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For the last two years I’ve been planting broad beans, trying them once and then giving away all the rest of them. This year I planted broad beans yet again. But I swore to myself that if I didn’t like them this year then that was it. All over. Never again.

So trying a different approach the very young pods were picked with some trepidation, cooked with some fried onion and bacon with even more, then eaten.

Let’s just say that between the 3 of us with teeth we managed to finish not just the plateful, but the whole pan of them. And would even make it again.

Maybe there will be some growing next year after all.

Though I’ve still got a lot of big pods that I’m not going to go near to give away this season yet!

Still not oodles to report. But things to report none the less. But I’ll try not to blow a gasket doing them all in a day and string them out for a bit more breakfast reading for you all. First up though, some freebies appeared around the place – leftovers from last year.

The most colourful would have to be the poppies and cornflowers. They’ve extended their reach over the effluent field by about 300%. And extended themselves quite a long way into the grass behind them. But the mower’s taking care of them so far.

And then there’s the coriander. Lots of coriander! Half of one whole garden bed has sprouted coriander, along with random plants in the compost heap, between the pavers, and even in the grass by the gardens. I have to confess that pretty soon after this picture was taken all this coriander was dug up and dumped to make way for potatoes.

But probably the most surprising has been the explosion of self sown flowers along the front of the deck, right where pretty much no water manages to fall. But they seem to like it, so until we get the paving sorted they’re more than welcome to hang out there. According to what’s affectionately known around here as “The Daffodil Press”, I think they’re Snow Daisies (Chrysanthemum Paludosum to be precise).