le weekend

  • May 20, 2012 12:18 am

In a slight deviation from our plans to plant more stuff at the allotment, we rebelled today and instead we walked a good five miles with our little Violet, maybe more, from Ivinghoe Beacon, through woodland thick with bluebells, to Brownlow Cafe at Ashridge Estate for a magnificent lunch, and all the way back again. She was wilting slightly towards the end, but would not be defeated. Walking is her thing. So is running. Climbing. Dancing. Singing….

I hope you’re enjoying your weekend. I have an exciting post to share with you on Monday: an interview with one of the RHS Chelsea Flower Show’s hot favoutites! Be sure to stop by then.

the hour of splendour in the grass

  • May 18, 2012 8:03 pm

We managed a little relaxing in the garden this afternoon, just playing, running, gadding about, watering the pots and enjoying the flowers. Right before it started to rain.

 

Book of the Week {the edible garden}

  • May 18, 2012 6:57 pm

I used to think that my interest in gardening made me a bit of an old granny (read also: knitting). Growing peas and peonies  just didn’t seem very cool so I didn’t really share this passion with anyone else. I remember feeling peculiarly elderly at around aged 23 when a friend’s younger brother brought his groovy pals round to our house and caught me in a reverie planting out some ornamental grasses in the front garden (ooh Arthur!). I cringed at the realisation that nothing I could say about Sonic Youth (and I could have said a lot) would endear me to the cool kids now. For some years after that I lived without a garden, so my geriatric urges were suppressed, but now I have learnt to embrace the dark, mulchy side of me, and lucky for me I married someone who thinks anything I do is pretty ok, so I have free rein to be a bit of a loon.

Well, it seems I am not as alone as I thought I was back then. If only I had known about Alys Flowler, Evan Schoepke and James Wong and the cool, urbanite, botanical world they inhabit, literally ploughing their own furrows.  Alys does urban foraging workshops, and she pens columns, presents TV programs, and writes books! Hmm, she also manages to be totally right on whilst she does it. Oh dear me.

You can tell that The Edible Garden is one of my favourite books: I leave my copy lying around the house and my daughter has taken the opportunity to scribble in Biro across most of the pretty pictures. I often flick through the book just to look between the scribbled pen lines at the photos, but there’s lots of good stuff to read too. Like how to embrace the ordered chaos of polyculture; growing on a small scale without spending money; growing for food or to be useful in some way, rather than only being ornamental; and generally not being uptight about it.

Whilst I acknowledge that there is a place in the world for art for arts sake, this gardening for a purpose idea (Alys calls it ‘floral food’ and ‘edible landscaping’ ) speaks to me as a Mum on a budget with limited space. “Welcome to another way”, she writes. “At last”, I gasp, and “thank you!”

It is Alys who has inspired me to mix echinacea, leeks, lavender and artichokes, cabbages, tomatoes, violas, strawberries and sunflowers in the borders around the lawn that my daughter plays on, to sow green manures on my allotment and experiment with compost, and to embrace the joys of the edible flower. I haven’t tried the Japanese knotweed frittata or the nettle soup yet. I can’t quite come to terms with allowing the scourges of my gardening life to hold any useful place in it. But I’m getting there.

 

 

At the coalface

  • May 16, 2012 6:28 pm

We’ve been enjoying some baking today. Banana bread to use up a load of overripe bananas, and rhubarb and cardamom tart  to put some of our rhubarb surplus to good use. Violet is a pro, but she does tend to get bored when it’s time to wash the dishes.

Happy Monday

  • May 14, 2012 8:48 pm

I began a course today. A course about blogging. I wonder where it will take me? I feel hopeful and excited.

Girl in a Shed

  • May 12, 2012 10:33 pm

Rain has been a significant factor in the week’s activities. In a brief hiatus I managed a little bit of weeding here and there. I’ve also put some straw down beneath the strawberry plants (which are almost fruiting already and heavy with flowers), and set up some netting over them to keep the birdies off. Because I have planted my strawbs a la Alys Fowler in a bed together with lots of other stuff (red cabbage, lavender, poppies, honeysuckle and climbing roses) it was actually quite tricky to do this, but last year we had our stawbs in pots on the patio and we didn’t get that many so I’m trying another way.

Our garden is undoubtedly at it’s best in May and June primarily because of the juicy amount of irises and peonies, dotted about with neon orange poppies and pink and bluebells. There are two bootylicious peonies in deep blood red and bright pink that were quite probably the most valuable thing on our property when we moved in. Which isn’t really saying much, but they are stunning. And right about now they are coming in to bud and getting really top-heavy, so I’ve put some cane supports in to stop them completely flopping over on to the lawn.

A few more seeds have been sown this week, including a second pot of salad leaves, some moss-curled parsley in the Belfast sink to go alongside the flat leaved variety that has been my winter stalwart herb of choice, butternut squash (Avalon), pumpkin (Hundredweight -just for the hell of it), Sweet Baby, Black Krim and Violet Jasper tomatoes (a couple of heirloom varieties in there that I suspect we may struggle with as we only have outdoor growing space but I’m taking the plunge and plan to get them settled into a nice sunny spot in the garden if they come up ok).

Up at the allotment Ant has earthed up the potatoes and begun to clear some more growing space of weeds so that we can get some of our seedlings in. I’ve dug over another bed and sown some Green Globe artichokes. It doesn’t sound much but the weeds are so virulent that it takes hours to get the roots out. This afternoon was glorious and we have all exhausted ourselves with sunshine and digging. We have also put in six asparagus crowns, a few dozen broad bean plants and lots of peas (Little Marvel) and climbing beans (White Tears, Blue Lake, Reading Purple and Cherokee Trail of Tears – all freebies from a heritage seed day at Kelmarsh Hall a few weeks ago). It’s yoga for me and cricket for him tomorrow, so a day off from mud).