En Garde

It's been a while since I last donned my fencing gear, and crossed swords (foil or epee) with anyone.

The 10th anniversary of the annual Triangular competition between 'Town' and 'Gown' and 'Old Boys' didn't see me come out of retirement either, but it was great to see so many old friends.





The competitors had a great day of fencing, followed by a gala final in the Marine Hotel - with the 'Old Boys' carrying the day, and taking the 'Taylor Trophy' which commemorates the legend that was our fencing coach Munro Taylor.  It was particularly pleasing to be able to cheer on the lads from my own 'era' to victory in the Men's Foil and Epee.

With the swords packed away, it was time for dinner, dancing, drinking (naturally!) and a good deal of reminiscing - might have to break out my fencing kit in 2014 . . .

Growing Our Own

We inherited a very lovely garden, as you'll have seen in the last post - and as yet haven't really put 'our' stamp on it. We've confined ourselves to weeding, and waiting to see what comes up / into flower next. So I suppose it's the vegetable patch that we've really taken 'ownership' of.

Not that we were very quick off the mark on this - it was early May before the potatoes and onions went in, and the peas and broccoli took a little longer ... The picture on the left above shows things just planted (if you look at the full-size version you might be able to spot an onion or two), the picture on the right is where we're at now.

You might also notice from this an evolution in fencing technology; this stems from bunny insurgency directed at the first generation broccoli / sprouts - which unfortunately didn't survive.

Luckily we had some extra plants in the greenhouse, so were able to replant once the bunny fortifications had gone in. Thus far these seem to have worked - and our brassicas are growing unmolested.

We've had a few potatoes (leaving the plants to mature now until early August), and the onions are coming along nicely, but it's our peas that are looking most impressive - the plants are approaching 6 feet tall and loaded with pods - just waiting for the peas inside to swell.

Our other success story is courgettes, we've got them in the greenhouse, cold frame (actually a mini-greenhouse taken from the old house and laid down on the ground), and outside - the ones under cover are doing particularly well and generating a good crop.

In addition to the veg patch and greenhouse, we've constructed a couple of raised beds, one for strawberries and one with carrots / beetroot in it (planted very late).

And there are the two apple trees we planted - which can be seen, together with the development of the compost heap (now corralled within some old pallets) - in the third garden picture from the other day (as compared to the second from May). Unfortunately the eating apples didn't survive, and it looks like we'll only get a couple of cookers. We had a sheep invasion one day - five of them squeezed through the hedge, and they took a bit of a fancy to apple tree. That was an interesting morning, herding sheep with my next door neighbour ...