honeysuckle which has happily grown through our fence is now flowering and looking fantastic…

Proving very popular with the bees too - there was one cheerfully buzzing around as I took that picture in fact - you can see him at the bottom of the shot! Our sunflowers have been growing furiously too and are now just beginning to burst into full flower - look…

Just how cheerful is that? Definitely something we would always make a point of growing now I think - they proved remarkably trouble free from the start, germination rate was high (6/6 germinated, but one got eaten just as soon as they were planted out - we would be faster with the slug protection in future) and although we did stake them due to some very high winds bending them right over, I’m not convinced they’d need it in usual circumstances. Above all though they are a great bit of fun with their big happy bright yellow flower heads! 

So there you have it - the main veg bed now looks like this:

As you can see the potatoes look to be trying to take over the world, there! Our tomato plants are also finally growing - and flowering - as we would hope…

That’s the standard plants - we also have an area of more compact bush plants at the bottom of the garden which are starting to produce fruit. All being well by the time I post the July in the Garden post we ought to be self-sufficient in toms, at least! 

Robyn. 

Warbird Heaven!

 

Last weekend Sywell Aerodrome hosted their first full airshow - and it became apparent from when they first started releasing information about the participating aircraft that they were going all-out to make this a success. A group of us decided to go along - some for one day, and a few of us bit the bullet and committed to both. Tickets were reasonably priced, standard parking was free, and the participating aircraft looked good - generally a pretty solid basis to assume that a show will be a decent one! 

So it proved - and the weather joined in as well to make things even more of a success. Sunshine with a light cooler breeze on Saturday, and Sunday was even warmer, with sunshine pretty much right through the day. We even got airshow favourite clouds scudding across the sky too which from a photography point of view is a winner! 

The show opened with the formation above - it’s always a bit of a coup for a show to get an F-35 to fly with anything else, and the two warbirds alongside (a P-47 Thunderbolt and P-51 Mustang) were just such a good pairing - I think we were all a bit stunned after several passes to be honest! We weren’t given much time to gather ourselves though before the P-47 joined up with iconic B-17 Bomber “Sally B”

How stunning! We weren’t done with USAF types either, a formation of Mustangs was quite something to see, sparkling and gleaming in the sunshine…

These frequently have “bare-metal” type schemes - wonderful to watch, but a bit of a devil to photograph…a bit like the incredible Flying Bulls B-25 Mitchell. 

You can literally see the countryside around reflected back from the immaculately polished fuselage! The Flying Bulls are a bit of a rare sight in the U.K. although they do occasionally appear, I’ve seen them just a handful of times though so their participation was extremely welcome and keenly anticipated. They didn’t disappoint either - displaying the Mitchell above with a P-51 Mustang (already seen earlier in the show both with the F-35a and in formation with other mustangs), a Corsair and another rarely seen type, the P-38 Lightning. 

Comedy moment of day 1 was undoubtedly the arrival of the Oil Spill Response Boeing 727 which took the commentary team - James Holland of the We Have Ways Podcast, alongside Mike Ling, best known from his time spent with the RAF Red Arrows both as a display pilot and as Red 10, safety supervisor, and also now an accomplished warbird pilot - by surprise. Their astonished reaction elicited an audible ripple of amusement throughout the crowd line! 

Another absolute highlight for most of us was the stunning wing walking display from 46-Aviation, a Swiss based (I think?) husband and wife team. The most frequently heard phrase during this one was “well she’s clearly just utterly bonkers isn’t she!” - not surprising when you realise that their finale was this…

Absolutely incredible to watch - she had the entire audience gripped throughout I think, not always the case with wing walking displays. I for one would be delighted to see these guys make more regular UK appearances! 

The main display on day 1 ended with a massed Spitfire formation. This is always an incredible treat to see - and indeed hear! They did a few passes in their group of 9 (albeit with one aircraft on day 1 tending to hang back off the main formation a bit, making it tricky to get in shot) then moved to line astern formation to engage in a lengthy tailchase display which was stunning to witness. 

