Monty’s month
I was born in July, so it has always been a pivotal month for me – the end of one age and the start of another – the beginning of the long holidays, which, as one sent away to boarding school at the age of seven, also meant returning home from a landscape I hated to one that I loved. But it also meant that the days were starting to draw in, with the sense that gradually there was less of everything and that winter days stood limbering up just over the horizon, which all made the hot July days doubly precious.
One of my adult July rituals is eating the first of our potatoes on my birthday, but the maincrop potatoes will not be ready for a while. And just as I am harvesting the first earlies, it is time to earth up the ‘Pink Fir Apples’, which are growing in a bag to ensure a good harvest in a couple of month’s time.