The potager is thriving. Liz is especially please that she has managed to grow finocchio fennel, it isn’t quite ready but we can already see that it will be delicious – and we’ll eat the flowers…. read on. This week we found a beautiful caterpillar on the fennel and discovered it was for a swallowtail butterfly. Lovely as it was we wanted to preserve the fennel so we carefully moved it to a wild fennel plant in the field.

We have our first onion harvest. Liz lifted them all this week and after drying we had plaits of red, yellow and white onions, about 30 of them – each plait had at least 8 onions. We were so pleased as Liz hadn’t grown onions since her twenties so it was a bit of an experiment. They thrived,  Liz thinks almost anything will, the soil here is like magic.We have been using them in the kitchen, it’s had to believe but they really are so different to shop bought – firm, peel-able, very tasty. Margie has started adding them to our pickles. She has already told Liz that there aren’t enough so grow more next year! She also thinks that there aren’t enough potatoes so Liz is thinking about extending the potager to make more space.

Our lovely friends Helena and Isabel came to stay, it was so nice to feed them from the potager and local produce. One memorable meal was:tomato consommé with sun dried piccolo tomatoes, charred baby onion rings, labneh and fennel flowers – have you tried them they are amazing; then courgette, nigella and orange risotto; followed by  salad, so fabulously green and fresh, with a zingy dressing made with our own lemons ; and finally a poached white peach and some fabulous vanilla ice cream served in beautiful vintage champagne coupes that we had found in a local antique fair.