Quiet days in Forges-l’Evêque

Much to be said for semi-creative idleness.  I do a spot of gardening around 06:00 when the weather is fine, and seem to fill the soon-to-be-charged-for garden waste bin once a fortnight.  I’ve been saving seed like a mad thing: if you’d like a county populated with marigolds, you need seek no further.  The little crimson dianthus have also seeded well, and we also have a few little packets of eschscholzia seeds.  Given the propensity of the verbena bonariensis to self-sow, we’ve harvested that as well.  The rudbeckias are looking a bit stressed by the wind and rain, but still give a striking patch of yellows, oranges and reds.  I’ll harvest seeds soon.  Not sure whether I’ve sown seeds or chaff from the chives, but at worst I’ll have wasted a handful of compost

We started some dwarf French beans indoors some weeks ago, and they are doing OK.  When we planted them out, I stuck in some more seed alongside the rooted seedlings, and they too are sprouting, so we’re hoping for successional crops.  The runner beans may give us a few more meals, and we have a few days’ worth of charlottes in the fridge (yes, I know, they should really be in paper bags in a cool dry place...) having emptied the last two bags a day or two ago.

Our little art club is doing another show at the drop-in Café in Edenbridge next month, so I’ve dug out a half dozen little canvases.  Two of them will go in NFS, but if the others fetch the odd tenner or so, so much the better for us and for the charity.

Give the intimations of mortality that surround us, we’ve booked another cruise, this time to the Fjords next spring.  Plenty time to dig out the thermals and woolly hats.

Too long stumm: discuss

Sorry to have been so long silent.  We’ve had one or two little excitements hereabouts lately, but survive to tell the tale - or better still, to keep it to ourselves.  The garden has been feeding us quite nicely with spuds, runner and French beans and the occasional tomato, and nourishing the senses with lots of flowers.  True, the roses are between flushes for the most part, but the Compassion climber has flowered pretty much continuously.  The rudbeckias have done wonderfully, and continue to do so.  We’ve started more dwarf French beans, and the runners look like they’ll feed us again once or twice.

Annie was here for a little stay last week.  The weather conspired against us, but we managed a visit to Standen, where the William Morris theme is enhanced at the moment by a little exhibition.  We also managed to have lunch outdoors one day at the Crown, which was pleasant, but our planned trip to the Farmers’ Market was thwarted by my lack of research: it wasn’t on at the Pantiles last Saturday, but in the shopping mall.  We discovered this only on returning home: given our visceral loathing of enclosed shopping arcades, we settled for what was in the fridge.  And the poor weather gave us the opportunity to sit and read quietly together and enjoy the great pleasure of companionable silence.

As for matters political, I’ll keep my thoughts to myself, for fear of boring you with views of which many are all too familiar.  I shall be less restrained on social media in a year’s time: be warned!