Down the allotment

I was very kindly offered a bit of a patch on Re:forms allotment last year. I duly went down and looked and hadnt been back since. At last it has stopped raining and freezing, so we went down for a bit yesterday and managed to get in two rows of spring onions and some rehomed strawberry plants, in between standing about in some degree of shock and awe. Some plots are so… tidy. Some plots are not. The best are the Edgelands sort anyway.

The magic of the allotment has inspired me: I am going to plant a field of dreams once I have started the seeds for the corn in the kitchen.

Watch this space.

More from the Anti-Photography exhibition (with a Blackberry)

The new space has a window and out of the window you can see this apple tree.

I like that tree but I have never seen it hanging onto its apples with such grim determination before…

The World of Rhubarb

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I have been lucky enough to be offered a patch on an allotment which I am a bit excited about. I went for a look see today and do you know what I was a little overwhelmed. Within ten minutes I was feeling like I was at one with the earth, and half an hour and a spot of light weeding later I wanted a roll up fag and a real ale. And I am NOT joking. Nor do I smoke.

The patch is hiding under some plastic sheeting with a pallet type thing on top and some more dirt and weeds, but underneath it looks jolly promising. Obviously I need to plan my crop so I have been learning about hard to grow carrots, which might be more correctly described as too feeble to be bothered to grow carrots, and I have marvelled at the great sprouting runners on the soon to be rampant strawberry patch. I have gloried at the mini caulis and the soon to be bulbous artichoke. There’s so much to look at you’d really just need to go up and sit down and take it all in.

Time flew by. I think that might be part of the point on an allotment. For my vague gardening efforts I was rewarded with a true taste explosion masquerading as an ordinary tomato and I have come home with a bundle of good-looking rhubarb. It travelled home with me, muddy and all, on the passenger seat and I can truthfully say the smell was heavenly. I am going to make a rhubarb crumble. Thank goodness I’ve got out of the fish pie.

The Tyranny of Grass

I spent a peaceful hour in a shady library garden yesterday, primarily waiting for a face to be painted (not mine) and had a browse of one of those books that it is interesting to read, but not so interesting that you might buy it. Except maybe second-hand on Amazon for a few pence if you ever remembered to. These are a few things I jotted down, the “lawn” being one of my permanent preoccupations.

A grass blade’s no easier to make than an oak.
James Russell Lowell (1819-1891)

Nothing is more pleasant to the eye than green grass kept finely shorn.
Francis Bacon (Of Gardens 1625)

Forests decay, harvests perish, flowers vanish, but grass is immortal.
John Ingalls (Speech in the US Senate 1874)

A lawn is nature under totalitarian rule.
Michael Pollan (Second Nature 1991)

One of the side-effects of drinking all that ale with the Devon Home Cook was that I was prevailed upon to mow my rather clumpy and long, but lush grass that I knew was hiding a multitude of sins – rather like a bald bloke’s combover.

This was the result.

As woeful as Argentina

One very good reason to stay indoors this afternoon

and look at Wimbledon’s lawn

in the absence of any live televised South African turf.

 And not forgetting I could watch the green grass of

Chantilly where Dick Turpin will attempt

to overcome the very impressive Lope de Vega

 at the awkward French time of 2.42 p.m.

Alternatively I could go outside and pave over the lot,

                                                                                         but there is something about a patch of green,

                                                                                    however small and pathetic,

                                                                                   that speaks to me.

Look what I got

Someone very kindly bought me back a vuvuzela directly from South Africa. It was an unexpected gift and it lifted an otherwise tiresome day.  

I go to a writers’ group at the Palace Theatre at the moment. It is a new project and I like it because we are a mix of ages. The youthful vuvuzela bearer brought back two: one for me and one for a retired teacher I’ll call Mr Morrell. The age gap must be about fifty years between those two and I sit somewhere in the middle of the range.  

He also brought some small stone elephants for another member of the group, wrapped in South African newspaper. I really wanted the newspaper fragments, but they were still needed for the elephants. So I contented myself with looking at a furniture store advert to see what manner of sofa you can get in Cape Town.  

Souvenir hunting can seem a bit Abigail’s Party in the wrong hands, but this young man pulled it off with grace and charm. He said after the England v Algeria match he needed to hit the shops for therapeutic purposes. He also said he thought JT had a lot to answer for…  

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Snail Foam

I know it sounds like an amuse-bouche you might get served up at a Heston Blumenthal restaurant (the Devon Home Cook would never offer such a filthsome outrage in a porcelain espresso cup), but it is actually something snails do.

I didn’t know that snails could do such a thing until yesterday, when I found one busily foaming away when I was out in the garden. Note: I do not say I was garden-ing, merely that I was garden-in.

I thought it was dying what with all the apparent dissolving that seemed to be going on, and I had a guilty conscience having already accidentally squashed one with my thumb underneath the rim of my black bucket – henceforth known as the bucket of death. Further research reveals that the foamed snail was probably just deterring predators or an acid attack… Well good luck to it.

