Bit of a shocker!

Ste Fleur

We've had some mixed weather, but it still came as a shock yesterday to see a frost. I hadn't been keeping a close eye on the overnight temperatures or I would have taken precautions with the vegetable plot.

The tomato plants have been shivering, the courgette leaves are shrivelled and only the figs seem to be, so far, unaffected. I went over this morning to gather up what was left and ended up with this little lot...

Quite a lot of green tomato chutney on the way this year, I think! Note the rather medium sized water melon grown by yours truly on the left - we are looking forward to cutting it open and trying it soon.

The sweet chestnuts in their prickly coats in the background were gathered by daughter #2 and her husband on a walk the other morning. They looked for wild mushrooms too but I think we get up a little late to beat the locals in the search for cepes and pied de moutons.

We've been rather disappointed with our walnut crop this year, there have been very few from our three trees and those that looked good were pinched by the red squirrels before we could get to them. Our main tree had none at all. We think it must have been upset by the flooding earlier in the year. We hope to get it back on track for the 2009 crop though.



The hedgerow was looking particularly colourful this morning, reds, yellows and still some greens are making our little corner of France look very pretty these days (not that it isn't normally).