Flowering Rhubarb
Posted: Sat 8 May, 2010 Filed under: Domestic, Green Garden, Weirdness 1 Comment »One of the stranger sights in our garden this week…
Rhubarb Flower - click to embiggenify
I’ve never seen this before, but our main rhubarb plant has created what appears to be a flower. It’s kind of broccoli-like, but with (as you can see) red bits and pale green bits.
In short, very strange, and very alien-looking.
Cold Frame
Posted: Sat 10 April, 2010 Filed under: Domestic, Green Garden, Norfolk Leave a comment »Today we’ve been assembling a cold-frame for the garden that Herself bought this week. It was OK in the end – Herself took the lead, which meant I was infinitely less annoyed/annoyable and sweary – but still a pig to put together.
While instructions usually prove to be sodding annoying, it’s still better to have some step-by-step instructions on how to build these things. In this case all we had was four pages with some drawings of how to put together certain bits of the cold frame. Other than that, we were on our own.
Still, it’s up now – it took the best part of three damn hours to construct, but it’s done now. Happy Day.
Playing with Concrete
Posted: Sun 26 July, 2009 Filed under: Domestic, Getting Organised, Green Garden, House Work 3 Comments »Regular readers already know that when it comes to DIY I’m pretty much a total bell-end. It’s a thing I’ve inherited from my father, who is a world-renowned DIY bell-end, and tales of his idiocies have been used for me and my brother to dine out on many times.
Anyway, about two years ago, I put in a thing for the rotary drier/airer in the garden. At the time it was fairly straight, but over time it’s got more and more wonky.
So this time we got another fitting (this time with a built-in spirit level – genius!) and a bag of Postmix cement. You can see already where this might go horribly wrong, can’t you?
Only it didn’t – the holder is now cemented in properly (and absolutely straight!) and the airer’s post fits in it fine.
At the same time (i.e. while waiting for the postmix to set) we’ve also put up a hosereel thingy on the wall of the house, which’ll hold a 25m hose-reel – enough to get almost halfway down the garden – which should make for a tidier garden without sodding hosepipe coiled up in random places.
Sometimes, a day can be quite successful. Of course, I’m now waiting to find something to screw up in order to balance things out again…
Pick Your Own
Posted: Sun 5 July, 2009 Filed under: Domestic, Green Garden, Norfolk 1 Comment »Today, we went to one of the local pick-your-own farms, spent about an hour there, and collected enough raspberries and strawberries to make up more than 12lb of jam, for the princely amount of £15.
Yes, the fruit in our own patch will cost even less, but that won’t mature ’til next year, I suspect. It’s getting there, and we’ve got some small fruits on the stuff there, but these things take time. The PYO place was fantastically stocked, and you can be sure we’ll be going back there for more this year.
We’ve still got some fruit spare as well, so that’s going in some puds for the week. Can’t be bad.
Hail
Posted: Tue 16 June, 2009 Filed under: Domestic, Green Garden, Weather Leave a comment »When I said we had epic hail yesterday, I really wasn’t kidding.
This was what remained around some of our flower pots two hours after it’d fallen – most of it stayed on the ground right through ’til at least half ten at night (having fallen at four or so in the afternoon) although it was gone this morning
Hailstones
Pretty impressive, really.
Of course, they hail has beaten the shit out of most of the plants outside – all the broad bean plants are bent over and have been beaten up, as have the strawberries, french beans, courgettes and pumpkins as well as the bamboo and lilac trees/bushes that we bought recently. But all of that should heal over time, so it could be a lot worse.
Mower RIP
Posted: Fri 22 May, 2009 Filed under: Domestic, Driving, Green Garden Leave a comment »Longer-term readers may recall that back in August last year, we bought a second-hand ride-on mower from the friend of a friend. At the time this was A Good Thing, as it meant that a) we didn’t need to have the nice man mowing the lawn again this year (as in 2009) and b) that I wouldn’t have to slog my arse off mowing the entire bloody garden with the petrol-driven mower.
Over the winter, we got it serviced (supposedly- that’s a post for another day, I think) and the engine electrics repaired from where I knackered it when the battery fell off the back of the cunting thing, pulling various bits of connected enginery with it.
This year we tried starting it – nothing. The battery was flat, so that got charged up, having borrowed a battery charger from the out-laws. Once that was done, it ran. For about twenty minutes. It then went bang, chucked out a cloud of smoke, and wouldn’t start again.
Today, we got a different person to come out and have a look. Turns out the starter motor was fucked sticking , so he cleaned it out and lo, it started.
So I ran it round the garden again. Put it in gear to start mowing. And it went bang, chucked out a shitload of evil-smelling grey smoke, stopped, and wouldn’t start again.
So all told, I give up. The poxy thing’s knackered, and showing no signs of recovery. I think we’re just going to write it off as a total lemon, and one day get a new ride-on with a long fucking guarantee.
In the meantime, it’s back to the petrol-mower again. We spent £100 on that three years ago, and it’s never given us any serious hassle. Sure, it’s a pig to start the first time each year, but after that it runs just fine.
I’ve come to realise that I truly fucking hate garden machinery.
More Garden Guff
Posted: Mon 18 May, 2009 Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Green Garden, House Work Leave a comment »Yesterday was emphatically not a day of rest – primarily because we spent most of it in the garden. Again.
The first surprise came when I went up to let the chickens out in the morning – and found three peacocks (OK, technically one peacock and two peahens) in the chicken run. They quickly fluttered up on to the fence, and then next door, but returned a couple of times more before finally being scared off by Hound. There’s a colony of peacocks over by the church (probably half a mile from us) so it wasn’t a complete “Where the hell did they come from” moment, but it’s still the first time we’ve had them in our garden since we moved here.
From there we got a bundle of work done, including finishing filling the remaining three raised beds on the veg plot (using the best part of another ton of earth) and finally planting stuff in the bloody things. So we now have raised beds containing :
- Broad Beans
- Peas
- Strawberries
- Pumpkins
- Courgettes
In addition, scattered round the rest of the veg patch we’ve got :
- Raspberries (18 canes’ worth)
- Gooseberries (4 bushes)
- Blackberry (1 plant)
- Rhubarb (4 plants)
- Garlic (2 rows)
- Onions (3 rows – although they’re not doing much)
- Beetroot (1 row of white, 1 of red)
- Potatoes (3 buckets, two of which have so far been successful)
- Various herbs and odds-n-sods
Bear in mind, this is actually a reduced list from last year, due to us not actually managing much garden-wise last year. *ahem*
Anyway, with that little lot sorted, Herself also planted a bundle of stuff round the new pond (Hound was being a pain in the arse by this time, and got dragged indoors by Yours Truly) including foxgloves, lambs ears (it’s a plant, we’re not that cruel!), salvias, and other stuff I now can’t remember the name of.
Along the way there was also other bits and bobs, but it was a pretty busy day all told.
And that’s why I didn’t update yesterday…