Author Archives: midlifegardener

High summer has become an Indian summer with warm weather interspersed with serious rain.  Perfect growing conditions, in fact, and the grass has come back with a vengeance after being parched in July and August.  I have been mowing more than at any time this year, just to keep the grass tidy and – more importantly – to enable us to clear up the copious amounts of dog waste which are being deposited by our rapidly maturing puppy (and her colleague the ginger whinger).

They are good companions in the garden, although I am concerned for the well-being of some of the veg as Ella, like an unruly child, does not grasp the idea of boundaries.  She gleefully jumps over the low chicken wire designed to keep the rabbits out, trying to gorge herself on raspberries or simply run through the swedes, beans or potatoes.

Growing fruit and veg one soon realises that what you see is not always what you get.  The Sarpo Mira have been happily growing all summer, and when I dug the first ones it was clear what a good summer it had been.  I was afraid that the small areas where the soil had washed off and the potatoes were green would mean a smaller crop.  But no: they were massive…weighing in at two pounds apiece some of them – like mini meteors.  Although they mostly look good, they are not all going to store well: there were a few already rotting, but when one potato will probably suffice as a meal for four, you don’t need too many to survive.  And anyway, we are still working our way through the King Edwards – which are storing well – so we will be OK for potatoes for a while yet.

Next on the harvesting were the borlotti beans, which I had been monitoring to see how the pods were maturing and drying.  Waiting till the surfaces of the pods turn red mean that they are more likely to be ripe, and they are also easier to spot as they stand out well against the yellowing leaves.  I duly harvested them a couple of weeks ago and, after they had lain in the greenhouse to dry off a little, I podded them.  Eight pounds of beans was the resultant haul, with most showing a good speckled burgundy on cream.  I had the rapt attention of Fudge who loves a bit of bean picking, but who was dismayed by the taste of the one errant bean that fell to the floor.  As borlottis are one of those beans that need proper cooking before you can eat them, it’s probably as well that she spat it out.  The last thing we need is a ginger puker.

The beans have dried reasonably well, though some have gone a little brown.  Perhaps I should have left the pods longer to get the crimson coat before shelling.  Who knows.

The squashes were next on the list and we have now got over twenty assorted butternut and crown prince squashes.  They are storing on the shelves by the Old Man’s back door – “the best place to store them” according to the oracle.  I took his advice.  It was not something I was going to argue about: it’s cool and relatively dry, so they should be OK there.

Tomatoes, peppers and even melons have continued to grow in the warm autumn.  The melons are not much larger than the melon balls that you get in second rate restaurants (and less than half the size of a sarpo mira spud) so we probably won’t repeat that experiment – unless Paddi wants to give us some more plants next year…

So: much of the harvest is gathered in – even a cabbage, which the OM advised me to pick before it split.  Once again, on the outside it looked a little caterpillar-eaten, but under the surface detail, the core was great.

It’s just rather a lot of cabbage for the two of us.

My youngest brother (2 years my senior), sister-in-law and two nephews came to lunch with the OM on Friday.  The discussions with TOM upon his announcement of their imminent arrival centred – as always with him – on “catering arrangements”.  He declared that he would be buying a couple of pies from Charlie’s (the piemaker and sometime butcher in Cary), and that we would have some potato salad and some green leaves with it.

“Excellent idea”, I said, “would you like me to dig some spuds?”

“Uuuuurm, actually someone bought some potatoes”.  He sounded a little embarrassed.

I pointed out that it seemed ridiculous to buy potatoes when we have a whole garden full of them and said that I would make a salad with our own spuds.  He accepted my offer to make some salad and – never able to resist the chance to offer some advice – told me that I would have to make enough for eight.

So Friday morning I dug a root of Belle de Fontenays, scraped ’em, boiled ’em and mixed ’em with some home-made mayonnaise (made with our own hens’ eggs).  I was duly summoned to lunch as soon as Hugh and Brigitte arrived and there on the table when I walked in was…..a bowl of potato salad which he had prepared with the shop-bought spuds.  And in addition to this there was a bowl of “leaves”: a little gem lettuce and some almost albino chinese leaves from the supermarket that looked like they had never seen natural daylight.

Disappointed would be an understatement of Wildean proportions in describing my mood.  The OM realised he might have messed up and said he felt that I had not made it clear that I would make a salad.  It was a rather poor attempt at an apology or explanation.

As a youngster and younger man I suffered years of my parents informing me of what was growing in the garden and what we should be harvesting and consuming before they run to seed.  And now I find myself – inevitably – turning into my parents as it is I who am telling my father to use up the spuds, pick the lettuce or use the beetroot tops in a nice salad.  Hell – I even made my own mayonnaise: how bloody middle-aged is that?!  For the dread of heredity to have finally come true, is no great surprise.  To discover that the Old Man has turned into a rather truculent teenager who fails to remember simple instructions and offers lame excuses for doing so is an unfortunate flip side to the same the coin, I guess.

Ah well.  Let’s not worry for now.  I feel better for that.  Let’s take a look at what is growing in the garden.  Even if no one wants to eat it.

