vayabayapatchwork's Blog

After a semi self inflicted exile from the patchwork I went last weekend to start tyding everything for the new year and getting the feeling of some soil back in my hands. I don’t need to describe the pleasure and how time stops while working around the garden.

The photo is the last batch of tomatoes from last season. It is said that if the tomato plants that are not going to produce more fruit for the year you hang them upside down, the ones left on the plant will ripe. I have to say that most of them do so. How much this is due to the actual ripening process or because the plant keeps “sending” nutrients I can not tell.

This is the kitchen table after harvesting. No room for anything else!

The pumpkins are from last year, but the rest comes from this year’s crops. The tomatoes are being specially prolific. After the fiasco from the wall patch, I gave the greenhouse ones a copper treatment to prevent any problems. Once at home I tried to build a pyramid with them… I’m not sure I managed, though.

I brought some garlic and peppers, too. There are several varieties of pepper: bell, Italian, “Piquillo”…

As for the courgettes, only the small to medium sized ones will be used for cooking. The big ones will go into some goats diet.

Hidden underneath some of the peppers some lemons are giving a touch of fresh aroma to the rest.

As the autumn is showing its face

sieving into our pupils

purples, yellows and browns

there is always a corner

where the greenery of the summer

is still in full power.

My green corner is covered mainly

in intense green Bonbon squashes.

Let the leaves guide you

and look for the arrow

pointing at the smooth cucurbita

coloured in green and white.

September is one of my favourite months. The weather is normally just the way I like it: sunny with mild temperatures which allow the enjoyment of empty beaches and sort of warm sea water (good for cellulite open Atlantic ocean).

And as for the patch I only need to walk along the wall to pick the rewards from the effort mainly nature and a little myself have put into producing all different crops.

This photo is an example.

Today I’ve had a great help from two of my little students. They live in a flat in the nearest town and farming is some sort of exciting and rare activity they watch on Tv or read on books. And also as soon as they knew they could see/touch sheep, rabbits and chicken there was no excuse.

Finally, we arranged to have them one afternoon so they could enjoy some untidy not too properly lawned  land contact and I could have some free workers ;-P

They worked really hard. Boy enjoyed the messy dirty part and Girl preferred the picking and harvesting (and some eating at the same time).

After getting some compost we planted some sweetcorn and pumpkin from vegetableseeds.

The raspberries were the treat for being such hard working children. I love to see enthusiasm in everyone, but especially in young people.

Red Kalibos. Just only one of the red cabbage plants I had did actually formed a close head (not sure about this expression). And so I decided to save it for the autumn and winter minestrone soups. A little bit was left for some coleslaw, though… and perhaps some  quiche and… it all be gone!!

The strange looking plastic bags are vacuum sealed ones. Last Christmas we got a home vacuum sealer machine and it has been very well used since. It gives extra quality to the product that goes into the freezer, as it keeps a better texture and flavour of the food.
As I have not been possible to save many seeds for next year’s sowing

Last weekend we had dinner at some friends’ house. This was the box quickly assembled to present as a thankyou for the invitation.

Out of words

To explain

These photos

It is more than a hobby

It is a way of enjoying life

It is the smell of the fresh tomatoes

It is the shine of the huskery paper onion layer

It is the crispiness of the oregano and the smoothness of the basil

It is in the end the blend of Nature

Oregano has always been an indispensable herb in my garden as well as in my kitchen.But today, looking for a practical and pretty storage I realised that it is also a very good garden hourglass.You start spring with the green carpet waking up to the warmth and longer daylight hours.

Then, through the summer you can see the flower buds stretching and turning colour until finally they are ready for picking and seasoning the most delicious dishes.

And I only realised by accident when using a gift given last year for my name day: a very long narrow beautiful vase. Flowers looked really stylish and elegant. The only but was cleaning the inside having a very narrow top. Consequences were that, in spite of how much I liked the effect of the bouquets, it didn’t get to be used very often. So, last week when I needed a container for the oregano I thought of the lonely glass sitting idle on a shelf and this is it.

And today it was straw picking and piling to provide for the year ahead. I know it’s sunday, but farming doesn’t know about weekends when the weather is right. So after the typical siesta time and rightly so (hot today) we phoned our straw supplying farmer to check if  he had baled the straw.

We were so eager to start that we just drove to the assigned plot and he was still working there. Nevertheless, there was enough to start picking, especially with our little trailer

As the photos show Andy was the one doing the hard work and I was dragging and piling bales together in order to speed the loading up. It took us five trips of an average of 20 bales per trip, but now we have two very neat and high piles to cover our as organically as possible cared plants.

A good fun and rewarding day especially on a sunny one like today!!! And the surroundings couldn’t be better either…