Garden news

Well, the big news from the garden is…

More than half way through August the beans are finally starting to flower. If I’m really, really lucky, I might actually harvest some before the first hard frost kills them. Oh, goodie.

I made my first batch of courgette and gorgonzola soup yesterday. Yum. Of course, the courgette in question, as previously noted, was not from my garden, but a friend’s. Since their Epsom salts bath, my courgettes have been busy producing flowers – all female. Argh.

One thing did cheer me up a few days ago when I went down to pick some blackberries. I spotted this guy.

Mind you, seeing him also made me a little sad. A couple of years ago, I posted this photo and commentary.

Every summer for several years now there’s been a little tree frog living in this hanging basket. I don’t know if the attraction is the finger puppet nun or the finger puppet Vishnu or the fact that I always grow basil in this basket. (In case you can’t spot him, to the right of the nun.) I don’t know if it’s the same little tree frog returning summer after summer. Could this be possible? Short break while I go on Google and discover that North American tree frogs commonly live for nine years. Holy moly! This could be the same frog. How cool is that?

There’s been no spotting of a frog in the basil basket this summer. (Why grow basil in a hanging basket? To keep the fucking slugs away. Basil, it seems, is their absolute favourite meal.) That little frog in the basket always made me smile. (Assuming, of course, that it actually was the same frog year after year.) The only thing different this year is that somehow over the winter the nun finger puppet went missing. Perhaps she really was the attraction. Or perhaps my little tree frog had had his nine years.

Meanwhile, over at TJ’s, she’s got pumpkins growing out of fucking gravel.

Compare and contrast my two stupid, barren courgette plants and Jan managing to grow pumpkins in gravel, (Okay, okay, there is actually soil underneath the gravel, but still.)

If I hadn’t already decided to give up, the sight of those pumpkins would have pushed me over the edge.