Sweet as the Moment.....

Cosmos.

I wonder how many people other than gardeners remember the true taste of a fresh garden pea. Having a feast of our fresh peas yesterday, the silly tune which accompanied the advertisement for 'Birds Eye' peas kept going round in my head. I grew up before frozen peas first hit the freezer cabinets of UK shops, I remember well sitting with my Grandfather shucking peas, fresh, straight from the garden. Somewhere along the line I must have tried frozen peas, they first hit the UK shelves in 1967, and that silly advert was in the 70's, however frozen peas have never made it into my freezer. Eating the peas yesterday I now know why, frozen peas do not taste the same as a freshly picked and cooked garden peas.

The variety we have grown this year is 'Hurst Green Shaft', and they taste as I remember peas tasting. I also remember well the tinned Marrow Fat peas, ugh, and  dried peas, double ugh, complete with a bicarb. tablet which you added to the peas whilst they were soaking, I'm not sure why the bicarb. was needed, to improve colour or to make the peas more digestible, whatever the reason I hated them. So I will continue to enjoy our fresh peas and then wait until next years harvest.

The ducks and Hubbard table birds have now all been processed, the Hubbards ranged in weight from 2.3 to 3.3 kg, we made sure that all our customers received at least one of the 3.3 kg birds. We will be picking up more day olds tomorrow, as all of our customers want more this year, they have all said that they consider our birds excellent value for money, which is nice, we are certainly not cheap, but I guess compared to the price that Tesco charges for an Organic bird we are, as our birds are far bigger. One customer in particular loves the chicken livers, I'm not sure what he does with them so we let him have them all. We however hang on to the duck livers which I will make pate from. This year I will be attempting to bottle the pate  using the hot water bottling method, we hope  to store the pate without killing ourselves with food poisoning.

The runner beans are now producing masses of beans, I cant remember what variety we grew this year but many of the beans are fifteen inches long, that's around 35cm. They are a lovey bean, with a great flavour.

The late cauliflowers are now forming their curds, but for some reason the cauliflowers have not been that great this year, the calabrese is also forming heads, so it wont be long before we are eating them.

The unexpected Muscovy ducklings are all doing well, there are eleven of them, just one egg failed to hatch,

Mum is very proud of her clutch, but we still have them confined as I would not trust the geese with them.

Cosmos, such a jolly flower.

The late summer flowers are now all in bloom,

many will continue until the first frosts or autumn gales destroy them. I am very please with a couple of clematis that we have,

the blue one has been flowering for over a month with lots of buds,

the  vermilion one was planted last year and this is the first time it has bloomed,

I love the colour of it and it contrasts wonderfully with the  pale pink of the perpetual sweet pea.

 

 

 

More Phlox

The Phlox are putting on a wonderful show, I love all the different colours,

and the Thalictrum has been flowering for over two months now.

The Agapanthus has at last flowered, it has been very slow this year.

All the peaches have now been picked, we have had around  twelve pounds in total, the final picking was five pounds, these have been bottled, ready for winter deserts.

A few more pictures of what's in flower at the moment.