Gardening: what else?

The ‘nursery’ has had a bit more attention than usual this year, and the warm weather has given things a boost.  Potting up the penstemon cuttings has paid dividends in particular.  It also helps that we aren’t buggering off to Lagrasse all the time and neglecting the garden, of course.  As I write, the seedlings are getting rained on and blown around out on the table on the terrace.  I cavalierly planted out some cosmos the other day, and they too are looking a bit bedraggled.  There’s another dozen or so in the cold frames, however, so we can fill in if necessary.

As for the veggies, the spuds are looking fit, and are just about ready for another earthing up.  I got three bags of compost from Fortnums on my weekly shopping trip on Monday, so they’re catered for. All six tomato seeds have germinated and are potted up, and some are looking ready for further promotion.  The runner beans too, sown it seems like minutes ago, are already coming through the bottoms of their pots, with the ones I harvested from our own beans last year doing rather better than the past-date seed I got cheap from the HAHA stores.  I have sown a first batch of French beans, both from ancient Lidl-sourced seed and from the stores: my plan is successional sowing, and I'll be influenced by the relative success rates of the two sources.  Last year, French bean seeds I bought from a big name were a complete washout: I sowed them all outdoors, but the Fortnums seed thrived.  We'll see what indoor sowing achieves this year.  The heavy rains of the past couple of days will have helped to settle down the enriched soil of the raised bed, so next week’s shopping list includes bean poles.

I gather that the Rt Hon The First Lord of the Treasury has managed to sire yet another sprog out of wedlock.  They should live and be well.  If his competence matched his fertility, I’d be a bit happier.

Simple things

Outdoor stuff again, after a brief dull spell.  The grass is cut, the mint tubs are weeded and top dressed, the runner beans are sown, and the seedlings are all coming along well in the sitooterie.  There’s an atavistic comfort in seeing new crops beginning: the spuds have started to poke some leaves through the surface of the compost, and the tomatoes will be ready to pot up in a day or two.  I have pricked out no fewer than eighteen dozen antirrhinum seedlings, and it only seemed like a pinch of seed.

It has been interesting to follow the news, hasn’t it?  Johnson has not ‘taken one for the team’: that accolade falls, alas, to the care assistants, nurses and doctors who have died because of the government’s failure to limit the spread of infection early enough, and to protect the few it has so meanly and grudgingly funded.  Bundeskanzlerin Merkel is showing herself to be perhaps the only credible political figure at the moment.  (Shame she’s retiring, but welcome to the club, Mutti!)

Life in confinement

I had a letter from MoJ Human Remains today, with three lines of formulaic thanks for my fifteen years at the hobby, and three pages of do's and dont's for retired Magistrates.  Sums it all up, really.

Meanwhile, doubly retired, I've been busy in the garden.  A lot of the seedlings are not far off ready to plant out, but since we're still having frosts, I'll have to restrain myself.  It's time to start sowing runner beans, so I'll need to contrive some space for them in the sitooterie.  The cold frames are likewise full.  I think I have homes for a couple of box cuttings, and for the over-wintered lobelias I potted up last week.  The warm weather of the Easter weekend and a few days before has given the garden quite a boost: the acer is leafing up well, and the tulips I found in the garage are flowering like mad.  They are in the bed that had previously accommodated some miserable geraniums provided by the soi-disant landscapers.  Can't blame the geraniums, but I certainly can blame the lack of preparation of the bed, quickly and easily remedied when I took matters into my own hands.

Up at the top of the garden, the self-sown willow is getting a bit big for its quarters, but it's a good enough shape, and yesterday I finally swept up all the twigs that had fallen off it during the winter storms.  The little ornamental cherry next to it is flowering, and on the shady bank, the primroses have finally settled in, together with one surviving cowslip.

Martyn had a go at the pond a couple of days ago, hauling out a vast amount of oxygenating plant.  We have at least one newt, and judging by the interest shown in the pond by our feline neighbour, Tiger Lily, there must be a frog or two in there as well.

