Clearing and caterpillars

We seem to have nice weather every second day in our part of the world and when Mrs. G. and I decided to meet up for a bit of weeding and clearing, the sun decided to stay well away. Not that it mattered. We hadn't even brought coffee or cake as we had intended to work!

I am clearly the messiest of the two as I no longer see the mess around the shed. Mrs. G. however is a much tidier person and had brought a big dust bin with the intention of clearing some rubbish. She set to work with Little Miss M. while I got down on my knees to do a bit of weeding. Look at what we had been surrounded by:

We took it all to the dump after we'd had enough of weeding and clearing in the rain. It was a very good idea of Mrs. G.'s to clear all of this as the plot now looks so much tidier. It's a good thing it's not all left to me as I would no doubt have the plot monitors breathing down my neck. 

Something had been nibbling on most of the leaves of our veggies - quite annoying. While weeding I found these little creatures:

Looking in my allotment handbook, they seem to be cabbage white butterflies. Or rather caterpillars waiting to turn into butterflies. It says they feed on brassicas (which is where we found them) and we should put a fine net or fleece over the crops and if need be spray. Well, spraying is what we did. We almost finished a whole bottle. Fingers crossed that they didn't like it. Will have a look later on today when I go up.

Things are coming along nicely and we tend to pick lettuce and spinach mostly. However, the courgette is growing like anything and we had to pick two rather enormous ones - one each. I placed mine next to one I picked last week and that I found rather big. Not compared to the latest one!

 

 

 I'm not very good at coming up with a variety of dishes involving courgette so I mostly use it in pasta dishes/ratatouille or in salads. I read somewhere that you can chop them up and freeze them and I guess that's what I'll have to do as we're away on holiday next week and I don't want them to go off. I think I'll have to search high and low for interesting recipes. 

Mrs. M.