17 March 2006
TODAY I AM very sad. We have lost Rosie Blossom Brownpatch, our lovely fluffy bunny. Ten days ago we bought the rabbit, a white dwarf English T Rex, from the pet shop for Delilah’s birthday. Since then she has been a great source of fun, living in a basket in the corner of the kitchen and hopping about all day, competely unfazed by the cats and by the baby. She was a very amusing bunny. In the evenings she would come and sit by the fire. But at some point yesterday evening, on the brink of a cold and snowy nght, she vanished. We think we must have left the front door open, and that she lolloped though the front door, down the path, past the gate and out into the terrfying dark wilderness. I spent an hour searching the outdoors last night. No luck. Then, after a fitful night, I hoped I might find her huddled in the porch this morning. No luck. Presumably she has been torn to pieces by wild beasts out there, or frozen by the snow. Unless by some miracle she has joined a bunny commune. Apparently they live in groups of 10 to 15 bunnies, but I can’t imagine that those tough rural rabbits are going to welcome a fluffy white town-bred house bunny.
TO MAKE matters worse, I had just blown thrity quid at the vet getting Rosie some drops for an eye infection.
THE CHILDREN seem less sentimental than us about the loss of Rosie, poor bunny in the snow. O Rosie! Bunny in the snow! Why did you have to leave us? Why did you have to go? O Rosie Blossom, you know we miss you so! We left the front door open, I���m sorry we were slack. Now you’ve gone for ever and you’re never coming back. Well, that’s how I feel. But when I said to Arthur, “what shall we do about it” He just shrugged, threw his bouncy ball at the wall and said, “get another one.” So I suppose that’s what we’ll do and one hopes that over time we will cease to mourn poor Rosie. Now though I keep thinking that I’ve seen her sitting outside somewhere, bu on closer inspection the white blob turns out to be a plastic bag or football.
MY OTHER DEPRESSING NEWS is that some of the broad bean plants have chocolate spot fungus, and are covered in little brown spots. This disease is supposed to happen to potash-starved beans, which I think is totally unfair as I dug in a lot of compost and wood ash when I sowed the seeds. What other disasters? Yes, two of my nice sash windows blew over in the wind and the glass smashed. Which serves me right for leaning them against a fence rather than leaving them flat on the ground. Now it’s mid March and it’s snwoing outside. What a thoroughly miserable morning.
STOP PRESS: BUNNY FOUND
I’m delighted to report that Rosie Blossom Brownpatch was found alive and well and hopping around in the larder at 11.45 this morning. I think she must have been hiding amongst the bin bags in a long-neglected corner. I grabbed her and cuddled her and then gave her a meal which she devoured greedily. So she wasn’t bunny-in-the-snow, after all. What a relief.
9 March 2006
A WORD ON varieties. To be able to choose your own variety of vegetable and therefore to free yourself of the narrow choice available in the supermarkets is one of the great pleasures of growing your own vegetables. In the first year I couldn’t get my head round all the different varieties and just chose the first that came to hand. But now I am beginning to understand the differences and I thought I might list what I have chosen this year.
Potatoes: Duke Of York. I only have one 10 ft by 4 ft space for potatoes, so this year I am not going to bother with maincrop, or with growing a lot of different varieties, and instead I am going to grow the early variety Duke of York and see how we go. Duke of York is recommended by Lawrence D Hills. I have just put about about fifty tubers in egg boxes for chitting, and I���ll have room for 40, so maybe the rest can be chucked on the compost heap.
Peas: Alderman. Last year I grew Alderman and Early Onward, but this year I’m going to simplify things and stick with Alderman, which is an old-fashioned variety and grows six foot tall. It was also absolutely delicious. It gave me a few problems with support last year, but this year I have cut loads of tall sticks from the tops of the ash hedges, which I hope will work. Alderman: I like the name. Aldermen were 18th century local government officers. John Wilkes was Alderman of Farringdon Without.
Carrots: Autumn King and Chantenay. Last year I grew some random variety from the garden centre. But these are both from the Organic Gardening Catalogue, as are all these seeds, where they recommend growing a few varieties. Well, they would, wouldn’t they?
Cabbage: Marner Early Red, January King, Offenham, Vertus. The idea here is that you have cabbage all the year round, I think. Maybe I’ve been a bit ambitious, but last year the cabbages were really easy so this year I thought I’d get serious.
Radish: French Breakfast, Scarlet Globe. Again, these are both recommended by Lawrence Hills, so that’s good enough for me. It will be nice to have two different varieties and since radish is so easy and so quick I thought I might as well.
Courgette: Nero di Milan. Last year I planted out courgette plants that were given to me, but this year I thoguht I might try and grown my own from seed. But I’m beginning to think I’ve taken on too much.
Leek: Hannibal. Last year’s leeks were dead easy so this year I’m going to do more, and I think this is a more interesting variety.
Lettuce: All Year Round. What with the varieties I’ve still got left in my biscuit tin, I’m going to make more effort with salads this year. Last year I was attacked by slugs and also I didn’t do my successional sowing properly. Really, salad should be in abundance all year. I might do it in the front garden this time instead of up on the veg patch.
Pumpkin: Connecticut Field. Well, this sounds like fun, and it will be an opportunity to tes my new mulch bed, which I made with cardboard and piles of compost and cow manure.
Celery: Solid Pink. Am I crazy to try celery? It looks hard. And I don’t think I’ve got room. Besides, why am I lumbering myself with al this work? I thik I wqent a bit mad with the seed catalogue. It all looks so easy when you’re leafing through it by the fire on a cold February night.
