The Midlife Garden specializes in growing cut flowers. Operating under the name of Garden Gate Flowers, along with our lovely neighbour Kate we supply seasonal cut flowers to local farm shops as well as taking individual orders. We also supply and arrange flowers for weddings and other events.
So this morning I got up to play my usual round of Sunday golf at 7.35 am to avoid carving into that all important family day. The rain had been lashing down all night and the dog was not impressed when I kicked her outside in the what was still a torrent.
The forecast was for it to clear up about 9.30, so I was hoping as I drove to the Royal Wheathill (thank you Juliet for that soubriquet) that it would start to ease sometime soon. But it was not to be. As I stood with Julian pondering if Steve had the good sense to not even bother getting out of bed for this, the rain started to turn to sleet. And as Steve arrived to participate in the debate, it started to snow.
Snow dial
And it continued to do so for about an hour after that, leaving golf out of the question, but some very attractive views of the garden. The weathemen had not forecast any snow which made the white covering all the more beautiful. But it was cold. Claire and I decided that the snow would count as the first frost of the year, thereby allowing us to abide by family tradition to only pick the first brussels sprouts after a frost. And they were delicious with our roast pork chop at lunchtime. Excellent.
I turned 50 last week. I celebrated with the my U16 hockey team ending narrow runners-up in the county tournament to “the-school-that-must-not-be named” (otherwise known as the “C” word in my dictionary of sporting vernacular). I had a quiet meal at the local pub and on Friday celebrated a different 50th anniversary by going to the first night screening of James Bond in Skyfall. Birthdays are not that big a deal – not even your 50th. Am I officially middle-aged or is that 40? Or is 50 the new 40? If so, is 60 the new 50, in which case when are you officially old, if we are all going to have to work till we’re 70 something to be able to afford a pension?
If I was not sure, the evidence on my birthday cards was conclusive: the recurring themes of gardening and golf which spelt midlife mediocrity writ large. But that is what I enjoy. I had a great round of golf earlier this week which included my first ever eagle, (followed by my umpteenth quadruple bogey) and on Friday, after a quick trip to Liverpool, I spent a very happy day in the garden.
All Clear!
I sorted the gravelly bit out by the road, though it has become overgrown with weeds. It is not an area that concerns me greatly, but Claire retains a suburban desire to put on a good front for the neighbours and wanted the grit and grass sorted out. It was hard work, as we have not really done anything to this patch for a decade – when we cleared the area, put down shingle and planted a Mahonia. My mother insisted that grasses would be a good idea – which irked me as this was, at the time, the only piece of the garden I could honestly call mine and I wanted to do whatever I wanted to: grasses were not in the plan.
Ten years on, two days hard labour and I have come round to the idea that ornamental grasses on this windswept patch of soil would be a great idea. My mother was right all along.
Always like a trim bush…
When I am in the garden I am often trying to avoid my father, but I conversely I feel closer to my mother, who died six years ago. It was she who did the majority of the work to create this garden and it is in many ways in her memory that I am doing what I can to maintain and develop it now. So I cleared the weeds from the shingle and split one or two of the ornamental grasses. There is some other weed there that looks reasonably decorative so I left that. And then I came in and ordered some more grass (no not that sort – ornamental stuff).
Lavender and sun-dial
Afterwards I trimmed the Berberis or whatever it is at the front of the house and then, after further internet research, I pruned the lavender. This had me thinking of mum again as we planted that this year around the sun-dial which had been her 70th birthday present from her four sons. I’m only twenty years away from that landmark, but there is no point in being morose over it. There’s still plenty living (and gardening and golfing) to be done.
Better get on with it then.
Lavender at the end of May – our first statement of intent in the garden. Better than dahlias we thought
Keats had it about right with his Ode to Autumn: A season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. In the garden the first early morning mists heighten the aroma of gentle decay and dwindling fecundity. The apples are dropping, we have picked the pears, french beans are finished and even the runners have reached the end of their race. We even managed to eat the pears before the went over into mush.
Slugfest
The hostas are now mostly bare skeletons after the constant onslaught of slugs and snails. But they make for some lovely colours and patterns. It is the colours that lift the spirit in autumn. It is too easy to bemoan the shortening days, cooling temperatures and arrival of equinoctial storms (remnants of hurricanes from across the Atlantic), but there is beauty in the garden and along the hedgerows. Blackberries are brilliant and the raspberries that we planted at the start of the year have given us enough to sprinkle on our cereal each morning. Look great, taste great. Already I find myself looking forward to next year when the raspberries will be really
There is an air of packing up and hunkering down. I have started clearing beds, such as under the Morello cherries: a bed that had some iris in it and not a lot else as far as I can guess, so some small lilies have gone in there today. General tidiness is the order of the day and we have chopped the runner beans down and cleared large patches of the garden.
