Summer firsts -- today: the barbecue!

I have been waiting for this moment for weeks: a Friday night barbecue. OH is swinging by the supermarket on his way home from work and has promised to bring Grillgut. I am making broad bean hummus and potato bread whilst listening to Max Keiser interviewing Gerald Celente on my laptop about the coming economic martial law. Gerald Celente rants about some money he's lost speculating on gold futures, and I sit there peeling last year's wizened potatoes thinking Mr Kropotkin the Robin could have told you this would happen.

This is the finished hummus -- it contained so much garlic that insects hovered at a respectful distance throughout the entire barbecue.









We decided to have the barbecue at the bottom of the garden, a lovely little suntrap. A bit unkempt at the moment, a little untidy, with lots of bits of firewood and pear tree prunage littering the bark floor, and the apple press sitting incongruously next to the chimenea -- it gives us the illusion of having a woodland picnic, but with the reassuring presence of a dishwasher nearby.

Burgers and sausages on the barbie. Our tables were upturned planters made out of old square decking slabs, with kitchen cupboard doors as tabletops.




I'm very pleased with the crunchy lettuce we got from the allotment. OH is very proud of his pink Falling-Down Water, the raspberry-flavoured cider.

Our guest of honour: Headless Harvey, our scarecrow. He really should be standing guard over our cabbage seedlings on the allotment because the only one he's been scaring so far is our neighbour, P, who is no threat to any of our plants.  

OH has been prodding me to make a head for him. But I feel quite affectionate towards him without his head. He doesn't need a head. Who needs a head these days?

(If you flip Harvey over, you'll discover his greatest asset!)