Toughies

I don’t venture down the garden path very often these days but today I left the crutches in the house, grabbed my new walking stick and braved the gravel path down to the greenhouse.  Risky, I know, given my disability but sometimes we all have to live dangerously and I had forgotten to ask Doc to bring up some fresh parsley.

The sunshine helped and beckoned me onwards, step by difficult step.  The frost was glistening and fraught with slippery potential.  But when I arrived, the sight that met me was worth it because inside the unheated greenhouse was sheer loveliness.  The collection of mixed pelargonium I bought from Jim at our local garden club last season, for 50 pence a plant, was still in magnificent, full flower - in January! 

 

How they survive such cold nights, I don’t know.  I can only suppose that the stone flags warm up in the daytime and give off just enough heat to see them through the cold nights.  However, even if I had expected them to just keep ticking along; I would never have expected them to maintain their display.  Perhaps I have weakened the plants for next season by omitting to nip off the flower buds until next spring, but the flowers do feed my soul.  It is almost as if they are willing me on:  ‘Call yourself a gardener?  Come on, this is only a setback.  Believe you can get back to work and you will.....look at us!’

The rest of the pots which are over-wintering in the wind-free shelter of the greenhouse are doing fine too.  The hardy fuchsias and strawberry plantlets are even sprouting new growth!  The parsley looks lush, the cuttings are growing away and some small clumps of chives are showing off fresh, green shoots. 

Of course, the truth is we are enjoying a mild winter, despite the horrendous rains.  We have had some cold frosts but we have not experienced prolonged sub-zero temperatures and the white stuff.  If we were facing a winter like last year or the year before, I doubt even the hardiest of plants in the greenhouse would look quite so perky.  A fair few of them would look positively dead.

I will keep my fingers crossed and who knows, I may be tidying up the pelargoniums myself next spring, putting them in fresh compost and looking forward to a new, exciting growing season.  If anyone has some compost suitable for an injured foot, do let me know.

Autumn Benefits

Each season brings its own rhythm in the garden and I love autumn.  The tasks are a pleasant ritual, rather than a chore.  Gardeners need gloves but bright, dry days are a bonus and must be celebrated because the garden path is leading us into dark, dank winter days. 

There are fallen apples to rescue (easy with our quirky apple picker-upper!) and zillions of leaves to heap into large bags to make rich leaf mould.  Doc sends the lawn mower away for a holiday and a service.  The smell of bonfires along our road is pervasive and reminds us that our neighbours’ are tidying up too.  Some people feel that autumn heralds the end of the growing season, but for me it is the beginning of the gardening calendar.  This is the time to get those bulbs into the ground and invest time in order to reap the rewards of next spring.

My foot has taken a step backwards this last week (sorry about the pun!) and I cannot manage even a gentle potter in the greenhouse.  However, Doc was busy on the plot over the weekend, promising me that he would make sure the garden was fit for my inspection next spring!

Before this setback I was able to give the strawberry plants their autumn clean up.  Mouldy, unripe strawberries attract slugs and they like nothing better than a snug, winter home under the decaying leaves.  I made sure there was space between each plant to increase the air flow and this should hopefully reduce the risk of fungal infections. The bonus of course was finding some rooted runners (free new plants!) which I lifted, potted up and took to the sanctuary of the greenhouse.  I already have 3 dozen plantlets and they make great presents for friends and family.

The vegetable plot is still providing us with comfort food and we need plenty of that at the moment.  We have parsnips and leeks and the radicchio plants I haphazardly planted months ago and left to their own devices are making wonderfully sharp accompaniment to a boring sandwich.  In the garage there are trays of apples, pumpkins and butternut squash.  Even the greenhouse has its own offerings and my pots of parsley are still doing really well.
2013 has been a great year for apples and Doc’s cordons (18 and still counting!) provide us with  daily apple tastings and we love them chopped up in our porridge. We could have invited the whole street for a Springfield apple tasting and if next year is as fruitful, we must consider organising a community event. 

