garden update, short stories, strawberry jam and Baroness Warsi

The garden is blooming with all the sunshine and rain.  Spent the morning digging up potatoes ready for storing and they look ok, a few mice nibbles but not a bad crop and the onions have been sunning themselves for the last couple of weeks. Courgettes cropping nicely and the beetroot is ready.  A couple of exciting projects are coming to fruition - the raised beds are finished and the ground has been prepared for the poly tunnel coming next week, a few photos included beside. We just need to batten down the hatches in readiness for the remnants of Hurricane Bertha predicted for tomorrow!

Does anyone out there read short stories or are we all too busy reading novels?  I love short stories and have just bought my second Alice Monro collection.  She's a Canadian lady in her 80s who writes stories about normal life, which may sound boring. But because of her skill with character creation and settings she transports you to the places where these stories are being played out and you end up living alongside these people. Lovely. I like writing in a similar style but with nowhere near the same level of skill, and this week I've sent off a selection of my short stories and poems to a few literary agents with a hope that someone out there can see a little bit of Alice in me, I wish, we'll see.

The problem of growing all this produce is that something has to be done with it as I've said before. Twelve jars of strawberry jam now accompany the redcurrant jelly in the cupboard. I made the jam the other afternoon while watching a couple of episodes of 'The Honourable Woman' on the old i-player. It felt really odd to be watching something as dramatic and violent in the middle of a sunny afternoon while making jam. But the jam turned out ok and the drama was very good.

Hats off to Baroness Warsi for resigning from the government because she felt that David and the gang were not protesting loudly enough about the level of violence being showered upon Palestinians in Gaza. A thousand dead, one third of them children and town after town destroyed. Well done Sayeeda. Someone pointed out the other day that Britain manufactures the arms used by the Israelis, and our Disasters Emergency Committee has set up an appeal for money so that the people of Gaza can be helped. What a mad world we live in.