So Jan picked the basil. We get a bit twitchy at this time of the year. One frost that we don't cover up for, and a lot of the vegetable garden is dead. The basil is particularly vulnerable and you can come out at mid-day after a frost and find a black bed of wilted leaves where fragrant green ones where the day before. This year we planted seedlings of a variety we've never tried. They bolted to seed very quickly and although we pinched the tops off many of them, you can see from the photographs that there was more flower than leaf. 

The down side to doing this harvest in one hit, is that it took both of us two hours to pluck the leaves off, and another hour to sort out the blemished ones. Although quite edible, they won't look very attractive, but they're stored in oil and the fridge for winter cooking. We're planning on a big batch of fresh pesto with the rest.