Here is some of my purple-sprouting broccoli which I have allowed to flower. I think it’s so pretty. I love that combination of pale yellow with the dusky purple. I had kind of given up on the purple-sprouting broccoli to be honest. We planted it last year and it got completely ravaged by something. It was all skeletal stems and no leaf. It is a biennial so doesn’t produce any florets until the year after it is planted but I was pretty sure it was a goner. Then suddenly it has revived and we’ve been enjoying eating it and looking at it.
A ewe and her lamb have moved into the little paddock next to our house. Our next door neighbour calls it the prison field because she usually uses it for neglectful mothers and their offspring. The ewe who is there now has an unusual condition called Twin Lamb Disease. Essentially what happens is that the lambs inside her take so many of her nutrients that her blood sugars drop and she starts living off her fat reserves. It is mostly associated with multiple births. One of the side effects is that she becomes blind. It doesn’t happen very much these days but occasionally one slips through the net. So this poor ewe was wandering around the field bleeting for her lamb, thinking he was lost, and he was asleep right next to her. So we have been making an extra fuss of this pair.
