Bean there....

Been there, done that, got the tee-shirt is the semi-ironic response to many a tale of woe, usually prefaced by Tell me about it! which in this context usualy means the exact opposite: please don't tell me any more about your personal disasters.

But I will tell you about our runner beans.  This year, we really have been there with our beans.

As I prepared to uproot an unproductive row I worked out what had gone wrong.  So here is my little list of what not to do.

Climate.  It has been hard.  Our spring was very cold.  Runner beans, unlike broad beans, are not native to Europe.  We propogated them in the greenhouse.  There is always a wait until the last frosts are over.  Perhaps we waited too long.

After that it was hot and dry.  Beans are thirsty plants. We did not water them enough.

Nurture.  This year we made a big mistake.  Normally we fill bean trenches with well rotted kitchen waste and plant out beans on top.  This year we did not allow enough time for it to rot down.  Result - germination of Jerusalem Artichoke peelings and potatoes.  These competed with the beans and almost choked them out of existence.

Seed.  We have been saving seed ever since we got here.  But unlike an older friend who selects his best pods, we did not save the healthiest beans.  We ate them.  You reap what you sow.

New year, new season, fresh beginnings.  Thank goodness we have time to learn.

Seed Packets, Small Print and Spinach

I found that the most enjoyable thing teaching English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL), was the use of realia, that is, you take an everyday object, a tin of tomatoes for example, and exploit the possibilities for all they are worth.  Food and drink have their own vocabulary.  As do seed packets.  So here is a brief reflection.  It is the season for autumn sowing and my kind family have just made a birthday gift to my husband.  Let's start with the spinach.

This is no common or garden spinach.  The luscious red-veined baby leaves in the photo on the front and the name itself F1 Reddy tell us that it is a type of hybrid.  This would take rather a lot of space to explain, and if I were clever with blogs I would have a blue instant link to the RHS website.  (You can find it listed on my page).  If I were in the classroom I would have satisfy myself that I understood this before I taught others.  Be that as it may, there was one sentence in the small print that caught my eye: F1 Hybrid seed is expensive to produce and should be handled with care.

Seed is precious.  I believe this applies to all seed, hybrid or not.  Let us be grateful for it and handle it with care.  Here is a verse from the Psalms:

He who goes out weeping, carrying seed to sow.
Will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with him.

Psalm126:6

Gloves Off

We had a lovely break in the Borders.  As we travelled over hill and dale we looked out of coach windows and commented on other people's crops - oh,look, sweetcorn; they're harvesting over there; potatoes flowering, hmm.  Sheep.  Sheep again.  Cows...

This afternoon it was back to the allotment. 

I noticed that after a couple of hours, my nice pink gardening gloves were discarded.  I needed to put my hands back in the soil.  

It is far more satisfying to be weeding your own stuff than watching others grow. 

Setting Point

I have been making preserves this week with the fruit from our allotment. Yesterday it was blackberry and apple jam, today apple butter which is a variety of sweet chutney.

My jam-making efforts, in contrast to my chutneys, have not always been a success.  Jokingly, I refer to my husband as the 'jam man'.  Three years ago I promoted my damson as a good sauce for ice cream, such was its runniness. 

However, this time I recognised the setting point.  In times past I tried the trick with the cold saucers, I examined the drips from the wooden spoon, I became scientific and stuck in the sugar thermometer in seach of the elusive 221 degrees.  This time I knew.  I am not even sure how I knew but I did; it was something to do with the viscosity of the mix, the rate of the bubbles, the resistance as I stirred. 

That was it: warmed jars out of the oven, lovely hot blackberry and apple spooned in with a ladle, waxed disks in place, covers and lids as it cooled.

I know now, and I will no longer apologise in that self-deprecating way.  I can make jam.

Levels

This weekend we drove to a nearby country park.  It was quiet and apart from a few dog walkers and cyclists we had the place to ourselves. 

As soon as we were parked and out of the car we noticed the housemartins on the wing very low over the open meadow.  We sat for a while by the little lake where some ducks and moorhens were dabbling about and then went up a slight incline to an overgrown field.  Thistledown drifted across the furrows in the breeze.  Grasshoppers, disturbed by our footsteps, leapt for safety into the grass.  Butterflies drifted in and out of the brambles.  High in the sky fluffy white clouds were blown in from the west. 

All lived and moved in and through the unseen air at their own level from the chirruping grasshoppers to the ducks quacking as they splashed down, from the ephemeral butterflies to the ever-changing clouds; from dogs let off the lead scampering about to cyclists freewheeling down the slope with the wind in their faces. 

The ever-moving air supports and sustains us.  "Let everything that has breath, praise the LORD." (Psalm 150)

No more coddling for cydia pomonella...

commonly known as the codling moth...

Once more, friends, the clue is in its Latin name.  And the external signs that the larvae have been at work are fallen apples with taletale brown skin blemishes and cores filled with frass. 

Next season I resolve to hang pheromone traps from the branches, girdle the trunks with grease bands. 

Meanwhile, I make the most of this fallen fruit with blackberry and apple muffins, blackberry and apple crumble and my latest experiment, courtesy of the Hamlyn book of preserves, apple butter. 


But apples would far better be blemish free and on the tree.

Three frogs in a pond

I do not usually write parodies, but I attempted this one.  The original is found in an old poetry anthology: Grass of Parnassus (1936) and is entitled Four Ducks on a Pond by William Allingham (1824-1889).

Three frogs in a pond,
Black liner they rest upon,
A grey sky of July,
Six little bulging eyes
What a happy surprise
To remember with delight -
Three frogs in the night!

The biggest sunflower...

Here's a picture of a self-seeded sunflower which sprung up in this bed for the second year in succession.  I tried to move some others earlier in the season, but the slugs ate them.  I am so glad that I left this one where it was.  If you look very carefully you may see a bumble bee at its centre.