Elsewhere I decided to chuck in a load of plants that Lynn has given to us. I am not sure what they are, but I cleared the bed at the top of the mole slope and spaced plants out according to what I am guessing they might become. I decided to call that bed the pot luck be, because the outcome of that will be even more one of chance than normal. We will see how it all goes, but it looks tidy for now.
The Old Man returned this week and said that he noticed that Jim had done a lot of work while he was away. I made sure he knew who had done most of the work and even found myself in a conversation about what work to do next in the garden (saw down the tortuosa willow to shed more light on the lucky dip bed).
It’s beginning to feel like I actually manage this place.
The Old Man is on holiday at the moment and it is no coincidence that the Cotoneaster at the front of the house got its annual prune this week. Hacking the shoots off a shrub that is more of a tree has been an annual task for me for years. But it has always been carried out under the watchful eye of the landlord, who insists that I leave the red berries which are – apparently – considered a delicacy by migratory Redwing and Fieldfares
Just what Fieldfares like to eat on a cool autumnal morning
This goodwill to all birds might keep their numbers up, but it has gradually diminished the amount of light getting into our living room window, as the Cotoneaster swells in size each year. So this year, with TOM away, I decided to get the big saw out and take it down a peg or two.
I can only imagine the news spreading to the Urals as word gets around the Fieldfare community that the greatest
Can’t see….
winter food source in Western Europe would not be available this year due to the brutality of the midlife gardener who simply wanted to see out of his window. Somerset will be without the flocks of migratory birds as they forage elsewhere across Southern England for food, or maybe do not even bother making the journey to the relative warmth of England when their main food source had been reduced to a pile of twigs.
…Can see
But I callously carried on with my arboreal butchery, going from using the secateurs to the “big loppers” to finally resorting to the bush saw. The tree did put up a fair amount of resistance and I did not get away unscathed. The scratches on my arms, not to mention the stiffness in my lower back, were testament to the awkwardness of reducing the monster shrub to a stubbly bunch of branches. The stepladder was quickly dispensed with as it became clear I would
It will grow back won’t it?
have to resort to climbing up it to cut it. Thankfully I managed to avoid the comedy “sawing the branch on which I’m sitting” moment, and the end result has made all the difference to the light pouring into the living room.
Further reduction of the tree line was meted out by Jim who took the fig tree back to its lowest common denominator – leaving just a trunk this time. That will give more light to TOM’s back room, though it all looks a bit severe Perhaps by the time TOM returns from holiday, a leaf or two might have grown back on some of his shrubs…
It’s been a while since I posted, which means that I have not been in the garden as much as I should have been, but I have two good reasons for that. Firstly, the Olympics were a totally warranted distraction from normal life and a two week holiday in South Africa put a complete hold on any horticultural activity in Midlifegardening terms.
But, coming back from our life-affirming break, I was pleased to see that everything in the garden is doing well. The Old Man’s lettuces and carrots, beetroot and squashes have all grown immeasurably in the fortnight we were away. And our brussels, cabbages, and purple sprouting have blossomed too.
Unfortunately, alongside (or rather on top of) the brussels, the cabbage white butterflies have been busy too. TOM’s brussels had been lacerated, with writhing masses of striped caterpillars gorging themselves on the fleshy leaves, and within days, mine were showing the same apocalyptic tendencies, with leaves holed and shredded.
The Red Kale took “a hell of a beating”
Since then I have spent a few happy hours picking the little blighters off the leaves and destroying them. I recall as I child I once did this with a friend and we somehow managed to throw them on a bonfire with the fierce glee of the young savage that burns within the soul of any under ten, but I decided to be more green with the destruction of these pests and even offered them to the chickens. Unfortunately the hens were not interested – which made me think that perhaps these caterpillars are toxic to birds (hence the bright colours) so crushing them under my welly heel was the most humane way I could think of to destroy them.
One thing is for certain: the cabbage white butterfly is not in danger of extinction through my random culling. There will be plenty left on the plant to maintain another generation.
Beans, Beans, Beans
Elsewhere the truly remarkable hits of the summer are the French Beans and the Runner Beans. Runners are an interesting item on the vegetable list and are a peculiarly British veg. I am not sure that our runner beans are so popular with our North American cousins. The idea of a bean that you pick whole, take the stringy part from them edge of the pod with a knife or potato peeler then slice to prepare for the pot, is not a type of preparation that some are familiar with, but it is second nature to many growers in Britain.
