Thriving on neglect

I stopped cutting the cardoons to eat about four weeks ago: I’d had enough of them. Because as we all know you can have too much of a good thing. 

The advantage of leaving cardoons to do their own thing is that this happens… Most of the time the flowers have been bee-smothered, but of course they buzzed off when I arrived to photograph them.

I was at G’s this morning, where amongst other things we transplanted a lemon tree. It is absolutely the wrong time of year to do such a thing, but it was very evidently dying in its pot in the glasshouse. 

We have stood and looked at it several times over the last few weeks as it has declined. Today we decided it might not last another week of prevarication, so we shifted it out of the pot and planted it in a spot in the flower bed next to the house where it will get full sun, lots of protection from the worst wind, and it is in well-drained soil. 

This latter consideration is vital because when we tipped it out of its enormous pot we found sodden and compacted soil in the bottom: definitely the cause of the health problems. I staked it and removed the tiny lemons, gave it a dose of compost, water and some mulch. G declared that it looked much better just 10 minutes later.

The rest of the day Chez Mima has been spent watering raised beds and the compost heap, pasteurising a churn of milk, collecting five eggs, picking beans, tomatoes, cucumbers and apricots. Various bits of processing are now underway. 

And so January ends. How did that happen so fast?