Since I arrived in November, I got used to the things Mummy takes out from the white box for our breakfasts.  There’s usually celery, a few varieties of lettuce, or some cauliflower or broccoli, and there was dark green kale which was rather nice.  And carrots, and peppers and sometimes some other root vegetables. Sometimes Mummy would go outside and find us some fresh kale, which was really yummy.  And sometimes a few other leaves.

The last month we’ve been getting less and less from the white box, and more from the outside.  I have to say, I really like the leaves that come from outside, because they aren’t as cold and they’re much fresher.  Once we started going out in the garden I realised why.  They grow there!  They’re all around our runs, some of them under netting, some up poles and some against the fence.

The past three or four weeks we’ve been getting everything from outside.  And since Mummy said Midge and I needed to diet, we’ve not even been getting carrots, although there have been some carrot-like things on the end of some of the yummiest leaves we had.  I’m not sure what we’ve been eating, so I asked Kevin to explain.  Here he is with two breakfasts from last week.

On the left, the top leaves are runner bean leaves, which I love, but Percy and Oscar say they’ve had enough of.  There’s some lavender lying across, and some of one of the types of mint Mummy has.  There’s a pea shoot, and some oak-leaf lettuce from the garden, and an apple leaf, and I think we had a rudbeckia leaf as well.  That’s a big yellow flower with a brown cone in the centre (not a flat one that’s even bigger, that’s a sunflower).  We also had raspberry leaves that day but I must have eaten them.  The next day (on the right), Mummy rather overdid the pea shoots.  I think she pulled up a whole plant for us.  I ate quite a lot of it, but she eventually took the rest away.  We also have one of the other types of mint, swiss chard with its red stem, strawberry leaves, salsify leaves, lavender again (she knows I can’t get enough lavender if it comes in small portions) and I think she gave us a slice of carrot that day, which wasn’t from the garden.  The next day the carrot tops were from the garden with very tiny carrots, and we had curly endive, too.  Oh, Mummy also gave us a wildflower called nipplewort which grows wherever she wants to grow grass, but it’s very tasty and tastes a little like dandelion.  She gives us that too, when she has some nice leaves handy.  And a special treat is cucumber leaf, but at present she says there are cucumbers growing, so we mustn’t steal too many leaves or the plant will starve.

We also get fennel, parsley, oregano (two  types), and more wildflowers from the garden outside, like red clover and wild basil, and sow thistle (yum), and wild carrot, and vetch.

Is that okay, Percy?

Yes, thank you, Kevin.  With all that variety, I bet you’re not surprised I needed help describing it to you.