The Vine is Alive!

Well, I had good intentions. I always do, every spring. I’ll get in there, vanquish the weeds, dig that bit I never get round to, and have seeds sprouting all over the place.

And then something intervenes. Usually – being an overdoing sort of person – my back. This year it was work and my back. So self-inflicted. Idiot.

But then life is amazing. I managed to control the weeds, and nature did the rest. The garden is beginning to bloom without much extra attention, and the polytunnel is getting there.

The vine has survived its first year. Hurrah! I was having severe doubts, but then it appeared and is growing strong. I’ve managed to start some salad leaves (in a slightly haphazard way, but who cares). I’m going to try just a few tomatoes this year, and leave the squashes. We have more than we can eat from the wonderful organic veggie box anyhow.

So, okay, it’s not exactly self-sufficiency, or a production line. But it’s growing slowly. And I’ve had so much pleasure from just sitting in the polytunnel on coldish days, enjoying the sun, it’s been worth it for that alone.

So now that things have quietened down a bit, I’m going to finish clearing that outside space for spinach and get a few chillies on the go.

I’ve got this dream of a mini solar fountain in the middle of the (very) mini pond in the polytunnel. Gently rushing water as I sit there admiring the grapes grow and the salad flourish.

Hey, what’s life without a dream ….?

Gardening - At Last!

Finally! I got out into the garden proper (as opposed to the polytunnel) this weekend.

It was a beautiful day, fresh and just warm enough to keep comfortable and smell spring in the air. The frogs were singing away in the pond, vanishing every now and again when one of the cats decided to go and watch proceedings. For the first time in what seems like forever, I spent almost the entire day doing the stuff I should have done last autumn, except that the snow and ice appeared so quickly and then stayed so long.

The mountains of dead and rotting leaves had been prodding me every time I went past, which – as you go through my garden to get to the house – meant at the very least four times a day, during dog walking duties.

I didn’t quite get down to serious weeding and sorting. But at least now it looks as if I care, I can see which plants have survived and which look very dead and might have to be replaced. And the daffodils have room to breath and grow.

So now I know where I am with the whole garden, which is good. I also know just how much work needs to be done in the next month or so. Which is not so good. Seriously scary, in fact.

Thank goodness for the vegan chocolate-and-ginger cake I made at Christmas to practice for lots of parties with vegan friends. Being holed up with flu meant I didn’t see any one. The non-vegan one got eaten anyhow, and is now compromising the belt of my trousers until the serious dog walking season arrives. Luckily the vegan one ended up frozen in chunky slices in the freezer for just such an occasion as this.

There are some days when nothing but cake will do. A full day’s gardening is just such a day. The cake was as eco-friendly as I could make it (not sure about the icing sugar, but what’s a cake without icing, and have you ever tried to buy truly vegan chocolate bars? I rest my case). It was certainly comfort-loving. Yum, yum.

Well, at least I’ve made a start. And the weather forecast was right and now there’s lots of rain, so I can catch up with all the work I should have been catching up with this weekend. On the other hand, gardening is like dog walking: serious thinking time. I’ve mulled over what I needed to mull over in the edits of the Work In Progress. Plus I feel energised after all that fresh air and green shoots and fully recovered from a week of cash-flow forecasts and business plans for the day job and raring to go.

Back to the Polytunnel Handbook, and Alys Fowler’s ‘The Edible Garden’, which has just arrived. I’ve got a definite craving for salad leaves at the moment, now the veg box has finished until June and the potatoes, cabbage and leeks are gone. Time to get planting! Yippee!

Okay, cheating. From B&Q

(other gardening and DIY stores are available)

:)

Gardening!

Spring finally arrived today. Yipee!

I finally sat in the garden without a fleece this afternoon (obligatory daywear when you live partway up a mountain in Snowdonia), and you could see the buds on the plants and the trees opening by the minute.

Fortunately, however, not the weeds. Well, only some of them. This is because since it stopped snowing, at the end of February, I’ve been in there, trying to get as many out as possible. I had two years’ worth of weeds this year, as gardening and puppies don’t go. Phoebe did try to help last spring, but the collie side went manic, while the spaniel side was heading for Australia. Fortunately, this year she seems to have calmed down a bit, and only joins in when I get particularly enthusiastic with the spade. Although I do keep on unearthing the most disgusting bits of dog chew …..

My polytunnel hasn’t arrived. In fact, it’s nowhere near, at the moment. I’m being philosophical about this. With the ground frozen for so long, I’m going to be late getting it up, so this year is going to be a doing what I can, when I can, year. You see, I want my garden to look nice, as well as start growing veggies, so the first bit I’ve blitzed are the flower beds, which are nearest the house and the bit I see all the time.

Plus the idea is to have friends over for long, hot summer evenings, for red wine and home grown salad and tomatoes to go with the veggie sausages. This has been the idea for the past couple of years. Maybe this year will finally be the much-promised BBQ summer. I live in hope!

Anyhow, whatever happens, this weekend I finally got the flowerbeds sort-of under control (if you don’t look too closely). I’m going to split the plants I’ve already got, like hardy geraniums, aquilegia and sedum, and fill the rest with things like nasturtiums and nigella to keep the weeds down. The aim is for this part of the garden to be colourful and easy to keep, so I can concentrate on the polytunnel, and building a herb spiral.