Anyway, the tree that always delivers the most abundant and tasty crop is the dessert apple: Katy.  It is an old established tree and the fruits are bright red and full of rosy cheer.  A few years ago Doc’s mum kindly gave us a juicer attachment to our Kenwood machine but we did not feel there were enough apples to ‘sacrifice’ in the name of experimentation.  However, this year Doc decided we should try to make some apple juice so in went the apples, cored and washed and out came the most gorgeous pink juice.  Usually I loathe apple juice - the kind that comes in cartons in the supermarket – but this freshly made apple juice was a revelation.   It is wonderful stuff and we had 2 precious pints to savour.  It does not keep more than a couple of days and unfortunately we did not have enough room in the freezer to store bulky juice, so we enjoyed it whilst it lasted.  Next year, we need a bigger freezer!

We love making the most of seasonal produce from the garden but of course there is a freezer full of produce from earlier in the season.  There are French beans and berries, rhubarb and gooseberries as well as bags of tomatoes I skinned and chopped. 
Surprisingly, the star of the freezer has to be the bags of sliced strawberries and pots of strawberry puree.  As with the apples, we had a glut this year and unlike raspberries, strawberries are not noted for their freezing qualities.  But I could not waste them, could I?  I pureed some because the texture of the fruit is not important and for an experiment I sliced some strawberries and open frozen them on trays before bagging them up.  I intend to use the sliced fruit to try a new recipe involving whizzing the frozen fruit slices with semi-frozen whipped cream for a soft, instant ice-cream.  I will let you know how it goes!

Strawberry puree is proving to be very useful - and delicious.  A strawberry jelly tablet is transformed by putting the squares in a jug and filling it to the half pint mark of boiling water.  Stir until dissolved and then top up with unsweetened strawberry puree, to make the full pint of liquid.  Pour into a dish and chill in the fridge until set.  We serve it natural yogurt and our granddaughter (Olympia, 16 months) would eat the whole lot!

Following the theme, strawberry jelly mousse is a must-try recipe.  Dissolve the tablet of jelly in a couple of spoonfuls of water over a gentle heat.  Defrost 7 ozs (200 g) frozen strawberries and sieve to remove the seeds.  Whisk up 2 x  6 oz/170 g cans  chilled evaporated milk until thick and doubled in volume.  Fold in the slightly cooled jelly liquid and then the strawberry puree.  This should serve 4 people but it may not!

It looks like I will be trying lots of new recipes if I cannot get out into the garden.  Doc does not say as much but I know he is thinking that this autumn is bringing fringe benefits.  I have put down the secateurs and picked up the recipe books.  I am going to have to regard my situation as an opportunity rather than a threat - though I am not sure my waistline feels the same.

Gardening doesn’t get tougher than this

I have been putting off writing a blog post for a long time.  Back in March I experienced a fracture of a metatarsal in my left foot and this was a repeat fracture of several years ago.  Although the fracture healed again, complications set in.   I am a very driven and self-motivated person, so I (literally) put my best foot forward and soldiered on, trying to cope with my busy, active life.  However, 6 months later I was not pain free and actually it was getting worse.  After considerable visits to different specialists and steroid injections, I am now waiting to see a Podiatric surgeon. 

It is as though my life has gradually shrunk away from the sides of the tin.  Daily life has always been inexorably intertwined with gardening and now everything is a struggle and it is likely to continue to be a struggle for some time to come.  I am back in the garden now but I am a shadow of my former manic (!) and passionate self.  Life is different. The last time I went for a proper walk was March 22nd and anything I do in the garden requires careful thought and lots of time.  Putting on my gardening clobber is not the same as it was and not just because of my new boots packed with thick wadding to support to my foot.  I am of limited capacity.  It is hard to embrace and celebrate what I can do and let go of what I can't do, when I am still grieving for what I have lost.

Whatever the outcome, gardening our large, hilly plot is going to be a forever challenge.  Since I have discovered there is a problem with my metabolism, I should not risk encouraging further fractures to develop.  My health has leapt to the top of the agenda and I am slowly learning to let go of much of what was important to me because there is now something which is even more important. 

I remember joking with everyone that the seats in our garden are redundant because I never have time to sit on them  - there is always so much to do!  Like the white rabbit in Alice in Wonderland, I would always be rushing around.  Now I sit in the garden more than I stand up in it, lazing on the bench by the shed, snug and warm in the greenhouse or perched on the steps by the pergola draped with wisteria.   At first, the agony of feeling incapable fought visciously with the agony of walking but eventually calm broke out I can now allow myself to sit and contemplate, even if I am not always dry eyed.

