Hello - I now blog here. Come over for some hyssop tea?

Two views of Dead Eye taken on different days last week:

What 'er indoors has been doing while she's been ...errr...indoors:





Meanwhile, this is my own composition:





Be nice, that was my best swede.

Some greenhouse scenes, in March, waiting for the great leap forward:

Lunch: from plot to plate in ten minutes!



That white blur is Venus. 23 million miles away. TWENTY THREE MILLION MILES!




Hard at work again.

A trip to the Lake District and some new things to point my camera at:

Finally, some snow.

Some images from a winter weekend walk in the hills near home:

It must be nearly February. I have swede, sprouts and kale in abundance - but not a lot else. The leeks didn't get sown in sufficient numbers and the warm autumn made all but one of the purple sprouting brocolli crop far too early. The bunching onions have been a revelation, however. I've got maybe 150 when stored maincrop onions are a mere memory. Admittedly the shallots are still ok and there's garlic galore from store, but bunching onions supplemented by leeks = year round onions.

This is sprout Rubine. They taste even better than they look - even the 'tops' are like a sweet kale.

After the flood... these pictures are taken from pretty much the same spot - in summer...

...and yesterday...

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The local fauna has changed too. From contented cows to... contented beasts of the water:

On the menu this week: kale, brocolli and cauliflower. This may be regarded as a form of torture in some parts. But kale with plenty of garlic and a little lemon juice is seasonal eating chez-nous.

It feels like another planet from the perspective of a windy, hail-y and increasingly cold January...but these are some of my late summer pickings...

Yu Choy! At long last a couple of plants got to the table without bolting or being obliterated by slugs. A brassica with tender stems the shape of very slender rhubarb.

Winter Squash. Unfortunately all eaten now...

Romanesco calabrese thing! 'Veronica' I think...

The last of the chillies and tomatoes picked in late October... I sowed some more today.

Sadly, the last of the red currants. We've been using these in the juicer: mixed with a couple of apples. The kids like the resulting juice so much I've invested in three more bushes!

Pizza for our evening meal today: all this lot went in plus home-grown onions, garlic and pepper. Providing for the family at this time of year is as easy as falling off a log. Wonder how they'll feel about nettle soup in April?

The tomatoes are big, but the aubergines are tiny - the remnants of a patio specimen tattered by the recent downpours...

One week, six tonnes of top soil, four tonnes of gravel and some autumn crops.

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Bunching onions to the fore.

An optimistic late sowing of runner beans growing over the arch, to be replaced by kiwis in November.

This bed was constructed earlier in the summer, and is already a jungle of borage, tomatoes (provenance unknown), asparagus peas, fennel (also unintended) and marjoram.

Along with purple french beans, garlic and herbs this lot went into the mix with some barley cous cous. The aubergine was delicious and the onions, well, I grew them from seed rather than sets, which makes them a rare delicacy around here.

My first aubergine. In fact there are now six - four black beauty and two tres hative de barbentane. The only thing I can think that I've done differently this year is to plant them in pots and neglect them...

At last, some rain...the pump in the allotment had dried up, the seedlings hardening off couldn't wait a moment longer.

What is this flower?

I found Tansy growing in a local hedgerow:

I've tried for the last three years to germinate this seed in my greehouse with no success!

This is a selection of yesterday's harvest: a few beans from my paltry climbing beans, a leaf or two from some kales, summer sprouting brocolli, courgette Tempra and a bunching onion Shimonita:

The bunching onion was great to cook with - like a huge welsh onion but with a texture only slightly coarser than a spring onion. Unfortunately, due to the intervention of our two year old, I only have a few more reaching maturity...but have about a hundred in pots awaiting planting out. If they are winter hardy I'd go as far as to say that they will replace bulb onions, especially those ridiculous sets, in my allotment in future.

There were no long distance views of merit on last night's walk - too much heat haze...but some interesting detail. I think this is Meadow Cranesbill:



There are a couple of small fields in the washlands area which are never cut and are full of cranesbill and meadowsweet (and nettles) at this time of year:



There are some nice bits of old and redundant field architecture:



And always a tree or two to appreciate...