Summer 2008 Overview - The Good, the bad and the ugly

This year, despite the weather office saying that this August has been the wettest and most miserable since 1942! – it has been very good for me on the allotment – despite the little time I have managed to spend there between all the visitors but we had a decent crop of garlic, shallots, potatoes, French green beans and tons of tomatoes!! I have processed about 10kgs of tomatoes for the deepfreeze. I have liquidised them, oven roasted them and whizzed them into pasta sauces and even made tomato soup and still they keep coming!! If anyone wants some seeds of the “Peacevine” tomato which has been the best producer this year let me know and I will pop some over ot you. It is an old heirloom variety which I got from a seed swap and comes from the Victorian era - I have been really impressed with it. We also got a good crop of gem squash and about 4 lovely big Hubbard squash. My mielies have still not fruited yet – they are quite late, but I am sure that we will get some good mielies as they are looking very healthy.

My green peppers and aubergines have been a disaster as have the melons – I do not think that I will try them again next year – a waste of time and effort. I must get Ron to bring me some more seed back with him in December – I have no more mielie nor hubbard squash seeds left. I also harvested my first load of Swiss Chard last Saturday and managed to get half the potatoes lifted and all my leeks in – a bit late but we have had really good rain since Sunday I am sure that they will catch up.

What a crazy Summer

We just got Jacquie and Mom and the kids settled int otheir new home and just managed to get everything cleaned up and back in its place and my sister Debbie came over for a month to visit us from New Zealand.

It has been really lovely having this time to catch up and get to know each other again. We have been very busy as Debbie and I went to London for four days and did all the touristy things and then the ladies popped over to France for the week-end to see a friend of mine. In the end poor Jacquie could not go as her passport was in with the children’s Visa applications. We had hoped to have it back by the time the trip came around.

Debbie really enjoyed her visit and I think she managed to charge her batteries up. She had been looking after Krystal’s son (4 years old), Seth full time almost for the last 9 months and was really worn out. I know why the Lord gives us children when we are younger! I think if I had to have a baby now I would either eat it, or put it down and forget where I left it!!

I was thinking after Debbie went home how really sad it is that we loose touch with each other not living close. Only now I appreciate how much fun it was growing up with all our cousins – going fishing and camping together etc. Now I am sure that I would walk past my cousins children in the street and not know who they were – for that matter I think I could walk past some of my cousins and not know them either! Although at the time when we were growing up with all the squabbles and fights you wished you were an only child.