September Song

There's something about the beginning of September that makes the spirit soar in a special way. I don't know exactly what it is - after all, September 1st signals the end of Summer and the onset of Autumn, and my didn't it feel autumnal this morning? Although the sun is now shining, at dawn there was a gasp of chill in the air. What my Gran used to call ' a proper hopping morning.'

As Heather said, 'It's one of those mornings where it's nice to wake up and feel cosily snug under the duvet rather than having to fling it off with a 'Phew, I'm too hot.' '

I have hops to harvest this year. I keep going into the garden and looking at the scrambled mass of them all over the fence, thinking, how do I go about untwining these? I had to arrange them in an artistic way along and around the fence because they ran out of upwards fence height back in June. But now I have to do some gentle untangling to keep the bines in lengths long enough to drape across the kitchen beam in order to achieve an 'authentic country kitchen experience.' Oh, I know by Christmas they will have dried out enough to start dropping on the floor and into any cooking I happen to be doing atop the stove thereby causing me to mutter, but I have a beam and by golly I am determined to swathe it with our own Malarkey hops.

I've already harvested masses of lavender which is hanging hither and thither in bunches to dry, and today I shall be taking the dried flowers from their stalks, looking at the ensuing bucket full of product and thinking, 'Blimey, there's a lot of lavender bags to be had from that lot.' But I have plans to use some of it to make scented reflexology powder.

What is it about the start of September? Is it memories of 'back to school' and being taken into town to buy shiny new shoes and shiny new stationery that you feel loathe to use because you don't want to spoil their perfectness? Is it the new season, the anticipation of the colours, the harvest, the easing off of sun lotion and bug repellent application? Is it the fact the first Christmas catalogue arrived in the post yesterday? (That got put in the recycle bin pretty darn quick, I can tell you!)

I think September offers the promise of new beginnings. A bit like New Year, but with more sunshine and lighter evenings and less post- Christmas excess and Winter gloom to deal with. Although Nature is slowing down in September, there is still that feeling of newness - children starting new schools, new classes, adults picking up new hobbies and training at Adult Education.
People going back to work after holidays, the familiar rhythm and pace of life picking up and moving on.

And so I celebrated the start of a new September beginning by giving my feet a jolly good buffing this morning. Well, I start my reflexology course in 3 weeks; I feel inclined to have my tootsies in tip-top order for then. I've tidied the account books and sorted out some new vegetarian recipes to try. The decorators are galloping on apace in the hall, stairs and landing. The smell of fresh paint lingers er...interestingly with the aroma of the rice and lentil pilau we had for dinner last night. Blimey, I've even made my own garam masala mix from scratch using the pestle and mortar and a lot of elbow grease.

And now I need to crack on with sorting out Nearly King Jimbo. I've had a tentative enquiry about the purchase of a few copies from someone who has an idea to give them as Christmas presents. The birth of Andy and Denise Publications Inc maybe?? Who knows...

Project Hop Bower

We're on a roll now, oh yes we are! Having completed Cluckinghen Palace, the next stage of the garden make-over chez nous is to turn the garden swing bench into a relaxation area. We inherited the swing bench from a friend nearly two years ago and currently it is located in the border that is next to the play area of Cluckinghen Palace. It is balanced on four scraps of old paving slab to stop it sinking into the ground and it is starting to look a little weatherbeaten. I have planted the hops bines next to the swing in order to train them over the top of the swing when they get long enough. Already the bines are 9 inches tall which I think is very impressive growth for a month. Better than the British economy anyway.

And as we were sitting on the bench yesterday evening, watching the girls settle into their new abode, we decided that a bit of decorative paving was needed beneath the swing. In my head, I also decided that the swing needs rubbing down and repainting but I'm not going to tell Andy this until I've decided between tangerine and fuschia pink. (I need to gather my thoughts into a battle plan to win him round on this design decision. I suspect I may have to back down and go with something in green or blue). Inside we go to consult the Reader's Digest Book of Home DIY.

'I like that,' I say, pointing to a semi-circle patio, being effortlessly laid by a couple of cartoon drawing people.
'We'd have to check the radius doesn't clash with the projectile sweep of the gates of Cluckinghen Palace,' says Andy, getting all technical. 'Do we need to do anything to the ground before we put the slabs down?'
'It says,' I say, because I am the one in the house who reads instructions for things rather than trying to wing it, 'we need to put down some sort of sub-base.'
'Such as?'
'Sand. And/or hardcore,' I say. 'It depends on potential traffic, weight bearing and soil type.'
'What's the soil type?' asks Andy.
'Tending towards clay,' I say because I've dug a lot of the border and I bloomin' well know it.
'Right. So what's the least we can get away with?' says Andy, who, bless him, is starting to feel the effects of building a chicken palace in two days.
'Levelling the ground and some sand, I reckon,' I say, because all we are going to do is swing on the swing. There is unlikely to be any passing traffic.
'Good,' says Andy.

So we might get started on Project Hop Bower over the Easter break. Depends on the weather. Today, Andy is starting his new, temporary job as Acting Senior Vet. Today he shall be mostly acting it in the style of Richard III due to being unable to walk with a straight posture after his DIY exertions. He toyed with Macbeth and Hamlet but decided to leave those until either a) he needs to get despotic to keep the nurses in order and b) he needs to go gradually mad, a side-effect of fiddling with the rota. I said that if he was going to do rota fiddling he ought to act as the Emporer Nero but he said he didn't think his work colleagues would tolerate him lying around on velvet cushions demanding to be fed grapes.

I reckon after the last few months, being fed on grapes is the least he deserves.

