End-of-the-Week News

Nettle beer update: Yesterday, Andy decanted his nettle beer into wine bottles. All six litres of it. Andy reckons it looks like dishwater. Last night, one of the bottles expelled its cork across the room. I reckon it could be pretty potent stuff. I shall be sending Andy for an eye test after he has finished drinking it.

Allotmenteering : on the plot first thing this morning before Andy knew what was happening to plant out pea seedlings, runner bean seedlings (I say 'seedling'. Most of them are a foot tall) and start clearing the space in readiness for polytunnel construction. We have a new friend at the allotment. His name is Julian and he is a blackbird. And, oooh, isn't he bold?? He comes right up to you and stares with his beady blackbird eye. I could have reached out and patted him on the head with my trowel this morning. I nearly did, too, because he had a beak full of slug.
'Take your slug away,' I said. 'Don't you be dropping slugs near my newly planted pea and bean seedlings.'
'Mmmmfffhhmfffmppphhhh,' said Julian.
'Aaaargghhhh! Save me!' yelled the slug.

Bees: Our friend, Jean, popped in for coffee this morning. During general chatter we did some accidental bartering whereby we got another compost bin, some flower pots and a big bunch of canes and string in exchange for some strawberry plants, seed potatoes and tomato plants when they are a bit bigger. Jean has also offered to bring slugs, snails and cabbage leaves for the chickens. 'I'd thought about bringing them before and leaving them by your back gate,' she said. 'Only I didn't want you to think you were being stalked by some weirdo with a cabbage and mollusc fixation.'
Jean has also offered part of her huge garden as a site for our bee hive. We are very tempted to take her up on this offer. Very tempted indeed. The bee-keeping plan is becoming way over-due in its implementation.

Running: This week I am going to start psyching myself up to start the running programme proper. In preparation for this, my left leg has developed a pain that stretches from the middle of my calf down to the outside of my ankle. I think this is from excessive digging this week, so at the lottie this morning I took special care to dig with my right foot instead, in a sort of cross-legged need-to-go-to-the-loo-motion.
'What ARE you doing?' said Andy, in fond admiration of my yogic contortions. (Either that or he was trying not to laugh.)
'Saving my left leg for jogging,' I said.
'And mucking up the right one in the process?' he said.
'I feel it's important to maintain a balance,' I said.

Cooking: Now Heather has returned to university, I have to remember to cook for two instead of three. Or four, for the time when Chris was still living at home. I anticipate there will be excess foodage this week whilst I adjust so if anyone wants to pop in for dinner, please do. There will be plenty.

Greenhouse: having shipped out the peas and runner beans this morning, there is now space for part 2 planting which will be more beans (French), sweetcorn, lettuce and late leeks. The coriander has gone from being virtually non-existent to rampant in 3 days flat and I'm not sure what to do with it now so will need to research next stage coriander growing. The parsley, too, is doing extremely well and has just started to go curly. My Auntie Nece, who visited this week from Scotland, said 'If parsley flourishes in a garden it means the woman is the dominant partner in the house,' and she gave me a bit of knowing look. I think she was trying to say, in the nicest possible way, that I'm a bossy moo.

Chickens : Mrs Miggins's erratic, weird-shaped, flimsy and broody egg-laying seems to be subsiding and she's getting back to normal. Well, about as normal as a chicken can be, given that they are quite the most beserk creatures I've ever looked after in my life.

Cats : we still have two cats. I have a few names lined up for any others that drift our way...

...and that's about it.

Like Mrs Miggins's 'plant 'n' kickabout raised vegetable bed', (which is doing very well, even if it is a bit difficult to decipher what is coming up where. Carrots, peas, kale, radish, lettuce, it's all in there, jostling for position) this week has been an eclectic mix of the normal and bizarre. Still, we muddled through, the sun is shining and no doubt the world is waiting to present more opportunities and challenges in the week to come.

I'm off to make crumble now, for tonight's pudding. Rhubarb up one end for me, apple up the other for Andy. A bit of an odd combination, maybe, but rubbing along side by side in sweet counterpoint nonetheless.

The Truth Behind the Spider Plant

No wonder I'm having motivation problems at the moment. Look at my writing room. It's a mess! It has, I am ashamed to say, become a dumping ground. It has become an easy place to erect (no sniggering at the back, please) a clothes airer on which to dry our clothes now we have dispensed with the electricity guzzling tumble dryer. When someone calls to say 'I'm popping round in half an hour', it is a good place to fling the papers/magazines/books/ ironing/ sewing projects that I grab from surfaces in a whizz-bang attempt at cleaning up so I don't appear such a sloven. It is one of the down sides of working from home. I think people expect me to have a tidy house because I am on hand to tidy. 'What else could she possibly occupy her time with?' I reckon they are thinking. 'She's isn't doing a proper job, after all.'

Ergo, when I go to my writing room to write, to do my work, I can't get near my writing desk for the clutter. And I settle with my laptop in the kitchen which is full of distractions like cups of tea and biscuits and gazing out of the windows at chickens. And giving the fridge a clear out and maybe making a cake or two...

