The Cherry On The Top...

Well. Not on the top exactly. Quite low down on the tree in fact. And all alone. 

This is the first ripe cherry borne by the cherry tree at the bottom of the garden... a tree already planted and growing when we moved in. So let me add that in more than a decade I have not seen another on its branches.

Is the start of things to come? Or a cherry moment? Do I savour it? Or not? Answer quickly, do.

Three Beings In Search Of Spring

Ah... it have stopped raining. Sun is out. Bumble bees buzzing. Have been trying to ignore my dieting hunger by getting active in the garden... and splitting, sowing, planting and so on. If I say so myself things do look spring-pretty with hellebores (some self-sown, some bought) planted up in a cleared bed. That there, in the picture, is a double celandine.

Mrs D has joined in the dieting... but her reactions be a little different. She is suffering gloom and guilt over a packet of crisps consumed on a non-diet day... and is contemplating making an animation about boiled eggs. (?? Me neither.)

As I do finish my garden labouring and admire the new plant-ups, The Old Man do approach with his camera. Aah, thinks I, he is going to celebrate my work.
Wrong. He is taking a picture of the single, opened, plum-blossom on the Kea plum tree. And I know him. He is not thinking "Spring!" He be thinking...."Food".
One way or another we all are thinking of our stomachs.

A Child Digs In The Garden...

...what do they find?
As a result of a breakfast talk between me and The Old Man... I do think of all the gardens of me childhood and what I do find buried there.

First garden... well I be too young to have unearthed stuff there... spending most of me time in me pram and toddling about. I may have found worms. I may have tried eating them. This may be family gossip.
Second garden. Newly built house on a resulting field of clay. Absolutely... clay. So I dug up clay and made little pots.
Third garden... a flat near the station... no garden to dig in as such... fascinated by the red-bodied harvestmen (daddy long-legs) that lived under the gate-pillar cap.
Fourth garden... (we traveled about a lot)... bright cut glass "beads" about the size of pound coin... clear and colours ... I remember blue... Someone said there used to be a glass factory on that site... and I guess these were for chandeliers.
Fifth garden. Yes, fifth.... A heart-shaped sea urchin fossil.
Sixth garden.... Too old for digging having transformed into a moody adolescent....

In The Garden - Havoc Wrought

...Not least on me... I seem to have developed some kinda late-onset hay-fever. My nose runs like a tap and glows like a beacon. My eyes are small, shrunken and peppery. I sneeze and sigh and feel very sorry for myself. Ah well.

But we do eat potatoes from the garden. In fact, I do dig up all the first earlies on account there is no doubt but we have been blighted. First time that it's got to the lovely tatties themselves. Had to wash and sort them, dry the survivors lovingly and put them in a box in the cool garage. Meanwhile The Old Man do cut the foliage from the second earlies what be showing dire signs of same. Hoping to have caught it before it trickles down to the tatties beneath.

This morning I do go to check my poor broad beans what have suffered weevil depredation and snails (snails don't usually bother them but I guess they saw an opportunity...) To my outrage I find the finally healthy tips are weighed down by fat dark greenfly with black legs... each the size of a tank. I have no option but to pick out these healthy tips with their sitting tenants... revealing as I do, the scurrying black ants what be placing the fat, reproducing beasts on my lovely bean plants. Blimey! The veg garden is challenging this year. But... am eating the strawberries... Yum! And eyeing up the peas for a first pick this evening. If something doesn't get there first.

In fact the whole cycle of life is a bit challenging this spring. Birds are fledging and quivering in fat, feathery bundles deposited in shrubs and trees whilst the parents hunt high and low to satisfy their hunger. The other day I skip like a ninny to film a caterpillar spinning its chrysalis on a sedge stem by the side of the drive. Truly, I be borbling on about the miracles of nature and so on. Next day I do find the chrysalis.... gone. Along with several of its brood-mates. I realise now it be likely that the desperate bird parents have taken them off to eaten by their children. One miracle of nature have been devoured by another.

Dreaming Up Stuff And Digging Up Stuff

Sorry to be so slow in posting. I have just laid around and stared at the Miyazaki skies we is having, it's true.