The devil made work for idle hands this afternoon

What happens when a person, like me, gives up teaching, like me, and sits at home being a writer, like me but occasionally gets 'distracted' by the Internet? (Like me.)

I'll tell you what happens. She goes buying random, but at the same time, very useful stuff. Stuff that is VERY IMPORTANT for people like Andy and me who are tiptoeing our way inch by inch towards a more self-sufficient lifestyle. (This last sentence was really to reassure Andy that I haven't been frittering money away on Jimmy Choos or Chanel sunglasses. I've already texted him with news of one of my purchases and he hasn't responded, but then he could be operating in which case it's just as well he hasn't got his mobile out. You've no idea the mess a mobile can get into if it's dropped into a dog's innards - YUK!)

So firstly I reviewed my hop research, assessed the varieties available and bought 2 hop plants called Phoenix. (I might change their names once they arrive - Phoenix sounds rather pretentious for a plant and I always think you should get to know something before you name it, don't you? Personality is sooooooo important.) Apparently, they are especially heavy in pollen, and given the current 'Plan Bee Garden,' I thought lots of pollen would be good for attracting bees. I hope it doesn't mean they will get drunk. I can't be doing with sozzled bees in the garden.

Secondly, I researched worms. I was very impressed at finding all those worms in the compost bin when we emptied it on Sunday and apparently, you can never have too many worms. (Especially when you have four greedy hens roaming your garden chanting, 'Where are the worms? Where are the worms?') I'd thought about supplementing our compost bin with a wormery before now so this wasn't a completely random 'what shall I look up on Google now?' moment. Wormeries are supposed to provide excellent compost and liquid plant feed. So I went onto www.wormcity.co.uk and really enjoyed reading about worms and the whole 'keeping worms' thing. The site was very like the Omlet site for chicken-keeping - practical, straight forward, informative and full of cute cartoons! And then I sort of bought an executive 72 litre wormery. And five hundred worms.

So, come next week, we'll have 2 cats, 4 hens and 500 worms on the homestead. Plus a potential 10,000 bees within a year...

...I'd better start getting a list of names together...

Bare behinds and hopping mad

Forget spending your money one gardening fripperies like soil thermometers. If you want to find out if your plot of earth is warm enough to plant your first seeds of the season there are two tried and tested methods that have been around ever since God planted that apple tree and said 'Note to self - get the mongoose to stand guard against snakes.'

Firstly, you can drop your trousers and sit on the bare earth with your bare bottom and if you don't leap into the air immediately, cursing and swearing about your frozen tush, then the soil is warm enough for planting. Secondly, you can have a look for leaf buds appearing on trees and hedges, and the first signs of weed growth. If it's warm enough for weed growth, it's warm enough for carrots.

So, there I was first thing this morning, trousers around my ankles, perched on our new raised bed in the back garden and...no, no, I jest, I joke!! Too horrible an image to contemplate!
'Don't you believe her!' says Mrs Poo. 'I've got photographic evidence but I'm warning you that if you want to see it, I don't come cheap.'
'But you go cheep sometimes,' says Mrs Slocombe.
'Not since I was a chick,' says Poo. 'Now it's more of a 'bokk, bok, barkkkkk.'

Ignore them. They've had far too many worms these last few days and you know what an excess of protein did for Oliver Twist, don't you?

I reckon the raised bed is almost ready for some outside planting. The hens have done a fine job of breaking down the larger clods of compost to a fine tilth. All we need is some top soil and a bit of polythene to cover the whole bed for a week or two to warm it up a bit more and we can plant seeds straight outside. I went into the greenhouse and stared optimistically at the seeds I planted on Monday. They're catching quite a bit of sun today and I've even remembered to water them. But no sign of growth yet. Ditto the stuff in the propagator and the conservatory a.k.a growing facility number two. Am I being too impatient? Probably.

I've also been investigating the idea of growing hops. My family on my mum's side were Kent hop growers. Hops are supposed to be good for helping sleep. Many were the hop pickers who were given a swift kick by the hop farmer for falling asleep on the job, so soporific is this plant. I'm thinking, I could grow some hops and hand- craft Andy a hop pillow to help him sleep better. Or maybe a hop duvet, just to make sure the job's done properly. And now is the right time of the year to get them started. The trouble is that they grow extremely tall. We're talking 16-20 foot high. There's a 'dwarf' variety which grows 10-12 feet. In order to harvest hops you have to have either a very tall ladder, a trapeze or, as is more traditional, stilts. Now, Andy has a unicycle which apart from being too wobbly for hop picking, isn't tall enough. But I'm thinking, if I learn to stilt walk for the purposes of hop picking, Andy and I could start a circus act as a side-line. He could ride his unicycle and I could balance on his shoulders on my stilts! I bet that would draw the crowds in! We could do carnivals and the like, earn a bit of extra cash to go towards our small-holding. And we can both juggle - well, Andy can juggle, I can juggle if I concentrate but I tend to be a dropper and if I drop balls on Andy's head whilst I am balancing on my stilts on his shoulders whilst he rides his unicycle, it could go horribly wrong.

But then, if I learn to walk on stilts I could also start a hydroponic growing system for peas, cucumbers and tomatoes in the guttering on the roof! Hydroponics is the growing of veg using water only. You feed all the nutrients the plant needs and would normally get from soil straight into the water system. And then I wouldn't need to worry about whether the ground was warm enough to plant seed. All I would need to do would be to dip my elbow in the water to test the temperature, much as you would to test bath water for a baby. I could use my bottom, only I think it would get stuck.

And if there is one thing you must be able to do in the world of veg growing and that's to be able to tell your a**e from your elbow.