Since summer started we have been using our new sun umbrella. This has resulted in unexpectedly quiet meals as Rosie is scared of the umbrella and hides behind the sofa when the umbrella is up. Just have to hope that we don’t ever get burgled by a man with an umbrella. She has just about plucked up courage to come outside if the umbrella is up, but only by keeping her eyes firmly on the ground so she doesn’t establish eye contact with the scary beast that hovers above the table.
Our twig orchard is coming along nicely. We’ve now got a lime twig to go with our others. Within about 30 seconds of planting the lime all the leaves fell off, which was a tad disconcerting, however hopefully this was just shock at its arrival in its new home and not a result of exceptionally bad planting techniques. We now have a lime, lemon, peach, cherry and nectarine and two tiny olives, plus the three figs that we have grown from cuttings. We have room for 5 more, so one will be an almond, we’d like a grapefruit, but not seen them in our local shop, perhaps a pomegranate, an edible orange and something else.
We moved our vegetable patch this year. There is definitely something wrong with the soil where we had originally planned to have our vegetables. Nothing grows there – it is the one patch of the garden that is completely devoid of weeds. So we moved the chickens back into their pen – not something that I felt bad about as their idea of free ranging is to wander into the barn and stare through the gate at Rosie who stares back at them. A stand-off that could last for hours. They then wander back for a little something to eat before bed – in total ranging about 3 metres. Our chickens at Mineral House used to range for miles. We moved the chickens back because last year they nibbled the tops off the tomatoes when I planted them. I then planted tomatoes, peppers and some plug plants which we couldn’t identify, by our trees, which should make watering easier. I learned by our mistake last year of spreading things that need watering in different spots around the yard. We can now put the sprinkler out to do some of the watering.
I have high hopes of harvesting more than two peppers and a tomato this year….