Me 1: moles nil

At last, I've done it. I've dug up the first two of sixteen Jerusalem artichoke plants that I've been nervously, impatiently, intriguedly watching over since mid-January 2011 when I planted some purchased tubers.

It didn't take long after planting for the first mole hills to appear in and around the bed, so I thought then that I'd probably never see any young plants, let alone new tubers. S-l-o-w-l-y, little green shoots started pushing up in all the places where I put a tuber, so I breathed a sigh of relief.

What impressive plants! Despite a hot summer, some torrential downpours, some very strong winds etc., they remained upright and got easily to eight feet tall. Multitudes of flower buds appeared later on and the yellow flowers that resulted were very cheerful; the bees rather enjoyed them too. Having got that far, I was again hopeful of getting a crop and I was itching for the first frost to arrive and the foliage to die back. And then the mole hills returned. Lots of them.

That was long ago and I've since been sidetracked, but I've got the fork out a couple of times now and have ended up with these beauties.

No sign of teeth marks either, or any empty voids (as with my carrots, grrrr). The skin looked so thin that I didn't peel these (plus I'm lazy! Judging by the knobbles I'd be there for ages). I've tried a Turkish recipe with rice – yummy. The skin wasn't unpleasant at all, just required a bit of chewing and, after all, fibre's good for us. My second 'recipe' was mashed Jerusalem artichoke and potato with a bit of yoghurt added and that was very enjoyable too. I'm really looking forward to eating the tubers from the other plants, minus a few good ones with a lot of eyes for next year's patch. I just hope the moles stay away…

Srebarna nature reserve

I am so overdue in posting this! Today's a miserably wet day, with snow due later on, and I've found myself thinking about a lovely - dry - day out that I had in November. Well, better late than never... 

I've been for a day trip! It was a lovely sunny day, although a bit nippy if you kept still for too long. Our destination was the Srebarna reserve, situated on the banks of the Danube – if we'd have walked a bit further around (and if it was a bit clearer) we could have waved at Romania. (In fact we did wave once we got to the city of Silistra after lunch). It was lovely to stretch our legs and nose about a bit. Dad was visiting and he discovered many snake egg nests. We spotted a few white egrets on our walk, but the best bit was listening to the thousands of geese. We didn't make it round to get a close look at the birds, though we'll return another day. I'd love to go and see the pelicans that Srebarna is famous for! The spiky acacia along the paths were quite something too, yikes. The orange, mealy sea buckthorn berries were also ripe at the time, so I'll try my luck at germinating the small handful that I collected.

Here's some extra info: http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/219
 

Definitely worth a visit.
P.S. Those little specks on the lake above are a LOT of geese coming back in to land.