A Sea of Orange

My pumpkin is ripening nicely. What I want to know is, how do you get the flesh out of a pumpkin without chopping it up? We can't do that until after we've used it for hallowe'en. Only once we've been burning a candle in it for a few hours it doesn't look too appetising.


Today I took down the french bean plants - they have finished - and the sweetcorn, which have also finished. I also cleared away the dead melon and the outdoor cucumbers, which have produced lots and lots of rather bitter cucumbers. We haven't eaten a single one - they all ended up on the compost. I will stick to all-female next year. The greenhouse ones were fine.

While I was doing all this some naughty kids - well teenagers really - kept ringing the bell on my bike, which I had left just the other side of the fence. They weren't really doing any harm, just trying to wind me up. I haven't come across any really nasty behaviour up there yet - although my allotment neighbour, Valerie, was once menaced by a young lad who threatened to burn her plot down!

I keep wondering about cutting down the Broom trees next to the shed. I always feel very guilty at the thought of destroying perfectly healthy plants - especially ones that size. They are very impressive when they are in flower, but they are getting quite big and they really get in the way. I wonder how severely I could prune them back?


Here they are in flower. They are even bigger than this now, and overhanging quite a big area of this corner of the plot. With a great big clump of marigolds on the right now as well, it's almost impassable.

The dreaded cabbage whites have found my purple sprouting brocolli. I have managed to keep the caterpilars more or less under control by hand-picking them, but I don't really like handling them, I wish they wouldn't ooze green goo all over my hands.

Found a few french beans as I was dismantling them, and picked almost the last of the runner beans - just enough for a meal. And this afternoon my son and I have made an apple pie.