We use them in soups and salads but still we are drowning in gherkins from the garden. I am not a great pickling man but needs must.

Stringing the harvested garlic and onions is what I was dreading but I took the plunge and did the garlic last night. I followed a “how to” video on the internet from one of those utterly infuriating folks who make it all look so simple. His garlic is so clean, the stalks never break and it all looked so well presented at the end. Mr garlic threading expert: I hate you. Having said all of that, I did follow his instructions and, as you can see, it worked. Triumph! .

What you see below is the yield from just one pepper bush and I have six of them in the garden. Plus another six producing normal shaped peppers and six more producing chillies which are now turn red and becoming fiery hot. All are dripping with fruit which we put in salads and stews but just cannot eat all of. I shall be threading my first chain of chillies for drying next week. Peppers, I am told, freeze well without any need for blanching so what you see below is now in a freezer growing fuller by the day.

The birds have reduced the yield on most of the fruit bushes to almost zero this year. Note to self: netting! But the raspberries have escaped. Maybe birds don’t like them. The bushes I planted here are both red and golden so what I collected last night looks splendid and tasted great as well. There should be more next week. It seems odd eating them almost in October but there are no complaints here.

A reader reckons they have a carrot even uglier than mine. What do you think or can you do better?

Once upon a time Worcester College Oxford was a place that proudly believed in free speech. Even in my student days it offered sanctuary to those such as the great historian Norman Stone whose conservative views were considered as appalling and depraved by the Guardian readers who dictate what can be thought and said in the City of lost causes. How times change. Today Worcester has attacked the one minority considered by the liberal elite to below the untermensch of working class males, that is to say Christians.

On the side of the new raised lawn and Ha Ha at the Welsh Hovel which faces the rRiver Dee the grass is now almost three weeks old and the slope looks even greener than when I showed you pictures last week. But now, something of a miracle, that is to say a couple of days of dry weather here in Wales, has allowed us to almost complete the works as you can see below.

Early next week, an early Christmas treat, I bought for myself, arrives here at the Welsh Hovel. That is to say my gift is two, four foot long, wooden boxes which I plan to fill with sand in which to store surplus carrots, of which I have many, for winter usage. When the shops run out and you are all starving, bring me your gold and I can supply not only beans but carrots. I should, however, say that my carrots get uglier by the day.  

Yes. What you see below really is the 2021 courgette harvest. I have never cooked a courgette of the spherical variety before but I have found a simple recipe so here goes tonight. Courgettes, beans (natch) and carrots in a semi alcoholic honey glaze, all from the garden is the menu. I will explain about the honey, a present from earth mother C and her husband, at a later date.

Thank heavens I don’t employ any pieces of skirt, as I must now refer to birds, following Judge John Crosfill ruling today that using the phrase “birds” is sexist. Whatever. I have been using it for years and have no intention of stopping.  What is more telling for me is just how out of touch Crosfill is with how the world, my world, of the City actually works.  Let me explain why Crosfill, in ruling for plaintif Anca Lacatus, shows that he should be put out to grass.

I already have 25 bags of beans in the freezer and another 4 jars in oil in my larder but yesterday I picked the last of the 2021 harvest, enough to fill half a sink. Now you may laugh but it will be me who laughs last and loudest. Let me explain.

This is the great work which some busybody in the village of Holt reported me to Wrexham council and Natural Resource Wales for creating. Both have now wished me well with my endeavours, praising me for removing so many toxins and for improving the drainage here. This is what my shit of local (Tory) councillor wanted to snoop and spy on but was not brave enough to knock on my front door to be allowed access to the land. And it is almost complete so here is a sneak preview of what used to be rusting barns and piles of abandoned asbestos, tires, barrels of bitumen and other horrors. It is now shaping up to be an object of real beauty.

Homework comes once a week from the Pest’s school here in Wales. It could be worse. Over the border among the infidels of England some of his peers have started at the Primary on the other side of the bridge and there for the fist two weeks the 5 year olds have been doing just two hours a day as “induction”. Apparently that is all about stopping the spread of covid, the plague which has killed almost nobody under the age of 10.  

We have a gherkin with almost every main meal these days. And about half the crop lie unpicked in the vegetable patch. From just a few plants we are drowning in gherkins. I am not the greatest fan of pickled gherkins but the Mrs lived in Sweden so I guess she must have been forced to eat a few. And so tomorrow’s jobs include, naturally, picking and freezing more beans but also picking another stack of gherkins and some serious pickling. Is there no alternative to pickling I wonder?

The Mrs switched on BBC Radio 4 this morning as she baked a cake for Joshua’s 5th Birthday party and as I made porridge with apple sauce for the family breakfast. No-one told me that having to listen to BBC Radio was part of the marital deal. I should have insisted that not listening to Pravda was part of the marital vows some eight years ago.  The programme was “Broadcasting House” and part of it included two obviously left wing harpies and a former Tory MP who spent his career before entering showbusiness for ugly people working for the BBC so was obviously a drip. Natch most of the big news stories they picked were from the Guardian Observer.