Following a thoroughly moochy Saturday evening, when my attempt to watch 'The Man Who Went Up a Hill and Came Down a Mountain' was scuppered once more by the pleasant and unexpected arrival of a bleached-headed Chris on roller-blades (don't ask), I told myself very firmly to pull myself together. 'Tomorrow,' I said, as I lay in bed ready for sleep, with Tybalt flopped on my stomach, 'you are going to TIDY UP that room, and you are going to GET YOURSELF BACK ON TRACK and stop all this MOOCHY behaviour.'
'Excuse me,' said Tybalt, 'but could you shut up now? I am trying to sleep and your talking is making your tummy wobble up and down. It's like sleeping on an ocean liner.'

Up early this morning I march into the writing room armed with window cleaner, wax polish, hoover and various cloths and dusters. I roll up my sleeves. 'Right,' I say. 'No tea and hot cross bun until you've de-cluttered this room.'

There are two windows in my writing room. It is what is known in estate agent parlance as 'double aspect'. Both window ledges contain plants. All the plants are pot-bound and looking decidedly ill. I cart all the plants to the greenhouse in order to repot them and give them a new surge of life.

Now, I tend to prefer houseplants that are foliage based rather than ones with flowers. This is because things with flowers tend to die on me. So I gather around me a mixture of ferns, peace lilies and spider plants. One of them even has a name. It is a large fern called Terwilliger, because it looks like Side-Show Bob from The Simpsons. So I repot the plants and it is when I get to the spiderplant that I have a startling moment.

Why are spider plants called spider plants, do you think? Because their arch-like green leaves make them look like spiders? I think not. I've always thought this plant was mis-named. I'd call it something like a fountain plant or a weeping willow plant. Far more in keeping with the effect its foliage creates.

I'll tell you why they're called spider plants. It's because of their roots! They have big, thick, bulbously fat hairy roots that tangle themselves together like big, thick, bulbously fat hairy spider legs! They are HORRIBLE! My camera has run out of batteries otherwise I would have a put a photo in this post so you could judge for yourselves. This particular plant had divided itself into three. I had the devil's own job separating them because of these horrible, horrible roots. There was no 'gentle teasing apart' involved, as is the suggested method in all the gardening books when it comes to the repotting of house plants. More like vicious and violent wrenching. It was like wrestling with a giant squid.

Well, I stuffed the now three spider plants into new pots with new compost and gave them some water. I don't know if they'll survive this brutal treatment. But now I know what lies beneath the surface, I'm not sure I'm that bothered.

Back to my writing room. After two hours of cleaning and tidying, filing and ordering, it now looks like a proper work space. It feels calm and ordered. It feels like a proper place to write. It feels like a good place to have a cuppa and a hot cross bun and do a bit of reading.

And maybe some writing.

A spring in my step

Or rather, THE spring in my step. Spring as in the long awaited season which is well on its way. It's been a busy day today, so here is the news...

First of all, what's this? A modern art installation maybe?

Or an elaborate bee-hive for enormous bees?

No, of course not! It's loo rolls stuck together with masking tape. Otherwise known as 'Denise's Home-crafted Root Trainers for Beans, Peas and Sweetcorn.' It's recycling in its purest form - cheap, useful AND biodegradable. However, if someone from the Tate Modern is reading this and wants to make me an offer, well, then my 'art' can be whatever you want it to be. And if a giant bee is reading this and thinking, 'Hmmm, nice penthouse,' then I've clearly inhaled some hallucinogenic spores in the greenhouse today...

I washed out many pots this morning. And when I say 'many', then 'many' I mean. There was a minor contretemps with one of those big, fat, hairy-legged, 'I-can-bench-push-the-weight-of-a-hippo' spiders where I screamed a bit and he/she/it made a run for it TOWARDS me, and then AWAY from me when I did a bit more screaming but other than that the pot cleaning went well.

And then, I spent a very pleasant afternoon in a sunny greenhouse, singing along to my pink radio, sowing the first seeds of 2009. I had to do a considerable amount of planning first to decide what to put in today because this year I'm determined to get to grips with successional sowing in order to avoid the problems of the last couple of years when we've flung everything in in one fell swoop and found ourselves with a glut come harvest time.

'Another parsnip with your parsnip, dear?'
'Why yes, that would be delightful. Maybe I could have a parsnip or two on the side?'
'Of course. And for pudding?'
'Why, parsnip of course. Unless we've any courgette left?'
'No. Only parsnip, I fear.'
'So did I.'

So today I have planted pointy cabbage, red cabbage, cauliflower, leek, pepper, jalapeno pepper (so Andy can re-create his Pizza Express Mount Etna moment in the privacy of our own home), cherry tomatoes, stripey tomatoes, aubergine, mixed salad leaves, peas, runner beans and a big tray of basil so I can have a go at making pesto. And on the flower front I planted some sweet peas but only because I went a bit overboard with my home-crafted root trainers.

The hens, meanwhile, continued to dig over our new raised bed. Not that it needed digging over.
'Quick! Get down! She's seen us!' hissed Mrs Miggins.
'She won't see me,' said the cunning Mrs Poo. 'Not with my head buried in the ground.'
'Ah,' said Mrs Pumphrey, 'the old emu trick.'

Once the seeds were watered and the ones that needed putting in the propagator were propagated, I went indoors to cook dinner and make some scones.
We had parsnip for dinner. We had other stuff as well, like chicken and roast potatoes (the remaining few of our crop from last year) broccoli and peas, but I thought you'd like to see how big our parsnips got last season.

What's that song? 'Long ones, short ones, some as big as your head...'
'That's a coconut,' said Mrs Slocombe.
'No. It's definitely a parsnip,' I said. And that was my day. And it was FAB!!