First off, an apology - I was unable to do this blog yesterday as the Typepad system was down for renovation (always worrying), but today it is back, so here goes!
We have had rain - not the torrential amounts seen down south, but enough to encourage some things to really put on a spurt - the red cabbages have huge leaves, the size of dinner plates, so I am hoping that we will soon see a heart developing. Of course, I ask why I only bought 3 plants, but previous attempts have been disappointing at best. The cauliflowers are also looking quite fine, so I hope for a few decent heads in the spring. The agony of trying to grow a decent cauliflower is why they should be expensive in the shops!
The chillies I set off from seed in the late spring are now covered in ripening fruits and I have already frozen 30 or so, which should deal with our need for spicy curry and chilli con carne for a year. This time I grew two varieties, cayenne - the long thin ones, possibly from French Guyana, but a good solid favourite, and Jalopeno thanks to a free packet of seeds from Kitchen Garden magazine and probably about 5 years ago (they no longer provide seeds to European subscribers, so I no longer subscribe). These have been a bit of a revelation, at least in the kitchen. They take longer to ripen but the fruits are reliably hot and a bit juicier and plumper than the cayennes. I may have to try to save seed for next year!
The rain has also brought on the autumn flowers nicely and it was a real treat to see how the cyclamen in the One Acre Wood are starting to spread. It seems to take four or five years for a cyclamen corm to go from a seed that produces a small leaf or two, to one that can support one or more flowers, and this patch have been tantalising in that I seem to have waited well over four years for these ones to flower, but now they have! A real joy!
Autumn is also the time of nuts. October 1st is generally the official start of the walnut harvest, as ancient wisdom says that those that fall before that aren't good. This year that doesn't really work as the weather hasn't been "right", but the nuts are now coming off the good tree as well as all the others. We really need to be on war footing with that tree as it is the one with the tastiest and plumpest nuts and other "people" also like nuts.
When I went to check the trail camera yesterday, it was on its side - I thought perhaps a gust of wind had taken it, or a cat had been sitting on the log. So, I righted it and then checked the photos and footage. A first look at a daytime photo before the camera went over showed that there were visitors.
The five videos below show the marauding hoard and give an inkling as to what it is like to be investigated by a boar!
Something else has been getting the sweet chestnuts before me too, but that is a whole other story and not one I can comment on as the camera is too far away!
How long the boar will be in the zone, I don't know. I suspect that will be determined by the hunt and when they decide to clear out all wildlife, but for the moment, we continue to enjoy the spectacle.
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