Wednesday 17 June 2020

Elderflowers and Broad Beans

A harvest day: I harvested 17 broad beans for supper, and Benedict Ambrose bottled 16 litres of elderflower champagne. A very, very clean bathtub was involved in the latter.

Our neighbour Sandy has returned from a double-stint in the North Sea. He is loudly singing.

In other garden news, I discovered another runner bean; it was hidden among the flourishing baby gem lettuce in the trug. The aphids have chomped wee holes in its leaves. They have also been chomping on the radish tops, but so far they have left the lettuce alone.

Sandy was interested in the large plant in the plastic pot beside the half-barrel.

"Courgette," I explained.

B.A. was exhausted from his champagne-making exertions, so we just had a short walk around some lovely Victorian row houses.  We would quite like a Victorian row house as our next rung on the property ladder, as long as it had a garden.

In addition to the 16 litres of elderflower fizz, we are the proud owners of 2 litres of almost one-year-old blackcurrant vodka. The vodka still has the blackcurrants in it; I am waiting for Advent before bottling it.

At lunchtime I underscored all the adjectives in Chapter 3 of The Eagle of the Ninth. Sutcliffe blesses many of her nouns with an adjective (sometimes two), and so do I,  I see.

2 comments:

  1. RE: aphids. I recently read that cucumbers keep garden pests away when sitting in an aluminium pie tin because something in the cucumber reacts to the aluminium and gives off a scent that the pests can't stand. Maybe that would keep your aphids away.

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  2. Thank you! That sounds like a great idea!

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