Bank Holiday

Gardening, gardening and more gardening, it seemed today. The YFG and I spent the afternoon weeding three of the six garden beds, achieving some success, but there is still work to be done. The soil we bought and used to make the beds seems to be disappearing and more organic material is needed in these beds, probably sooner rather than later. We took a photo tonight to show a before and after scenario - the bed at the top has been weeded and we are in the process of doing the lower one. I might get it done tomorrow, if the weather is fine in the evening.


As I have mentioned before, we haven't planned far enough in advance this year, so we have some empty spaces now that some of the crops have been harvested. In the top bed, though, we still have dwarf beans thriving alongside lettuce and some chard. In the lower bed, there are some butternut squash plants, which have got some very small squashes on them and I have my fingers crossed that they will actually manage to ripen before the frosts start. There are more lettuces there as well and some baby carrots.

We did have the vegetarian meal that I thought about last night - it turned out to be a curry with courgettes, tomatoes, potatoes, green beans, mushrooms, onion and peppers. The first four veg in that list are all home-grown, but the potatoes were grown by a friend and given to us. It was a really great feeling to eat a meal in which we had produced so many of the ingredients.

The FH thought that he would take the FGs to a local country show this afternoon but they returned home within 20 minutes of leaving, very disappointed. The show was in the process of being taken apart, all the exhibitors were leaving or had already left and the whole thing had been a disaster for them. It had been meant to run for the whole of the weekend but it seems that no-one came to the show - there were no "customers" so the exhibitors were packing up early and who can blame them?? One wonders whether this was a result of the current economic climate, and people just don't have the spare cash to attend this sort of show at the moment - or was it lack of publicity on the part of the organisers so that the general public were not really aware that it was on? Personally, I suspect a bit of both! There is another similar show not too far away next weekend, so perhaps we will go to that and try to see what is happening - I know that this one has been well advertised, so if there are not many people there, it is more likely to be lack of spare cash to spend!

One of the white girls saying, "Goodnight!" after being put back in the hutch. There are three white girls who are identical, so we have found it impossible to name them as we can't tell them apart! They are quite thin and so we are trying to feed them up a bit.

Tomorrow promises a busier day out and about - the FGs are doing sports, and the FH and I are going shopping for seeds at a garden centre that I have heard has reduced all its seeds to 50p a packet, so I am hoping that they still have some when I get there! I heard that Lidl was going to have fruit bushes in last week but by the time I got there at lunchtime, they only had redcurrants, a white currant and some blueberry bushes left. Will report back on whether this trip is more successful!