Its All Happening On The Veg Plot and Flower Garden.

I believe there is Fake News.  Fake Weather News Any way.  Do the weather forecasters look out of their windows in London and Dublin and decide what the weather is for all the country?  We have no Scorchio here.  It warmed up a bit and Ireland duly steamed up with Mizzle.  

I have heard people call Ireland "The Kettle" and they are right.  I think its mainly to do with the mountains being on so much of the coast and the mild Gulf Stream?  My spudatoes have started pushing their stalks through the soil.  Have yours?  Hope we don't get Blight with all this Mizzle.

Any way.  The weeds are growing like weeds and I have been busy.  

 A 'Slug Pub' in the middle of my cabbages.  Its an old Baked (Heinz of course") Beans can filled with some cheap and nasty beer we thought we would try.

 More "Slug Pubs" with plant labels lay prostrate to make the slugs and snails "walk the plank" and drop in after their last drink and also hopefully any useful Beetles don't fall in.

 Some of the hundreds of Perennials I have made this year.  Anybody want to buy some cheap pretty flowers?  

 Even the side of the poly-tunnel is playing at being a nursery for my plants. I placed them on a tarpaulin on top of some montbretia.  The plastic holds puddles of water and the plants drink it when they need it.

 A "Dog and Cat Pub".  This is an old pan full of water for Fido the terrier and Domino the cat have a drink of water when they so require.  The birds like it too!

 The cheapest poly-tunnel  in the world.  Just two old polythene bags.  They go over the plants in the picture below.  I can't believe how much moisture runs from under the plastic when I take it off.  I am reusing my plastic like Monty and Nellie and Nigel do on Gardeners World.

This is what it looks like when the plastic is removed.  The cat-mint (Nepeta) cuttings front left are growing like Triffids.  I made holes in some plastic buckets and filled them with with grit-sand and got hormone powder and dipped some cuttings in it and pushed the cuttings into the sand.  Everything is doing really well.  It just shows you don't need a tunnel to root your cuttings!  Anybody else making cuttings at the the moment?  Any propagation tips?  

Is there really an heatwave in Blighty?  I find it hard to believe.  The rain is coming for Wednesday.  Just for a change!

"It's Too Far For Simon!"

 Another one of my anecdotes:

About twenty two years ago.  My fiancee and myself decided to go on a week holiday touring Scarborough, the Yorkshire and the Lake District.  We didn't think our car was up to the journey so we hired a car from a carhire firm.

The Hyundai Pony looked good and we toured around and stayed at campsites.  It was the weekend when we stayed at a little camp site in Coniston.  We had pitched our little tent and decided to go for a spin into the town.  The ignition key broke in half and it was stuck.

We walked to a red telephone box and rang the hire company and told them our problem.  The lady said:

"He will be with you in twenty minutes.  Whereabouts are you?"

"Coniston!"

"What are you doing up there?  We thought you would only be going local.  It's far too far for Simon!"

It's a good job we were members of the AA!

Making A Stinging Nettle Brew For The Garden And Veg Plot!

Its raining here today.  Yesterday I made some Stinging Nettle Garden tea fertilizer for the lawn, flowers and vegetables.  Why buy plant and lawn fertilizer when you can make your own for nuffink or even nowt?

I got an old pillowcase and put on my gardening gloves and used secateurs to cut and fill the pillowcase with nettles.  Then I tied it up and attached a piece of string to the pillowcase and tied to the handle of a bath full of rainwater.  

Then I dropped the pillowcase full of nettles into the bath and weighed it down with a big stone.  I have done this before with seaweed.  Some people use Comfrey.

In two weeks time I will use my nettle garden tea on my lawn, food and vegetables.  You are suppose to water it down: 10 -1.  I think the bath full of rainwater will dilute enough for me.  Anybody make their own garden brews?

Some Rather Posh Campers.

Here's another one of my anecdotes for you to read.  

It was about ten years a go and we decided to go on holiday in Galway.  We hadn't a lot of pennies so we just put some fuel in the car and bought a cheap small tent from Argos in Killarney.

The two lads had a sleeping bag each and we took the quilt off our bed and a pillow a piece.  Then we stopped at Aldi and bought some crisps and pop and some of those "El Cheapo" little bottles of French lager.  What more would anybody need for a camping trip?