The OM has been out of hospital for four weeks now.  Fortunately Gill has been  coming in to cook him a dinner or lunch.  For the first couple of weeks he was coming to ours for breakfast on account of the fact that he had been told that he should lift nothing – not even a tea-pot – for a seemingly indeterminate length of time.  So a regular visitation for porridge with blueberries became the norm for a while.  And it was fine after all, it is time with my father in which we can have a thorough and meaningful two-way chat.   Ok, so I’m half right there.

With us about to take a break for a few days in south Wales, I managed to intimate to him that perhaps he was well enough to make his own breakfast.  So the next morning I was just enjoying a minor lie-in when I was awoken by my name being called in the yard.  I got up to find my father standing in the drive, looking up the yard at some of the young cows in the field which were moo-ing loudly at the next field.  He instructed me to go and find out if any had escaped.  I walked all of 30 paces to discover that there was no problem and that all cows were accounted for.

As I walked up and back I was thinking I know that the cows were the original reason I took over this garden, and that one has to be careful that this herd does not get into contact with next door’s (which has TB in the herd).  And I also know that he has just had major heart surgery,

“But for fuck’s sake, can you really not manage to walk the short distance to the gate to find out for yourself?”

Is what I did not say to him.

Is he just playing this for all it’s worth?  Has the general anaesthetic really had that much of an effect on his short-term memory?  He says he WORRIES so much more these days.  Well I guess you would, but everyone needs a bit of positive mental attitude.

“So you’re doing your own breakfast this morning?” I enquired as I retreated through the front door.

“If you like” he said.

So I got my way, without the use of expletives, which is a good thing.

But not as satisfying.

And so it begins…

This year has been as chalk to cheese with the brilliant, unbroken sunshine of the past few weeks contrasting with the relentless rain of 2012.  But some things remain the same, for while the veg patch and borders are all looking spick and span, we are still under bombardment from local villains.

For example, two weeks ago I happened upon a number of caterpillars on the broccoli.  They were simply resting alongside each other, like mini cruisers in a game of battle ships.  They were resting because they had clearly had their fill of large portions of my summer purple sprouting.  I could hear the dramatic music in my head as I lifted a leaf and saw more as they munched their way along the leading edge of another leaf.  It’s hardly Pearl Harbor revisited, but I actually felt a little rush of adrenalin when I saw the lazy fat striped bodies lying there in the bright sunlight, confident in the knowledge that no birds were going to eat them.  I think I must be investing a little too much emotional energy into this these days.  Well, the caterpillars had not legislated for an angry midlife gardener and were duly despatched.

Interestingly, since then I have not seen any more caterpillars, but the butterflies were out in force this week so we are expecting a fresh assault any time soon.

In other news, as they say, we continue to try and get the rabbit(s).  They had munched on the brussels and broccoli after insinuating themselves through the wide gauge netting which the OM put round the smaller patch at the start of last year (before allowing the chard, lettuces and pink fir apples to get overrun with weeds).  So I changed the netting and, since TOM got out of hospital I have taken possession of the air rifle, with which he has previously been pretty successful from his bedroom window.  (I can imagine my father would have been very much at home back in the hey day of the Empire, sitting on the veranda in some sweltering Imperial outpost, shooting whatever happened to be passing, while the ice cubes rapidly melted in his tumbler of Bombay Sapphire and Fever Tree Tonic).

However, as he is slightly concerned with the thought that he might be split asunder by the kick of the rifle, I have taken control of the weapon and have spent a few fruitless mornings stalking bunnies in the garden.  Fat chance I have of hitting one.  In the old days I used to blast them with a shot-gun, but in the current climate of proper gun control, with only an air rifle, my chances of hitting a rabbit with a single pellet from 25 paces from behind a small shrub are slim.  Even allowing for the telescopic sight (which gave TOM a black eye when he rested it against his eye brow when firing) I know the rabbits are safe.

Instead of shooting we are trying trapping instead.  We have baited the rabbit trap (after a short 10 minute instructional talk and demonstration from TOM).  But to no avail.   I also set mouse traps and netted off the caulis and cabbages as I thought mice might have been eating my Fennel sprouts.  No mice or rabbits caught, and although no further damage, the culprits are still at large (in the case of the rabbits, increasingly large).  So one has to turn to the ultimate desperate weapon of choice: Fudge.

I know, I know, I have made much of Fudge’s inability to catch anything other than a canine cold, but she has shown interest in the rabbits, and got close on occasions.  But no success as yet.  But then, metaphorically speaking, she pulled an almighty rabbit out of the hat the other day when she dug up and slaughtered a mole.  I had basically given up on catching moles – the traps never work and none of my pouring acrid smelling chemicals down the holes last year seemed to do any good.  So I would simply “tramp the dirt down” (a nod to Elvis Costello – what a set he played at Glasto this year) and get on with life.  But then Fudge comes up trumps with an excavated and executed mole.  Good dog!

Now, Fudge, about those rabbits….