The quiet months.

The periods between blogs are becoming longer as the days get shorter, and there is not a lot to report from my vegetable patch at the moment. 

I have had a couple of first's this week though. Finally I have harvested some of my winter vegetables. Savoy cabbage and leeks to be exact .

They were both planted when the garden was at its early stage of development and I have watched them grow over the summer, wondering if they would ever make it to the table. They have suffered slug attack and far to much water but seem to have survived nicely. 

A family lunch on sunday meant a quick inspection earlier in the week to see if I could use them. The answer was a resounding yes, so early sunday morning I was in the veg patch armed with my sharp gardening knife and my trug. 

I picked a suitable sized cabbage

And cut it free from the bed. a quick trim of some of the older leaves was also needed. 

Next was the leeks. 

I picked the 6 largest in order to let the others keep growing. 

They were all then popped in the trug for the trip up the garden

And after a lot of washing were prepared ready for lunch

They were delicious , even nicer as they were from my own garden. 

Nothing else much to tell you from the veg garden. My Japanese onions that I planted from seed a few weeks ago, are just poking above ground but are far to tiny to take a picture of. The sprouts look like they will be ready for the pot in  a couple of weeks, and there has still not been a ground frost, so the parsnips remain in the ground. 

A couple of our visitors from last winter have reappeared over this last week. 

The squirrel was nicking the bird food..

and the egret was taking some sunshine on the fence. 

Gibson is fully recovered from his surgery and back on top form. On saturday we went back to his breeders with 3 of his 7 brothers and his mum and uncle and a couple of other guest dogs.. What followed was an hour of total mayhem, but they all seemed to enjoy it and we did manage to get them to sit down for a couple of photos.

Gibson is far right. 

The daschund was called Dudley and he stood up for himself very well amongst this lot. 

and finally I have had an article, I submitted to the Thompson and Morgan website published there. Its about my first year as a new gardener. You can see it here

My First Year

It is different to anything on this blog.. and on that note time to get on with my day. Hope you all have a great week