Tag: garden

Repeat

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I have a confession to make. I do consumer competitions. You know the ones splashed down your chocolate bar or on a nifty collar on your fave tipple…WIN….money, a holiday, car, plastic novelty item, tickets… Another confession. I have won several such prize draws and tests of skill. The point being they are designed to affect your spending choices and to attract your loyalty. I get a magazine with all such ‘contests’ available to me listed. I do t even have to buy the thing (unless that’s an entry requirement). There are also secret oiine cabals with free listings….they even publish the answers.

My point being that way back,I those heady days before the pandemic, I won a two night trip to a rather swanky place. Hoar Cross Hall (Not sponsored) As a marketing ploy it was successful as we go back annually global circumstances permitting. My absence is due to one such brief voyage. We spent 36 glorious hours mainly underground and submerged in water… except when being therapeutically pummelled or Michelin star fed. This is the first occasion I don’t recall seeing a TV or other celeb. There was however a wedding and I realised that I’d previously missed the chapel and a walk around the church which stands in the grounds.

My parents hate the very idea of the’spa’. That’s OK they weren’t invited. Buying time away from the everyday even for a moment, even a fairground ride or a film, is something everyone dies in their own way. A walk at the beach need cost nothing, also true for urban exploration. Take some time. Sit. Think. Play.

Spring has sprung

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First really warm day of the year. I can just about stand to be out without a jacket and the washing (laundry) is on the line outside. It is spud chitting time. The Maris Pipers have been sitting on the window sill in an upturned egg carton for about 5 days now and possibly tomorrow they will be going into the grow boxes. The cats are, of course, rolling all over the warm, planted areas of the raised beds but regardless I can see radish begin to sprout.

Potatoes chitting

On the warmest window sill the mange tout and peas are showing green shoots but no-show yet from the broad beans.

Pea shoots

Even after a late night, at a long anticipated concert, the sunshine has lured the family, cats and all, outside. Walking down tne Street people are smiling. There’s a sourdough loaf being manufactured and brownies ready to gift to a sick friend. Its one of those ‘Famous Five’ Enid Blyton kind of days (historic children’s adventures from my youth. Those of a certain age will know what I mean). Lashings of ginger beer.

Sowing the seeds

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Spring is sprung. The raised beds are finished but we are yet in danger of frost. The radish and lettuce were sown today. The beans and peas put into the propagator inside on the windowsill. The cats are very interested. It’s a question of what they dig out first I suspect.

Sowing legumes

We decided on planting our own food crop before the pandemic but have only just managed to get the beds together. I suppose there is about five square metres. I’m not sure how well we will succeed but it will be a grand experiment. In this, of all years, with a war in the Ukraine and a rise in taxes and energy costs before that, this is a good time to focus on a bit of self care and those closest to home. As I write those in Kyiv are being shelled, surrounded and besieged. They had no warning, no time to plant less time to tend a garden. There is certainly still a good chance of a frost in Kyiv.

Sorry, a bit heavy for a short post about food. These are interesting times. Stay safe.

I’ve got worms

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They arrived today in a large bag along with some coconut coir. To be clear these are composting worms. Apparently ordinary garden worms aren’t so hungry and therefore take longer to make compost. As ‘project retirement’ moves on apace we are having raised beds and a general garden tidy up. Brexit Britain and all that  we took the decision to grow some veg and keep our cost down resulting in some heavy duty garden work being undertaken.

There is now a 10 foot long a metre wide (yes, I’m mixing my measurements) and tucked into the corner is a little composting pod from Subpod (no they’re not paying me). Its a buried, worm based, composting system which is supposed to be less smelly and more efficient than a normal compost heap. The brick sized lump of coconut soaked in water and crumbled into the box topped with a yummy layer of cardboard and a banana skin then in go the worms all tucked up under a biodegradable blanket. Lid closed and, I am told, it can now be ignored for a week.

There’s something comforting about the idea of having the ability to grow food. I know its already a wonderful thing to have an outdoor space as the past two years have proved. There’s also a memory wrapped up in there. Both my grandfathers worked on the land. One raised turf for bowling greens and sheep for the table, the other grew dahlias and chrysanthemums for market. I spent many summer afternoons helping to round up sheep, tote bales of hay or sitting on a Victorian garden bench with my grandma bashing the stems of the flowers so they could be put in water before shipping.

I knew it was spring as a child because the rotovator man would come. My grandparents lived next door and the coming of the rotovator man meant grandad was preparing the soil for the spring planting. why own a machine that would sit in the shed for all but one day a year. The vegetable garden sat in what had been the base of a commercial greenhouse and would provide enough veg for my grandparents, auntie and uncle and our family too. if they had lost me in the summer months I’d be stealing peas straight from the plant. There were other greenhouses (glasshouses for my American cousins) with tomatoes and flowers for commercial sale. it wasn’t a bad way to grow up. We even had a Jersey cow for fresh milk. I can see my grandad now, cap turned backwards milking her and my grandma hand churning butter on the kitchen table.

I moved to the city to study. My once tidy vegetable patch (I had my own little area to manage) became a fish pond for my parents. Gardening seemed fruitless task (pardon the pun). Funny how the wheel turns.