The tangerine tree in the garden is in flower and coupled with the warm weather was a beautiful fragrant welcome home for me, I love Portugal in the Spring and early summer, its so beautiful with all the wild flowers and citrus fruit trees in blossom, the air is scented and absolutely heavenly.
Also as the temps in North Wales never went above 14º the whole time I was there, the lovely 28º I came home to was very welcome ...
The heavy rain that troubled Portugal while I was gone has caused havoc in the veggie garden though, all our aubergines, peppers and most of the squashes have just drowned and completely rotted away.
We will have to replant as fast as we can and hope this warm weather will bring them on fast!
The cabbage, both red and green are doing fine, as are the couple of rows of beets Rick managed to get in, he worked like a trojan and planted all our spuds singlehandedly and they are looking great, and the beans are popping up everywhere. The sweetcorn is just coming up in places, so we hope not all has rotted away...
We have had to make the decision to only plant bare basics this year, as we will struggle to cope with the work of caring for it all.
I will plant some late parsnips next week, plus some basil, summer wouldnt be summer without the gorgeous scent of fresh cut basil in the house... tomato salad just isnt worth eating without it..
The ton of broad bean seed we planted in the autumn has paid off, we have just started picking a mountain of them... and I really do mean a mountain.. the pics below should show just how many, we filled the red laundry basket first, then had to use the plastic fruit tray, and still had six rows to pick that we couldnt fit in...
I spent yesterday podding& freezing them.
