Finally! A day of planting!

It was a toasty hot day today, so out of my list of immediate jobs to do, I opted for a day's planting rather than donning the strimmer - so I warn you now, this isn't going to be a long or exciting post, (exciting for us, but I think you really needed to be here).

While Helen toiled away in the chilly office as per usual, I set up shop behind the house with a crate full of seeds, a huge stack of pots and three sacks of compost and that was where I stayed for the duration of the day, with the exception of a half-hour break at lunch time to have a luxurious egg mayo sandwich on the patio with Helen (not as luxurious as it could have been, as we have two goose eggs on the worktop waiting to be eaten, but it seems Mrs Goose may well have laid her last egg for the season (today was day four with no sign of an egg), so these two remaining eggs need to be savoured in some form better than a sandwich).

At around 3.30pm, planting done, I spent half an hour transporting all of the pots down to the lower terraces while Helen finished up in the office then got ready to go out for a walk.

What took me all day to plant? Well, from memory, the list went something a little like this...

Aubergines (or melanzane as I should now start to call them)
Yellow bell peppers (pepperone giallo)
Red pointed peppers (pepperone rosso)
Celery (sedano)
Two types of squash (zucco)
Runner beans (I've no idea what they're called in Italian - they're seeds from England anyway)
Three types of tomato (pomodoro)
Cucumber (cetriolo)
Lettuce (lattuga)
Courgettes (zucchini)
Parsley (prezzemolo)
Basil (basilico)
Sage (salvia)

Rocket (rucola)
Chick peas (ceci)

That's all I can remember off the top of my head, but combined with the potatoes, onions, carrots, radish, leeks, peas, broad beans and beetroots, and the asparagus and artichoke (neither of which will crop this year), we should be in for a bumper crop of delicious veg this summer - that is assuming we don't mess it all up, which is highly likely as we've hardly started small!

After siting the pots, we loaded Reggie into the car, drove up to Stiappa at the top of the valley and did the short walk down to an old mill that we did with Helen's parents a couple of weeks ago. As we drove along, the valley looked glorious in the late afternoon sunshine, and we all enjoyed our walk through the trees in dappled sunlight.

Once we were satisfied that Reggie had stretched his legs sufficiently, we headed home to mow the lawn, water the seedlings and cook a quinoa salad with griddled squash, salad ricotta, toasted pine nuts and piles of parsley with an olive oil and balsamic dressing.