13>First Mange Tout

I have only just got into Food Patrol.

- walking around the garden with scissors or a knife and a basket, finding things to eat.
There are no emergency waterings, weedings or stakings to do, just a wander around getting supper.
The slugs are no longer sliming in on nightly raids on my tender shoots.

My first mange tout, huh.

I feel like A Husbander, tending with clumsy care to his fine, wild bride..
Intoxicated by the sweet kiss of her Sugar Snap peas !




My hands are still tingling from grubbing out baby nettles that make up part of the army of weeds hiding amongst my crops. I embarked on a systematic weeding yesterday, starting on the onions and petering out amongst the beetroot.
Having sown the seed with such awestruck care, I still feel loathe to thin out  rows to allow the rest to fatten. The beetroot and the carrots have brought the necessity home to me though, as the least successful germinations are giving me worthwhile roots, while the thickly set rows are all leaf.

Have cleared my first rows, with the double satisfaction of a crop of new potatoes and turnips, and new, warm ground to plant up.
I have cabbage and swede seedlings, clamouring for new lands to occupy and settle in. I resettled a small tribe of Florence Fennel (some packets of seed are SUCH a rip-off) into half the space where my Annabel early potatoes has been half an hour before. I feel like the Hong Kong Housing Minister...


  I wonder how long it is before these start to interest the wood pigeons.

  -Have ben told that the way to tell when the sweetcorn is ripe is when the badgers have eaten it.


 


 John at Penymynydd above me, is suffering from the attentions of rabbits in his garden.
Is my reprieve from the local predators just that they are distracted by the General Abundance of the Summer?

I haven't heard the neurotic cough of a pheasant recently. Are their craws too well-stuffed with June's plenty to squawk ...

Pigeon, Rabbit, and Pheasant are all good eating .
  It's the tasks in between that are alarming or unknown.


 


No dread, mr spikes. Be here & now, mr spikes.
Predators and Winter are fear's fools.
Abstract terrors, which turn out to be unfounded or beautiful on the day.



I love the particularity of our weather and seasons. We should be thoroughly trained up as NOW- people to be living in such a bowl of possibility.
- Those Whether Systems that pile in from the Emotional Body of Atlantic.


Time to get up. The stove is lit and breakfast is on. Had my tea in bed. New potatoes and bacon and salad.

Salad with everything...


 

 Am going to market in St David's today.
There is a dark belt of cloud on the horizon .



Oh Well,
I always feel good after a trip there.