Today we had another wander around the garden and fields to discover we have a prolific pear tree (photo above) that we didn't even know we had - even better, it looks as though they'll be ready for harvesting "toute de suite".
Whilst clearing the land with the tractor in order to make this discovery, Tony ran over an underground hornets nest - after running away once they started swarming out of the nest he'd run over, we went back at twilight to set them on fire and hopefully destroy the nest - the photo above is the burnt patch of ground that revealed a pretty good size nest that is no longer - this is one of the very few times, having been stung twice this year when we actually embrace death and open a bottle of wine to celebrate it! Especially having discovered that the more you get stung the more likely you are to one day go in to anaphalactic shock - apparently you don't build a resistance to the sting by being stung you simply store more of the poison which may eventually have a much more severe effect on you - hence the celebrations!
As I've already written about the cucumbers, I couldn't resist posting another photo taken just 2 days after the last one, and it looks as though our french neighbours are indeed correct when they estimated 5-8 days before harvesting - the cucumbers are growing rapidly and I only hope my sister and her family like them because it looks like we may end up with about a dozen in succession.
I also couldn't resist posting a photo of our first melon (above) - this is a canteloupe - very popular in these parts and although this is our very first and our biggest so far (still only about the size of a very large pebble!) there are many others not far behind.
I also couldn't resist taking a photo of our quince tree and our bay tree above (I'll never need to buy dried bay leaves again), and below the 2 types of plums we have in the yard also ripening as I type - a beautiful purple one and a very tasty yellow one.
Below is a photo of the largest (and most bizarre looking) tomato harvested from the dozen plants our neighbours gave us - this one weighed in at 480 grams!
As we've slightly overspent our budget on kitchen cabinets, we're reassured that we shall not starve and I shall now have to find an abundance of recipes involving quince, pears, apples (photo of the apples below), plums, courgettes (photo of our first courgettes also below) and cucumbers :)
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