Description: Mark's commentary on culture, politics and everyday life
In Manchester today, it is mild and sunny, like late September. Temperatures are unprecedentedly high in the UK and have been for days.
I picked runner beans (painted lady) yesterday and achoacha (a frost tender cucumber relative) today. The beans have stopped flowering now but unless there is frost, the small beans will continue to mature. I always lift the tubers and pot them up in sand so as to get an early start – these days, stray ones survive the winter in the open ground. The anoacha is still flowering but the leaves are beginning to go yellow. Both these crops are usually killed by frosts in October.
I remember bonfire night as a child – always cold and often frosty but this year people weren’t wearing coats.