Rainy saturday

Saturday, 7AM, it raining. I'm really, really glad it's raining. Raining means we cannot spend the day mixing concrete. If we're not mixing concrete and it's too wet for serious gardening, there is no urgent need to get up.

Make coffee, go back to bed. Allow the dogs to sneak upstairs for some duvet-surfing. A couple of hours later I'm still sitting here in the optimistic hope that Brian might just make me poached eggs and more coffee and bring them up to me.

I've caught up on a few blogs, chatted to a couple of relatives and friends (about DNA and Greek beaches (not all in the same conversation)) and read my email.

There are now two damp lurchers on the duvet having a post breakfast snooze.

Wonder how my eggs are doing?

British Summer

We've had some very hot summers in recent years, very non-classical British summers, nothing to whinge about. Oh, my mistake, of course there was the heat, the insects, the drought. A truly British pastime, we love to complain about the weather. I wonder why?

Anyway this June has been a tad on the damp side, much more your classical British summer, it's rained a fair old bit, so much so there have been flash floods and damaged dams. All serious stuff. On a personal level I like it (not the floods, just the rain), the dog walks are quieter and I don't need to water the garden by hand. Mind you on tuesday I woke up to find the rose petals scattered across the grass, so a little less wind would be nice thanks.

On sunday the itchy feet got the best of me so I took the three lurchers on a new walk on the north bank of the Thames.

This stretch of the Berkshire riverbank is fascinating, lots of rather nice houses:

Oooh - this one is for sale - can we afford it?


Or is this more our style?


disused boat houses:

These are fascinating




and old gun emplacements left over from the second world war. It's amazing to think that there were concerns that invaders would make it this far up the Thames, and the trees now grown up between the boxes and the river show just how long ago it was..


The dogs liked it too but I'm guessing the gun emplacements were of little interest to them.

It's very pretty round here, I'll miss it when we move.

Lastly - I want THIS "deck"

Runaway broad beans

We have a case of runaway broad beans. They are currently hiding under the three seat sofa and, ironically, I think there are three of them. At least there were when they escaped yesterday, by now they may be bred up their numbers, begun a colony and started accepting immigrants. Perhaps I should move the sofa and clean.

I was sat innocently shelling said beans at the coffee table while reading some back-blog (which always seem vaguely voyeuristic to me, but there are a few gems out there which I simply cannot resist) when a few sprightly ones made a break for it. Maybe I should pay more attention to the beans than the blogs, on the other hand, at least it did not involve sharp knives.

The ones that did not get away were delicious. I mean the beans of course, not the blogs

Meanwhile the tomatoes in the greenhouse have not yet turned red. We've had a couple of yellow ones but no reds yet. I was discussing this with my neighbour which whom I swap tomato seedlings every spring. We always grow different varieties and trade. Typically we always have too many and try to give each other more than we take, but such is gardening. Anyway, Sue informed me that the stripey green variety

stays.... you guessed it...green.

Oh.



So how on earth do I tell when it's ripe?
Help please.

New potatoes and fresh mint.

Never send a man out for a "sprig" of mint.

On another note I've done it again this morning, I fed the hypothyroid dog the pills for the arthritic epileptic dog.

Oh dear. He seems ok, mind you - would we actually be able to tell if anything was awry?

The Longest Day

Not the movie, though we have that too. Yesterday was the (theoretically) longest day of the year. Now for some reason this seems to bring out a spate of rather depressing comments such as "oh it's all downhill from here" and "christmas is just round the corner" on the radio and at work.

Me? I don't dwell on those ideas, June 21st usually arrives with me thinking "Well at least Brian did not get arrested".

Brian, my husband, flies microlights. There is a tradition at the club he flies from that every summer solstice they get up VERY early (or more likely never go to bed), fuel up their microlights and fly to Stonehenge for the sunrise. Bit silly really, since the sunrise in the air is not at the same time as on the ground, but hey, it's a "boy thing" and it keeps him happy.


A crowded Stonehenge at sunrise.


The sunrise

Anyway, a few years back he and his club mates were merrily circling Stonehenge (at strictly legal heights of course) when they were descended on by a police helicopter. It got a little too close for comfort so they all headed on back to base. Brian needed to refuel on the way home so he landed at an empty airstrip, and put the spare jerry-can of fuel in the tank. At which point a police car came haring up the runway, screeched to a halt and a policeman leaped out. (TBH there was probably very little leaping out of the car at 4AM, but let's not let the truth get in the way of a good story).

"Are you the owner of this vehicle sir"?

Brian, quaking, admitted that he was.

The conversation that followed involved the policeman telling Brian that there was a no-fly zone around Stonehenge that morning, and that Brian and his club mates had been in violation of it. Brian pointed out that there had been no NOTAMs notice to this effect and that they did this every year, then mentally made a note to check the NOTAMs back at the club just in case. The policeman took all of Brian's details (at this point Brian got very worried).

Then the policeman got out his mobile phone and said:

"Could you take my picture with your plane?".


Britain's finest, we love them.

The longest day? At least Brian got home unarrested.

Picotee

Why picotee?

Well, I have an affection for words. Short words, long words, pretty words, real words, made up words. I like words. I read a lot.

Looking on my favourite dictionary site http://www.onelook.com/ for a synonym in a gardening context, I stumbled a gardening word list in the "P" region. On the page was was the word "PICOTEE -- Term applied to a narrow band of color on a pale ground at the edge of a petal."

It rang a little bell. On the wall of our snug (which is a small room lined with books off the main living room, (the deerhound sleeps there)) there is a copy of a hand coloured print of my father's mother, Mary, on horseback. She was a keen point-to-point rider in her youth.

The horse's name was Picotee. Apparently he was her favourite horse. I wish she was alive now so I could ask her about him.

It is a pretty word, and great name for a horse. Or a blog.

A slice of heaven

Two baby onions still muddy from the ground.
A handful of small pea and broad bean pods crisp from the parent plants.
The first ripe tomato from the greenhouse.
A pair of tiny carrots so small it is almost sinful to eat them.
One stripling of a courgette barely bloomed.

Sauteed in butter with a dash of mint picked still damp from the shady back of the garden, wrapped in flat bread.

Heaven is a promise of goodness yet to come. There is something about picking the very first produce that you have sewn, planted out, watered, staked, weeded and cherished this year. If you've never tried it I recommend it. Start with a single tomato plant.

But I must learn to make flat bread.

June Thunderstorms

We had thunderstorms today. They rolled up from the south coast and hung over Reading. The fringes dumped some much welcome rain on the garden and the light and sound show over the town to the east sent the dogs skulking inside.

After the clouds blew away to the north east and left clear air behind, we walked down in the valley near the River Thames, not a soul to be seen. The local rabbit population was making the best of the emptiness and were none too impressed by our presence. The dogs returned home nicely tired.



Meanwhile in the garden, the thyme is blooming.