The horticulture culture

Nature has been kind enough to do the watering for us the past couple of days and nursery work has been a bit slow while we dodge raindrops:

- Harvesting tomatoes - with all the interesting (and weird) varieties, colour is not a good indicator for ripeness. A gentle squeeze reveals if the fruit has ripened or remains stiff and firm.

- Harvesting broad beans. I learned that broad beans = lima beans in the US. Lightbulb! With such a small crop, I just pulled each plant out of the ground by hand. I miss my scythe.

- The vegetable beds here have luxuriously soft and dark soil. In addition to years of mixing in compost, they spread a thick layer of manure on the top in late autumn and leave it over the winter.

- Tamed the rambling vines of a climbing garden shrub. Tied stems to bamboo pole stuck firmly into soil in pot. Stems seem to naturally twist clockwise. Hmmm...

- Trimmed deadheads off hostas when buds dead and seeds beginning to form.

- Chopped off most of basil plant - leaving only a few leaves on each stalk - and planted in large pots with tomato plants. Tomatoes and basil - a match made in heaven.

And the chickens. Silly little ladies:

- We feed chicks a high energy, high protein food (they are kept in a separate enclosure) and the noisy hens get normal chicken feed - which looks like Gus's old pellets. The feed is scattered throughout their area and they go crazy, scurrying around to snatch the little pellets.

- They drink water from a couple big buckets. It's amusing seeing them drink - their mouths open and close several times to gulp down a swig of water.

- The eggs are laid inside the adorable little chicken coops. there are a few nests with comfortable straw beds for the would-be mothers and a hinged door overhead for easy access. If a hen is sitting around and doesn't get up when given a slight nudge, you have to gently pick her up and place her in a different nest because she is probably sitting on an egg. It's amazing seeing the range of eggshell colours depending on the chicken breed. My favourite are a light pink eggshell laid by rare black-and-white chickens. If the eggs are dirty, they have to be rinsed with very hot water before going on the shelf to be sold. Cold water will seep into the shell through tiny pores.

- If eggshells are brittle and crack easily, we feed the chickens broken up oyster shell. Theory says that the oyster shell gets somehow incorporated into the shell of the eggs they lay. Interesting.

- Chicken crap smells terrible. Absolutely disgusting. Rain makes it worse.

All nature wears one universal grin. - Henry Fielding