A little harvest

Lunch. Tomato salad, of course.   It’s apparently the last day of sun and heat. Cold weather is forecast but no rain.   As a consequence I’m forced to do a lot of watering. This morning it was the sorry-looking potager.   I need to weed and sort it like mad.   But first I need to save the veg that are still persisting.

My small helper managed to get himself stuck inside one of the cloches, so we haven’t quite sorted out our relationship yet.   He is keeping his distance and howling.   But I’m working on him.

Being Thursday it was market day.   So I had to rummage about looking for enough cosmos for a bouquet for Madame Orisette.   I actually managed a big haul so that was great. And the smile on the face of M. Orisette is always worth the small effort.   Alas, Madame was too poorly to attend.

I didn’t need to buy any fruit or veg, but I did buy garlic just to keep M. Orisette’s till ticking over.   And I managed to book up Nicolas for some landscaping in November.   He has a market stall now, so it’s easy to track him down.

And then back with all the groceries it was time to mooch about and try and work out a list of things to do.   I am going to wait for the cooler weather to do any good digging work.   So for starters I picked up the fallen chestnuts in the shade garden.   They aren’t the edible variety, but boy do they germinate prolifically.   I am forever pulling out chestnut seedlings from this part of the garden.

Some of the shrubs here were looking parched, so a few buckets of water were needed.   And then I realised that I needed to water the hedge as well.   There is no pelting rain forecast alas, so out with the heavy hose and on with the laborious task of keeping these plants alive.

Oh for autumn rains.

My small harvest consists of a large vase of olives (with fruit) for the house. I cannot be bothered to pick the fruit and turning them into anything edible. The birds love them so much over the winter I think it’s far more useful keeping little birds alive than showing off with a jar of one’s own olives as an aperatif.