It was probably the finest plant I’ve grown this year. Funny how you can plant seeds from the same packet in exactly the same way, yet one develops into a much more vigorous and healthy specimen… This was a courgette Black Hawk, a thing of beauty and astonishing vitality, growing almost visibly. A courgette had grown underneath the lowest stem and had become distorted; potentially rotting and bait for slugs. So I manoeuvred my secateurs at what I thought was the right angle – and snip, a very satisfying crunch. Disaster. I’d cut the main stem at ground level. The whole plant was irrevocably felled.  

Happily, however, there is another Black Hawk plant which is growing well in the same bed. And, even better, there was a little patty pan courgette plant that had germinated late and for which I had in vain sought a home earlier in the day. So now it has a prime position and I hope will take energetic encouragement from its recently departed cousin, now sadly languishing in the compost heap.