Tuesday 3 August 2010

Sunflowers & Tatty Time


I've been negligent again. Caught a bug off my nephew and have suffered accordingly for the last week or so. Prior to that there was muchas busyness at work, and a million other time sapping duties to keep me away from the blog.

A lot has happened over the last month - primarily the garden at Rue Albert has blossomed somewhat with all the corncockles having come out, and the all too brief inflorescence of poppies in a brilliant range of colours and appearance. We're talking crimson with black blotches, crimson with white blotches, some sherbet pink, others white and marbled. The variety was exceptional. Winks for that Parsley!



Then there are of course, the wonderful sunflowers. I was worried about the tallest one as something had a real go at the stem early on and it was 1/4 nibbled. Needless to say it pulled through and stands proud. The others have come out a bit, but there are still three more to flower. The biggest one is peering over into our neighbour Sam's garden. Damn heliotropism!




The bees are loving the sunflowers. This is always a good thing to see. They will go ballistic for our ivy bush when it buds up in a month or so. The smell though...I can't describe it here!

* * *

Allotment wise, I confess I haven't been down anywhere near as much as I would like. Excuses of rain aside, there is a lot to be done still. Cakealot and I went down last week to reap our harvest of potatoes. 'I'll fax you the diagram I made with all the varieties of potato we planted,' promised Cakealot anachronistically. Where's my fax Sir Cakealot! I want to know whether I'm mashing spuds that should be roasted or roasting spuds that should be mashed! Either way we had a good go at it and there was a bumper yield of mega tatties, and no, I didn't steal all the undamaged ones. Added to that were some tasty onions. I am in agreement with Michael Wale - allotment grown veg gives you a whole new perception of what veg should really taste like. And it's satisfying to bring back a bag load of it, all earth ridden and fresh. Mmmmm!

Pace.