Dreaming up? We-e-ell.... can't forget an image from the other day...down at the petrol station. The Old Man do drive in to get his paper. I notice we do pass a parked car with an Alsatian dog sitting in the driving seat... upright, eyes ahead, full of dignity. The Old Man do park up and goes in to the shop. A moment later the dog-car passes and pauses to pull out of the forecourt. A man now sits in the driving seat (of course) and the Alsatian sits in the passenger seat by his side.... side by side... same height....both of them... upright, eyes ahead, full of dignity.
Image just won't go away.

Mrs D has become similarly obsessed and appears to be constructing a cardboard "pick-up truck" for the dog and bike-girl to sit in... in similar manner.
Heigh-ho. The artistic mind is a mind capped by a bonnet containing a bee.

Digging up? Mmm. My first new potatoes.

Garden - Last Minute Fruit Planting

Been some lovely days this weekend, though now it's raining again. I manage to plant a blackcurrant bush just before the rain begins... the rain will be good for the bush I hope. Got a Japanese wineberry waiting to be planted as well. The moral for our garden is... grow nothing too lush, for we do a good line in strong sea-winds, mizzle, slugs, snails, bindweed and nettles. Then, we also can get fierce sun with no rain, for good measure. Things have to be tough. The fruit can't be too tender or demanding. If we get something to eat from them... then thank you very much.
I mean it. Thank you.
The rhubarb is a blessing. And there are some little apple trees, including one I do call "Grandma". She is old, canker-struck and lichen covered. She do hit me on the head regularly when I garden near her... but it makes her feel good. I apologise to her and later she will give me an apple. "Grandma", see. Her branches spread out. We have at least two of them propped on stakes for support because each year since we came here she do crop more and more. Lovely cookers, sharp and fluffy. But The Old Man don't think she is a Bramley.
Surprisingly, we also manage strawberries. As long as I pick 'em a bit early and ripen them indoors. Not because of the birds... but because of the slugs and woodlice. And we planted a Kea Plum (small Cornish cooking plum) several years ago. The tree has grown but we have had only one tiny misshapen fruit so far. This year there is a bit more blossom on it. Will we get a fruit?

Planting Garlic

OK. A vegetable eater's gardening is never done.
Rain has stopped long enough over last few days to tidy up a bit in the veg patch. And I done bin planted some garlic for next year. They do like a bit of winter if you plant the right sort. Sad to say the bulbs I ordered are a bit rotten... Truly. But I makes up with some of me own crop from the summer.

Already worrying over where to put what if my veg-growing dreams come true next year.... taties, beans, peas, leaf beet,.... where will they fit in?

Heat And The Badger

Wonderful dry heat...and still spending most of the time ferrying water to the vegetables. We's picking peas and broad beans...

The Night Badger (cos that's who we think it is...) is getting desperate and digging potatoes again. This time he/she have resorted to eating them. But obviously they are not high on the list of desirable food as I usually find a half-eaten, drool-covered potato dropped somewhere on the path. I just mend the damage and dig the spuds from the plant that the critter have picked out.

The other day I go into a particularly "neglected-in-this-heat" patch of garden and am a bit bothered to find a mega pile of earth and montbretia corms against the "hedge" (wall to some).

I don't mind Badger patrolling through of a night if it don't do much damage... but I'm not so sure I want Badger setting up home here. I understand the pressures on the critter. Four houses in our tiny row of eight are building (or planning to build) houses in their gardens, one of which did have a badger sett.... don't know if it still does. This means that although we do not have a huge garden .... soon it will be the biggest in the lane.

Nevertheless I still ain't got room for a Desperate Badger.

Later we work out that Badger have got desperate hungry in the dry heat this month. (Hence the potato diet.) And we do reckon that it may not be trying to dig a sett.... but.... sadly for the bees.... have dug out a nest of red tailed bumblebees... cos we notice a lot flying around the place. These bees often nest underground at the base of stone walls.... and bees' nests can be eaten out by foxes, badgers, weasels.

