Another Monday morning has rolled round again. The last week before the half-term holidays. Pea has an exam every morning this week, but will be home most afternoons to relax a little before revising for the next day's exam. I woke at five this morning to hear tiny feet scuttling about in the ceiling. Just as I was wondering who I could bribe to go into the loft and put bait down, the rain began falling. It came straight down like stair rods, heavily and steadily for a couple of hours. I listened to it, cosy in my bed and let my mind carry me where ever it chose. Two seconds before my alarm went off I began to drift into a peaceful dream as is usually the case after lying awake for hours. The rain was still falling and later, as I was driving home from taking H2 to school, the sky turned a deep grey and cast a metallic glow over the landscape. A flash of lightening lit up the morning sky before a crack of thunder echoed around the countryside.
This picture is a bit blurred as the rain was still falling heavily and soaking my camera. That or I just slipped. I love the light and how fresh and vibrant the plants (and weeds) look. By the time Middle Aged Labrador and I arrived home there was a brief lull in the weather so we took our chance and shot into the poly tunnel. There are trays and trays of small plants that need to be carried outside to harden off each morning and back in again in the evening. If the weather keeps mild, I will be planting them out over the weekend and next week. MAL does not like thunder at all, so as I was dashing in and out with my hands full of plants, she kept trying to run back to the house. The door was shut though so I kept calling her back to stay in the poly tunnel with me but she wasn't too impressed with this idea, so we both went in for a cup of tea (me) and a dog biscuit (MAL).
This week Mother Nature sent us lots of sunshine, so consequently, things in the garden have been growing like mad. Pea and I had our very first vegetable from our new plot a few days ago. We picked it fresh from the earth, washed it under the garden tap and then ate it between us, standing right where it was growing only seconds before. A magnificent moment and one that was accompanied by us both squealing with delight and jumping up and down quite a bit. Do you want to see why? Do you want to see the superb vegetable we plucked from the rich earth? Okay then, brace yourself.....
It's a radish. With a face. So exciting! The boys looked at us with an unfathomable expression and then walked off to do something far more important than grow food from bare earth, no doubt. Anyway, this somewhat small radish tasted fresh and sweet and then left a peppery bite in it's wake. Gorgeous. There are plenty more to follow and I sowed another row on Wednesday so these should be ready just when we have eaten the first lot. We have had some casualties and failures with our seeds, but most things have germinated and are growing into fine young plants. The saddest thing was that the mice ate both of my sowings of Crystal Lemon cucumbers. I suppose I could have sent off for another packet of seed, but the postage would have made it a bit ridiculous, so I bought four small plants of two other varieties instead. At least these are at the stage mine would have been
sans rodent interference, so we should get plenty of fruit (vegetables?) off them. Ditto with the tomatoes. Mine have germinated, finally but even though they are languishing in the kitchen window they still don't seem to have done an awful lot. I really don't want to have a huge poly tunnel standing empty all Summer, so the purchase of a few young plants seemed a more sensible option. It would have been lovely to grow all of our veg from seed myself, but the main idea is that we have home grown food to eat all Summer and I have merely made sure we will.
All the glorious sunshine has meant that I have been spending almost every spare moment in the garden. The house is taking a back seat for a while and not being cleaned as much as it was during the Winter. Thank goodness for that. A boring, thankless task if ever there was one. At least with gardening I get to enjoy it while I'm working in it. The birds keep me company with their constant beautiful singing; Swallows swoop over the garden and sit twittering on the wires near the house. A blackbird sat in the damson trees and sang his liquid song all day and well into the evening until the sun started slipping from the sky, taking it's heat with it. There is something about the song of a blackbird that stirs a memory from a thousand years ago. It is like looking at a long forgotten photograph, fuzzy with age so that you can't quite see the people in it or remember their names, but you know they were once important to you. For me the blackbird has the best voice of all our avian friends and I could listen to him for ever.
I quite enjoy hand weeding between rows of shallots. It isn't so easy to use a hoe as there is always the danger you could slice them off by mistake. I've done that before. The weeds coming up round my beetroot and salad onion seedlings were like a sea of green. I managed to carefully extract most of them, leaving the seedlings with more light and space to grow. My parsnips may or may not have germinated yet, I don't know what they look like so I daren't pull out any weeds in case I find out, rather belatedly, that they were parsnips. So I will just have to wait a while longer until I know for sure. It does look a bit of a mess though.
I am getting a nice tan, tight muscles and a bad back ache from all this weeding, but I'm loving it anyway!
There are plenty of flowers coming up among the weeds (or wild flowers if you like) and these are a complete surprise as they were already here, sleeping in the earth when we moved in last Autumn. They seem to be following my chosen colour pallet of pastel blue, pink and white.
All I want to accomplish this year is a garden that makes people smile when they see it. A place where any person who drifted through the boarders could pick a bunch of scented flowers, a handful of salad leaves, pull a radish from the ground and pluck a ripe tomato from a vine. I want there to be something pretty to behold where ever your eyes rest, scents and sounds to fill your heart with happiness and memories to last in my childrens' minds all their lives. Just simple stuff that daydreams are made of that can be part of our every day reality.
Why not?
Love your garden and thank you for reading. xxx
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