The Fairest Thing In Nature

"Fire is the most tolerable third party"  Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 62)

It comes to something when I receive excited texts from my husband announcing "Got two new water-butts through Gumtree" and then later, "Managed to get eight bags of sh*t". 

Ah - the romance!

Well, we have started the autumn jobs as advised by various gardening books and magazines and the preparation for winter.  Not that you would think it was even in the offing if you consider the absolutely fabulous weather we have enjoyed this past week.  How fortunate have we been??

However, the runner bean wigwams have been dismantled, and the tomato plants have been stripped of most of their leaves so all the energy is focused on the ripening fruit.  The aubergine plants have been added to the compost heap - they started off so well, flowered and even developed small globes but then seemed to give up the ghost.  I spoke with the man-who-knows at our preferred local garden-centre (Gotherington) and he said that he only had two plants himself and they are notoriously hard to grow because of the amount of constant heat that is required.  I also think that I probably over-watered them too, and although I managed to rescue the peppers (just about!) from the same fate, the aubergines were just trickier customers.  Oh well, you live and learn.

Still, all of this harvesting coupled with my enthusiastic clearing of the annuals, pruning, dividing and moving perennials meant we had our first bonfire of the season.  And we all know how much Paul loves a bonfire!!

But back to the eight bags of the good stuff...

"The fairest thing in nature, a flower,still has its roots in earth and manure"  D H Lawrence (1885 -1930)