Day 2 was much the same as far as the majority of  participants were concerned. No F-35 to start, and the display closed with a Red Arrows display after the massed spitfires.  

This year’s Reds display is an absolute cracker - without question the best for a fair few years, in fact. The return of the famous Diamond 9 formation after several years of the team flying reduced numbers for various reasons is fantastic to see - and they are flying the above version of short diamond with all 9 jets streaming smoke which is a bit of a nod to this being their Diamond Anniversary year, I think. 

There were the usual synchro passes - and I even managed to track the right jet on some of them which was handy! We’d decided on a far more chilled day so were sat a good way back, but of course that doesn’t matter much for a display like the Reds. It’s also nice being able to see and hear the crowd reaction along with the noise of the jets too - the ooohs and ahhhs at Synchro’s close passes, and always a ripple of delight when “Tornado” makes an appearance too. 

All in all this show was an absolute winner. A great range of aircraft flying, including stuff rarely seen in the U.K. something a bit “different” too - it’s always great to have something a bit unique to point the camera at! They did a great job with the car park too - staggering the departure times by adding the evening display on Saturday made leaving straightforward, but even on Sunday when a lot of folk were leaving directly after the Reds it was easy - in the car and straight out, barely even stopping. The large shows that have been doing this for years could learn a LOT from their approach! 

Well done Sywell - if you run again next year I will be straight in the queue for tickets! 

Robyn. 

Hebrides…DONE!

 

Another two weeks at beautiful Kettle Cottage - and how lovely it was to be back after missing a year last year because we were too slow off the mark to book! 

As usual with any Hebrides trip these days, there was a bit of ferry-related stress on the way up. It was windy - not by Hebrides standards, but windy nonetheless. And the ferry has a stabiliser out of action at the moment which affects the sea-states she can sail in. As a result we actually let our overnight hotel not quite knowing if we would get across, or not. Thankfully by the time we reached Fort William we were able to see that the boat had left South Uist on her way across to the mainland, so a big sigh of relief was breathed! 

The weather this year did leave a little to be desired - especially when compared with our two weeks of wall to wall sunshine and ludicrously warm temperatures in 2023. Nobody with any sense visits the Western Isles for sunbathing weather though, so it didn’t get in the way of anything we wanted to do, although it did mean we adjusted the days we chose to do a few things, and also meant that it was right at the end of our stay before we finally made it up our favourite little hill on Benbecula - Rueval…

The views were as stunning as ever, but oh my was it breezy at the top! 

Coincidence of the trip was finding ourselves by chance sharing a table at The Dunes Cabin for lunch with another couple - we got chatting as you do, and after a while the conversation turned to where we were from… “Essex” said we…”oh, us too” came the response…”which bit?”  Well, it only turned out that they live less than quarter of a mile from our front door! Ludicrous or what? It was their first visit to the islands, so we passed on a few “must sees” and will be keeping an eye out for them locally now we’re back to see if they are planning a return trip!  

Of course we booked for another trip on the boat with the lovely Lady Anne crew - Nye was skippering this time, with new crew member Rosie alongside, and as usual we were expertly navigated into some great spots to see some fabulous wildlife, with the beautiful White Tailed Eagles being stars of the show as always.

That is Ronald - one of the pair resident in the area the boat visits. Handsome chap isn’t he! I’ve photographed them a number of times now but the thrill as you first see them never diminishes - and it always takes your breath away seeing such a huge bird so close up as well. It’s just such a privilege - and well worth the cost of the trip. 

As usual the trip was filled with plenty of wandering about, nice food, general relaxing and a bit of exploring too - even after all these years we still find the odd place we’ve not been to before. We were also over for the Tractor Rally this year too - first time we’ve been there for that in a good few years. Always good fun, the tractors set off earlier in the morning to do a circuit around the Island before heading back to the hall and show ground at Hosta. Everyone admires them for a bit, then goes and eats and jolly good lunch of soup, sandwiches and homebaking - and there is NOTHING not to like about that! The Uist ladies really know how to bake as well and they are definitely “never knowingly undercatered” - we were absolutely stuffed. It’s all for charity as well, so feels like a good way of being able to contribute something back, while we are there.

