Hey there! Hope everyone survived the wind yesterday (meteorological, of course, not gastronomical!) We have some really tall, thin trees at the bottom of our garden (must find out what they are) and I just love the rustling sound they make in the wind, and as my home office overlooks the back garden, that was the soundtrack to my Friday.
I was afraid that the wind would scupper the homemade plant tourniquet that I fashioned on Thursday! This is my first point.
On Thursday afternoon sitting in my home office, I was forced to watch in silence (because I was on a conference call) as a squirrel climbed up my second tallest Sunflower until its weight overcame it and it snapped over. To add to my dismay, it then picked one of my Sunflower Teddy Bears and sat on the fence post nibbling it without a care in the world!
Anyway, conference call duly completed, I hot footed it out to the garden to see if I could salvage the toppled Sunflower. It’s days away from flowering and I really want the poor thing to fulfil its floral destiny. So, I made sure its bottom half was securely inside the metal support, then added a taller bamboo support and tied it securely in a couple of times and then wrapped the snapped part in gaffer tape. I then had to sit and watch yesterday as the wind buffeted it all day. I was expecting by today, for its leaves to be wilted, but so far it seems to be holding up. Fingers crossed enough goodness is getting up that stem to allow it to flower on.
Moving on to the greenhouse and I finally have what looks like tomatoey success appearing in the tomato jungle!
I’ve no idea what type of tomatoes these are as I got the labels mixed up when I potted them on, but all the plants have flowers so hopefully I’ll get some of each of the three varieties that I planted. Just need it to stay warm enough for them to develop. To be honest, given how late I sowed them (because I changed my mind about growing them) I’ll be happy if I just get one tomato! As you can see, they’ve completely taken over my greenhouse. I was intending to take some cuttings to get myself some free plants, but there’s no room!
The only thing I do have room for in there is my pepper plant.
This is one of the first two peppers that grew on the plant weeks ago and I’ve left it and left it to ripen because I prefer my peppers any colour other than green, but I was starting to doubt that it would ever change colour, so I was delighted to see this morning a very definite red tinge to it! It’s a bit tricky to see in the photo, but if you squint at the back of it, you may just see the redness developing. it’s tied up to any support I could find in the greenhouse because there are seven peppers growing on it, so it’s somewhat top heavy. Hooray!
Continuing with the veg theme for now, I harvested my carrots this week – isn’t there something very satisfying about the pop with which they come out of the ground?
They’re not the biggest carrots in the world, but they’re mine and I grew them so I’m happy. We had a couple with a chicken dinner in the week and they were delicious. I haven’t brought myself to eat the one with legs yet because it’s cute, but I guess I should steel myself to chop it up and devour before it’s too late. If feels like we should have some kind of ritual death ceremony for it.
Moving back to the non-edible, and I have quite a few seed heads around the garden. Some of them may have already scattered themselves but I might be able to harvest some seeds to save for next year.
Left it right, we have Aquilegia (which itself, self seeded from somewhere unknown), Welsh Poppies which were a beautiful yellow (also self seeded on our bistro) and Nigella which I grew from seed and which flowered beautifully, but somewhat short lived. I have to decide whether to save these seeds to grow more next year, or whether to keep them to use in the kitchen – they’re delicious stirred into rice.
Finally I’m going to finish with one of my favourite flowers of this year as it probably won’t last much longer now that the weather’s going decidedly Autumnal (sob!)
Delightful, dazzling, delicate Dahlia. I really think I could become a Dahlia enthusiast if I had the time and space to dedicate to them. As it is, I satisfy myself with buying one or two each Summer and enjoying their gorgeousness for a couple of months. This year I’ve enjoyed this one more than usual because it lives in a pot on our bistro where I spent much of my time furloughed and it’s right in my eyeline to the side of my laptop now I’m back in the home office.
There’s my Six. I’m off to do some cross stitch now while I wait for Tesco to deliver our shopping, then I’m off out for an afternoon tea with my best friend and, would you know it, we’re having it in a garden centre! I feel a purchase coming on!
As ever, check out the Propagator’s blog for more Sixes.
TTFN!
Green Girl Gardener 
The squirrel probably needed the sunflower more than you did anyway (although it would have been polite to take it without breaking the adjacent sunflower.).
Those tomato plants are impressive for being contained.
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