One and one and a half

So I was poddling about in the veg patch, squeezing in four small rows of onions. My feet are not big, but they must have seemed enormous to the pour wee onions and carrots that had somehow survived, despite being totally neglected throughout the summer. Not watered enough. Not weeded enough. As I say, neglected were they. And yet most of them deemed to grow. The onions, well they are salad onions so are thin as yet. I use salad onions as a flavouring for a lot of things, so I am going to use them during the winter. If I forget they are there, which is likely to happen when the colder weather arrives, they will probably set up a flower head, then they will grow lots of little onions around the base. 

How do I know this? Because salad onions which were left in the ground last winter did just that. Now I have a lovely clump of onions. Lester would dig them up if he was let loose on the veg plot with his rotovator. All in its path would be shredded to bits, including the little row of salad onions and little row of carrots. Fortunately for all concerned, he is busy with other things at the moment so I am in charge of the veg plot.

So the veg plot has developed little rows and paths. This is because I get fed up with having to dig large areas, so I do small ones, a path being formed around these little plots by my size 5 feet walking round them. 

The thing is that little plots make for little rows. 

Today I planted four little rows of onions. On one side was half grown fennel, on the other side the salad onions, next to which were carrots, not many, just a few. 

Only there are less now because as I was ever so carefully planting the onion sets I was not paying attention to where my feet were treading. The result? Half the salad onions are bent over sideways, and several of the carrots have flattened tops. What to do. Pull them up, not expecting much at the end of the root. 

But I couldn't. They were stuck fast into the ground, because .......

....... they were huge! Ok, so I am exaggerating, but in all my life I have never managed to grow a decent sized carrot. I have also never grown a peg-legged one. 

We had them for lunch. 

I have left the bent over onions for another day. 

The wood has been delivered, all 5000 euros of it. Obeyed instructions about getting it under cover, but was saved the effort of struggling with the very large beams because, quite simply,  I could not even lift one end of one of them let along heft the thing into the Tall Barn. Lester did all the work, bless him, helped by a friend who happened to come along just at the right time.

Elise, our cow, is being a good girl about coming into the Tall Barn at night. She has to be separated from the sheep and the goats after spending all day out in the field with them and this normally means a hectic chase around the paddock. But now she stands quite still as Lester puts the rope on her, and trots along quite obediently beside him. 

Found two heaps of eggs today, one in the Wood Shed / Goose Bedroom, one under the DIY hay bales stacked up in the Gatehouse Porch. Nearly thirty eggs in total. Crikey, but those hens are chucking the eggs out at a furious pace at the moment. 

And today, oh joy of joys, a 2013 seed catalogue arrived in the post from the UK. We don't buy from the French seed catalogues because it is too much of an effort trying to translate their gardening jargon. We stick to the language we know for the buying in of the seeds. 

And the weather is still very warm. Now out of my thermal vests. Can't believe we are at the end of October. Living here sure does make the summer feel longer and the winter therefore much shorter. But I am still wearing my flannel petticoat because my knees get cold, although in the veg patch yesterday I did hide behind the clump of nearly finished Jerusalem Artichokes to take the petticoat off because I was dripping with hotness. I don't think any passers by saw me. I tried to make it look like I was not going to the loo. I didn't want people to think I was being that bold.