Saffron

Saffron petals and stamen, zoom view.

My first saffron flower opened today!! 

Quince and seedballs

Harvested quinces waiting on the mushroom straw

Here's some quinces waiting to be taken up to the house after harvesting. They're lying on the straw I put down for the giant mushrooms to grow in. Anyone know some good quince recipes? I read that they keep well so all the unblemished ones can be boxed until I work out a good strategy to deal with them. Maybe I could make a tub full of quince paste... Maybe a bathtub full.

The picture underneath are the seedballs. I made them for the first time today to see if it would work with the clay at my place. And it did! The idea is that the seeds are 'planted' into the balls which means that the soil need not be tilled. Its a genius idea of Mananobu Fukuoka. He is the Mr Miyagi of permaculture.

The mix is 1 part seeds, 3 parts compost and 5 parts clay. Next time I'll add blended chilli to keep out the bugs. The compost is a bacterial innoculant which hopefully will aid to build the soil wherever the seedball lands.  I didn't need to add any water as the compost was already moist and the balls formed up easily in the cement mixer. Its an optional extra.

I chose barley as geese love gobbling barley. By the time it grows I may have got around to getting a flock of them! 

Seedballs drying in the sun after a tumultuous time in the cement mixer.

Barrow of spuds

I dug up these spuds yesterday, so I could keep them over winter. There are many different types of spuds in there.  I knew the forecast was for rain and wanted to get them out before they all got wet and muddy. I'll pack them in boxes between sheets of newspaper and keep them at the bottom of the pantry. There's more spuds in the garden still They'll have to wait until the next dry spell. And by the look of it today, its not coming for a while....

Honeydew melon

Sweet and delicious, look what grew in the hothouse! We cut it into segments and savoured every sweet juicy mouthful. I think there's one more of these in there, next year we will have to plant a whole lot more...

Muscovites

They arrived today in a grey and a red box. 4 ducks and a drake. He's the big one sitting there in the corner. He makes a great hissing sound, a bit like Smeagul. One of the ducks is brown and the others white. They all look like superheroes with their red masks. They've had their wings clipped as they all flew away from their previous owner (who eventually caught them again) except the drake who is too big to fly. Luckily I have a big enclosure for them in the cherry orchard and they can cruise around in there until they make it their home. I fed them a bunch of ripe plums and they were fully disinterested and went around, munching instead on the clover.