surely I'm too young for senile dementia ?

spent bloody ages looking for my secateurs today - got loads of stuff to chop down ... anyone seen them ?

What a beautiful day it has been today - didn't start off so promising, but the afternoon was glorious - the Jerusalem Artichokes are in full flower:





Hmm my strawberries seem confused !



The little Alpine ones are adding some much needed colour:



Finally got hold of some garlic - forgotten what the variety is already LOL ! Ambled up and down the lottie trying to decide which bed to put them into when I realised that last years garlic bed has geared itself up already. I took a closer look and was a little suprised to see that there are 14 very healthy looking plants - I'm sure I dug them all up in late Spring / early Summer ! Decided to take a chance and use the same bed - ended up using all three cloves.



Am feeling very pleased with myself - that's my garlic in and my onions have been planted for a couple of weeks - they are already 1-2 inches high :) Just need to get some broad beans, sweet potatoes and sweet peas and then I think I'm set for the winter - well apart from my manure and new greenhouse !

Finally ! this is my Romaesco cauliflower. Blimey it's taken a long time to appear ... hope it's good - my cauliflowers were growing really well this year - until the two-week rain deluge that we had in the summer.



Looks like I might be getting some broccoli soon - not quite sure what I did to it, but it looks like I only have one plant - still that's not such as bad thing as OH doesn't like it:



Now, this is a leek head that went to flower ... and then little leak-lets appeared ... so I've potted some of them up - will they grow ?? I can't think why they won't. Free leeks :) :)



Last of the Borlotties ... I'm going to grow stacks more of these next year - why not, we really like them. Got some podded ones in the freezer and made some more into spicy bean burgers - yum yum yum !



Remembering my potato disaster last year (ie, when I didn't dig them up until Spring this year!) I've been slowly digging my way across the beds - but as the stems disappeared long ago on mine, I'm puzzled as to how Nick's (next door) are so green & vibrant and still in flower ??



Here's my compost heap ... always feeds well this time of year :)




The last of the summer flowers are just clinging on:



and surprisingly the Phacelia is still going strong - not many bees around tho:



I harvested a few beetroots and some strange looking thing - noticed a few of them growing in and amongst the beetroots - guess it's a turnip or something. Tastes like a sugar beet tho. Oh well, it's gotta be edible right.

Anyway next to the beetroots I spy my three parsnips - yep, three whole parsnips from a whole packet of seed. I decide to pull the biggest one - it's flipping enormous. It kinda made up for not having many - could have fed the whole street with it :)

The photo with Loki doesn't really do it justice - the widest part of the the parsnip was as wide as my head !! It was flipping heavy



So what to do with a giant parsnip ... hmmm, cake !



Here is my parsnip & maple syrup cake - it is delicious and unbelieveably moist - I can thoroughly recommend it. Best of all girls it almost counts as your 5 a day - parsnip, apple & orange !!



The rest of the monster parsnip became parsnip soup - I'll discover what that tastes like tomorrow - anyone seen those secateurs ??