Man of the Match; wild flower meadow; Karcher again, etc

Well hello! It's been a long time - ish...


Busy, busy, busy, but no excuse for not doing this since February. Biggest, most important thing that's happened since? Finlay, age 6, Man of the Match against Bovingdon on Sunday and he didn't even want to play in defence! He was class, even going on a couple of David Luiz style raids forward. Proud parents is all I can say.


As to gardening, well where to start. Karchered my way round Rebecca's in Quainton:

I know I have an obsession with this contraption, but it does do a superb job, but please wear waterproof trousers if you ever attempt to do a job on this scale...

Also, made a really good start on the meadow area. Cleared away lots of weeds and rubbish from under the trees and will hopefully get the OK on hiring a turf stripper/cutter which will mean I can clear the area out in the open in just one day. This is the area shown from both ends:

The area I've cleared is the far end. This is fairly late in the day so does not show the full effect of the sun on the open area. It's a long term project, which I love, because it means I am going to be here for some time to come. Love it!

And, finally at Quainton, here's the hellibores I moved from the proposed tennis court area, plus a few ferns and such like. They have settled in beautifully, but then again they're not my favourite flowers for nothing, they're just so easy...

Over at Buckland and the pond had some visitors the week before last, couldn't believe it!

Yes a duck couple, unfortunately you can only see the male as this was taken on my mobile and the camera isn't that good.

A view of the pond from the top, delightful!

And finally a quick look at the allotment:

The digging is coming on a treat, I will be putting on some compost this week. Sowed the cabbages at the weekend, awaiting the potatoes, sowed five different varieties of tomatoes, put in some salad leaves in the greenhouse, as well as salad onions and some onions too - eat your heart out Tesco!

And absolutely finally for this blog, the new chicks arrived three weeks ago and they are very cute, as you can see:

Tallulah - who has a "gammy" toe on her left foot, she hobbles a bit but seems in no real discomfort - she chirrups all the time bless her...

Tilly, very robust!

Clarrie, Harriet, Bridie (hidden somewhat) & Betsy - all laying! We had 12 eggs last week, so basically now they are in full flow, so to speak, we should start getting well over 20 eggs a week from them. Half dozen Murray Eggs anyone? £1.73 to you!

Happy laying!

Allotment quickie!

Today I went to the allotment to have a tidy up and, more importantly, to dig. The following pictures show Finlay doing just that.

Good hot bath at the end of the day, of course!

The aim is to finally get rid of the horrid path of couch grass behind Finlay and that area will be covered in potatoes, five varieties this year - two reds, two whites & a salad variety. Where the black plastic is will be cabbages and beans and such like. And the area where Fin is "digging" is the fruit area - bramley & braeburn apples; rhubarb; blackcurrant; and black, goose and rasp berries! 

The words great and genius are so over used. Always have been, but they seem to be wheeled out far too frequently in these over hyped, "celebrity" obsessed days. Gareth Bale for instance, he of Tottenham and Wales. Basically he is a good footballer, like so many, he IS a good player of the game. BUT he is NOT Lionel Messi, nor is he Cristiano Ronaldo; he has a long way to go before he can be mentioned in the same breath as Ryan Giggs. Mr Bale is not even in the top 20 footballers in Europe, but he is continually mentioned as the best. When he consistently performs to the standard that we all can see he has occasionally achieved, and not just every now and then, that is when we can think of him as great or a genius.


And taking those two words, great and genius, we can move on to to Spike Milligan. He is without any shadow of doubt the greatest genius comedian this country (Empire? don't forget he was born in India) has ever produced. Without him, Not Only But Also & Beyond the Fringe would not have existed. Neither would Monty Python, Alexei Sayle, Eddie Izzard, Lee Evans, The Mighty Boosh, Reeves & Mortimer, Harry Hill et al and even that exceptional kid's show, Horrible Histories, would not be. He invented a genre and countless others have since followed it. 


Anyway comrades, once a leftie always a leftie, except if your name is Paul Johnson of course (turncoat - wasn't he horrible on Desert Island Discs the other week?), so here is a picture of my very favourite, and new, t-shirt. I got it for my birthday last week. I also got a Spike Milligan Sweat shirt, basically in honour of the 10 year anniversary of the great man's death.

So there we are, a bit more politics amongst the compost and why not? Politics is life; life is politics. Unfortunately we can not escape it, they effect (infect) so much of our lives do politicians. The person who says, "I don't care about politics, it doesn't effect me," needs serious help...


