The Thousandth Post

As in every gardening season, I suspect, since Adam delved and Eve span, there was some good news and some not so good. The potatoes, as I suspected, had relished the rain. We dug some First Earlies, and relished them. The courgettes were less happy – they must have missed the sun – but we’ll have plenty in August. Courgettes are much more fun to grow than to eat, anyway.

Carrots promise well, beetroot disappoints. And so forth. There was no sign whatsoever of rocket (arugula) or kale, the veritable garter stitch of vegetable growing. I suspect slugs rather than rabbits. I don’t think rabbits have been back to my little enclosure, and anyway rabbits don’t like rocket very much. Too peppery for them.

Here is my “raised bed” with which I continue delighted. The empty-seeming squares have been re-sown largely with salad stuff, their previous contents either eaten or despaired of. A square foot of spinach is just right for lunch for two.

The opium poppies have turned up. They find empty, cultivated soil as unerringly as pussy cats do. I always leave a few for next year's seed, but I don't think I need worry. They'd be here anyway. They look just like the poppies in pictures of Afghani farmers with their proud moustaches, but I've never had any luck extracting heroin. The magazines say that British poppies don't get enough sun to develop any -- but they would say that, wouldn't they?

The picture shows them among the broad beans.

I scarcely knit while we were there. I’m moving, slowly, down the second sleeve of Ketki’s gansey. I found it sort of tough, the tight circle and the tight gauge. Maybe it’s time to switch to two circulars.

Back here, last night, I turned the first corner of the melon stole.

The modest pile of post included no knitting magazines, but did bring the July Yarn Yard Club offering. It’s based on the colours of Natalie’s strawberry bed this time. It’s time for me to sign up again, as I will do. I can’t go on much longer; I’ve fallen well behind, and soon there will be no room for the yarn. But for the moment, I can’t bear the thought of a new month with no blue package.

The new Knitting magazine – I didn’t give up on it, after all – has a plug for QueerJoe on its recommended-blogs page, and I had the great pleasure of being the one to tell him. I’ve never seen a plug for Franklin on such a page, although I cannot imagine that anyone who reads knitting blogs at all doesn’t read Franklin. Editors must be scared of Dolores.