Last year the runner beans were a disaster for my father: they did not grow well and the harvest was poor. This year, I threw them in a well-manured trench, constructed the network of canes for them to grow and then pretty much waited. As we went away there was a burgeoning number of them getting to a good size and while we were away I think TOM was overwhelmed by a tidal wave of ever larger pods. Indeed, this summer has been declared, in true Olympic style, “the best ever” for runner beans.
The problem is one of glut: what do we do with the extra? TOM likes to make runner bean chutney, but there is only so much of that you can eat in a year before you are round to the next summer with a cupboard full of last season’s still in their jars. I think next door he probably has row upon row of chutney lined up in their years, categorized by type: “Mmmmm 2005: Classic Vintage: that’s going to be ready in 2015, while the 2011 makes an excellent Nouveau for use with lighter cheeses. The 2008 is stonking good blue cheese accompaniment: a fine body and with a hint of cinnamon on the nose”.
Or else the other means of preservation is the good old chest freezer, which, although full of dead animal has some room for runners.
So, repeat after me: string, cut, blanche, drain, cool, bag, freeze. String, cut, blanche…..
With the summer continuing changeable, one is almost taken aback by a bit of warm sunshine. Wednesday provided the whole of this season in one day, with light rain followed by torrential rain, which cleared to warm sunshine, during which, with masterful timing I took the dog for a walk. A good walk only spoiled by Fudge going ballistic at a slightly startled elderly rambler; though Fudge had good cause to complain: the lady was wearing full rambling gear, carrying maps, back packs and hiking stick all accessorized badly with what looked like a yellow bin liner by way of waterproofing. Enough to freak the most laid back canine.
By the time we returned, the blue skies were being invaded by scudding clouds as the wind got up and blew away any thoughts of a leisurely afternoon sunning myself in the garden.
Instead I prepared the ground for, and planted, lines of swede and chard as well as hedging my bets by planting a couple of seed trays of the same in the greenhouse as well as some small pots of cauliflowers.
At the other end of the reap and sow spectrum, I picked more runner and french beans as well as a courgette (zucchini to our north american brethren) which magically went from the size of a small pencil to torpedo in hours flat. In between times I had trimmed the tomato plants to stop them taking over the whole greenhouse.
Elsewhere around the garden the are plenty of flowers blooming at long last, with cornflowers for cutting looking good – though how on earth you get them to grow straight I have no idea. At the Olympic Park they have thousands of the beggars standing straight and tall in vast beds. Fantastic – but how do they do that?!
Blousy? Moi?
The Love in the Mist are finally blooming joining the Nicotiana in the corner bed. The scent of Nicotiana is so lovely on a warm evening as we go to shut the chickens in. And lovely set off with the Love in the Mist and the Cosmos. Elsewhere there are numerous splashes of colour including the infamously blousy Dahlias (The Old Man is very pleased with them – but they stand out in the flower beds like rambler wrapped in flapping yellow plastic). I don’t know the names of flowers – I am don’t have the brain for it – but they look kinda nice and next year we will hopefully plan and develop the colour schemes a little more.
So yesterday had all the summer in one: sun, rain, wind, cloud, preparing, planting harvesting and just some good old seasonal flowering.
We are at the time of the year when I remember my parents would begin to repeat the mantra about fresh produce in the garden. “The beans are ready for picking”, “plenty of courgettes” or “please help yourself to lettuces – or else they will go to waste”.
Waste – anathema to the generation brought up in wartime rationing and post-war depression. Wasting good produce was deemed a cardinal sin in the garden. All those delicious vegetables and we don’t seem to want to eat them. Well, I am now in that happy position when some vegetables are coming to harvest time and the daily habit of picking them has started. I say “some” because, frankly, this summer has been pretty crappy with the cold wet weather putting paid to many of the early veg like the peas (one bowlful from a row of plants). But the runner beans are hitting their stride at the moment.
Harvesting runner beans is the equivalent of plate spinning: you check each row every day and try to pick every bean that is of the required size: not too skinny, but not too fat and stringy. But somehow you always manage to miss a couple so next day you see a cucumber sized bean hanging in the green shade. If you left it another day, you feel it would pull the whole plant over, such is the apparent speed with which they grow.
So today I will be getting out there and trying to reap as many as I can. And what will I do with all these beans? Well, I will follow the parents’ example and start slicing, blanching and freezing as many of the blighters as I can. Suddenly frozen veg in the winter seems a really worth while idea. If it means they don’t go to waste.
