PTC Apples

'Katy' is cropping really well this year and they are delicious!  At least the hens only eat the windfalls.

Hen Damage!

The girls discovered my beetroot!  Looks like a plague of locusts descended - quite biblical I s'pose.  Oh well; the good side is: these beetroot won't bolt now!  Only the leaves eaten - no harm to the actual beet.

The Perfect Toadstool

Fly Agaric alias Amanita Muscaria

I took this picture just because it reminded me of Big Ear's house!

Al's New Garden Arch

A rainy Saturday meant that we could no longer postpone painting Al's new arch.  Well........we say Al's but it was actually the design of the Head Gardener and made up by Lanes (Agricultural Engineers at Stanford Bridge)  But to have an arch at all was definitely Al's idea.  We figured that it could depict Worcestershire's emblem of the black pear which we already had following a re-spray.  It seemed another excuse for Pear Tree Cottage to have another pear feature in the garden!

Erecting the arch and ensuring that it was exactly upright and square took a little muscle and weight - mostly all Chris's!!  The artistic and elegant curves meant there was no handy spot to hammer it into the ground.

All this was a welcome excuse to evacuate the partially dismantled kitchen.

Harvest Time at PTC

At long long last and despite prolonged drought conditions, fruit and veg are cropping well.  We have bumper crops of plums, damsons, pears and apples in the orchard.  Replacing the vegetable patch soil with new premium top soil has really paid off.  All that hard and desperately disheartening slog in the frost and snow in heavy and clinging clay has really paid dividends - thank goodness!  We are enjoying juicy fresh beetroots, carrots, cabbages, runner beans like never before. the Jerusalem artichokes are really tall and the sweet corn have cobs (despite being put out a little later than ideal) The chickens have only just discovered the beetroot leaves and are shooed off in no uncertain terms!  Tomatoes are now cropping well in the greenhouse and a late cucumber has just started.

After the recent rainy spell, the grass has greened up and lost its brown and parched appearance.  With weather warnings of further and prolonged heavy rain predicted, we hope that the chickens will learn to shelter and not remain in the open looking very wet and bedraggled.

Chicken Buffet Lunch

Sunday lunch at the chickens table!

Burwarton & District Annual show

Two days off in a week!  Well, one can't miss Burwarton!  It was a great show apart from the feral children who annoyed everyone with their loud and disruptive behaviour in the grandstand. No sign of any security despite the fact 2 panels of security fencing being removed by show officials!  This meant that 12 or more out of control children were actually inside the arena perimeter and running riot during displays!  We took ourselves off to the far (and quieter) end of the grandstand.  The catering arrangements in the member's tent were a joke and run by incompetents with mile long slow queues and hungry, frustrated and complaining visitors!  Apart from this; it was a really lovely show with huge numbers of people.

http://picasaweb.google.com/PamsPhotographs/BurwartonDistrictAgriculturalShow2010#