Denise: Even before the gooseberry harvest was over, we’d started picking and podding peas for the freezer (and feasting on the sweetest as we worked!), and broad beans too. For about four weeks now we’ve been picking peas steadily, piling them up in big seed trays for Jonathan to pod in the evening whilst watching TV, me knitting.  But the legumes are now all gathered in, with 20kg or so of peas and about half that of beans in the freezer – enough to keep us supplied with both right through to next summer. (In fact today I’m using the last of last year’s peas in a pea and mint soup). Friday was the last day of the longest run of dry weather we’ve had since – well, probably last September! : just four-five days, but enough to dry out the onions, and for us to pull them and get them under cover before Saturday’s rain.  It’s not been a good year for onion: not sunny and warm enough (after all culinary onions did come from the Mediteranean to Britain with the Romans!), so not many are large enough to store well, but the largest are in the greenhouses to dry further. And the rest?  Well, Jonathan’s been busy this weekend making a large batch of pickled onions!  The winter weather here is very very mild, so carrots and parsnips stay in the ground, still growing – just – until we need them, even as late as March, but potatoes have to be lifted and stored in bins, safe from wet, slugs and rodents. So next to harvest – our last great gathering of Autumn Bounty in the Big Garden, will be the spuds.