Today’s harvest haul from the garden...
...tomatoes, raspberries, carrots, beans and a couple of comedy cucumbers. I’m picking a good pound of tomatoes every day, and a bowl of Autumn raspberries, too, which have been coming into their own over the last two weeks, taking over almost seamlessly from the Summer canes. The carrots are coming to an end now, as are the cucumbers.
It’s the runner beans I am most pleased with, though! I planted the bean seeds back in April and they grew into lovely plants, which I then transplanted into the garden, only for them to be decimated by the Bastard Slugs, pretty much overnight. Fortunately, I had some Emergency Bean Plants in reserve in the newly built greenhouse and they stayed there until they took on triffid-like proportions and then I planted them out, and they got chomped by the Bastard Slugs, too, but to a lesser extent.
By then it was too late in the season to re-seed any more bean plants so I persevered with watering and willing Bean Batch the Second to survive. It wasn’t looking good. They were making all the effort of the Vicar of Dibley attempting to stand up from her chair after forcing down her third Christmas dinner. No runner beans for us this year. Ah well...
BUT....the Goddess of Runner Beans (probably called Zola) was out waving her magic wand at some point in August and, all of a sudden, the plants took off up their support canes like racing whippets. Within two weeks three beans were spied, and we’ve been picking a nice handful every other day since! This morning I gleaned two big handfuls and there are plenty more to come. Never did I think back in May that I would be contemplating putting a bag of home grown runner beans into the freezer. Never.
The Beans of Hope then! Just goes to show you can’t second guess good old Mother Nature when it comes to fruit and veg growing. Just got to go with her flow, keep on keeping on and working with her, thinking happy thoughts, telling yourself it’ll be okay in the end, and what do you know? Hope wins out.
(Perhaps we should apply this process to other areas of our lives, too? Spread some bean magic today!)
Comments
KJ
We have weird by-laws in England, KJ. If you cut down overhanging branches from your neighbours’ trees you have to offer them back. I wonder, Aileen - shall you be offering the mountains of bindweed back to your neighbours???
Denise; are there any bylaws protecting hedgehogs? I’m sure if you go back to 1354 you will find a still existing law that will work! UK indeed has some funny/ interesting laws. Always entertaining, especially because I won’t be affected by them.
KJ
As for the hedgehogs - Schedule 6 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act (1981) makes it illegal to kill or capture hedgehogs, and the Wildlife Mammals Protection Act (1996) prohibits cruelty to them. Do you have a specific interest in hedgehogs? Sadly, they are in decline here, but there are lots of charities devoted to rescuing and protecting them.
K “ the environment warrior” J