Off The Edge Gardening

On Friday I dusted off my second best cat suit and headed to the big metropolis to meet Dorchester Doris.  As a couple of glasses are sweet sherry were due to be consumed, I sensibly caught the train, a quaint branch line with things like “request stops” and “no toilets”.   I was not only looking forward to seeing my old friend again, but also to the hour of enforced stillness that the journey would involve.  Until I discovered that I had forgotten my glasses.  This meant that I couldn’t read or write or even play patience on my phone except by pulling my face into startling contortions.  Not only did this method frighten the children, it really hurt my fizzog.  So instead I looked out the window.  This is what I saw:

A flock of sheep chase after a man on a quad bike*.  A meadow dotted with indiscernible yellow flowers, were they cowslips?  A shattered aged oak, the sight of which made me wince.  Clear rivers and ponds thick with weed, geese, old orchards and new plantations. Tree houses, wide fields in fertile river valleys.  Back gardens and washing lines.  Furious drivers at level crossings.   Bluebells, primroses and clumps of flowering reed.  Leats and water channels dividing rough pasture. Trees both statuesque and scrubby.  Misunderstood crows.  Fences in retaining wood and excluding metal.  Grassy banks, hedges and dry stone walls.  Red soil, white May blossom.  Swings and ladders and more primroses.  Silver birches dappled with moss.  Wood pigeons feasting in a freshly sown field, just showing a hint of green.  Gorse and goat willow.  Pesky ponticum and unruly box draped with old man’s beard.   Pastoral perfection as lambs cavorted in a wooded riverside glade.  Countryside catastrophe with fly tipped plastic barrels, carrier bags waving in innocent branches and abandoned rusting cars dumped behind hedges.  Brambles beginning their march and solid holly.  Red campion, flag iris and bird cherry blossom.  Hedges laid by man or storm.  Deep cut streams with ruddy banks, dens in the wood, sticky weed, dog walkers and still more primroses.

As I sat I contemplated what I saw.  Who lives in the house on the station? How old is the tree that supports an arboreal mansion? Does that lady have seven dogs or is she borrowing some?  What do sheep think of cows?  I may have forgotten my glasses, but I hope you will agree that I saw an awful lot more without them.

* I deduced these were probably the famously carnivorous local breed, the Long Toothed Devon’s.

 

 

 

This creamy California poppy was a surprise sighting today, poking its head through some spent hyacinth flowers, enjoying today’s outrageous sunshine.  Is this a portent?  Is it heralding spring moving into summer, the victor in the battle between the seasonal neighbours?  But just a moment, hold your horses!  It is only the beginning of May, we shouldn’t be talking of such things yet.  This was spring in disguise, getting a little above it’s station.  Today, the first day of true warmth, the natural world was in hyper drive.  Unfortunately I seemed to be trapped in slow motion, the speed of change disconcerting after months of cruising gear.  Soon enough I was back into my stride, planting and weeding and planning and smiling.  As often happens at this time of year, I stood for just a moment, looked about me and thought “what a lucky maid I am”.

We also ate the first radishes of the year, five imperfect jewels were harvested from the raised bed.  They were sweet and peppery and as fresh as a summer shower.  They were reserved for lunch time when they were savoured like none will be again.  Until next year.

I returned home having been reconnected with the sensation of sun warmed limbs, weary but fortified.

Exochorda, the pearlbush, shining in the spring sunshine.

And although I cannot truthfully say that you are my only sunshine, you did brighten my day.

I do love a nice hanging basket

Clients beware.  This is what happened to the unfortunate who suggested that I might plant Cotoneaster horizontalis in their garden.  For the sake of my dear and most sensitive readers I have shown you the silhouette only.  Some might say “harsh”, but I would say “fair”

 

At The Farm we have been working hard to reclaim the vegetable garden. To save you the trauma of our agonies over the last few months I will précis what we have achieved.  There are now two distinct planting areas.  These are rectangles of improved soil that have been released from the suffocating carpet lain many years ago and now covered in several centimetres of turf.  The lower bed has been planted with potatoes; Foremost, Wilja, Red Duke of York and Blue Danube. Courgettes will join them later.  The upper bed will be for peas, both sweet and edible, and all manner of beans and which will be supported by a trio of alternative wigwams created by Young Master George, one willow, one twisted ash, one sycamore.   Both beds are encircled by recycled paving slabs, bedded in by Slasher.

Slasher also constructed a raised bed, on a piece of uneven ground adjacent to the greenhouse. We filled it with upturned turf, relocated topsoil and added a few bags of compost for good measure.  It is to be used for salad crops and its height means it can be more easily protected from Those Who Wish Us To Fail.  The members of this non exclusive club include, but are not confined to, badgers, rabbits and of course those pesky chickens.  It has been succession sown with beetroot, spring onions, cut-and-come-again lettuce, carrots and of course radishes. Continuing with the recycling theme, we found abandoned in the bushes lengths of what I think is reinforcing steel.  This was cut to length and used as an open cloche for further protection.  But wait a moment, what is that top right, poking up between the ruler lines of emerging seedlings?

Rhubarb, that is what it is!  Foolishly (in retrospect) we built the raised bed on top of the scrappiest, saddest, specimen of rhubarb you have ever seen.  Its pathetic performance last year didn’t warrant even a single harvest.  This weakling was so obviously a spent force, doomed and definitely not a threat to straight lines.  Now it is vigorous, indomitable, chaotic.  We are all doomed.  I have cut it twice and still it continues its upward momentum.  Shows just how much I know.  Again.

Everyone is shouting “snow”,”plummeting temperatures”, “wind chill”, “Arctic conditions”.  So, in an attempt to redress the balance, I will whisper “beautiful icy-white Iberis sempervirens“.