Tag Archives: Brussels sprout

Blighted

“Tis because we be on a blighted star, and not a sound one, isn’t it Tess?”

I decided to start this post as I ended the last – with a literary quote (welcome to Pseuds Corner). But this week I have been thinking about the term “blighted” and sought out its use in literature. It is used to describe something that has a severe detrimental effect; that inflicts great suffering. It has an old-fashioned ring to it and finding its use in Tess of the D’Urbervilles feels apposite for the Midlife Garden, as rural disaster and destruction have struck. We are, indeed, blighted.

I first noticed the potatoes were showing the tell-tale signs of blight at the start of the week. Brown spots on the leaves, and stems that were turning to mush meant only one thing so I quickly took the tops off and disposed of them. It is not the first time we have had potato blight and I am hopeful that the spuds in the ground can be saved.

In retrospect should not have been surprised by the appearance of blight. The weather has been warm and damp recently – ideal conditions for the spores to spread and do their work. So the earlies are saved, and the main crop should be fine as they are Sarpo Mira, which are blight resistant. We hope.

The same cannot be said of the tomatoes. Blight has struck them too – but there is no saving the vast majority of them. For a moment, I felt as my father did when the cows destroyed his whole crop of Brussels Sprouts. The beefsteak tomatoes – such as the pineapple tomato – were looking stunning but needed a few more weeks to ripen while the Gardeners Delight and Sungolds had only recently started to produce ripe fruit. Instead they were all gone. I picked as many ripe but unrotted tomatoes and disposed of the reast, with the plants.

I was upset for a moment, but avoided a plunge into Hardy-esque gloom.  In the MLG we refuse to be resigned to our fate and will make the most of whatever life throws at us.  We might be on a blighted star, but we will do our best to enjoy our stay on it, as best we can.

Of Mice and Moles

160504 (3)The sun lay on the grass and warmed it.  And across the expanse of green the midlife gardener looked and saw the soft volcanic shaped mounds of light brown earth stretching before him.  The moles had been working hard over the past week, striving to excavate their tunnels under the lawn and pushing the soil from the darkness to the harsh sunlight above.

The man walked wearily over the once lush lawn as he looked for the old rusted shovel and the wheel barrow into which he would clear the mole hills.  Ants worked the soil too, on the edge of the borders, where more mole casts converged with the flower beds and grass and the once crisply cut border edge was now covered in the extruded soil, spilling like an over-filled tub.  And the man sighed as he saw the damage done to his flowers which were wilting with the lack of soil around their roots and the dust swirled in eddies between the yellowed stalks.

The cold spring had been preceded by a mild winter and the mammals of the garden had – like the slugs and snails – survived the dark nights and short days in greater numbers than previously and they were now reeking damage on so much of what had previously been well-managed vegetable plots.  The mice had laid waste to the peas and beans and broccoli seedlings that the midlifegardener had sown weeks before.  And as the cold spring had given way to the long early summer days that bore intimations of drought and global warming in the time to come, the man had taken action to combat the ravages of the mice.  For four days straight his traps had been successful and this morning as he walked though the kohl rabi patch towards the newly planted cabbages and broccoli and brussels he pondered what he might find.

It was with mixed emotions he looked down to see another mouse caught, dead, in the jaws of the plastic trap.  He rigged some protection for the young plants, fashioned from the timber window frames from the old house, with ancient sheets of glass – unequal in thickness due to the slow flow over time.  He wanted to avoid the need to trap more rodents.  It had worked in previous years – but would it work in this changing, unpredictable world?  Only time would tell.

He picked up the shovel and went back to the lawn.

“Goes back to the beginning…”

Best brussels since...
Best brussels since…

In amongst the usual TV series that appear this time of year to lead us into winter, like Strictly and I’m a Celebrity, some proper wintry drama returned with the third series of The Bridge.  The theme tune was in my head the other morning – partly as a result of the gloomy nature of the programme, but also because we had our first (and so far only) frost of the winter and that reminded me of how this whole gardening thing really started with me.  A frost, in the eyes of The Old Man, was critical before we would be allowed to start picking the Brussels Sprouts.  It was the lack of a frost back in 2010 that meant that the stampeding heifers who trampled through the garden one November night destroyed the whole crop in one fell swoop.

