Insecure plants

This weekend is the first time in over month that I've been able to get into the garden. September was a month where three weddings and an overseas trip meant that we were not physically in the city for a single weekend and my few weekday evenings were spent recuperating and coping with a fractious and unsettled baby.

Coupled to this was an Indian summer which made the weather unseasonably hot and dry. I came back to pretty much what you'd expect.

Basically, my garden now has abandonment issues. After a long summer of watering, fertilising and regular harvesting, it's panicked at being left alone and different plants have reacted different ways,

- The green beans and courgettes have attempted to buy my love back by putting out as much food as they possibly can, only to realise far too late that I really have gone and the watering is not coming back, resulting in dozens of immature and withered courgettettes and beanlings hanging off desiccated plants.
 - The winter cauliflower seedlings on the other hand just gave up without a fight - they've been dead for weeks, having apparently abandoned all hope the minute I left the house.
 - The fig tree and raspberry plants have demonstrated their pre-existing hatred for me by ripening as much fruit as they possibly could in the first week and then letting it rot while laughing behind my back.
 - Two of the leeks have decided that they don't want to be vegetables anymore, they want to be pretty princesses flowers instead. I have taken measured and fair action, listened to their feelings, tried to understand where they were coming from... and then decapitated them to put an end to that deviant behaviour.
 - The broccoli and brussels sprouts don't appear to have noticed I was gone at all.
 - Two of the cauliflowers saw what the raspberries and fig were doing and decided to try their hand at it because they wanted to be cool. Unfortunately, they must've failed to take into account how incredibly slow they were, as they've managed to produce some perfect cauliflower heads just in time for me to harvest them. Thanks guys!
 - The pumpkins are the clear winner in terms of outward expressions of disapproval at my absence. They have decided that, since there was no more food and water coming at the base, the only solution is outward expansion to go find more supplies. While the base of the plant has withered and died, the vines have kept pressing further outward, forming little pumpkinettes along the way before abandoning them and moving onto fresher ground. In the process, they've been clinging onto any plant foolish enough to be in their way, like a drowning man after a lifeband. In the course of their ramblings they have ensnared a tomato, potatoes, sweetcorn, blueberries, gooseberries, a grape vine, several random pots and a shed.

See that plant pot in the background, nearly 3m away, with the withered plant sticking out of it? Yep, that's where the base of the plant is.

This has basically meant that I've spent the day closing down a lot of the summer cropping section of the garden, which basically means digging up and composting. The courgettes, green beans, cabbage, sweetcorn and most of the cauliflowers are now done for the year, although I have got some frozen and stored for winter. The broccoli is mostly done for as well, although I have a late summer planting which I'm hoping will come to something before the frosts come.

I have also finally taken Bexx's advice and sacrificed one of the crap cauliflowers (actually the one in the picture on that link!) in despair that it would ever produce anything more than leaves.

All mouth...

Although on breaking it down for composting, I did discover the fruits of its 6 months worth of squatting in my brassica cage...

...miniscule trousers. 

PJW