Sorry bees. But I am a bit relieved badger ain't moving in..... yet.

PS. Looking around the web for more about "building in gardens" I do find a property developer's site that do reckon this hysteria about the loss of gardens to development be all whipped-up by the media. Sigh!

Hot

... I tell you I spend all day ferryin' water to the vegetable plot.
I be picking the first sizeable pan of peas today... And the strawberries? There are lots and I have to make tiny batches of fresh jam to keep in the fridge to keep up with them. We do never get round to getting a freezer.

The garden has patches of waist-high grass which we call "wild areas"... and visitors call "hay-fever sumps". These have some powerful tall ant hills. This place have also attracted what seem like resident pairs of Ringlet butterflies. They flit around amongst the long grasses in a very floppy, summery manner.

The field over the lane has been cut and baled and I look out the window to see slow-moving parties of rooks browsing in the stubble for food ... The ground must be hard and dry now for food-hunting critters.

I'm too hot to move. But I must not stare into the mouth of that old gift horse.  It's been a long time since we had this kind of summer.

Badger Digs Potatoes... Again

... the summer is starting to be fruitful in the garden. Starting to eat the strawberries and potatoes.... Peas and broad beans be setting to make fruit. I kind of like the challenge of seeing what I can make a meal of from the garden.

So I be a bit annoyed to find some flattened potato plants cos Mr Brock have rooted around in me roots.

Grumpily I do harvest the flattened plants and wonder what to do with the prematurely harvested tubers. But cleaning them up I do see that there be the start of some rot or blight going on in the largest of them.  Not to mention an excellent set of claw marks on one.

...So. I do say thank you to Mr Brock (who be after worms rather than taters, I'm sure)... cos I do realise that it's time to get those taters up and out .... before it all be truly blighted.

Bombay potatoes and leaf beet tonight I think.... wiv some black-eye beans and mushrooms... rhubarb pie for afters.

Spring: All That Is Done May Be Undone

Look out of the kitchen window this morning .... and watch a blue-tit carefully harvesting the string that The Old Man have used to tie up a plant. Guess the blue-tit needs some nice soft stuff for its nest.

Me? I do weed the broad beans and sow some mangetout. Potatoes are up.

The Badger Thing

Clarissa Dickson Wright says that we should not waste the badgers that are to be culled in the government's great Bovine TB experiment. We should eat them. Their meat be a perfectly good thing, say she.

Tell me.... is there something I have failed to grasp in this situation? I understood that badgers are to be culled on the basis of being "reservoirs of disease" for the whole cattle rearing industry thingy. Pardon me if I do pass up on the opportunity of sampling "Reservoir of Disease aux Clarissa"..... leaving aside the whole wussy vegetarian thing, I mean......

Oh! And that will stand for the grilled fox giblets, smoked deer haunch, llama livers, chat aux cerises and Jack Russell Supreme that be sure to follow the "diseased badger" entree.

I See The Toad - The Toad sees Me

The other day I do go out and start cutting the grass in the shady corner of the garden. As I do mow towards the plants I do feel something hit me on the head. So I do think perhaps a neighbour have taken against my's mowing sounds on a sunny afternoon. But at the back of my mind I do wonder how high a toad or frog can jump.

Today I do be tidying up the edges in the same bed. I do pull back some geranium leaves and there be a toad - flat, matte, mossy green with black spots, staring at me.

Be this the toad that do hit me on the head I do wonder? He do look like he would like to hit me on the head.

The Summer Sun... Birds Do Fly

Yesterday mornin' I look out at the garden. A brown bird flies in and stands on the bean frame. I can see only part of its back and tail and think it be a blackbird... but it looks too big somehow.
I look again. It's a female sparrowhawk, calm as you like, sitting and looking to see what she can see. Quick as a flash she flies off into the next garden.

Later, we drive out.... and pass a field of hay being cut.
In the sky above I see a spiraling tower of buzzards riding the thermals.... eight in all I count.
Eight.

