The polytunnel also yielded a few strawbs and a few spears of asparagus early in the week - though HunterGatherer rapped my knuckles for picking the latter. Apparently you're not supposed to harvest asparagus from June onwards (to let the plants regenerate for next season). Sad that, as there are another few spears already waving at me and I'm looking at them wistfully, but I dutifully haven't laid a finger on them.
There's been a lot of wildlife - in addition to the domestic animals - in evidence around the smallholding this week. Several swallows (or possibly housemartins?) have set up mudhome in our stable, keeping the poorly Shetland pony company. Here are the babies peeking out and saying "hi" from on high!
And last, but definitely not least, here's a lovely wee toad who leapt out of the middle of the raised strawberry bed while we were working in the polytunnel this evening (HG has planted a bed of spinach so large we may feed the whole of Kinross-shire with it). Mr Toad crawled away under one of the wooden supports that holds the raised bed in place - he couldn't get into our special terracotta toady des res, because it's been taken over by ants! We're fervently hoping that the distant thumping beat of T in the Park won't deter him from coming out later to continue his slug feast. He's got a lot of eating to do!
DaughterNo1 with fiddle at the ready
We’d taken the precaution of recruiting a couple of Scottish Country dance gurus to come along, who coaxed and encouraged even the ‘virgin’ Scottish Country Dancers (from Oxford) on to the floor – and kept them there. Celebration Cake Station in Perth supplied the cake, complete with icing tartan sash, and their client service was exceptional. And last, but definitely not least, there were the guests: 70 odd (!) folk who drank and ate and laughed and danced all night, then stayed on stoically to help clear up at the end. Great nights are, beyond a shadow of a doubt, made of great people.
Thanks to Celebration Cake Station in Perth
June is galloping past at a fair lick, and C-day (Ceilidh Day) is fast approaching. HunterGatherer forayed into the deep south, complete with no. 2 daughter and a hired transit van to retrieve no.1 daughter with all her clobber plus most of son&heir’s clobber but not son&heir himself (his term not yet having finished). It was quickly evident to everyone involved that the combined mass of “stuff” accumulated by Sparrow Major and Sparrow Minor was never in a month of 36-hour Sundays going to fit back within the already bulging walls of the Sparrow residence.
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