The ground here is full of slate, and not exactly rich, while the stone walls are slug heaven. I don’t use slug pellets, so my flowers are grown on the principle that if the slugs like them, they don’t get grown again. Plus I don’t have the time or the back, or the energy, to dig in manure all over the garden. And if I don’t dig it in very well indeed, Somebody will eat it.

However, over the past years, I’ve been gradually planting shrubs that will take care of themselves and attract bees, although my poor old lavender plants seem to have died amongst the arctic blasts and will have to be replaced.

With the flowerbeds sorted, it’s time to finally turn full attention on the exciting bit, and get that polytunnel up and going. But that’s for next week. Today, I celebrated spring with a friend by forgetting gardening and going to the beach on Anglesey. We had a beautiful view of Snowdon – still with large patches of snow on top – as we sat in the sun and watched a couple of seals vying for sunbathing position on the rocks.

I did mean to get started on the polytunnel patch when I got home. But I kind of fell asleep in the sun. I’m calling it sun worshiping. And that lovely warm sun hasn’t half been a long time coming.

And anyhow (I keep telling myself) there are light evenings after work, now. Plenty of time to attack the next lot of weeds.

Couch grass and creeping buttercup, here we come …

Frogs and Hummus

Spring is in the air!

Well, it was a few days ago when I sat in the garden in the sunshine with my coffee and was almost warm. Suddenly, after all that snow, the first primroses were out and the daffodils beginning to appear between last year’s weeds.

And the first sign of spring means only one thing: frogs. I should perhaps explain that I have two gardens. This is because my cottage is really two cottages knocked into one. So I have the two strips of land that once housed the standpipe on the other side of the road, a veg and flower patch, and the loo at the bottom of the garden. The divisions of the garden went years ago, along with the road and the loo, leaving one big garden and, because I’m the last house in the terrace, a rocky bit round one side.

So I have two ponds. And don’t the local frog population know it. The first sign of spring and they’re in there. So there is always this delicate balance at this time of the year: clearing out the grunge between it being too frozen to venture out there, and the first arrivals for the orgy of the century. And this weekend was it.

All right, so clearing out rotting leaves, miscellaneous plastic bags brought in by the autumn winds, and the odd disgusting dog toy doesn’t exactly count as the comfort-lover’s favourite occupation. So how about a little bribery? I’m a great believer in personal bribery. Nothing too spectacular: chocolate, wine – the usual suspects. Oh, and some good, hot homemade veg-box soup for starters. We had a couple of extra veg-box weeks, after all, this year, and that is definitely a cause for celebration. Although I’m not sure I’ll want to see another cabbage for a while.

And so to the ponds. Well, I didn’t fall in. Not even the plastic-liner one that I mostly did by hand. (Remind me never to go to the North Pole, half an hour of deep freeze was quite enough) I fished out a couple of disgruntled frogs lurking in the mud – or it could have been the same one, very disgruntled – but the cats supervised from a safe distance, and the dog amused herself by renewing her acquaintance with a slimy rubber dumbbell and a disintegrating tennis ball. Yum.

The trouble with going back out into the garden after not looking too hard in its direction since somewhere around Halloween, is that dawning realisation that so much needs to be done. And that’s before I even think about my polytunnel and a herb-spiral.

Oh, well. It’s back to freezing and flurries of snow again this week, so I can safely return into thinking-about-it mode. But safe in the knowledge that when I hear the frogs I’ve done my bit and I’ll have some nice clear water to watch the tadpoles sunning themselves in the shallows when spring finally arrives.

Right, so back to indoor occupations like yoghurt and hummus, which are coming on nicely, especially the hummus. I’ve found a recipe that’s just chickpeas, lemon juice garlic and tahini, which whizzes up in no time and tastes gorgeous. It’s the fresh lemon juice that does it. A real clean hit amongst the yummy gooeyness of the tahini. It’s much tastier and much less gloopy than the stuff I used to buy. I don’t own a pressure cooker (my mum’s used to scare the living daylights out of me), so I’m using tinned chickpeas until I find one I want to invest in. Even then, it’s working out cheaper than my previous supermarket hummus, and which, when I looked at it closely, was half rapeseed oil and water in the first place.

Plus – shame on me for not looking before – I have discovered that my local health food coop (two minutes walk away) buys tahini in bulk and refills your jar. I got talking while my jar was being filled, as you do, and came away with all sorts of ideas for different kinds of hummus to try, including beetroot hummus. And beetroot and chocolate brownies. Now I can’t wait for next year’s annual veg-box beetroot glut. I’ve never been an adventurous cook, but I’m actually getting inspired to try. More research for dark and dreary nights!

Simple Hummus:

2 cans of chickpeas (or around 250g cooked chickpeas)
The juice of two lemons
Two tablespoons tahini
Garlic (the recipe said 1 clove, but I’m an addict and work part of the week at home, so have only the dog to breathe over after lunch, and use 2)
Seasoning to taste

Shove in trusty blender/food processor and whizz until it looks right for you. I like it quite lumpy, so the chickpeas still look a bit like chickpeas, only chopped. Spread onto hot buttered toast, stuff baked potatoes, or stir into soups instead of grated cheese.

And enjoy while waiting for the spring (and frogs) to appear.