Sadly, I did definitely squish the other’s snail shell so I am hoping it just slimed off to carry on life as slug. Don’t tell me any different thanks. I couldn’t live with the guilt.

The snail foams

Another snail

A Bumper Crop

I was thinking of drafting a question to Radio 4′s Gardeners’ Question Time.

Dear Team

I have sorely neglected my plot this year and, apart from a few tufts of grass, when I went out there today (in hope more than expectation) all I could find was this solitary excuse for a carrot in my microcosmic black bucket.

Should I be trying to grow them in some other container?

I have a family to feed – please help.

Yours sincerely

Makemeadiva

P.S. The carrot measures no more than an inch long and not, I’ll have you P.P.S., in a bijou, eat the skin baby Chantenay kinda way.

There’s a theme this week…

…but it may not be evident immediately.

The flat we had in London was on the second floor. This was an improvement on the flat before that which was on the eighth, on the far end of the balcony and next door to Alan and Gromit his dog. Alan was in the habit of getting completely out of it on a regular basis; often leaving Gromit out on the walkway to the flats to terrorise the neighbours or ride the lift on his own. One night he excelled himself, Alan not Gromit, by passing out whilst his tv caught fire at about 4 a.m. I realised then, the fire brigade don’t have ladders up the the eighth floor and jumping is no good either.

We were therefore very happy to get down to the third floor in Hackney Wick, opposite Mabley Green and the throw of a stone from the River Lee and Hackney Marshes. It didn’t matter there was no garden because we had masses of green space on the doorstep and the dogs loved it. That said, by the time there were four humans in the two-bed we had to move on and I was really happy to at last have my own garden. I don’t mind saying I took a bit of pleasure in it too, planting plants and whatnot.

Sadly now, after a hard winter, loads of rain and Rudi smashing around in it daily it resembles a hideous hybrid monster somewhere between Steptoe’s Yard and the Gaza Strip. If I go out there, which I have to, I shudder. I re-turfed last year not that you can tell, now I am not sure I have the heart.

Rudi’s kill list:
Grass, everything green underfoot, more grass.
Silver Birch sapling
Wisteria
Something with purple berries, but we never got that far
Hellebores
A couple of pots smashed to smithereens
The back fence so he can better poke his nose into the person behind us’ business

The cold:
Pelargoniums – every last one as far as I can see
Some kind of pretty viburnum
Banana plant (but that was partly my fault)
Cordylines
Maybe the fuchsia but I can’t be sure
Stuff

It’s depressing. I tried hanging the washing out today for the first time in 2010 and found a bucket growing weeds. I was thinking of emptying it straight into the compost bin when I saw the ferny fronds of what looked like carrots poking out. On investigation it was indeed a carrot.

Amazing! Amongst utter devastation something is quietly doing a spot of growing in a bucket. Even an evil winter and the doings of Rudi cannot wither the mighty carrot.

Here’s a picture:

We washed it for its photo shoot then Cassia ate it. She declared it to be sweet. There was a decided emphasis on the vowels.

There’s been some snow round these sides…

From the back garden - I love the snow on next door's washing line collection

…and at Ascot too which has knocked my Big Buck’s post off course. Not to worry, the Long Walk Hurdle is taking a shortish walk down the M4 to Newbury on the 29th December and I have rescheduled the post about an errant apostrophe until then.

There must be racing today somewhere but I am not going to be watching as I will be elsewhere, so instead of mentioning horses that will likely lose at Wolverhampton I thought I would put up a few snaps from yesterday.

Our snow girl

There is a little listed contest at Lingfield @ 2.30 today. At the moment Tranquil Tiger is everybody’s favourite NAP at evens now and probably a shade odds on by the off? I have been backing Saphira’s Fire since she won under my nose LAST year at the Guineas meeting – surely today she has a good a chance as any as poking her nose in front with 7lb in hand. At 7/2 it’s not much of a surely though. Over a cliff springs to mind. The NAP is probably a good thing here at whatever price.

Moods

I guess only a sailor would really know the meaning of that phrase where “moods change like the wind”.  One moment you’re whipping along on the crest of a wave with the wind in your sails, the next you’re stuck in the doldrums.  I’m not a sailor but I know how to ride my moods after 40 years of practice.  The answer is to let them float along with you, like one of those big boats with a small dinghy tied onto the back.  Sometimes you can be effusive, holding forth and riding high on the big poop deck, then other times it’s best to get in the dinghy, hunker down and wait for the weather to turn.  Which it always does.  Which is what I tell myself when I feel frantic or desperate, or if I am living life inside out with all my nerve endings hanging out in the elements.

So tonight, after a day to be survived and negotiated and a little bit endured, it was rather nice to water the plants with the decadence of a garden hose in the near darkness with a glass of Prosecco saved for after teaching the evening class (and the 3 and a half hour morning class) and the bid writing and other tasks in between.

Oh and to read my email and find that my weekend long battle with Betfair has ended with the winner declared as ME!  Proof of which is that, despite their lousy Terms & Conditions, my account has been credited with a lost multiple stake. 

Life can always be sweet if you hang in there, but always read the small print