We visited friends in Gloucestershire when lockdown eased enough to make it legal, and descended on the local plant nurseries like locusts. I’d had poor success raising seedlings for the polytunnel – well, I’d had the usual success rate, but as the weather in April was more like February, I wasn’t able to plant them out with any reasonable hope of them surviving, and most of them died. So I was pleased to be able to buy some plants – cucumber, aubergine, melon, sweet pepper, and a vegetable spaghetti.
Varied success. The cucumbers took over their plot and supplied thirty or forty cucumbers within the space of ten weeks – the peppers went beserk, but we can deal with a glut of peppers – the aubergine plants produced a single fruit the size of a hammered thumb and the melon plants managed one fruit each. Cheaper by far to buy the fruit at a shop, though not as much fun. The vegetable spaghetti plant was full of flowers, but not so good at fruit – they grew just two gourds, but they were so big that they dragged the vines off their supports. I’ve never seen spaghetti gourds in the shops, so I had no idea whether they were ripe (or how to cook them).
Thank Evans for the internet. We cut the smallest one in half tonight, scooped out the seeds and roasted it for 40 minutes, then dug a fork into the flesh. It dissolved into delicate threads immediately, and it tasted great. One half was enough between the two of us as a side dish, so I’ll be finding out how well it freezes. The larger gourd? I just really hope it freezes well, or I find a dozen veggie friends to invite to a meal.
Not so much success with the writing. I think I blew a fuse or sprained the writing muscle in my head with the Scriptly fortnight, but for the first time in seven years I have got as far as November 1st with no damn idea what to write about for Nano. Total count so far, 120 words of blather. Target, 50,000 words. Sounds like an ooops this year.
Julia Chalkley 