Off The Edge Gardening

“Don’t punch the plants Nancy!”

A couple of weeks ago we reached the heady stage of planting out Nancy Nightingale’s new border.   We laid the specimens in position, carefully considering potential clashes of colour or foliage before we commenced.  As NN is a complete novice I gave her a quick planting tutorial before retreating to a safe distance for her to continue unhindered by my critical eye.  “What do you think?” she asked after her first attempt.  The plant was 1cm proud of the top of the soil.  “It isn’t deep enough” I said.  To my horror she then curled her hand and thumped the plant down with her fist.  “Don’t punch the plants Nancy!” I cried.  We then fell about laughing.  I explained that the accepted technique is to carefully dig it back up, make a larger hole and try again.

Later she messaged me to say that she had made a formal apology to the geum and given it some extra water to make up for “their little misunderstanding”.

I’ve got my work cut out here.

On the whole builders and gardeners don’t go.  Far be it for me to generalise, but in my experience they are counter- rather than productive partnerships.  They are not “cheese and pickle”, “strawberries and cream” or, let me wrack my brain for another, oh yes “gin and tonic”. They are more “the black death and 14th century Europe”.

Ends however must be reached, and the means are not always negotiable.  There is a new lodge at The Farm and very smart it is too.  Installing it involved preparing the area, soil shifting and lots of JCB action.  Craning this new structure into position necessitated a huge amount of nerve and skill by the driver.   And a certain amount of spontaneous hedge pruning in the lane.  The upshot of this operation was that the large border in front of the new building was repeatedly driven over by the digger, had shillet subsoil spread across the top, assorted builder paraphernalia buried throughout like a perverse treasure hunt and lots of general steel toe-capped stomping.  None of these actions are Royal Horticultural Society approved.

Through all this, the sapling magnolia has held firm.  Mrs G threatened pain of torture by pruners to anyone who dared come close.   It worked.  And it has rewarded us by flowering its little heart out.  A rose in the desert.

 

There is a shop in the harbour that sells fudge, particularly excellent fudge.  I may have partaken on the odd occasion.  They concoct this ambrosial sweetmeat in front of your drooling lips, large copper vats are stirred over an open flame emitting devilish aromas which drift into the street, enticing the hardest hearts down into their lair.  For those not wooed by scent, behind a picture window you can watch as they work the sugary goo on a marble slab, tempting more prey into the web from which you can never escape, at least without a bag of clotted cream flavoured or perhaps, for those with their fingers on the pulse, chilli and kale.

Yesterday we stood and watched for a while, joining a young lad and an older lady who I imagined was his grandmother.”Hello” I said to the boy “what is going on in there?” ”  Without turning her face in my direction the lady said “You mustn’t talk to strangers” and yanked him away.

This has stayed with me.  It made me frown.  I really don’t need any more wrinkles.

I was offended, possibly wrongly so.  She meant the best for the child.  But I worry for us, for our culture, to live in a world where it is wrong to speak to people that we don’t yet know.  Young, old, middling, our lives are enhanced by others.   The ones that we happen by, those that are foist upon us or that we seek out.

We have a family joke, between myself and my mum anyway.  When getting on public transport we say “Make sure you don’t speak to any strangers”. Then we laugh as we know it is inevitable, mandatory, to make new friends, to learn about others and perhaps become better people for it.

And not to frown.

 

Did I mention that whilst working at The Farm last week I lost my glasses?

As I am approaching my life-peak I am finding that reading glasses are getting higher and higher on my top ten of day to day necessities.  It has even overtaken marmite on toast. This doesn’t mean that I spend hundreds of pounds on designer frames and tinted, anti-scratch, UV protected, Dalek repellent specs.  Quite the contrary.  I have a posh(ish) pair for special occasions, for example when I need to see in focus, and the rest of the time I use cheap off-the-shelf, rough estimate of my prescription, acceptable ones.  This is because I mistreat them, and lose them.  In fact the ones that I mislaid last week were some left behind in one of the holiday cottages and never claimed. Waste not want not.

Quick, we are going off piste again, let’s head back to where we started, which was last week at The Farm.

It was a showery, gloomy day and my pockets were stuffed full of essentials; hat, labels, pen, tissues, camera, a danish pastry and my glasses.  Just before lunch I realised I had mislaid my specs, guessing that as I pulled my hat out of my pocket as yet another rain storm commenced, they had fallen out.  I retraced my steps.  I put out an appeal on the tannoy (they don’t really have a tannoy, I just told Mrs G which is good enough).  I squinted and peered and pulled faces that have undoubtedly aged me by about 30 years.  Who would think there were so many things that needed close inspection?  Then Farmer Tony gallantly came to the rescue.  “Have a pair of mine” he generously offered. “They cost 99p” he added, which slightly lessened the impact of his generosity.  So I have been wearing them for the past week. They are rather good in a Joe 90 kind of way.  And they have served me well.  There have been compliments.

Today, as I busied myself around the greenhouse I spotted the wayward set on the ground just outside the door.  A little muddy and one of the arms was broken, but apart from that absolutely fine.  Nothing that a sticking plaster wouldn’t mend.  As for Farmer Tony’s set, I have decided to hold on to them for a while.  You never know.