No-one is born a hero and being heroic does not always require us to dramatically slay a dragon or climb a mountain without oxygen.  For most of us, we are simply caught unawares and normal life changes in an instant.  There the challenge is, thrust upon us and we just have to cope and muddle through.  What other option is there?  So I too must learn and adapt, accept what has happened and find new goals. 

Doc is supporting me and has done amazing work in the garden but there is a limit to what he can do because he has other responsibilities.  We may have to bring in more outside help, be realistic about what we can grow in the kitchen garden and our plans for overhauling the under-developed areas are now on hold.

None of us knows what the future will bring.  One minute I was racing up and down, down and up, round and round, swinging a spade with one hand and wielding the secateurs with the other.  In the next minute I wasn’t doing that very easily at all and gradually I realised I should not even be trying.  However, even if I never run down the hill at Springfield again, then I must hold tightly onto the precious memory that I once did. 

It's all about size

Our rhododendron and azalea collection dates back to when the garden was originally laid out, from 1910 onwards.  The colour starts in late winter (depending on the temperatures) and there is a continuous succession of blooms right through until summer.  After a dull, grey winter, they are a blast of vitality and the acidic soil at Springfield has enabled them to flourish.

Not sure about the colour combination but it wakes us up in the morning!

Rhodies in particular are heavy-weights and if given their head, they start throwing around too much weight.  And that’s the problem, isn’t it?  When we moved here, they had been allowed to grow unheeded and we set about pushing them back and showing them the colour of our loppers.

But the time came when an annual moderate pruning was not enough.  So this summer Doc has almost massacred them but finally we can distinguish each tree and walk between them.  They don't look pretty at the moment and they won’t flower next season but this is a price worth paying for reclaiming the garden.  They won't die though, they are already sprouting green shoots and before long they will be back in the business of providing colour, but on a smaller scale. 

There was over a foot deep of leafmould around these thugs, the result of decades of decaying leaves, spent flowers and twiggy bits.  When Doc dug all this out, he found lovely stone edges to the beds and the path between the rockeries is actually much wider than we thought it was which is going to be very useful.  (Though we will need a fence to keep people from falling down the banks!) 

 

We can use the leafmould as a mulch elsewhere in the garden and it will be rich in nutrients.  Doc has piled up the largest logs to feed the log burner next year and the rest of the mountain of debris has been burned on a bonfire which lasted 2 whole days.  He calculated that he had walked 4 miles, barrowing it all down to the bottom of the garden. It is one of the reasons he is currently so slim!  I feel guilty that my disability meant my only contribution to the mammoth task was to trim the leaves from a few branches.

The process has been cathartic because we feel that finally we own the entire garden, not just part of it.  We are busy planning what to do with the banks now we are back in control.  One of our ideas is to create planting terraces with sleepers so we can plant some attractive ground cover plants, bulbs and so on.  Without planting pockets, new plants would be washed down the banks in the rain.  We also have plans for a garden room with a retaining wall at the back of it so this will be a major project.  It is going to take some careful thought and of course, we must keep on top of the rhododendrons....

Size is the current theme because we have had great success with the carrots.  I know that baby, sweet carrots are best but since we find growing carrots quite a challenge, we are proud of this particular whopper.  With such a cold spring we thought germination would be impossible and even when we did see some growth, we did not water the plants very much, nor did we get round to installing a baffle to deter the carrot root fly.  However, nature has provided and this carrot was perfect and has lasted us for 3 meals!  We are hopeful that the white carrots (parsnips) will be just as productive.

Death in the air

It started with a whisper of a whiff.  At first, I thought it was the smell of soil clinging to the potatoes in the vegetable rack, or a potato that had rotted.  Or maybe it was the large basket of beetroots?  However, by the time I had made another batch of beetroot chutney, the whiff had become a pong.  Doc thought it was the smell of the house martin droppings outside, wafting in through the vent in the pantry.  So he scrubbed, scraped and disinfected the vent as well as the path outside the kitchen.