We stopped at a beautiful farm come campsite overlooking a beach and the Atlantic Ocean.  The old currant bun in the sky was actually smiling and shining on us that day, for a change.  

It didn't take long to pitch our little tent and the two lads went paddling in the sea and we sat outside our tent and drank some of the French lagers.  It was a beautiful evening.

I started to question if there was any alcohol content in the lager?  Rather like that stuff you pay for at those big concert arenas and national football stadiums.  You fork out twenty quid to put you in the mood to see your favourite group put in a naff concert or your beloved football team fails to know how to win on the day.  Been there got the T shirt and paid for the lager and burger!

After half a dozen bottles of gnats pee lager.  We noticed a big shiny posh car pull up opposite us.  Its inhabitants duly unpacked everything but the Butlers sink and erect an enormous frame tent.  They then unpacked a picnic table and chairs and began to set the table complete with crockery and cutlery.  We couldn't help people watch and the teenage daughter piped up in a upper crust English accent:

"Mother.  Where's the tablecloth?"

Her mother rolled her eyes and with a voice like the mother in the Durrell's replied:

"It's in the wicker picnic basket!"

I asked my wife:

"What's a tablecloth?"  

Zetas Nots

The Forget Me Nots are now in full bloom in the new part of the farmhouse garden we made last summer.  The nots remind of us of our four legged Border Collie (long departed) friend who use to sniff them and sneeze.  We even call them Zetas Nots.  I named her after the beautiful Catherine Zeta Jones who was starring in The Darling Buds Of May at the time.

We often said Zeta was half human.  She sneezed at flowers and sat down at Pelican crossings and waited for it to make a beeping noise.  You could hold an ice lolly in your hand and she would lick it slowly and would daintly take out crisps from a packet with her mouth, one at a time.  Zeta's party piece was when I asked her if she wanted a can of beer?  Zeta would bark three or four times and I would pour her a can of bitter into her bowl.  She had definitely been here before and she loved walking round the garden sniffing flowers.  I am always under strict orders never to weed Zeta's Nots.

Its strange how vegetables and flowers make you sad and happy.  I use to grow Parsnips for my dad and Beetroots for my mother.  When they euphemistically passed away.  I carried on growing them for a few years.  I don't think I will bother with them this year.

In the background you can see Foxgloves that have self seeded everywhere.  I let them grow.  One year a white one appeared in the front garden.  It never self seeded though and we have never had any more white ones reappear.

Forget Me Nots or their posh Latin name: Myosotis Arvensis "Mouses Ears".  Are said to have got their name in Medieval times.  A knight and a lady were walking next to a river.  He was dressed in full armoour.  They happened to be very much in love and he leaned over the side of the river to pick a large bunch of the flowers.  The weight of his armour made him fall into the swollen river.  He started to drown.  Just before he drowned he passed the lady the bunch of flowers and said:

"Forget me not!"

Don't know if its the true etymology of the meaning.  But a nice tale!

Here's an appropiate song by Foster and Allen.

MR IMMACULATE ALLOTMENT HOLDER.

If local radio had allotment correspondents this man would write it and say something like the following:  

"The Leeks are growing in a north to south direction and my Savoy cabbages have got Finger and Toe disease.  Did I tell you I bought a new rake?"  

Mr Immaculate Allotment Holder is very methodical.  He only cares about his allotment being neat and tidy.  Every fruit and vegetable is planted in a regimental line.  It must be when he joined the Salvation Army and served his country back in the days of National Services or in his case, Services?  He use to play lead electric triangle in the band.  It was this experience that made him methodical and regimental.  Everything is planted in a straight line.  Rather like trees on a golf course fairway.  

Nature does not work in straight lines.  It likes to ebb and flow and meander and self seed in a patched quilt of a Cottage garden way.  Mr Immaculate Plot Holder lives and breathes: STRAIGHT lines.

His allotment is immaculate.  Hs garden shed wears a resplendent army green annual coat of paint.  His allotment entrance is an hardwood teak front door with a letter box and brass polished numbers 22 Acacia Avenue (Iron Maiden song) resplendently polished with Brasso ("clean your buttons with Brasso") and gleaming in the sun.

