Blue sky musings

The last few days of August have been patchy weather-wise. We've had the typical "sunny spells with showers" - more grey than sunny.

Yesterday during a sunny spell I lay down in the grass under the damson tree and gazed up through the branches into the blue sky.

Right above me lots of plump-looking damsons ready for picking this weekend. Last year we had a bumper crop and the cupboards are still full of damson jams of various types and damson vodka. Flitting around the damson fruit were several brown & white butterflies and an enormous dragon-fly.

Then, swallows - flying very high. I haven't seen many recently (since the babies fledged) and thought they may already have gone south. But obviously they have just moved their roosting spot further into the fields.

A big silver bird came into view - no, it's an aeroplane moving silently across the blue sky shining in the sun.

Then the engine noise followed joining the orchestra of wood-pigeons cooing, long-tail tits squeaking and woodpeckers calling as they fly and THUD! - a large cooking apple dropped a few feet from my head. Definitely time for harvesting!

First tomatoes

Yesterday we picked our first Faworyt beef tomatoes. We picked 3 lbs - one tom was 8oz. They are been growing in Mum's conservatory in grow bags sowed from seeds on 30 March. Looking at last year's diary we picked our first Big Boy tomatoes on 18th August having planted the first week of April, so very similar - despite this year being much warmer. The year before we had our first Big Boy tomato on 13 August (11 oz).

Faworyt beef tomatoes

We've grown Big Boy tomatoes for many years. They are excellent for cooking and soups as well as in salads. They provide much better flesh to skin & pip ratio than other varieties. However, they are an F1 hybrid and have been increasingly difficult to source seeds. So this year we tried the Faworyt variety.

They certainly germinated well and have grown luxuriously, perhaps a bit too much leaf which we've had to trim back quite a lot. (I know some people suggest cutting back nearly all the leaves anyway - "to prevent the leaves taking the goodness". But it's the leaves that create the tomatoes, especially the sweetness, via photosynthesis.)

Well for lunch we did the test - sliced tomatoes,with chopped chives and a splash of vinegar & olive oil - and I'd say the taste was pretty good. Nice and sweet. But I think there were a lot of pips, not so much flesh as the Big Boys.

Faworyt tomatoes in growbags in the conservatory.

In the big greenhouse I've grown Alicantes and a few tomatoes that appeared in the compost so could be anything. We've been picking and eating for a week or so and they are pretty good. Very sweet just to eat as they are but will do soup too.

Alicante toms ripening on the kitchen windowsill.

Swallow families

This year there are loads of swallows and with the sunshine following the rain on Saturday there are lots of bugs. We've had great fun watching their aerobatics and swooping down to feed their fluffy babies perched precariously on the telephone wires. The transfer takes half a second. I think the swallows have their nests in our neighbour's big barn.

Some years we've had no swallows. Last year we had martins and swallows but this year just loads of swallows. Certainly the warmer summers help.

See first swallow entry >>