The first Morning Glory flower of the year. For some reason, the classic light blue varieties just won’t grow in this garden, but the dark blue “Grandpa Ott” does magnificently and self-seeds year to year.
Having grown up in the Oxford area, I suppose that Dark Blue comes naturally, anyway …
Ten days ago I was celebrating the first, very young, broad beans to cook whole. It doesn’t take long for the beans to grow and the pods to swell – tonight was my first picking of fully grown ones. Picked and cooked within half an hour, they’re a delight: a totally different experience from those bought on market stalls, or the frozen ones. I only have space to grow one 1-metre double row, which isn’t many meals worth, and they’re soon over, but always very much worth the effort.
In the mini wildflower bank behind the pond, the scabious has started to open. I haven’t seen it much in the wild in recent years, though it was common in my childhood in the Oxfordshire Cotswolds.
Red “heat alert” and very high pollen count forecast for the rest of the week is “very high”, so I’ve just ordered a full set of filters (HEPA and foam) for the air cleaner/ioniser … rather overdue, I think. Between the noise of that and the air conditioner, I’m going to have a rather noisy siesta, even when not wearing my hearing aids.
Orange Hawkbit (“Fox and cubs”) is not a British native, having been introduced as a garden plant in the 1620s. However, it very rapidly escaped and established itself across wide swathes of England. As it doesn’t compete heavily with other species (long grass and many meadowland species out-compete it), and as it attracts a fair number of insects (especially hoverflies, as here), I’m happy to consider it a “wildflower” – it lives on the fringes of my little wildflower bank in shorter grass, and in cracks in the concrete path..
The main Pride here will be in September, but there was a fete and parade this lunchtime, on which I volunteered to steward. Naturally, I dressed up for it …
A warm night with gentle drizzle in the early hours of the morning has encouraged the runner bean flowers to start opening. The variety – as usual – is “Painted Lady”. Definitely heritage, of course – something very like it seems to have been used as an ornamental plant here from the mid-1600s, and it was named and used as vegetable from the mid-1800s. It’s heat resistant, though (as all runner beans) it does need a lot of water in periods where there’s little rain.
The first broad beans are ready to pick. When they’re this young, they’re fine to eat whole (including the pods), but when they get longer than about three inches the pods start to get both bitter and woody. I’m pleased to see the odd ladybird on them – blackfly are the curse of broad beans, although this variety – the low-growing “The Sutton” – suffers less than most. It’s a heritage variety, introduced in 1925.
The first picking this year of “Tom Thumb” peas. Dating from the 1850s, the plants grow to a height of only about 30cm (one foot), so they don’t require tedious staking or netting (which are liable to be blown over in the kind of weather we often get here in May). Young pods, cooked whole … tonight will be had with a tin of salmon and a potato/sweetcorn/mayo salad. The second sowing of Tom Thumb is coming on nicely, and I’ll do a third sowing this afternoon.
The acanthus mollis (bear’s breeches) is now pretty much in full bloom. At about 5 foot / 150cm it’s not quite as tall as sometimes, but I think that this year’s four flower-spikes is the most I’ve had, an this year’s spikes may grow another few inches yet. A rather impractical plant, really – the enormous leaves try hard to take over my tiny patio, and act as shelter for every possible variety of slug and snail. However, I wouldn’t feel that the garden was complete without it!
