Tag Archives: sweet peas

Warming Up

160508 (1)
New Camellia and mole hills

Finally the cold weather has relented and it suddenly feels like summer might be about to happen. It’s the time of year when I personally get constantly challenged over where I have just come back from holiday. Answer: nowhere. I have naturally tanning skin and spend a lot of my time outdoors in the garden or shouting at school children in PE lessons. Others have suggested I might have some sort of Mediterranean genealogical predecessors.  Who knows.

It is also the time of year when stuff really starts to happen, with the perennials in the border suddenly getting going (I think they might have been growing for a while – I just did not notice the Echinacea as the rabbits kept grazing them back to the bare earth. I little chicken wire around them has worked wonders).

I’ve planted a camellia that the OM randomly produced from some mail order or other and I’ve had to earth up the potatoes as well.  In the background of the camellia picture you can see the moles are enjoying the sun as well…

But many plants are taking some time to get over the cold weather. The sweet peas might have been terminally affected by the frosts and the extreme temperature range in the greenhouse meant the tomatoes looked as if they had blight. They have survived but are struggling to regain their good looks and start growing properly.  And the melons, to coin some schoolboy humour, have gone from up and coming 34B’s to something akin to sagging, flaccid aged A cups.  No amount of surgery is going to help them, I suspect.

Laughter and Forgetting

160330 (1)
Overwintered kale and kohl rabi planted out

My memory fails me.  It always has.  But these days I do not seem to have the faculties to hang on to the most basic information.  I could not even remember the names of charities I give regular donations to so trying to remember the names of flowers is mostly beyond me.  I have taken up learning Spanish in a vain attempt to kick-start my neurological faculties, but so far my elder brother’s fears that I will soon start speaking  espanol more fluently than him are completely unfounded.  No te preocupes, Paul.

One of the unfortunate side effects of living next door to my father and delivering his paper to him each day is that I can see first hand where my symptoms might have their origins and where they are headed.  Genetics can be blamed for so much.  The other day the OM told Mrs B that he was thinking that we could make a wooden herb trough  outside the back door and that he knew where to source some wood.  The fact that the trough was my idea, the wood had been sourced by me (discards from the edge of the astro at school) and that Mrs B would already know all this, seemed to elude him. Selective memory, perhaps.

And yesterday he was cursing his luck that a birthday invitation he had received fell on the exact same day that we have agreed for the family party in the summer:  11th July.    I demurred and told him that the family party was on 2nd July.  He was relieved – but then exasperated and even a little deflated when I took a look at his invitation to see it was for 11th JUNE. He had not only got the date of his own party wrong, he had mis-read the date of the new invitation.  I don’t get annoyed – I worry that this is what I have to look forward to.

And I pity my wife and children.

Mind you, Mrs B already has a handle on this.  I identify with Tim Lott writing in the Guardian, speaking for many middle-aged men, who claims his memory is not as bad as his wife and kids tell him it is – but he has no way of knowing.  How can you know?   There is probably a way of ascertaining it, but I have will have forgotten it.

In the garden the only way I remember what tasks await me is to walk around and actually SEE what I need to do.  Always been a bit of a visual learner, me.  Mrs B makes plans; I just react to what I see and take it as it comes.  I guess that is one of the reasons we have made it thus far in our partnership, still able to remember the good bits and laugh about whatever might have slipped my (our?) mind.  Milan Kundera had it about right when he wrote that

“The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting”

(The Book of Laughter and Forgetting)

Looking to spring

Young Toms
Young Toms

Back from half term we have had some frosts in Somerset which has knocked everything a little. I actually brought my sweet peas in from the greenhouse just in case they get nipped by the frost.  The temperatures did not dip low enough for the Old Man to need his water turned off in the lean-to, so I guess I was worrying needlessly.

Anyway, before I went up to Arran I had planted tomatoes in order to avoid the tomato tensions of last year, when Mrs B was gazing longingly at other Gardeners Delights and comparing them unfavourably with my Sweet Millions (looking more like sad singletons).

Aubergines going in
Aubergines going in

And hey presto, the toms are up.  The problem now is trying to make sure they don’t get too leggy as they strain for the dim light coming through the study window.  Do I put them in the greenhouse and risk losing them in the cold?

One thing that will not be going in the greenhouse any time soon are the chillis and aubergines that I planted at the same time.  Even Monty on Gardeners World  (hoorah – new series started Friday….middle aged?  Moi?) was saying that planting chillis was a job for this weekend, but  mine have steadfastly refused to germinate so far.  I’ll try again next weekend if they have not come up by then.

In the meantime, I have a Sunday which I will spend finally cleaning the greenhouses – then perhaps I will risk those long-legged supermodel tomatoes out there.

Spring Clean

Seen Better Days
Seen Better Days

In the past two weeks we have had a major eclipse, the term has finished at school and Parliament has been dissolved to make way for the General Election.  All worthy or exciting events, but frankly not as exciting for this midlife green fingered gopher as the opportunity to get out in the garden and actually get some stuff done.  So while the leaders debate who has failed whom, gongs are given out at school for adding up really quickly or colouring between the lines and the moon tries to blot out the sun, it is good to address  important issues like cleaning the greenhouse which, as always at this time of year, lives up to its billing as – literally – a green house, such is the mould on the glass.  But a quick dose of Jeyes fluid and a spray with the hose pipe and an afternoon’s work has seen off twelve months advancing algae.

Birdcatcher
Birdcatcher

While Mrs B and I were working on ridding one airborne invader from the garden the faithful Lab-Retriever was working a little riddance of her own for another airborne invader.  Ella just does not get the fact that as a Retriever (or Labrador – whatever half of her genetic makeup is taking precedence at the time) she really ought to wait till a bird is shot before bringing it back.  She managed to flush out a pheasant that had taken up temporary residence in the garden and took up the challenge of downing the bird.  I guess, for a dog that is obsessed with squirrels and is constantly trying to work out ways of retrieving them from the branches, the chance to snatch a bird is a rare opportunity for hope to triumph over commonsense expectation.  So despite our demands to the contrary, Ella rampaged through shrub and border in her quest and triumphantly brought the bird back to us.  A rare victory for canine over avian, though pheasants barely qualify as flying birds  (certainly not as part of  Noel Gallagher’s band), but that is why we do not have cats, as we value the bird life around here too much.

Higgledy Sweet Peas
Higgledy Sweet Peas

The past couple of weeks have been spent planting a few seeds and planning our flower growing – at which point a big “shout out” for my new BGF (best gardening friend) at Higgledy Garden.  I have just discovered this fab website which can cater for all our flower seed needs as well as entertaining us with regular blog and Facebook posts.  I bought an excellent value selection of sweet peas from Ben and he threw in a packet of nicotiana for good measure.  The sweet peas are in and doing well in the sparkling greenhouse and I will no doubt be picking out nicotiana soon.  The scent around the garden come July should be intoxicating.