Mole meals

Rats. The moles have beaten me to them. Half a row of thick juicy carrots reduced to ironic tops thanks to the moles.

Actually, I’m rather surprised they haven’t eaten more of my vegetables.   They burrowed under two rows of the dwarf French beans (the rock hard seeds can’t have been palatable) and stirred the soil below the cabbages.

So I should be grateful that it’s just a few carrots.

Luckily I had a lot more that were ignored. But just to be safe I dug them all up today.   What am I saying? We dug them up. We have friends staying at the moment and Eliza is proving to be an excellent garden helper.   French beans, carrots, fruit. We have been harvesting a great selection of treats.

And today was jam day.   Twelve pots of jostaberry and raspberry and then mirabelle and white nectarine jam. Her friends, family and teachers will be delighted with their tasty gifts.

Gardening? I haven’t done much more that harvest right now.   But I did do a spot of pruning.   The soft fruit bushes have produced their crops by now, so it was time to prune out the central stems to get in some air to the plant and just pay a bit of attention to the shrubs. I am guilty of being very lazy with the soft fruit orchard.   The jostaberries produce a huge amount of fruit no matter how little I attend to them.

But the black currants were looking a little tired. And I had barely a handful of white currants this year.

I wasn’t alone: a very cold winter didn’t seem to suit the white currants.   And to make sure I have more and more bushes of this wonder crop I have taken lots of cuttings from the pruned branches.

I have made three trenches of jostaberry, black currant and white currant prunings behind the potting shed. It is cool (ish) and near to a water butt, so I might even remember to slosh a bit of water their way over this hot summer season.

It is a bit hot to do much else. Well, I did go up to town to see if my chipper has come back from the repair shop. Alas no. But it does mean that I’m not driven to try and make mulch from all the sticks in the parking area. So it’s a mini holiday for me.

Artur is naturally making the most of the heat by snoozing through it. This is his favourite morning chair as the sun hits it around 830am and will keep him warm and happy until the sun reaches overhead and he is forced to choose a more cooling spot. I don’t actually know where his favourite spot is at the moment. Nor does Daniele who came looking for him today. Bad cat. Not doing his pet duties at both houses right now.

I’ll have to have stern words with him. If he stays awake long enough.