That summer feeling.........

The warm weather we had in June is now slowly fading in my memory as more rain is forecast for the oncoming days ahead. It has been a "bad" summer for gardeners as it started too hot and dry when the vege plot needed it the most which has now affected a lot of them with a result of very low yield of fruits.

We dug up our potatoes the other day and have never had such a pathetic harvest of it! Only 3-4 kg (!!) not worth the hard work that we put in - well, hubby's hard work this time as I didn't plant them in this year as you probably know - I was galavanting away in Malaysia! Blame it on acts of God - the volcanic ash in Iceland, to be exact and as I didn't managed to come home in time so he had to put them in. :) !!




Anyway, our raspberries are also having the same effect. Most of it eaten by birds/squirrels and also a few of them were broken off at the top as those big fat pigeons were seen sitting on them while pecking them off !! I counted 10 were broken the other day and all had good bunches of unripen berries on them too. Having said that we still managed to harvest about 6 - 8 kgs so far with half of that already been made into jam for this year. Pic above shows the jam being cooked before it was put in jars - about 14 of them!!. I hope I shall continue to pick them until the first frost and keep these back for tarts and maybe I will have a go at making some ice cream later in the year - maybe ? - I can try anyway.


We had given up on planting tomatoes for about 2-3 years when we had a very bad attack of what they called over here as the tomato blight - basically the stems and leaves go black and then the unripen fruits will get affected too which left us with nothing in the end. Well, this year my neighbour gave us 20 tomatoes seedlings as he planted too many of them and didn't want them to go to waste. We thought we give them another chance and see how it goes. So far I pulled up one of them as I thought it was showing some early signs of the same damage but (at the moment) the rest seems to be ok. Having said that I am still not too sure about a couple of them but as there are quite a good bunch of tomatoes on them and they seemed to be ripening I have left it. Judging from the above pictures we may be very lucky this year but fingers crossed!!


We had a late - very late - and small - very small - crop of radishes, just three of them in fact !! They are very spicy though nothing like the ones that we get from Tesco which were probably picked a week before they got to the supermarket.

As for our carrots, they seem to be doing pretty well. Last year we had a very good crop but as we had to go on our holiday we gave it all to my father in law which he said was very nice :)! We tried some the other day and they were indeed very fragrant and sweet. We normally save them for our salad instead of cooking them in order to get the real taste of it.



As you can see they are of all sizes and of all weird shapes and knobs !!


We have a very good sowing of beans this year - all 16 of them which went in the ground. They started off very healthy and seemed to have an abundant of flowers which beans will form when they are polinated. Unfortunately again I was told is probably due to the hot weather very few of them got polinated and I kept finding the dried blooms on the ground with nothing left on the stalk.

This is what we pick every other day compared to four times of that EVERYDAY last year! Another failure there !!

Just as well we are not relying on all these to survive as we will probably not have any vegetable to eat ! Hehehe!!

Better luck next year then !!

ENCORE EN FRANCE !!!!

We had another good holiday in France but this time we took my father in law with us. Robert helped with his brother laying the patio around the pool (first picture above) which took them 2 days and even then they had only managed to finish 3/4 of it ! It was really hot - too hot for those ang mohs really, to be out under the glaring sun with 28 degress celcius, especially for Robert - he was melting - literally, so not a good sight at all. Ha ha ha ! We didn't do much sight seeing this time around as we have already been to most of the tourists sites out there. However as we decided to abandon the "building" project we thought we would drop by one of the local parks i.e. with a landscaped lawn and gardens and an orchard with loads of fruits and berries especially raspberries, plums etc. I also came across which I think looked like a hibiscus bush (see picture below) I have never seen hibiscus blooms that big before and as it was the same colour as my capri pants (hehehe!!) Sarah said I should take a picture with it! Oh oh I think I need a haircut !!



Peter and Sarah's neighbour brought in 6 melons (!!) that she picked from the local fields near their villa. If you look at the first picture again you will see a big tree (walnut tree) on the other side of the pool and just about 2 meters from there are their neighbour's fields. This year they grown hay in those fields but last year crop was sunflowers which, as you can probably imagine the scenery then, looking out from the kitchen, must have been breathtaking!! (I guess that was how Van Gogh got his inspiration from !! ) Next year's crop will be melons. Her neighbour works in a local melon factory which harvests those fields and they tasted as sweet as nectar honey and, as a guess, I suspect that was due to them being ripened on the fields instead on transit to whichever country that they might be exporting to! (as a guess probably including UK asI have since been proven right !) The local peaches were yummy too and again they are so juicy as they were propably ripened on the tree itself - well, as they say, you win some you lose some !

I think I should give you a "tour" of their house by now - well I can try anyway from the pictures above. The second picture is the front view of the house; the opened front door takes you to the hallway [which leads you to the dining room on the left (which leads to the kitchen, and then to the swimming pool) and on the right of the hallway leads you to the lounge (the 3rd picture above shows the outside of that part of the house). There's a staircase which takes you to the three bedrooms, two with on-suite bathrooms and there is also a family bathroom upstairs too. There is an opened fire place (4 times the size of ours !!) on one end of the lounge with two big doors on each side and another one opens out onto the covered porch area where there is a purpose built-in barbecue, as shown in the 4th picture. You can see the roof covering the gravelled (stoney) porch area where the brown coloured bricked top of the barbecue is "peeking out" from behind of the bamboo on the right hand corner of the pic. You can also see the lake on the left of the picture which is their neighbour's. The garden/lawn area surrounding their house/villa (which they also own) is about 1 1/2 acres. Sarah has planted plums, walnuts and pears and she hopes to be able to harvest them in a few years time.

Although it was really hot out there the pool was far too cold for us to swim in unfortunately. The temperature gauge was only showing 21 degrees - way tooo cold for me !! Robert didn't go in either this time around. Maybe another time but probably not ever again, reason being the villa may be rented out to tourists next summer. No doubt they will as it is a lovely holiday villa but I don't think we will be able to afford the rent!

Au revoir France ........ pour le moment !! A la prochaine!