Mr Immaculate Allotment Holders allotment is organised and set like the control room of an aircraft carrier.  His anorak is grey and the same colour of a Royal Navy battleship.  Every one of his fruit and vegetables are accurately spaced between itself and the next fruit or vegetable.  Seven seeds or vegetable plants to every row.  Seven is the number.  The magic number.  Bees have seven body parts and their hive is split into seven sections.  They even fly in a number seven formation.  Everybody knows number seven is God's number and that is the number he adheres and regimen-tally sticks to.  

Mr Immaculate Allotment Holder never purchases or places any animal manure on his allotment.  He believes cow manure to be a 'cold' manure and never heats up to kill any pernicious weed seeds.  Horse manure is full of oats and they germinate and grow everywhere.  He gets very few weeds because he doesn't add manure or compost to his allotment soil.  He hoes rain or shine and shine or rain again.    His fruit and vegetables upon harvesting are always small and puny.  But they are immaculately tended.  His allotment is immaculate and he is a very boring man! 

Mr And Mrs Right On Baby Decide Its Time For The Good Life And Buy Their Very Own Smallholding.

Mr and Mrs Right On Baby decide that they have had an enough of renting their municipal allotment.  They decide to buy a smallholding in the countryside. 

They are tired and fed up of living in leafy suburbia, the rat race and having normal every day things like; a corner shop, a pub, milkman, FRIENDS, libraries, kebab houses, restaurants, public transport ("what's that?"), chip-shops, newspaper delivery persons ("very PC"), football and cricket teams, footpaths, friendly neighbours, mains water and mains sewers, broadband, street lights, telephone box, post box, greengrocers, off-licence...?  Shall I go on?

Mr and Mrs Right On Baby decided to take the plunge and buy their own little smallholding in the countryside.  

"Oh wouldn't it be great to have baa lambs, piggy wigs, goats, moo cows and a Shetland pony a piece for Prudence and Tarquin?"

They know that they have all the knowledge to live the good life and become self sufficient and they do have a credit card.  

"After all we have read all of the booky wooks (just looked at the pictures really); John Seymours : The New Book Of Self Sufficiency, The Natural Way Of Farming: Masanobu Fukuaka (try pronouncing his name after you have been at the wine gums), Enid Blyton's: The Famous Five ("where's Timmy the dog?)...?  What's more is there to know?"

So they purchase an ex farm labourers cottage for a kings ransom and pay a farmer forty grand for four of his worst acres.   They have their very own little piece of Eden in the countryside.

The very next day after Pickfords the removal people moved them in.  They decide to grasp the nettles, take the bull by its horns and tackle that overgrown acre of brambles, rushes, rose-bay willow herb, couch grass and fifty years of the previous owners rubbish, detritus and very own private landfill site.

"Anyone want a gas-mask or a tin of powdered egg?"

"We will be Orgasmic ("Organic") and will not use any man made chemicals.  Just good old manual labour."

"Isn't he a Spaniard?"

"What's wrong with George our gardener and the little man from the village?"

Mr Right On Baby decides to use bloods sweat and tears and buys himself a eight cans of Special Brew (recycled radiator water) and a sack of Mars bars for his good lady wife: Mrs Right On Baby.

Two hours later.  Mr Right On Baby is walking around aimlessly and doing a wonderful impression of the hunchback of self sufficient kingdom.  He has broken a spade, tripped over some old discarded long johns and he thinks he is going through a "Dark night of the soul experience".  

Just to put a tin hat on thefirst days proceedings and nightmare in their 'Escape To The Country'.  The vicars wife will not be returning again to welcome them or deliver the parish magazine.  She seems to think that Mr Right On Baby called her:

"One of them there!" 

Mr Right on Baby attempts to stumble after her and explain it was a bramble root he was swearing at.  But its too late and she's gone off down the road with a flea in her ear.  

He stops to look round at his beautiful Potager and it looks like an hens been scratching about in the wasteland.

Mr Right On Baby sits down and begins to realize its cost a lot of blood, sweat, tears and MONEY to live in the middle of nowhere!

The End.

I sent this once to a smallholding magazine.  They told me that they would not be publishing my composition.  They didn't do humour!

"Hmm..?"

Next Time: Mr Immaculate Allotment Holder.