Gardening in a Gale
Never apologize. Never explain. Just get the thing done, and let them howl - Agnes Macphail I confess that for the last 10 months my muse has been locked in the cupboard while I have been pre-occupied with other matters. I will not bore you with the details but you will discover what I have… Continue reading A New Year, a New Adventure
Time and tide wait for no man, nor do the seasons. The oystercatchers "speed dating club" has been in action for weeks with noisy groups of birds gathering in the fields, voraciously probing for invertebrates and acting like hormone-fuelled teenagers. The skylarks are rather more refined and have been proclaiming their territories with glorious song-flights… Continue reading Spring imperative
After the storms came the rain, hail, sleet and snow; today we have wintry showers, sunny intervals and an icy northerly wind of about 40 mph. However, there is sunshine and I am planning to cocoon myself in as many layers as I can and stagger down to the vegetable garden to retrieve some our… Continue reading Wintry Showers and Sunny Intervals
Bulbs on the benchI fear that whatever I write about the garden and the weather I will end up either a Jeremiah, Job's comforter or even worse a Polly Anna. So we will summarise the current state of the vegetable and cottage gardens as wet, sodden, saturated and waterlogged, which is quite remarkable as I… Continue reading A Slow Start
Somewhere along the line the botanical purist meets the gardening hedonist and the ambivalent fundamentalist emerges. In the garden there is not too much of a conflict of interest as I am quite content to grow pure species, subspecies, hybrids, geographical and horticultural varieties, plants of doubtful parentage or even clones. The growing conditions in… Continue reading The Ambivalent Fundamentalist