Shopping remains interesting.  I got stuck behind numerous dithery shoppers yesterday in Fortnums, where the concept of social distancing seems foreign.  My makeshift mask will have stopped my passing on droplets, but of course won't protect me from idiots.  Vast amounts of R-swipe on the shelves, but not a grain of flour.  Martyn had the Waitrose list, and reports the same.

We drove down to the shops in the Egg, which had not run for fully three weeks.  It started as usual on the first turn of the key, and ran sweetly there and back, the coolant reaching and stopping at 90° as it has done all its life.  Said life has not been hard, of course: twelve years since we collected it, it has done less than 50'000 miles, and these days it barely does a thousand between MoTs.  Staying on matters automotive, the recent sharp drop in fuel prices prompts a wry smile: as one wag on the internet put it, it's a bit like giving me a prize of a hairbrush.  How interesting that the oil price cartel is the only area of common ground between the Untied States of America, the Russian Federation and that champion of human rights and the market economy, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

April may prove to be the cruellest month

We’re doing as we’re told, and going out only for essentials.  When we went out on Monday for our weekly shop, there was so little traffic on the road that it felt rather like a Sunday did when I was young.  We were able to get everything we needed, including bread flour at last, but we are getting very low on yeast.  I guess all those long-forgotten bread machines are being dug out from the backs of cupboards.  Ours, I should say, barely cools down between batches, so apart from bagels, which are just too much of a faff to make, we rarely buy ready-made bread.

Thank goodness it’s a busy season for the gardener.  Our tomatoes are germinating, but slowly.  I had another go at the penstemons yesterday, following the advice of a tv gardener to cut them down to the ground.  Some of the new ones we grew from seed last year, and which flowered so well through the season, have rooted from the stems that were lying on the soil, so the layerings are now separated from the parent plants and potted up.  The fuchsias we had in a box on the steps last year over-wintered again in the cold frame, so they have been cut back and a couple of trays of cuttings taken.

It won’t be long before we’re planting vegetables.  The first early Charlotte potatoes have been chitting in the garage for the past month or so, so next time we have a prospect of some mild nights I’ll get them started in their growing sacks.  Our local nursery delivers, so I rang them yesterday afternoon to order a few sacks of compost and muck.  To my surprise, a little more than an hour after I called, the delivery driver rang the doorbell.  So we are equipped for spud growing and to prepare the raised bed for the beans.  I’ll sow some runner beans in a couple of weeks’ time, and perhaps also start successional sowing of dwarf French beans.  The nursery had no trailing fuchsias to offer, so the basket at the front door may have to make do with the upright variety.  There are some trailing ivy plants in it, so it won’t look too bare.

On the creative side, Martyn has turned lately to three dimensions, working on the model railway, so has not been turning out water colour landscapes for a week or two.  I’ve topped and tailed a couple of little acrylics, and have gessoed a couple of abandoned canvases ready for overpainting when something inspires me.

As we expected, our May cruise to Norway has been cancelled.  Cunard is offering incentives to try to persuade us to take a future cruise credit rather than a cash refund.  We shall sit on our hands for a little longer: after all, the money would be earning bugger-all in the bank.  We have paid a deposit on a Mediterranean cruise in the autumn, but, like the friends we had planned to meet on it, we’re not sure about embarking on a floating Petri dish just five months hence.  I’ve meanwhile cancelled the car hire booking I’d made for our day in Åndalsnes, and the prepaid charges were promptly refunded by rentalcars.com, to whom loud applause.

As a postscript to my fifteen years at the hobby, I’ve swapped emails lately with one of our local defence advocates, since I didn’t have a chance to say my farewells in person.  I shall miss his outstanding advocacy, pragmatism and wit, and told him so.  He tells me he’ll miss my sympathetic look when he was trying to defend the indefensible.  I think that means he knew he was on a loser when he detected a certain slight movement of my left eyebrow.  I’ll never make a poker player.