Apologies for yesterday, but I did warn you that there mightn't been an update - visits to Azay-le-Rideau take time, emotional energy and a bit of recovering from. But this morning I was up and about and ready to seize the day, so relatively promptly to the market in Baugé. If there is one thing that would convince me to grow our own vegetables, if I didn't already, it was standing in a queue for 25 minutes this morning for the fruit and veg stand!! Unfortunately we are in that gap in the year when we don't have much variety, other than leeks and sorrel, so have to buy in things like citrus, carrots and (joy of joys) mangetout peas. The queue for fish was much shorter and the options almost overwhelming - in the end I got a couple of pollock tail filets, which will take a sorrel sauce very nicely.
This afternoon was spent at The Shack (we will catch up on the funeral that we recorded shortly), and while John spent a happy couple of hours tinkering with ride on lawn mowers, I finally got round to sowing a couple of patches of bee friendly flowers in the Fergus memorial shrub bed - none of the shrubs are big enough this year to take up the whole plot, so it is better to fill the gaps with flowers than leave the couch grass to take over again.
I like to start planting my spuds on Good Friday and then make sure they are all in by the third week after Easter - well Easter was a bit of a blow out this year. I had to work Good Friday, then the Azay project had to take precedence, so it is only today that I finally started on planting the potatoes, with the first 16 in. It is jolly hard work, not least as the plot hasn't been used before, just rotavated and left, so it is all to do. I'm hoping to get another 16 in tomorrow morning, but first I get to see if I can still move!!
During one of my rest moments, I watched various insects working their way along the row of flowering broad beans - this one is a dark blue carpenter bee (I think - masonry bees are smaller and make nests in inset screw holes in our woodwork, while the carpenter bees seem to like living in our back wall). I applauded her industry!
Once the planting and sowing was done, and I had tidied away my stuff, I beat the bounds and admired the apple tree in blossom - either Canada or Russet I believe - the apples don't look particularly nice, but if the tree and the other one like it do their thing again this year, we can do a single variety juice pressing in the autumn, and this variety of apple makes a really tasty apple juice.
More tomorrow!
Comments