Catching up.

I'm still here - I know it's nearly 2 weeks since I last wrote anything but I've  been busy with one thing or another.  Still watering the vegetables on a twice weekly basis but there are less to water now as the borlotto beans are beginning to dry out and are being picked for seeds and  the sugar beet is frozen,  but the cauliflowers, swedes, carrots, kohlrabi, chillis, peppers, aubergines, tomatoes, cabbages, kale and sprouts all need water still.  And we mustn't forget the strawberries.  Picked half a kilo this morning and we now have about another 30 runners potted up into old yoghurt pots.  The roots haven't yet come out the bottom of the pots so I'm leaving them for a few more weeks,  last year I planted them into a new bed at the end of September but lots of them died off.  I think it's still too hot - 30° at 4pm today -  they need the sunshine for the fruit but it's too much for a small plant to cope with.

Filled the drier with very ripe tomatoes this morning, they haven't been picked for a week and were very red and juicy.  Kept enough in the kitchen for us to eat until the next batch have fully ripened.  63° in the drier at 4pm, still getting very hot in there, even though the sun is lower in the sky.

I was away for a mid - autumn break last week from Tuesday till yesterday lunchtime.  John was chief vegetable waterer, dog walker and cook.  He's renamed Monty and Pip "the clingons" as they didn't leave his side during that time.  Normally they come for walks with me  and first thing in the morning they come to my side of the bed to make sure I'm awake.  But of course there was nobody there so they were a bit confused, especially Pip.  I have a suspicion that she slept up on the bed to be close to him at night as well. 

So that just about sums up the past fortnight,  we had friends over for dinner one night and they stayed here before going back to England the next morning,  but apart from that we've been doing the usual things.  The red chillis are strung up under the terrace drying, there are bunches of sage drying in the breeze too,  I've pruned down a geranium that had got way too big and collapsed on top of a sage bush, John has rebuilt one of the raised vegetable beds that was edged with  pallet wood but is now done with mini-bloques,  (half the thickness but full sized in height and width)  and we have plans to do the other 2 beds before next spring and fill them with fresh compost to give the plants a really good start in life.  We don't have many almond trees but the 2 closest to the house have been picked, husked and stored.  Now we need to get the other trees picked before the almonds drop off and roll down the slope into the  brambles.