And I'm feeling blue…
Monday 9 August
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For once in my gardening life, I have staked the dahlias properly. On planting them out as rooted cuttings, I put chestnut pales in the corner of the beds and suspended a layer of jute netting above their growing tips. I have been rewarded with the most beautiful, long stems. I haven't grown Hamari Gold for a few years, but I cannot for the life of me I can't remember why because it is glorious. Liquid Desire on the other hand. However on offer the tuber was at the garden centre, I still shouldn't have been tempted.
Tuesday 10 August
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Visitors from Scotland to the Mill next door. We pop round for home brewed cider and supper cooked on a grill over a wheelbarrow. Their leeks are in full flower and their pears almost ready to drop. (Their orchard is only a hundred yards away from ours but it is some decades older and I think a lot damper. I still compare.)
Wednesday 11 August
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The dyeing garden, after a slow start, is looking wonderful. The Hopi sunflowers are huge and I have harvested the first heads. Rowena has sent me pictures of her first dye pot and I think these are going to be absolutely astonishing. The dyer's chamomile is also tall and bursting into bloom. I will dry these and add them to the stash that I already have stored in the studio.
Thursday 12 August
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I spend the morning with a woollen blanket over my head. I am determined that my podcast will sound soft, breathy and intimate like Nigel Slater's Christmas Chronicles, to distract from the fact that my vowels are sometimes rather flat and if I am not concentrating, I have the potential to sound like a Brummie. I always thought I wrote short, succinct sentences. Having tried to read them out without running out of breath, I now find that I do not. I am going to have to re-record because you can hear it in my voice and it makes me anxious just listening to it back.
Also, the first beans harvested. Mostly French and the odd runner. I got all my seed from Beans and Herbs this year and I cannot recommend enough.
Friday 13 August
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The woad vat has had its 48 hours of fermenting and test papers have turned pleasingly blue. I dip fabric carefully into the bucket to avoid oxygenating it, and then hang it on the line in the orchard. It does not look promising but I think that perhaps it takes a little more exposure to the air to turn blue. Hours later, the fabric is resolutely parchment coloured. My mood is not helped by Christine Lewis throwing up a picture of her woad vat and its gloriously aquamarine results. Mood improved again by half a bottle of fizz in the orchard with pizza as Jess has come to visit on her way to Abergavenny.
Saturday 14 August
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The greenhouse is too hot, and the tomatoes are suffering. The outdoor ones are verdant and lush and producing beautiful fat red tomatoes. The ones under glass look thirsty and yellow. I could paint shade onto the glass, but I want to warmth for seed starting and so I move the tomatoes into the courtyard and put up more staging in the greenhouse. Now is the time for thinking about hardy annuals and for definitely getting on with winter leaves.
