Tea Tent

Bird netting is essential over the tea bushes, to prevent the blackbirds biffing the roots out of the soil in their pursuit of worms and wrigglers. The cane frames are essential to prevent the netting weighing too heavily on the young bushes.

I am suddenly swamped with eggs. My five hens have slowed down since the Equinox and I’m getting just three eggs most days. Bean has one a day and on average I eat one a day too. And I barter half a dozen to a dozen with S&N each week. At the moment it’s a bit tight.

Yesterday a friend turned up with a surprise bowl of eight of her flock’s eggs to ease my shortage. And this morning I found a tray of 30 eggs on my drive, left there by another friend from her (enormous) flock. 

Such kindness has resulted in some cheese bartering. Both were as grateful for Camemberts as I was for eggs.

Mind you I’m not quite sure what I’ll do with 38 additional eggs. It’s just as well they keep for ages while I sleep on it. (Yes, Bookie…more mush on the pillow.)

I promised some reading recommendations. These are all detective / crime fiction authors whose books I’ve been enjoying recently:
Jo Spain
Jim Kelly
Margaret Hickey
Janice Hallett
And of course James Oswald who is a fellow Blipper.

The torrentially wet rain didn’t happen, but it has been damp and occasionally wet all day. I managed to squeeze in a couple of hours’ gardening with G and a walk with the Beanio. 

Other than that it’s been a cookathon: soup, ragu (thank you Tweedy), mayonnaise, tomato salsa, and Sheila the Dough-matua has just been fed so that I can mix and prove sourdough in the morning.

Bean is wrapped in a blanket and snuggled up to me as I type. It’s a cool evening and she needs all the body heat she can get. She’d be on my lap if she could.