Large green things

20 July 2007

We’ve had a fair amount of rain recently, with a huge downpour this morning. Somehow the sun has made it out from behind the clouds after all these showers and rainy periods and so my veg patch has been in a somewhat euphoric state.

The sunflowers are huge and most have multiple heads on them. I guess that’s what comes of being too tight to buy “proper” packets of sunflower seeds. Well, why should I, when there are clearly hundreds in this big sack of bird seed we already have?

The sweetcorn are huge too and if you compare the photo I took today with the one I took six days ago, you’ll see just how much they’re enjoying the rain. I’m not sure I could easily walk between the plants any more. Though frankly I’m not sure I want to either … because of the aliens that might lurk within. What do you mean I’ve watched “Signs” too many times?

My five pumpkin plants (nope, I never did manage to get a sixth seed to germinate – I gave up after the fourth attempt) are going great guns, with one vine in particular heading off out of the patch. I’ve had several female flowers come and go and though there are lots of buds for male flowers, none have flowered yet. Meanwhile, the women thus far have all given up waiting and have dropped off. I can see a few more female flowers developing – they’re the ones with little pumpkins ready behind the flower heads – but they’re down the ends of the vines, rather than up near the base of the plant like the first flowers were. Thus making them just that bit more of a nuisance. Assuming that the male flowers actually pull their fingers out and open, allowing me to germinate these female flowers, the pumpkins will be growing at the ends of the vines, in among the sweetcorn … rather than in their nicely allotted space. I blame the men.

I think the potatoes are doing well too, only I don’t see them all that much, being as they are, well-hidden by everything else. And the garlic I shoved in the ground? I don’t know, I keep forgetting to look. Though I kept walking on the one that I planted over in the right-hand corner, so who knows what it thinks of that.