So I went out and picked the Brussels which are looking pretty good for the first time in years.  It was a proper Sunday roast with veg from the garden all done to perfection by Mrs B.  And delivered to the table at exactly one o’clock.  Sunday roasts are in our British DNA – though each family has its own take on how it should be done.  Mrs B combines all the best ingredients from both sides our families.  We use the veg from the garden (my family’s habit) but it will – almost without fail – be served at one o’clock.  I have fond memories of going to the pub with my father-in-law when we came down to visit in our young newly wed days.  He and I would have a half of IPA in the Catash while Bren cooked the lunch.  I was his partner-in-crime as we would “roll” back at ten past one, just a little merry but subject to a cool steely gaze from the disgruntled chef.

It seemed a jolly jape at the time, but these days it is I who gets the hard stare from Mrs B if I do not get myself together in time to be sitting down for the roast at 1 o’clock.  It seems we are doomed to become our parents in so many ways.  As The Bridge theme song wails…”goes back to the beginning”

Super Storm?

Another look for the front garden

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.

Fudge – not a happy puppy

Snowy Leeks

 

 

First frost for Brussels?

Mid Garden Crisis – How It All Started

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Best Brussels in years – destroyed in one night.

Last night I dreamt I woke to the sound of cows again.  It was a dream that has haunted me recently and it is a signifier of more than just a mad fear of bovine TB.

In November when delinquent Friesians from the next door field trampled the Brussels sprout patch in our garden I was more amused than dismayed.  Yes, we had lost the best crop of Brussels for many years even before we had eaten any (my father insists on not picking them till after the first frost) but the whole incident was somewhat comical in that the damage had been done under my old man’s bedroom window and he had not heard a thing.

But he was upset.  And only now am I beginning to grasp his depression at the destruction wrought by the hungry heifers as, in the fallout from the incident, we have agreed to take over a large part of the gardening duties from my father.

My parents had always been fiercely proud of their garden – and with some justification.  They had started it from not much more than a ploughed field and turned it into a well cultivated acre of land with herbaceous borders, trees and, most importantly, a fine vegetable patch.  All four sons had been required to do some digging, planting or harvesting, under a certain level of supervision, but it had never really left me with any feeling of satisfaction.

Until now.

Renting the converted barn off my father, we have a vested interest in the state of the garden, and since my mother died five years ago it has become increasingly difficult for him to cope.  But it is even more of a struggle for him to let go.  Any work in the garden is closely monitored from the control centre next door and is more than likely being done in the wrong way, with the wrong tools and at the wrong time of year.  I am approaching fifty (from the right direction, if one asks) but still get myself into adolescent sulks as I try to start the strimmer and hear the inevitable “is there enough petrol in that?” or the catch-all offer of  “a word of advice”.  I am unable to attempt the simplest tasks without the intervention and supervision of my father and it drives me mad.  But I say nothing.  Why?  Because I think that if I do I will upset him.  So I take the angst while he takes control.

But the cow debacle has given us a way in.  We have offered (nay – demanded)to actually take over part of the veg patch and that is what I am going to work on this summer – and perhaps even write about.  And it might just be the means I need to finally become a mature independent adult.  I have already made one step when I was given some advice by the Old Man on how to put chicken wire around the patch to ensure that the mower could still get around.  I finally felt compelled to tell him to back off and leave me to do it myself.

“I know how to do this thanks.  But if I want advice I will ask.  I would rather try things out my way and if I fail, so be it.  I would rather fail and learn from my mistakes than constantly have you telling me what do”.  There….I said it.  And felt so much better for it.

But now I feel I must NOT fail….