Trimming and tidying

I spent a couple of hours this morning trimming the verges - easily my least favourite job - weeding, picking and watering everything. The courgettes continue to thrive; I picked six today, and have picked as many during the week. Here they are a few days ago, with the corn just coming into flower. The corn cobs are more evident now which means that I can look forward to eating Yotam Ottolenghi's sweetcorn polenta during the next couple of weeks. The courgette harvest has been roasted, served with pasta, stir-fried and, for lunch today, made into soup seasoned with a couple of sprigs of lemon thyme and the last pickings from the dill, which is going to seed.

The runner beans are cropping regularly now, and there are lots of tiny beans left on the plants. I grew too many plants, really, having stuck a couple of seeds in at the base of each pole where my home-grown plants had failed, and now the effect is rather jungly, and one of the wigwams has started to sag. There are two cucumbers coming to maturity, still rather spiky and I think not quite ripe yet - they look a bit pale. Remarkably, there are also a few tiny green tomatoes on one of the plants, but no likelihood of a glut to manage.

The cima di rape was a great success - delicious stir-fried with some chilli flakes - and there is another row maturing. Also nearly ready are the first rows of beetroot. The chard and sorrel plants are still giving regular harvests, and the mizuna is doing well if a little gnawed by visiting gastropods. The carrots, however, are a definite failure - about six plants growing from two rows of seed. Never mind, it's not like carrots are expensive, is it?