Week 10 in the South West

The Orchard

It's been a happy and encouraging week at the orchard with soft fruit bushes bending with delicious produce ... loganberries, blueberries and wonderful sweet plump cultivated blackberries. The blackberries are a revaluation, no tartness just a bomb of sweet juice.

I must mention the apricots which look so golden and gorgeous. I stewed a couple that fell and they were brill. How amazing to be able to grow edible apricots. The tree is only in its second year.

All the veg is growing a treat and the nets are discouraging the pigeons. So far the deer are sparing our beans and beetroot, but we have to be vigilant.

The flower patch is gradually filling up and I have given away lots of bunches this week... Snap dragons, gazanias, gyp (saved from the rabbits with fleece... such a fab cutting flower), cornflowers, Veronica.

The Larkspur has failed but I must try again next year as it is great for cutting.

The rubekia is growing sturdily with a promise of golden blooms in August through to frost, if the orchard creatures spare them.

Solomon's seal is being munged a bit, but going strong.

The Garden

Successes! 

A left for a conference in Cambridge on the 9th with a box full of garden produce for T and H: the first beautiful green cucumber, the umpteenth bouquet of sweet peas, a good dose of broad beans, a bunch of herbs, the first three baby beetroots, and the second picking of courgettes, two punnets of soft fruit (red gooseberries and redcurrants) all on a bed of Coombe Cottage hay!

So, the big story of the last two weeks is the hay! It was cut by a neighbour on 29th June, turned daily until July 3rd and put into bales on that day ahead of a promised thunderstorm (which never came...).

Alliums finally showing their colours:

Beautiful persian buttercups (definitely getting more next year - thank you Father Christmas):

The rose tree over, mulberries coming on, sunflowers growing, a huge patch of old raised bed rescued from the weeds and glorious sunshine for reading outside. 

Interesting fact of the week:

Everyone knows the phrase of 'make hay while the sun shines!' Great aphorism about taking opportunities whilst you can (which we certainly managed with the field - checking the forecast about six times a day became very addictive). 

This proverb is first recorded in John Heywood's A dialogue conteinyng the nomber in effect of all the prouerbes in the Englishe tongue, 1546:

Whan the sunne shinth make hay. Whiche is to say.

Take time whan time cometh, lest time steale away.

Many proverbs exist in other languages, but this one doesn't and it's a reasonable surmise that the phrase is of English Tudor origin.