welsh hills again

There is a moment in August when the crops come at you faster than you can pick them.  Remember this in December when all is bare and still.  I had a bit of an "Oh my God" moment, in the midst of almost too much plenty,  when I discovered that the beans I had thought were still leaf and no beans weren't that at all.  I lifted the sprawling leaves thinkingthat maybe they needed tying up and there they were in their tens and twenties and more, another vegetable to be eaten or frozen or preserved.  Don't fret and fume.  Half the world is desperate for what we have. The plum tree is only in its fourth year but is weighed down with fruit that its slender branches can barely hold.  It is a Victoria, the plums sweet and tart at the same time.  Funnily enough they are sweeter eaten raw than when cooked.  The plum crumble (don't you just love those words together?) which I made yesterday was delicious but nothing like as sweet as a single plum in...

You might think that living in rural Wales would have cured me of an addiction to glossy magazines of the Country Living variety but you would be wrong.  I am still a sucker for articles about artist and craftsperson Fionella who lives in her pink walled cottage in Suffolk with her daughter Saskia, her beautiful Irish wolfhound, Ossian,  or mischievous Jack Russell, Tyke.  The cottage has invariably been done up on a shoestring and has white painted floorboards, vintage textiles and Fionella's own art work on the walls.  Light streams into a country kitchen with a jug of wildflowers on the scrubbed wooden table.  The garden will always have a lot of lavender, roses and lady's mantle.  There will be a wrought iron table and chairs under the apple tree, the chairs with soft floral cushions and the table, covered with a hand embroidered cloth,  holding a jug of home made lemonade.  You will always wonder why you aren't living her...

Life is full up on the hill at the moment. The kitchen is still in progress. Here is Ian taking out the sink and then the new ceiling in all its newly plastered glory. Still to be done? Don't ask. It will happen, eventually. The garden is throwing stuff at us faster than we can eat it: cavolo nero, onions, chard, beetroot, potatoes, raspberries, blueberries, beans, salad stuff. And the cutting garden too is full: full of dark purple sweet peas, orange marigolds, orange and gold cosmos, black cornflowers and White nicotiana. There are jugs all over the house but I still can't keep up. And of course there are the projects which have totally stalled. The quilt which hasn't moved on since last November is lying in a box upstairs. At some point it will start whimpering reproachfully when I go by but just now it is dozing quietly. The socks which I dropped a stitch on in January have already got to that reproachful stage. Every time I go past my knitting bag they sigh heavily....

With very few words. July end of month is part of the series hosted by Helen at patientgardener