Summer Gardening

Despite the slightly late and rather damp arrival of proper sunshine-y summer, we have managed to spend a fair amount of time fiddling about in the garden over the past few weeks.  The recent spurt of sunshine followed by rain has made the vegetable patch do very exciting (and slightly mad overgrown) things.

We have so far been enjoying fresh lettuce, a stuttering supply of radishes and some very teeny broad beans.

The very first harvest was turned into a miniature salad (served on a saucer and eaten with a cake fork for extra miniature-ness).

Things are getting a little more serious now however and we have had several courgettes and more substantial bean offerings, which yesterday I sauteed in butter with an onion, some fresh thyme, a splash of milk and some manchego cheese and stirred into pasta.  Just what two tired garden-potter-ers needed to replenish our energies.

We have also managed to wrestle a very few strawberries from the all consuming, slimy grasp of the slugs, and a fairly reasonable harvest of gooseberries which is impressive considering that the gooseberry bush lives in a tub and rarely gets watered.

Happily, gardening seems to involve quite a lot of replenishment of energies...

...or maybe that's just in our garden?!

(Homemade madeleines and coffee for a mid-morning boost)

The sweet peas are finally finally doing beautiful and heavenly-smelling things, I have a posy of them with some roses to keep me happy while I wash up.  It almost makes washing up enjoyable...almost.

The rhubarb is going great guns, is huge, and absolutely delicious.

Ditto to the herbs which have over-run the rather stingy space I allowed them.

We are now awaiting various things that are just hinting at being ready; the tomatoes have tons of flowers, there is a delicate purple tinge just arriving on the blackcurrants and there is a very exciting collection of little grey green raspberries clustering bravely atop the canes.

Now it's just a case of waiting and keeping a constant vigilance against any wildlife that tries to get to it all first!