Borlotti beans are really beautiful.

Even the pods are beautiful. This is this years haul.

It was a really windy day when we picked the beans. In fact it also poured with rain about two minutes after this photo was taken.

Podded, there ended up being about three freezer bags worth. This probably works out as about 6 family meals.

(As you probably know, borlotti beans are really versatile. You can freeze them fresh, or you can dry them. They keep their shape really well when boiled – though they do lose their speckles.)

I am not exaggerating when I tell you that we have had this apple tree at the allotment for eight years and have had about 4 apples from it in that entire time.

Last autumn I told it that it had one more year to get it together or else…

and wow did it listen to me! (Only, you know, not really. ;)

Most of our apples are cider apples – which is what happens when you marry a brewer. These ones really are that bright.

Last year out house was full of half eaten apples because FB is great at starting them, but not so great at the follow through. This year LR is toddling about finishing them of.

The yang to his ying.

(Hopefully there will be a shop update tomorrow.)

(New [to us] garden furniture – definately worth the wait.)

and then FB and his daddy went to look at bike seats (and watch Stage 2 of The Tour de France at the shop, and have a sneaky snooze!) and I made…

Hello patchwork! Why did I wait so long?

It was a busy weekend! Saturday was spent at Salvo Fair with Debbie from Monkey and Bo and her family. After about about 5 years of searching we now have garden furniture, (or we will have when the table arrives on saturday – hopefully.)

And on Sunday, after a good year of talking about reading about it – and because we still had the car – we went to finally buy our chicken run and chickens!

We have two Hipswell Sussex (called Weiss, and Fat Hen) and two Rhode Rock (called Abigail and Hudson.) And they’re great!

They’re scrapping with each other to work out the pecking order, but they’re great! And suddenly I have pets for the first time in about 18 years! But I knew that going in.

And we have eggs! Already!

Since Sunday we have had 5 eggs. They are two slightly different shades of brown, and I think they are coming from the Rhode Rocks, since they spend more time in the coop. But they have been free ranging about the garden, and FB thinks they’re amazing.

And I am learning to pick up chickens. And herd them back into the coop at the end of the afternoon.

This morning we had a visit from the fox, but the Hipswells are feisty and flapped at him a lot. But – we live in a city, there were always going to be foxes about.

One domestic job that I really enjoy is hanging out the washing. I find it calming. (Though hanging out the washing on a day potentially full of showers, fending off a toddler who is determined to annoy his baby sister? Not so calming.)

Of course my hb will probably find it hilarious that I like hanging out the washing, given how much washing he ends up hanging out. But with two still in cloth nappies we have A LOT of washing that needs to go out.

Last summer GardenMama ran a project called Wash Wednesday that was really very beautiful and inspiring. It was running while we were getting ready to move, and it made me so excited that we were finally going to have a proper garden to hang our washing in. (Up until then we had a balcony that was over-looked by trees.)

Anyway I would encourage you to go have a look. Maybe you’ll be inspired too.

If you are, then you need to know about raintoday.co.uk (thank you TheFrogPrincess!) which helps you to work out if it’s going to rain or not. It’s very clever. And today it showed me that despite what BBc weather might say, it really wasn’t going to rain today.

So out the washing went.

And out the nappies went.

And out the new fabric went.

And out the (freshly dyed) yarn went. \o/