Today I harvested a beetroot that looks a bit like a chicken…

A wee micro post as time is running out. I have 1 and a half non-work days before it’s summer! I used to love the summer holidays, it would be very much me-time, my reason why I teach. I have not worked in August for longer than I care to remember. One summer in a hot Madrid on a battered old second-hand computer, I drafted a whole novel during those glorious two months off.

I still love summer but there is no way that anyone could describe my summer now as me-time. The children take up every moment and I still love summer but there won’t be any novels getting drafted or blog posts getting written or work of any kind getting done. It will be lazy and glorious and very unproductive.

So this week feels a little like headless-chicken time, I flit from one bit of work to the next trying to get all the stuff done I need to before they invade my very being from wake up to their bedtime. I will try to get them down the plot, possibly once a week if I am lucky but already it needs bribery. Often the response to a suggestion of a trip down the plot is a chorus of very loud ‘no’s’!

Today I harvested another bag of broad beans. I plan to do something with mint, broad beans and bacon that I read about in The Guardian this week, hoping the promise of bacon will convert those broad-bean deniers I have in my household. http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/jul/04/broad-bean-bonus-mary-ellen-mctague-seasonal-recipes

This is my last batch of beans so after this I can stop being creative and use some normal vegetables to make dinner with. I also picked a strange looking beetroot that looked a little like a pink headless chicken.

The other two beets were runty to say the least. Luckily I have some beetroot recipes memorised from last year so using them up shouldn’t be too much of a hassle once I have roasted them.

My harvest was subsidised by a kind plot neighbour who gave me an impressive cucumber (my cucumbers are still mere seedlings) and two gem lettuces (my lettuce pot got so riddled with greenfly and slugs the only place for it was the compost) – so once again the kindness of plot neighbours compensates heavily for my lack of skills as a gardener. And cucumber and lettuce – that’s two veg I can happily dispatch with, no googling required.