Preparing for autumn in the garden

After the excitement of the week end, today was a quiet, pottering sort of day.  Surprisingly for a bank holiday, it was sunny and warm, so we spent some time in the garden, looking around at jobs that will need to be done to prepare for autumn.  

The runner beans - not a successful year at all

Courgettes still flowering and producing

The brassica seedlings N successfully germinated a while back have proved popular with the bugs, and are now little more than spindly shoots devoid of leaves :(.  It's a shame as we were so pleased to have nurtured them to the seedling stage.  However, thankfully we have a Plan B, and took ourselves off to the local nursery to check out their poly tunnels.  Sure enough, we found what we were after and have put by some winter cabbage, broccoli, sprouts and kale to collect mid-September.  By that time they will have grown a little and hardened off ready for us to plant out.  We're very happy to support this little nursery, which works alongside adults with learning disabilities, and they raise many of the plants themselves.

Lots of height ...

... but no sign of a flower yet

I continue to monitor the progress of the sunflowers, which are now taller than me, but I am becoming increasingly concerned about the lack of flowers.  Lots of leaves and plenty of height, just no yellow petals!  The coreopsis, on the other hand, are just blooming away for England; they have proved to be the most reliable and honest little perennials, covered in bright gold daisy-like flowers continuously through the summer and showing no sign of stopping for some time yet.  Some of the other flowering plants are beginning to look a bit straggly, their flower-heads dying back and falling over.  I shall have to take action this week.

Coreopsis gleaming in the sun this afternoon

Several of the tomato plants have finished producing now.  We have had a good crop from all of them, and N has been using some for ratatouille to freeze.  Last year he made tomato sauce with some of the surplus, carefully removing the skins as he went; this year he's simply blitzed a load with the hand blender, skins and all, and frozen the puree in the silicone fairy-cake tray.  Once frozen, the little moulds slide out and are then bagged up to return to the freezer.  They're great with courgette and onion for a lovely accompaniment to meals:  fry diced red onion in a little margarine/butter/olive oil, add sliced courgettes and cook till beginning to caramelise.  Add a couple of tomato moulds, stir into mix and continue to cook until any liquid is gone.  Very, quick, easy and tasty.

From early this morning, we have watched a steady stream of scooters as they made their way to the ferries to leave the Island.  It seems strangely quiet now, and the delightfully distinctive and nostalgic smell and sound of 2-stroke scooter engines has gone for another year.  Another week and it will be September - autumn is just around the corner.