Tomato: Beefsteak. In the past I have had zero success with tomatoes but I am going to try again, and I thought I’d just try the biggest variety I could find. I don’t really like those little sharp-tasting tomatoes, anyway.
Climbing French Bean: Blauhilde. These are purple, just to add a bit of colour to the patch. I tried French climbing bean last year and they all died, so who knows.
Leaf Beet: Bright Lights. This is a colourful chard-type thing.
Brussels sprouts: Early Half Tall. Why am I bothering? The brussels, like the kale and broccoli, were a total disaster last year.
Melon: melon? The most difficult thing to grow in the world? What am I doing?
Sweet corn: Double standard. Now this really would be great fun t grow. But again, have I got the room or the energy?
Parsnip: I don’t seem to have bought any parsnip seeds, and they’re the one seed that you apparently cannot save from last year. Quelle fool.
Beetroot: I have quite a few left over from last year.
I’ve also bought marigold seeds, sunflower, swet pea, echninacea, lupins and wild poppy. Blimey, when I am going to get all those going? Some of them need to be planted in a greenhouse, and my study windowsill will be the greenhouse. I picked up five nice old sash windows from the rubbish dump the other day, with the intention of making a cold frame. Then I remembered that I didn’t know what a cold frame was for. Cucumbers?
2 March 2006
THERE IS STILL snow on the ground, little hail-like white spheres are scattered about the place. They look like those awful polystyrene balls that fill beanbags. Even beanbags, it seems, are made of oil-based products these days. What happened to beans? Does anyone know the difference between the sprout and the bean? (a little nu-folk reference for you, there). I wonder also, is it usual for there to be snow in March? I understand that some people round here are practically snowed in. It’s blimmin’ cold, and I wonder what effect will this cold weather have on the soil? Will March sowing be delayed? I hope not, as I am itching to get the seeds in the ground. I put in a big order through the Organic Gardening Catalogue, and I also joined, finally, the Henry Doubleday Research Association. Last year I was too mean or poor to part with the £26 annual fee, but now I think I can spare the money. They are supposed to have a very good advice line which I can now use for free.
MY VAN BROKE DOWN the other day when I was on my way to the station on a London trip. The steering wheel started wobbling violently so I pulled over and called the AA. Apprently a bearing had gone on the fornt wheel. Well, it was towed back to our nearest town where it now sits ourside the garage while I wait for the part to arrive. When I called the garage they said that the police had been asking questions about it because it has no tax. Oh blimmin’ heck, I keep forgetting to renew the tax disc and I keep forgetting to pay the fine for being late, so now it���s gone from £40 to £80. That’s a lot of seeds! I really must sort myself out. Now I’m worried that it hasn’t got an MOT. I can’t remember the last time I had it done. Maybe it was more than a year ago? Then what? Will I have to go to court again? Maybe the police will give me another producer form and the whole sorry legal saga will start all over again. Hail the horse!
I THINK IT’S QUITE amazing that all the bulbs from last year are coming up again. And apparently they split into two underground during the year, so where last year there was one tulip there will now be two. Incredible, nature and her ways. Two of the three hellebores which I planted last year are flowering nicely, one is pink and the other a deep purple. Or when I say flowering, I should really say leafing, as apparently the flower of the hellebore is nor flower but a strange leaf.The only thing wrong with hellebores is the way they rather mournfully look down at the ground, which is perhaps why they are associated with melancholy and are cited as a cure for that condition in Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy. I must work out how to extract the oil of hellebore.
THANKS TO MY friend James who sent me a great folk CD, we have been driving around singing along to Sing a Song of Summer by John Martyn and also The Sprout and the Bean by Joanna Newsom, which I referred to above. Both great singalongs for parent and child, and particularly suitable for a country life. Inspired by the folk movement going on right now, I have booked Bert Jansch and Circulus to play at our local summer festival in June (http://www.llama.org.uk).
ON THE BIRD-TABLE lately, we’ve seen a nuthatch and a greater-spotted woodpecker.
MY BREAD-BAKING is going very well. Every two weeks or so I bake five or six loaves plus a few rolls or raisin buns. We put three or four loaves in the freezer and her presto, enough bread for two weeks without having to leave the house, and at a cost of about a quid. The whole process takes five to six hours although I could perhaps knead the dough for longer as my friend James the baker commented that my bread was a little on the, erm, dense side. Got to work on getting those air bubbles in there.
I AM PLANNING A lot more fruit this year, and I’ve ordered more blackcurrant and redcurrant bushes plus a couple of gooseberry bushes. Fruit bushes and trees seem to be a particularly good idea for any garden, combining as they do beauty and utility and requiring a lot less work than vegetables. In fact, whenever I visit the garden of a city-dwelling friends, I encourage them to break up their boring bourgeois lawns with lots of fruit. I suggested to one friend planting more fruit, and they said there wasn’t any more room in the garden. I looked at their garden and there was a giant stretch of bland lawn! People say kids like lawns to play on, but surely they would like them even more if there were apple trees, pear trees and plum trees dotted around the place?
Today we launch a new free service for our readers, Odd Jobs. Odd Jobs is a space on the forum where idlers can offer short-term or part-time work to each other, in exchange for cash or service.
The odd jobs offered could be anything from gardening, to cleaning, to websites, to house-sitting, to carpentry, to night watchman, to bar work… in the 18th century, we understand, the newly rich used to employ hermits to live in a shack in their grand gardens.
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Finding an odd job could give you the cash you need to pursue your own projects. And providing an odd job could give you some much-needed extra time.
Go to the forum to post your Odd Job.
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