We were also up at the right time for the stunning arrays of wildflowers on the machair - always a highlight of a spring visit, and this year didn’t let us down as Uist had a warm spell at the beginning of May which meant all the flowers were a bit ahead of where they might usually have been. The orchids in particular were both stunning and prolific! 

All in all, another lovely trip. It’s always tough to leave, but then these days not only do we know we will most definitely be returning, we are also coming home to a place we love, and with plenty to keep us occupied between the garden (which ran cheerfully amok while we were gone!) and airshow season now starting properly for me.  

Our 2025 trip is already booked up - so we’d better get saving! 

Robyn. 

May in the Garden...

Everything just feels like it's flourishing this month - the weather has turned warmer, the seemingly incessant rain we had all through the winter and early spring has finally eased, and things are GROWING!

Picture taken in the semi-dark showing the more "floral" bit of the garden!

The Broad beans are now in full flower and looking stunning - they're a great crop to grow as they do look (and smell) so lovely, as well as giving a welcome early substantial food crop, of course. We've also now built the frame for our other beans to climb up - so that side of the garden will be bean central, this year! MrEH remembered to look at the large Orange DIY shop's garden clearance area when he was in there for bamboo canes, and discovered some rather straggling pea plants for 43p - so those have gone in at one end of the frame and they will either live, or not...

Rescue peas...

We've transplanted the tomatoes into their pots and growbags and found what we hope will be the right locations for those - they seem a bit slow getting going, but hopefully when they properly find their feet (roots?) they will catch up a bit. I also sowed the last few of the Hungarian Black Chilli seeds that we had remaining - these are a lovely mellow flavoured chilli with flavour rather than heat - the seeds were given to us by an old neighbour who grew them a few years ago and to be honest they're probably a bit old - I'm hopeful we might see more from the second sowing, but as things stand we have one solitary little plant! Cucumbers have also been shifted into a growbag.

Tomatoes, chilli, rhubarb & very happy redcurrant!

In the new veg bed, the potatoes popped their heads up early in the month and now seem to be doing very well. The rhubarb also seems to have settled in well. The winner in there so far though is unquestionably the redcurrant - which actually has some fruit forming on it! We didn't expect to get anything from it this year realistically, so that's a nice surprise! Also in that bed now in additional to the stuff mentioned before is Swiss Chard ("Bright lights" - which once it's a bit bigger will look nice and provide useful food!) and pak choi which we've not grown before as far as I can think, so that will be an interesting one. Some calendula have been planted in there too as attractive companion plants, and also a sow of sunflowers across the back - there were six. but something ate one straight through the stem! We're actually really delighted with those - we've not grown them before so it's gratifying that they're doing so well! 

Potatoes peeking through...

In terms of all things floral, the highlight of this month has been the Alliums which are just stunning - I'm so glad that we planted those! The Aquilegia is still going strong too - and the new one in the front is also in flower already which is a lovely surprise too. Also out the front, both roses are now flowering as well, and we're seeing plenty of activity from the various seeds that got scattered, although as yet it's a bit of a mystery what we might be getting, there! The little line of foxgloves appear to be taking over the world - and several of them are now taller than I am, much to MrEH's amusement! (He will be less amused if as I suspect, they overtake HIM, too!)

One of our utterly glorious Alliums...

We’re starting to discover what our problem weeds are going to be now - bindweed which keeps popping up all over the place and is probably the most problematic. Creeping cinquefoil and herb Robert - both st least easy to pull out, even if they are persistent. We’re keeping a beady eye out for any three cornered leek appearing - so far there have been a couple in pots we brought with us so they have been allowed to flower, then had the flowers nipped off and then the bulbs pulled out. 

New veg bed flanked with tomatoes! 

I'm hopeful that the June in the Garden post will be more about harvesting things, and successional sowing, and my basil FINALLY looking like it might eventually provide me with something which will be able to be turned into pesto later in the year!  

Robyn