Happy allotmenteering!

Hello!

I'm not gonna lie, oh no. I'm not even gonna give any lame excuse. I just couldn't be bothered to write anything in the past 3 weeks or so, but, fear not (as if) here I am and here's that bunch of grapes I've been monitoring at Julie's lovely place (400 year old cottage in 5 acres, with the lovely pond - more of that later).

4th August

10th August

Stupidly forgot to take one today, but I have to say the wasps are beginning to have an effect. However, I am determined to get at least enough for one bottle of wine, Julie and Andrew don't bother with them you see, not even to eat!


Well, it's been busy out there in the land of the garden. I have had so much work I think I'll actually be able to pay my tax bill this year - my first one since going self-employed, it's on last year's earnings so thankfully it's not that big and I have just about 2/3's of it tucked away in the mattress, ha ha! It's another thing to be slightly concerned about innit?

4th August it rained. And I got wet, but I like rain drops - not on kittens with mittens though, 'cos that's basically not fair - especially when rain drops fall on water, like this:

I'm not going to write the obvious caption from a certain "cowboy" movie of the early 70s, THAT would be too too obvious!

Some actual gardening for a change, a novelty on a blog about gardening - does one say "on" or "in" a blog? Anyway, I have today been attempting to control that weed of all weeds, Mare’s-tail. A bastard that grows like a big bastard in cultivated land.  I prefer the latin of course, being that way inclined(?), Hippuris vulgaris - fantastic latin innit? Well, my little sun flowers, it turns out that the bastard isn't mare's-tail at all but, indeed, 'tis Marsh Horsetail, Equisetum palustre - from equus, meaning horse of course and seta which translates as bristle or hair. Well, imagine my chagrine at that news. I can tell you, I pulled that weed up with ever increasing violence once I had found out it's true identity. Masquerading as another weed like that.


Basically, all you can do with it is move house...

...and here it is, in volumes filling me big bag up to the very top...

Oh! More gardening, following is one of 8 pumpkins grown from last year's Halloween pumpkin as purchased from Tesco (yuck!).

Not the biggest, indeed it's the smallest we have,
but I thought it looked dead cute - if a vegetable
can be cute of course.

Point is comrades, if you can get seeds from anything you buy at the supermarket and you have access to even the smallest bit of ground you can grow anything in the right conditions. A great way of sticking one on the corporates, 'cos you basically get it for free. I have 6 tomato plants from a Tesco bought pack of tomatoes too. They taste better than anything you buy - even if that statement isn't true, I believe it it's a psychological thing, they seem to taste better, fresh from the greenhouse, all lovely and warm...


Aha! here's a picture of all the tennis balls I found over this summer at Pat's place:

9 of them and not one chewed by Fergus -
he's the dog

The grass at Pat's is looking a bit ragged at the moment. She has a separate company to come in and look after the lawn and it looks like the "treatment" has re-acted badly this year:

Those patches are all dead grass and there's not a lot of re-growth in them too. Sad, but with a bit of luck and a bit of feed and fertiliser in the spring it should be ok in time for next summer.


I have an announcement to make of a devastating nature. I shall just say it, so take care, my boots are dead. 


Boots:  A sturdy item of footwear covering the foot, the ankle, and sometimes the leg below the knee. 


Yes, 20 months into this new life of mine and already I have gone through two pairs of steel toecaps. These were a pair of JCBs, bought for £12.50 on E-bay (RRP - allegedly - £58.99), so I believe I got a damn fine deal there. The new ones are Dickies, apparently legendary footwear. Well, MR Marketing bloke, I shall be the judge of that. Here's the old pair:

They're letting in water, so they have to go, but
bless them, they served me well

Here's the new ones:

I would market them as "Dickies - more than just footwear, Legendary footwear"

Actually, a boot's a boot innit?

And finally. Today it rained. It rained a lot. So much I actually had to give up and come home. Here's the evidence:

Happy drowning!

Peace innit?

The greenhouse comes to life

This is what it's all about. Hopefully, all this will produce us enough food to not have to go to Tesco from June onwards...

Salad leaves, toms, french beans, salad onions, carrots, potaydas...

...cabbages, salad onions, more cabbages...

...cucumbers, melone, basil, more toms...

...yet more toms, melons, salad onions and that shallot!

Also, over on the allotment we have more cabbages, about 200 onions & shallots, garlic and 4 types of potatoes