Sorry gentle readers for a summer hiatus in the posts. I have been tunneling through a pile of work assessing and writing about the world’s children, and like mole, only occasionally make it to the surface!  But from next week my deadlines should all be completed and I can return to writing more about picking beans.  I have two more trips to London this week and next and then – freedom!

The runner beans are coming through nicely now. We at them for lunch yesterday, along with cauliflowers, and the end of the peas and broad beans. Courgettes and marrows are tumbling out of every corner, and I have started picking tomatoes in the green house. The raspberries are rather like manna, one bowl a day, enough to eat but not to make jam.  Despite the essentially really dry summer, things have grown well this year.  – Oh and my sweetpeas are finally in abundance, –  they took their time but made it in the end.

We have Lucy staying with us while Tim and Clare have gone to Santorini for a week, so the house resembles a kennel of wild dogs, who rush around  all the time. Three seems to be a much more ganglike number than two.  Thank goodness we have a huge garden for them to play in.  

Two hens have hatched out little late clutches of eggs, which is nice, but will probably produce yet more young cockerels.  There seems to be a very nasty plague affecting garden birds down south, with huge tumours growing out of them. Hope and pray that it does not spread up here.