WIDE ANGLE WEDNESDAY AND LOTS OF LAUGHTER!

My Blip for Wide Angle Wednesday shows a panorama of Mr. HCB’s vegetable garden and you can see the greenhouse, housing the cucumbers and tomatoes, the raised beds with runner beans, borlotti beans, climbing french beans, peas, pea beans, lettuce, onions, potatoes, sweet potatoes and beetroot.  Sadly, this year, the carrots didn't germinate. :-(   Behind those and out of view are the potatoes, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, blackberries and rhubarb, so a very productive garden, all thanks to the wonderful gardener.

Mr. HCB buys many of his seeds from an online shop called Seed Parade;  they are very good to deal with, have unusual seeds and you can buy 5, 10, 20 or as many as you wish.  The star of this shot, however, is the wonderful courgette plant creeping along in the foreground - it is an Italian heritage variety named Courgette Tromboncino Albenga - and the fun part is that the courgettes look like trombones.  They can grow to 3 feet long - but are best harvested, apparently, when they are almost a foot in length.

There are a couple of flowers on the plant and three or four little courgettes that have just formed, so it will be interesting to see them when they’re fully grown. Just behind are the butternut squashes, which we hope will be better this year than last.

The amusing part in all this is that a few days ago, when we were chatting about how long the plant was - and it must be at least 10 feet long - Mr. HCB checked and said that it shouldn’t be creeping but climbing!  I couldn’t stop laughing, but it doesn’t actually say that on the packet the seeds came in, so I guess by the time they arrived, he had forgotten - oh the joys of growing older!  However, we are looking forward to seeing the courgettes when they do grow and of course, if they are heavy, as it says in the blurb, then the ground will support them, so maybe all is not lost after all!

I am still continuing with my Daniel Fast, and with so many vegetables in the garden ready to harvest, this quote seemed appropriate:

A vegetarian meal served with love 
     is better than a big, thick steak 
          with a plateful of animosity.
Proverbs 15:17 International Standard Version

P.S.  I even, inadvertently, managed to keep with the theme, which was earth, wind or fire - and of course, they are growing in and along the earth!