Sun And Heat At Last

Oooh Yes. It be frazzlin' here. I do some garden stuff and have to stagger in to recover. It be so hot that Mrs D has switched from a glass of red to a glass of fizzy water with a slice of lemon. Sittin' there... on the sofa... fanning her little distressed self and reading her crime thriller.....

The Old Man did call me out to look at a cricket on the wall top out front. It be a small Great Green Bush Cricket... about one and a half inches long so not fully adult yet, maybe what they call a nymph. (Remember I did post a picture of an adult on the house wall last year?) This one looked a bit wobbly on its flower stem. Tried to get a photo again but didn't want to disturb it really. It started to munch on the hawkweed it was sitting on so I guess it had got the hang of things.

Certainly a day for natural encounters. I goes into the garage to fetch some vegetables.... What? It be cool and dark in there... a good place for keeping the veg...I be sayin'. So I go in for an onion .... when something dark and leggy scrabbles away from me. I jump feet and yell. But it be a toad. And it be more frightened than me I bet. It do scuttle away behind some flower pots. Fancy that, a toad in the garage is worth more than two in the... the.... erm.... I dunno.

The Greening of The Doll

I tell you. If it doesn't stop raining soon.....

OK. The rain is good for crops... after all that drought early in the year, but I swear that I am growing mould. Some of you may say I always is rather mouldy but...

I have had to start using a kind of slug poison to protect my vegetables, having tried every barrier method known to man and doll... to no avail. The pellets are supposed to be safe for other animals and birds, being slug specific, and it was doing some good protection. (Not for the slugs and snails of course.) But now with all this wet... When it do not rain it be mist. And I could cackle and poison to my heart's content... but I do live on the side of a damp, grassy, granity hill... so the supply of snails be endless. I plant a new squash plant the day before yesterday... put some pellets around it, clear away any lurking molluscs I can find. Next day the plant be eaten. So's my dahlias....

But apart from all of that... I am tired of the dark and gloom. I shall turn green with mildew to match the walls.

Catching up with the lady what grew the squash plants and who runs an organic market garden business selling vegetables and plants.... she do say it be awful year... some of her seed sowings refusing to germinate and others rotting off once they have germinated. Plants bolting during the hot dry spring (what should be "now" not "then") was a cause for grief with another grower.

What hurts the market lady most be another matter. When she started years ago the polytunnels be alive with the buzzing of bees. Now there be hardly any. The tunnels be silent.

I know I be just going on about taking up the art of poison myself.... but the UK still seems to be dragging its heels over banning neonicotinoid insecticides (already banned in France) which some scientists say causes neural damage to the bees, effecting their short term memory so they no longer know "what they came here for" and more importantly... can't find their way home to the hive. You may say..."So what?" But no bees, no crops. There's this little thing called pollination...

Like I say.... wish it would stop raining for a bit.... feeling gloomy.

A Little Help in The Garden

Looks like the badger which we think visits the garden at night...

has given me a helping hand digging up me potatoes.

Good news is that they ain't interested in eating them or marking them as their own!! (I've known badgers to crap in the holes that they dig.)

Must be looking for worms, leaving us the potatoes.

The Number of The Chilli Seedlings

The Old Man is very pleased with himself.
He has just potted up his latest batch of chilli seedlings. He do love a chilli pepper. And so it is that he proudly informs me that the number of seedlings now tallies at 66.

I sit down suddenly and wonder where they will all live and how do we eat them all. This kind of thing do not bother The Old Man. Rather he do worry that there may be a lack....

Harvesting My Squashes...

All two of them! But there you are.

They's a good size each so worth it if they ripen off and store well.
One's a Crown Prince, bless him. The other is a Musquee de Provence which should turn orange when ripe. I've never eaten one of those.

Ooops! Not in front of the children.....

Mrs Doonuthin Cuts the Grass - Again

She's off again. Doing her garden duty. Dragging around the grass with the mower. At the moment she's going even slower, announcing her dangerous presence to all critters living in the plot laughingly know as "The Garden".

Scything away slowly and cautiously, she frightens all sorts of wildlife into springing out into the open.

On this occasion - umpteen grasshoppers, two small frogs and a young slow-worm.