Taming the garden

This is a kind of patio area that used to have a large dog run built on top of it. Thankfully that was gone when Andy and I moved in. It's been a bit of a mess since then as since Andy died, my own future here has been tenuous. I've spent the last few years trying to hold my head together and  there has seemed little point in putting a huge effort into something I may have to leave behind.

 

Last year, before Joe moved in, Brian-next-door helped me to cut down the worst of the nasty knot weed stuff, which was a beast. Since then, Joe has taken an axe to it several times and dug up the main roots. It seems to have been vanquished at last.

 

So even with the future being uncertain, we made a start on tidying it up properly earlier this year. Joe lifted the slabs. 

 At last a nice sized plot was revealed. I began digging it over.

 

And even though there hasn't really been any money for plants or seeds, I have managed to grow a few things and it looks a lot better.

The potatoes at the back should break the earth up (not for nothing are they known as 'pioneer plants'). The courgettes and beans seem happy enough.

As you can seem a lot of rubble has been removed. It will take some work and a lot of manure this winter to turn the earth around. And there is still a patch at the back which I am getting to grips with. It is thick, dry clay mingled with stones and rubbish, so I am doing it bit by bit, inch by inch. 

 

There are tomato plants growing at the side. It all looks a little bare, but at last it looks as if we'll be able to stay here for a while and maybe next year I will be able to plant out the large herb patch that I have secretly dreamed of. 

With everything that has happened, and being in a rather fragile state of mind most of the time, I still find it hard to contemplate a more reassured future. This little corner of the garden is the one part that is slowly taking form, with some herbs and creeping succulents. I look out on it often and try to take hope.

Garden round up

It's been a funny old gardening year. Started late, because of various distractions. Andy took a garden sabbatical (I think he was traumatised from the demise of our polytunnel) so I had to see to it all single handedly, in spare moments. And, at the risk of destroying any illusions that we live in a tranquil, rural paradise - we have been living next door to this;

The bush in the left hand corner is in our garden and the strip inbetween is our neighbour's garden. It began in late spring, and our little old terrace of cottages shuddered and shook as the wrecking ball demolished the ugly 1960's retirement home which had previously stood there. All day, nearly every day (even at weekends) since then, we have lived with the accompanying noise of big diggers, industrial tools, shouting navvies, chainsaws, drills - well, the usual cacophony. So time in the garden has been infrequent and as needs be.

But despite all that, we've had a pretty good year. Picking funny little harvests and wondering how to bung it all together.

Eaten string beans when we wanted. Lots of them.

Custard squash were a triumph: what a great little vegetable they are - and when they are young, can be eaten skin and all. If you store them, then just cut them in half, roast them and scoop them out of their rind bowl.

Potatoes were meagre and very disappointing; we have had barely any rain here all year. I tried to keep them watered with my bucket - no hoses here - but it was a sparse result.

So the garden quietly slips into scruffy dishevelledness. A few things linger, thanks to the unseasonably warm weather, but it is time for a winter rest.

Oh, but tomatoes - the tomatoes excelled! The seriously cold snap must have killed off any blight we had lingering, and they have thrived.

All the plants are now stripped back to stalks and fruit. Despite a night's frost last week, the plants are still strong and healthy.

And I continue to pick ripe tomatoes in November, which is extraordinary.

I also like to leave green tomatoes to gradually ripen indoors - they will last into late November at least, just left to hang.

We are still living next door to a building site, except that now some of the houses have been built - which means that this time next year, we will have new neighbours. The time to move has definitely come.

But at least I still have some last nasturtiums to enjoy.

It's a jungle out there!

The UK basks in what we like to call a heatwave. Yesterday morning, 7.00 am, before it became unbearable. A fat ginger cat, a vegetable garden going mad and cricket whites...yes, whites. Well, almost. After my washing disaster, a lovely lady from America sent me some Rit colour remover, to see if it would remove the stains. And it pretty much did! We don't get Rit over here, so I am going to have to be very careful not to have any more absent minded moments. They have been deemed wearable, and suprise was expressed that something, for once, did exactly what it said on the box. Thank you so much to the kind hearted soul, who has been responsible for re-juvenating Andy's second kit.

While I wilt in the heat, our little backyard garden has gone crazy with the humidity. Each night it drinks between 20-30 large cans of water. We long ago gave up trying to make neat beds and lines; now we cram as much in as possible, feed it with heaps of homemade compost and let it all get on with it. The peas have done splendidly again, planted in just one small square of earth, with my scatter-gun method (chuck 'em on, cover 'em up, feed 'em and let them grow)

BEFORE

AFTER

Inbetween the patches there are tomatos in a bag, more salad and strawberries in pots, broad beans, butternut squash and the edge of the Potato Army just seen on the right...

...they have romped away. They are a mini-habitat all on their own, with foot-soldiers of frogs living deep in the dark cool under the leaves. When we water, there are happy rustlings and squelches as they anticipate another dusky evening of hunting snails and slugs.

Dark patches in the wall are damp or bee holes, and the shadowy machine
seen against the window inside, is my neglected Adana press.

The batch of spuds nearest to you are commonly known as 'volunteers'. They sprang up of their own accord, from the ones we didn't find last year. Most of them grew in situ, a few we have transplanted from other beds. You aren't supposed to repeat them in the same place, but Mother Nature makes her own rules, and they are the healthiest plants of all.
It's been a good year for volunteers - maybe a few too many. This untidy bed is a huggle muggle of potatoes, properly planted tomatos, woody leeks which have outstayed their welcome, butternut squash, (more) a new bed of peas and various seedlings which have self sprouted from our own compost.

This sunny patch is one of our most productive - it is bravely (and successfully) supporting six different close planted veg; yellow tomatos, cucumbers, acorn squash, potatoes, the peas and mixed salad, again just scattered in a square and left to grow as it will, for 'cut & come again'. Which we do, often.

There are chilli peppers, sweet peppers, more cucumbers, more courgettes, even more tomatos. There are tubs of flowers and herbs, succulents and sweetcorn. Some waiting to be potted on or planted out, when there is space. We bung them in plastic pots, nice old earthenware pots, buckets and broken crocks. We are not, by any stretch of the imagination, a show-garden.

The spinach has become a monster, though it can't compete with Andy's strawberries, growing behind them. For the last few years he has been building up his squadrons; the runners creep everywhere like weeds, and we leave them be. They are now so numerous and vigorous, they crowd the real weeds out.

They grow along the sides of the beds, up the fences, in the cracks between the flagstones, in pots and in old barbeque stoves. Every night when he comes home from work, he goes straight out to inspect the garden in his shirtsleeves, tie and stockinged feet. He cossets his strawbs with the tenderness of a doting mother.

They are not shop-perfect; they are often mishapen, and sometimes a bit slugged or pecked. But they are ours.

We are on the waiting list for an allotment.

Holiday from home

So, that was quite a relaxing (and cheap) week's holiday. No painting, no blogging. Andy started a new vegetable patch...

We found some of my Pooh cards at Woolworths...

Spend an afternoon wandering the woods in search of edible mushrooms...

(Yes we do know what we are doing and no, we don't eat anything which we cannot identify 100%. Never pick anything you are not sure about).

And finally, the boring but necessary business of updating my website and organising a big mail out before we are forced into the poorhouse. One of the less glamorous sides of being freelance, punting out for work.

Don't forget to add your piece to Daisy Lupin's Giant Hallowe'en Story Circle, appearing for one magical month here. Looks like Daisy's written another humdinger of a story, which I am saving for tomorrow night, to read when the lights are low and the wind is moaning softly down the chimney...