Harvesting Garlic and Planting Irises

The Propped Up Sidalcea

Today I harvested around one-third of the garlic. Zoe got her crop out before she went on holiday and today Bert drew my attention to it still growing scapes! I cut them all off as Bert said they would be depleting the bulbs. God! No-one told me how complicated horticulture could be. 

The scapes on the drying garlic

No seeds were sown but I did pot up some self-sown aquilegia, ash and sycamore seedlings that were growing in the garlic patch and I finished repairing the damage to the broad bean beds that suffered the kune kune attack. I'd say we lost half of the crop. I picked raspberries too. Early fruit yields have been very disappointing this year. The Beast From The East* must have got them at a crucial point.

Hair also on hold as I'd forgotten Tuesday is closing day at my salon. I shan't go tomorrow either as there are other places I want to be. The stranum isn't looking too awful since I stopped shampooing it. That's right, no soap has touched my locks for more than a fortnight now. Just plain, hot water in the shower every day.

The gravestone thing has been sorted out but not without an embarrassing faux pas. How was I to know that there are several monumental sculptors operating in the county, all from the same family and not really on speakers with each other?

Another thing. Bert took his walk along the back lane last night and came back all excited as he'd had a close encounter with a young and very huffy badger. I was jealous. Bert and Hannah are always meeting up with foxes and badgers on the back lane (they never have cameras) and I never see a thing. Bert was heading off for Gypsy Jazz with Les tonight and he said,

You should go out the back lane around half-nine tonight. The big field is bound to have foxes hunting frogs after the silage cut today. 

So I did. I brought my camera and not one fox did I see, nor even a frog. Just this lot.

Roy

Roy and the other two

The cat who goes for walks

...and Hubert's calves

You know what I didn't do today? Mop floors.

*The Beast From The East - what we on these islands call the cold wave that hit us late February-early March this year, but could also refer to the reptilian Vlad featured in the news this week. Whilst one world leader looked and spoke a shambles, Putin appeared to all the world a poisonous cobra ready to strike us all down. These are interesting, far too interesting times. 

One more thing, I was reading Glendinning's book on Leonard Woolf and this struck me.

Heartening.