Meanwhile, T.O.M. keeps informing me that the carrots in his patch are ready to pick. I gladly took some last night – and they are delicious. Carrots are right up there in terms of veg that truly taste so much better than shop bought.
And in response to my pompous declarations to The Old Man that there are plenty of runners, he first of all said that he better make some runner bean chutney (what? from my beautiful fresh runners?) then, after we returned from our trip to the Olympics at the weekend, said he hadn’t realised there were any ready.
Now I know how he felt whenever I failed to heed his requests for me to pick my quota of produce.
What size omelette did you want?
Elsewhere, the hens continue to lay well, but who is laying what is a mystery as the three from the other day show: mummy egg, daddy egg and baby egg: double yoker, single yoker and, well, “could do better if she tried”.
The unpredictability of home harvests.
Shallots?
A final note on my previous post about labelling things. I decided to lift the shallots, which I did under the supervision of T.O.M. It was all going well, with him advising which were “banana” shallots and which the ordinary variety (pretty obvious really – no need for labels there) when I found one little clump which had not developed greatly. We simultaneously realised that this was not a clump of underprivileged shallots, but was a garlic bulb. How did that get there? I wondered. Then remembered that all the shallots and garlic had been put in hurriedly at the start of the spring. So, once agin, you need to be so careful to label things, you know.
“A dreaded Sunny Day, So let’s go where we’re happy…Keats and Yeats are on your side”.
Anyone for Pimms?
So sang Morrissey with The Smiths. I like the line (as I like the Smiths) but I have had to carefully edit the Smiths lyrics to take out all the pathos and depression.
Likewise one has to do the same this summer: carefully edit out the dreadful rainy days and think only of the sunny ones. And at last we have had just that: a sunny fortnight with which we have been blessed with sunshine. It was perfectly timed to coincide with our summer celebration for our Silver Wedding which we had ambitiously planned to have in the garden. Two days prior to the event, the rain stopped, the sun came out and we were able to get the garden looking spick and span. The edges were done, the lawn mown, the mole hills squashed and rabbit-proofing chicken wire taken down from around the cosmos and Nicotiana.
It was a fab evening with great friends and family. It was, to a great extent, what I had been working towards with the garden so I was pleased with the results, though a few more hours of sunshine might have got the potted sweet peas blooming and a little more colour around the garden.
To a great extent, though, gardening is about the process as much as the result. The repetition of planting, watering, hoeing, weeding and general maintenance becomes an end in itself. The final moment when you pick your flowers or vegetables is merely the ultimate stage in a succession of worthwhile activities.
Tables and chairs – heavy lifting instructions required
Ultimately, though, the garden is there to be enjoyed, and the sunshine gives us the opportunity to relax and take in the sights, and sounds. So my obligatory morning coffee is taken on the grass, sitting on the wrought iron seats (purloined from my brother’s former bar – and built to be so heavy you would need a gold medal in weightlifting to be able to draw it to the table, let alone throw it across a crowded bar).
For me, making coffee has become a ritual in which process adds to the result. I use coffee beans – from my good friends at Azorie Blue – which I grind freshly for each cup with my Krupps grinder. I then make an espresso with our neat new Aero Press. While I am doing this I have put the milk in the microwave to heat, then I froth that and add to my espresso for the perfect latte. I have taken some stick from one of my more cynical brothers for the lengths to which I go for a home brewed latte, but it makes me happy and I definitely get a better cup of coffee.
And it tastes even better in the sunshine in my garden.
Peter Cook and Dudley Moore had – as their alter egosDerek and Clive – an expletive-laden conversation regarding the lack of labelling on important household items (such as motorbikes and sunglasses – getting them mixed up can be awkward, it seems) and I often find myself reciting the lines in my head as I go around the garden looking at rows of green stuff sprouting up, trying to remember what they are or how I should be harvesting / nurturing them.
The brocoli we planted is sprouting nicely, though not in one big head. As these are the plants that Lynn gave to us we are not too sure what type they are, so I am second guessing what to do. Perhaps they are “cut and come again” brocoli which I can just take off florets and more grow. But they are just the size of purple sprouting and at the moment we don’t get much of a meal from them.
How ripe is my tomato?
The tomatoes are another issue – I have been patiently waiting for the first one to ripen to its full red bloom, only to discover that this type are naturally orange in colour and will not turn red. Change the label to orange tomato.
