Midlife Gardener

Pick it up

Earlier this term I was walking towards the sports centre that is opposite the school.  There was a car stopped in the road and the driver was talking to a pedestrian on the opposite side of the road from me.  The passenger’s window was open and from it, as I was watching, an empty sweet bag was nonchalantly tossed onto the curbside below.

I was astounded at the brazenness of the action.  How could someone have the nerve and lack of decency to just chuck a piece of non-biodegradable rubbish onto an otherwise perfectly clean and tidy side street?  As it just sat on the tarmac next to the car, I decided to find out and walked down to pick up the offending article.  I handed it to the girl who was sitting next to the driver and said “excuse me, would you please take your litter away with you and not throw it out of the window here?”

She was aged about sixteen, I guess, and looked at me like she would look at a piece of dog shit on her shoe:  something unwanted that she had not noticed but seemed to be temporarily stuck with.  She took the bag from me and threw it at her feet in the foot well in order to just get rid of me.

A few seconds later the car pulled off, and there in the road was the sweet packet, like an empty sugar-coated middle finger raised towards the middle class twit who had taken such offence to her simple littering.

Such things frustrate me.  It is not some form of middle-aged middle class worthiness that drives me to confront the litterers of this world: I have always felt this way.  It’s how I have been brought up.  I recall being aghast at my contemporaries at primary school thinking nothing of dropping flecks of silver paper from their polo wrappers as they walked along the lanes in the morning.  It just doesn’t seem right.

Inadvertently dropped concrete

Equally, when walking the dogs the other day we were confronted by the infamous Lake Inferior down the road once again being the location for more tipping of various industrial waste.  I have written before of how the glorified puddle was constructed from a fascinating array of filler material which included broken piping, building waste and even the drum of a concrete lorry.  It is all perfectly landscaped now around the pond but near the gate is another pile of concrete and steel which has been dumped their by the owner prior to disposal somehow…probably in the ground somewhere in the vicinity.

Where’s Wall-E?

This type of large-scale littering is a common occurrence here, and it seems that paying the occasional fine or simply having the ear of local planners is all you need to do to get your way.  In the mean time I fear  for what is happening to the ground water as the rain drains through the rubbish that is accumulating above and below ground.  I am only grateful that I am not down hill from what is rapidly becoming a brown field site.  But whether it is a sweet wrapper or the inconvenient remains of some building refurbishment they both demonstrate a lack of care for one’s surroundings, and an unwillingness to play one’s part in maintaining the environment.

Board Beans out

So we are into May and the risk of frosts starts to recede.  The greenhouse has filled up with trays of germinating seedlings with virtually every spare level surface covered.  We’ve rigged up the usual cold frame outside and spent the latter part of April hardening them off.  Nothing has suffered so far – apart from the potatoes which looked a bit browned off (I was worried that blight might have struck already – but they look fine now and Monty reckoned his Belle de Fontenay had had a bit of frost damage, so I reckon that was what it was).

The various beans (french and runners)  looked a little crinkly too at one point but they too seem to be OK.  Not sure if that was frost or lack of water.  We’ll plant them out next weekend.

Kohl Rabi and Kale with various peas behin

So we have now planted out Broad Beans, peas, sugar snaps, mange tout, sweet peas, Kholrabi, Black Kale, Curly Kale and summer PSB.  When I say “we” I am no longer talking about me and my canine companions (one of whom spends much of the time dropping tennis balls on the seedlings and getting tied up in netting and string) but more my increasingly serious gardening partnership with Mrs B.  She has signalled an intention to spend more time on the horticultural side of things now that she has elected to no longer be a partner within the John Lewis Group.  Which has greatly improved our productivity, although I have to get used to the idea of gardening as a team sport rather than an individual one.  I might have to be organised now, as Mrs B will inevitably want a list of jobs, or worse still will start telling me what needs doing – which I already know and have already re-prioritised. Or maybe I have not.

I do not necessarily plan ahead even as I go down the garden:  I have a couple of things I want to do, but am likely to get distracted by something else I have been meaning to do for weeks.  I don’t generally write lists (this is a close as I get to recording anything about the garden, save a seed list with what to plant when and a plan of what potatoes are in which rows).  I like the feel of it as being more ORGANIC:  one goes with the flow, lets the plants do the talking and it seems to work.  The look of the garden will change, though, with suggestions from the Assistant to plant the rows of kale and kohlrabi perpendicular to the longer rows of peas & mangetout.  Funky.

It all freshens things up and avoids me catching repetitive planting syndrome “well this is how we did it last year so we’ll just do that again” – spoken in the sonorous voice of a middle-aged male.  We don’t want that do we children?

“I have a problem”

A statement that spells doom for us as The OM stands at the threshold to the kitchen as we wait for the follow up narrative.

TOM likes to speak in headlines.

With the rest of the article…..

Following….

Later.

One has plenty of time to try to guess the nature of issue, but it is not an easy task.  If it is a Tuesday afternoon it is likely to be a problem that involves a surfeit of sponge cake after the elderly ladies’ (and Keith’s) tennis four have played and left their tea unfinished.  In general I would liken “too much cake” to “too many cricket victories over Australia”: you cannot have a glut of either.  But in this case it is possible to have too much under risen cake – especially if it is coffee walnut: to me an abominable destruction of a Victoria sponge, or worse still the beetroot and chocolate monstrosity that was proffered as an alternative to a traditional conservative tea.

Too much cake, though,  is not an insurmountable “problem”.  If you can’t eat it, recycle it.  That’s why we have hens.

But the announcement of a problem can involve many unpredictable factors.  In the past couple of years he has had more than his fair share of medical concerns with heart and other issues for which we have been on hand to assist and support.

One gets used to it, but what one cannot get used to or anticipate is whether the nature of the challenge will match up to the bold headline that has preceded it.  So, the context of the announcement that he has “a problem” can include anything from “I can’t get the photos off my camera”, “It might freeze tonight”, or “I think I might be having a cardiac arrest”.

Solutions range from turning off the water to the lean-to, connecting the camera to the laptop, putting the kettle on and stuffing my face with Victoria sponge or phoning for an ambulance and a defibulator – though perhaps not necessarily in that order.  It keeps one on one’s toes.

The Christmas Day “problem” was a genuine one: his Alpha cooker had “locked out” and he did not know how to re-set it.  Thereby jeopardising his and Gill’s roast bird (this year a Guinea Fowl).  Fortunately this did no present a too great a challenge to us:  we are used to just pressing the button marked re-set and seeing the recalcitrant stove fire up like the Quattro in Life on Mars.  Presto duly hayed.

More recently there have been fewer problems, although the other morning after Mrs B and I had had an unusually long lie-in – it was perhaps later than 8 a.m. when we came down for breakfast –  I saw the OM standing in the drive gesticulating at me through the kitchen window.  He appeared to be waving towards the gate so I went to the door to see if there was delivery.  I reckoned I could stand at the door and sign for it.  But there was no one there and I was greeted by the request – nay demand – from TOM “Can you get the gate?  I’m just going out”.

I was gobsmacked.  “I did not realise I am gatekeeper now as well” was my stunned response.

“Saves me” was the reply as I opened the gate.

“Saves me?  SAVES ME?!  Save yourself – walk a few more paces every day, get the old ticker, with or without by-passes, working and get those lungs cleared with more fresh air” was the retort that I never dared say within his earshot.

I think there is a bigger problem than we thought.  And I think it might be mine.

(Midlife Gardener is currently spending too much time in the school boarding house.  Gardening items will resume shortly).