Not a travel blog

As an antidote to my recent text-only whingy posts, have a gratuitous picture of a seaside donkey, escaping from it's handler to chase a seagull:

Long time no wittering

Well hello there blogland, how are you?
Progress on the plot is slow and disheartening right now. After my chemical drench, the horsetail and nettles took the opportunity to just carry on growing... Presumably blowing raspberries, pulling faces and singing ner-ner-ner-ner-ner at me at the same time.

So, summoning up all the determination of her dad*, my mum took a dual attack approach yesterday: strimming till the blade fell off, then immediately drenching the lot in more weedkiller. I wait in anticipation...

As well as the plot looking like somewhere dinosaurs might go to play, I got home from a weekend at the seaside to find all my seedlings had died... Have managed to revive some of them but I think I'm going to be re-planting.

It's not all doom and gloom though, there are blooms too... Well, sort of, but blooms rhymes so I'm sticking with it.

I've been given a chilli seedling, have had some new ideas for ways of tackling things, a friend has dug over a good starter sized bed, and the border is blooming and full of cheer.
My mum alsodiscovered that someone has planted some pansies and primulas at the front of the plot... RAK for me!


*My grandad was a fantastic gardener. My grandma is convinced he used to lie in wait for new shoots of horsetail to appear...

Lettuce glut

My garden is glutting already!  Despite the 10 weeks of almost no rain, my tiny raised bed planted full mixed leaves is lush and leafy.  We're having stir fried pak choi and mustard, rocket pesto, mixed leaf salad with beetroot and radish greens, anything that is leafy, clean and crunchy is getting eaten at the moment.

I have discovered that the Small likes picking the leaves and rinsing them, but isn't sure about eating them while still fresh and a little bristly.  As soon as they're in more manageable pieces, she can't wait. 

My friend's herb garden got planted at the height of the dry dry spring, and didn't look very verdant when I last saw it, but we've both been so busy I haven't had a chance to be out there.  I have promised to move her enormous rosemary busy, and put lavender plants in there instead, and I will, I promise, but we need some time for blissful garden days.  It will probably be june before I get out there again, and I must put up the pictures of our hilarious planting day.

Just know that we're living in the garden, our pea plants are coming up like billyo, and the first one of the dwarf peas in the porch is flowering.

Pea shoots are tasty, let me tell you!

Right! Onwards, there is more office work to be done.

Looks like I may be buying veggies for a little while yet.

Well, blogland, long time no see eh?
Spent Easter Monday with a watering can and some weedkiller, dousing everything except the border, the rhubarb and the gooseberry bush.
A couple of weeks on, and the result is disappointing. I now have slightly sickly looking horsetail and nettles poking through some yellowed grass! Not quite the spectacular result I wanted. I'm certainly going to need more weedkiller, and I think may have have to put plot planting plans on hold till next year.
Never mind there are always containers!


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May Encounters

I had a wonderful neighbourhood gardening moment on the last day of April.  During our very dry spring, we have been watering the garden every evening.  It's a long process at our house, as we don't use a hose, and the waterbutts are all at the back of the house. I pick up the watering cans (always left in the front garden, which is our main gardening space), I walk around our little terrace of houses (we're no 3 in a terrace of 5), to where the waterbutts are in the back yard.  I have to fill up twice to manage the sweetcorn, the carrots, the peas, the sunflowers, the lettuce bed, the potatoes and the random flowers in tubs. 

It's a really pleasant ritual, especially on these warm evenings, and nobody else ever seems to be around as I do it, a sort of oddly enchanted space in a very rushy day.  The last evening of April smelled warm and calm, and as I walked around the corner I saw a man I might describe as looking like a greying hippie (greyer, and more old school than me) carrying the most enormous armful of hawthorn blossom.  I asked him whether he wanted some lilac to add to his bundle, because the tree in our backyard is very generous.  We had a lovely chat about picking the may, and how it came of him having an Irish wife.  I maintained that he should be collecting dew for her at sunrise the next morning.

The lilac tree was at its absolute best that evening, so I bet their house smelled of rapturous spring on May day.  He was so thankful and cheerful about us offering something that we get more than enough of every May that I came back into the house full of peace and laughter. 

The lilac have all gone over now, so we need to prune what are really mammoth bushes, so we have a bit more light throughout the rest of the year and still get our blossom next spring.  Every time I see them this year I think about a man walking around our neighborhood looking for blossom for his love.
   N.

Tragedy!

Creepy crawly horrors invading my garden!  Uck uck uck!

A massive sawfly larvae infestation all over my green and happy gooseberry bush.  At first we thought they were quite sweet, until we saw how they stripped the leaves clean down to their veins, and just kept on eating.  According to the Encyclopedia of Gardening, you have to pick them off by hand and for "severe" infestations it's insecticide, baby! 

Yeah.  It looks like we might be at that level.

Luckily pyrethrin is an organic insecticide, and is supposed to be safe for us, and for most of our other garden residents.  I still hate the idea of using it, but it beats picking handfuls of little green wriggly things off my poor mutilated gooseberry bush every 4 to 6 hours.  I say again UCK!

No pictures, but just imagine a tiny green caterpillar with a black head eating its bodyweight and expanding at the speed of light.  To the garden centre I go!

Apparently, I'm the head gardener!

We've just moved offices at work, and our new site overlooks the railway.  The bossman suggested that a hedge might make our little patio more pleasant, so there I was, with a big bundle of beech hedging, a tiny "lady's shovel" and a bank made up principally of rocks, chunks of concrete and quite heavy clay. 

I know you're supposed to dig a trench, but that was not gonna happen, no way.

I was quite proud of my 27 holes excavated, filled with water, and eventually with tiny twiggy beech plants.  It took me all afternoon, and freed me from 4 hours emptying boxes.  Despite all the effort it looks just as if I poked 27 twigs into the ground.  Today they looked a little fuller, and a bit more relaxed.  Hopefully they'll leaf up eventually.

I asked for a pay rise based on being the official head gardener, but sadly that's not a long term job title.