Killing fields

The worker bees have started evicting the drones...

I never realised it was going to be in such huge piles of dead bodies....

Wonky beans fixed

Spent some time today switching the beans from a wonky, wind-blown bamboo-with-link-balls frame, to a couple of 3-cane tepees, that seem a lot more stable (at least for now). 

Why didn't I do that ages ago??

The new arrangement also means that I had to remove the netting that was (kind of) protecting the plants from invading chickens. The plants should be big enough now to be in real danger, but I fear a good scratching session could still uproot the lot, so what to do?

Maybe I had good idea: I put down a patchwork of old slate pieces - there are still lots of gaps so that should be OK for water but enough of a solid hard surfarce to deter any scratching. Or so I hope.

You can probably tell I'm a veg-patch beginner.... In London I had a few herbs pots, tomato plant and potatoes in grow sacks out on the patio, but never really got my head around doing it properly. Not that I'm doing anything properly now, despite having tried to ingest a lot of information about the subject over the winter. The long winter and my newbie status put me off sowing anything, so I ended up sticking in a hotch potch of plug plants in late May; whatever I could find locally, with no plan or system. Still, after a slow start everything seems to be doing really well now, and we are struggling with the quantities of chard, lettuce and calabrese, and that's only the start!
Coming from Greece, where the hot summers scortch everything from une onwards, I am still shocked at the ease and abundance of lush green growth in this country!

Summer evenings!

Precious, glorious and never-ending (we are almost made to believe...)

Island kittens

These are the orphaned feral kittens I clicker 'tamed' at my family's summer house on a Greek island. Scrawny and scaredy at first, they turned into adorable and affectionate beauties within 2 weeks. Aw!
But as autumn proceeds, and they grow dearer every day, the big question looms larger every day: who's going to take them in over the winter...?

Lily, Princess of the Garden

Miki in the weeds with flowers

Urban jungle

Summer

Summer has finally, definitely arrived! My first summer with the cats. I'm fascinated by how it's changing their attitude: there is so much happening outside, it's keeping all of them constantly occupied: so many bugs to chase, weeds to hide in, birds to stalk, patches of sun (or shade) to laze in... even feeding time has lost its attraction!