The path was clean and smelled sweet, in fact we could have eaten our dinner off it but the pantry was now so putrid it made us feel sick to go inside.  Something had to be done. 

We took everything out of the pantry which was a large task because although it is a small room, it is much like Dr Who's tardis.  Doc made remarks such as “Are you hoping to use this lot to barter with the barbarians as they rampage through the valley...?”  I got to work with the disinfectant, explaining that there is nothing wrong with having a well stocked larder.  (Although I have thrown out some jars of herbs and spices which had use-by dates too embarrassing to mention.) 
Doc opened the window and it was then he noticed a yellow, damp patch in the corner of the windowsill.  We lowered our noses and the smell was even more intense.  Doc is a GP and said he had smelled the smell before.  It was the smell of death....decaying flesh..... (who would be a doctor?)

With a little investigation on the internet, we discovered that it is not uncommon for small mammals such as mice to find their way into the cavity walls of a house, get stuck and die.  Perhaps they are searching for cheese?  Apparently, it takes weeks and weeks for a corpse to complete the decomposition process.  So we have to let nature takes it course, or hire a builder to break the wall apart and retrieve the rotting mass.   

Doc has installed blocks of activated charcoal and is researching some odour sucking crystals in the hope of managing the symptoms of this horrible problem.  Currently, the contents on the pantry are in the dining room so we feel as though we are camping out.  I am concerned that the fruit and vegetables from the garden will suffer in the warmth of the kitchen.  The fridge is stuffed full!

On top of this, I was terrified out of my wits the other evening.  I was reaching out for the toothpaste when I found a large insect crawling up the tooth mug.  On closer, but very tentative inspection, the little critter appeared alien to me.  It had a black body with a waist, lacy wings and bright orange legs.  Sticking out of its rear was what looked like a long, nasty sting.

The words ‘don’t panic Mr Mainwairing’ came to mind, so I breathed deeply and coaxed the little beastie into a glass and covered it with a flannel.  I carefully took it downstairs and although Doc was not visibly concerned, I noticed that he held the glass at arm’s length.  He released the insect outside, slammed the door shut and we went to bed.  I could not sleep though and was convinced this tropical killer had arrived via the supermarket shopping. It could have arrived in the bananas.

Next morning, Doc found the creature in the utility room so it must have crawled under the back door – though of course it could have been its twin.  This time, there was no holding back.  With a sharp tap, it was dead but not so squished that my TV CSI training could not be put to good use.  I initiated a thorough investigation, beginning with the obligatory photographs and several searches on the Oracle.

I soon discovered that the offending insect was a Pimpla Instigator or ichneumon fly and there are many different species.  They are totally harmless, nectar feeding insects but we are consoled that lots of other people have reacted in a similar way, with the same results.  

Our visitor may not have killed us but it does have a rather grisly habit. The so-called sting is actually an ‘ovipositor’ and the female uses it to inject as many up to 150 eggs into a defenceless caterpillar. The grubs grow inside the caterpillar, gradually eating their way to the outside world.  So, far from being a nuisance, our fly was probably killing off the caterpillars that eat the vegetables we are trying to grow!  

 

Fruits of our labours

With my ailing foot, harvesting the fruit and veg is something I can get my teeth into and that is exactly what I do with the Japanese Wineberries (Rubus phoenicolasius). There is something magical about popping these small, sticky, ruby coloured clusters of unctuousness into your mouth, straight from the pink, prickly stems.  Not many of these delicate little fruits make it back to the kitchen but this season’s crop is the best we have seen, so there is a bowl of them in the fridge to have with our muesli tomorrow.  And there are lots more to ripen. 

Wineberries are an unusual fruit with a glossy appearance and a definite sweet red wine taste. They are exotic in their appeal but are remarkably easy to grow – either in full sun or partial shade. They are similar to summer fruiting raspberries in that they fruit on the previous year’s growth.  Unlike raspberries though the canes are long and arching – so we tie them into a trellis but if you have the space you can let them run free, though they will not be well behaved!  If you bend a stem to the ground and weight it down with a stone, it will root very easily. 

You can use wineberries in cooking as you would raspberries, but we never do.  They have such a wow factor that we think they are best served as they are. I can never understand why more people don’t grow them.