Off The Edge Gardening

The great thing about visiting gardens is meeting plants that are unfamiliar to you.  It may indeed be your first encounter or you may have forgotten the previous occasion, either is quite feasible.  This Staphylea holocarpa “Rosea” was one such tree.  It is hard to believe I could possibly have forgotten such a beauty!

Those of you that know me well would say that I am pretty good at talking.  That I am.  In a “supermarket queue”, “bus stop”, “train journey”, “any time any place” kind of way.  This is part affliction, part blessing.  My mum is to blame as she has perfected The Art over the years and has passed these cursed genes on to me.  Today I gave a talk to U3A, the University of the Third Age.  This was quite a different matter all together.  It is not idle gossip, passing the time of day or indeed small talk.  It involved a lot of forward planning, a projector, Powerpoint presentation, an audience and, a first for me, a microphone.  How many of these torturous talks make you a seasoned professional I am not sure, I think today was number five in my career.  In truth I was marginally less nervous than normal, the nightmares only began a couple of nights ago.  I awoke at 6.00am with a calm innocence until I remembered what lay ahead.  Then came countdown to doom, frenzied rereading of notes and wondering if the Foreign Legion takes women recruits these days.  After all the stress, I think it went well and I might even have enjoyed it.  The projector worked perfectly, I remembered all parts to my computer, most plant names and, as I was dangerously armed with a microphone,  I didn’t forget myself and start a karaoke session.  They were an attentive and generous audience who laughed at my jokes.  There were trays of member donated plants, several of which I now call my own.  I only spotted one man with his eyes closed and I would like to imagine he was going into raptures at my sage-like words.  All in all it was a good day.

I had a cunning plan today, yes another one!  Actually it was quite ingenious whilst still in the safe confines of my head.  If I written it down it would have been most excellent on paper.  However, when put into practice, the theory met with a few variables that had not been allowed for.   It seemed quite straightforward:  stinging nettles en masse, a willing man with a strimmer, an empty water butt and a new tap close by.   For those of you not keeping up, let me spell it out – WM would strim off the nettles, pack into the water butt which I would then fill with water; voila a free and effective liquid fertiliser.   So nettle were strimmed, packed and water was added.  Then the water came straight out again.  It appears that the water butt had a leak.  WM bravely unpacked the nettles again.  He managed a grimace when I pointed out (accompanied by my most charming smile) “it could have been worse, they could be brambles”. He fixed the leak, repacked and ran away as fast as his legs would take him.  Can’t think why!

Esteemed Client: “Remember that beautiful pink tree peony I told you about?”

Humble Gardener: “Yes, is it flowering yet?”

Esteemed Client: “It is, but this year it seems to be yellow”

Humble Gardener: “…………”

One Japanese primrose is incredible, a carpet of them is phenomenal.

Of course I had heard the stories, but I dismissed them as folklore.  Surely it couldn’t possibly be true, it was just idle gossip.  And then this week I saw one for myself, I rubbed my eyes in disbelief, it was in truth an immaculate hosta.  So apparently they really do exist, it was not just a tale our parents told us at night to send us on the fast train to dreamland, just as generations had done before them.  This dry spell has meant the tedium of trudging throughout the garden, arms stretching under the weight of watering cans.  However one great advantage to this mini-drought, notwithstanding the gardener’s mood enhancement, has been that our friends (obviously said with irony) the molluscs have not thrived, affording the emerging foliage a good head start.  Perhaps though we should remember this hole free moment, it is unlikely to last.

Blurry, blurry, very very blurry, its very blurry.  Tired, tired, very very tired, I’m very tired.

Back tomorrow with a larger selection of words.

Honesty, it really is the best policy.  Especially when they seed themselves so generously around the garden.

Today I have been digging.  I am not a great advocate of digging generally, but sometimes it is necessary, and this was one of those times.  Luckily I was ably assisted by a strong young man who showed an admirable interest in the soil.  We talked about its importance, how if you look after your soil it will look after you, how both historically and currently it is abused and polluted, how easy it is to enrich and renew, how we owe it to the world do just this.  We also had a “who could find the longest root of bindweed” competition.   I am far too cag-handed for this highly skilled undertaking, so am uncertain why I suggested it at all.  It was doomed to failure on my part.  My unerring competitive nature I suppose.  Unfortunately my measly attempts came in 4th and 5th behind the whippersnapper.  He could have been a little more discreet in his victory.  So after three hours I left him to it and went home to have a well earned siesta.  Hope he managed without me!