Mind you, even with a label and instructions, life does not always work out. My coriander seeds which the packet told me would take something stupid like a matter of hours between sowing and harvesting, have taken months to only produce three pathetic seedlings. It don’t always do what it says on the tin.
One row of potatoes – spot the difference
And even when your plants do well, you cannot always be sure what you will harvest. Lynn kindly provided us with a whole host of different chitting spuds, from Belle de Fontenay second earlies to Sarpo Mira Main Crop. I carefully planted each type in its own row and assiduously labelled each one accordingly. What soon became apparent when the spuds came up was that they were not necessarily uniform rows: the tops were clearly different, and since the destruction of the plants by blight, I havent’ a clue what I am going to find. This week we dug several roots of potatoes that are like no other we have planted – so while one root is clearly Setana, the next is bright red – maybe Duke of Yorks? Who knows. But it brings even more excitement to an otherwise mundane task fo digging spuds.
As Derek and Clive said “If people would label things…you’d know where you were”.
Trail of destruction – the snails didn’t read the label either…
Prince Charles has been ridiculed in the past for his admission that he talks to his plants to encourage growth. Looking over my desolated veg patch this week, if HRH had had a look he could have been forgiven for thinking that I might have been saying rather nasty things to my plants. The broad beans are black and increasingly wizened, and the potatoes, with nothing above ground, now look like Iron Age long barrows, awaiting grave robbers to dig up the treasure within. If anyone has been talking to these plants, it would probably have been someone from the John Terry school of elocution. What might pass for “banter” on the professional football pitch would definitely be banned in the allotment.
Admittedly, the more banal explanation for the sorry state of the beans (and spuds) will be the weather – in particular the position of the jet stream which is doing its very best to break every precipitation record in the book this summer. But talk of the weather is also banned in our house. Claire has been threatening to put a sign up in the bookshop to warn potential customers that “yes – we know it is raining outside, that it has been a crap summer and we too are fed up with it. But most of all we are fed up with every single (JT expletive deleted) customer telling us this”.
The other reason we are not discussing the weather in our house is because our Silver Wedding Celebration is planned for this Saturday – in the garden. Jim told me yesterday that he thought that we should be OK this week-end, and coming from a man who has spent his life working outdoors on farms, I was heartened to hear an expert opinion on the subject. Unfortunately, he undermined this voice of authority by saying “well that was what it said on the ‘Countryfile‘ forecast”. AAAhhhh…. that’ll be same TV programme we watch on Sundays – a glossy magazine of picture postcard farming for city dwellers who think cows are the size of a large dog (genuine overheard conversation that one) where the rare breed piglets on Adam’s Farm get a little sun cream on the ears to prevent burning.
No that does not inspire great confidence, so we are not trying too hard to guess the size of the next weather front and are avoiding false hopes and discussion about high pressure over England this week-end.
But in the absence any weather to discuss, what can we Brits talk about?
Parsnips just keeping their heads above water
Well, I reckon second on the list, is gardening, so a quick resume of what’s growing on in the borders. Well, Claire planted out the Sweet Williams and I put the parsnips out. Both now look rather sodden and sad, but are surviving. The Heritage Peas have grown magnificently – straight and tall. Unfortunately, they forgot to flower, so there are five feet of leafy, spindly growth, with six inches of flowering plant on top. So a couple of handfuls of peas are the best we can hope for. But only if the bees are able to get out and pollinate, but they are seemingly hive-bound because of – you guessed it – the weather.
The pigs are happy as….well pigs in mud really. They have discovered that if they dig deep enough they can get to the roots of the blue cedar. The other morning I discovered them up to their shoulders shovelling away with their snouts – looking intent on digging a tunnel out of there. Perhaps they are trying to escape this crap weather. When they ask for a wooden horse for practising their gymnastics I will start to worry.
They are managing to keep themselves busy with rootling around amid signs that they are getting adolescent urges as the smaller puny pig keeps trying to mount his larger brother. Some sex education might be in order here, but in a blog that is intended to be read by the whole family, I think we will leave it there. To paraphrase from last week’s court case: he’s a rutting ginger runt.
Elsewhere sex education is also in short supply with the hens who are laying three eggs per day, but Sydney the Speckled Sussex has been broody for weeks. Sydney clearly does not understand that however long she sits on those eggs, they ain’t gonna hatch.
But then again, perhaps it’s not the eggs that make her stay indoors – perhaps she too is just fed up with the WEATHER.
But we’re not going to mention that are we? Just try not to comment on the bleeding obvious.
An Orange glow in the greenhouse… Is it the sun? No: just the first tomato trying to ripen.
