Spring is springing! My crops are well on the grow.
Spuds:
Strawbs:
TINY BABY LEEKS; SQUEE!!!
Last year I planted a Jasmine at the foot of the arbour. I read up on it before I planted it, so I knew it died back in the Winter, but I didn't realise just how much it dies back! All the leaves fell off and the vines shrank and turned a very dark green. I was convinced by March that it had died. I thought "crap, I'm gonna have to dig this one out, amend the soil and go buy a new one". Then just as I was contemplating doing the work we had the first hot sun of the year and the Jasmine burst into life, grew half a foot and sprouted a mass of leaves in less than a week! Now it looks like this:
I fully expect that Jasmine to be a further foot taller come the Autumn. Also in Spring news, my lawn received its annual infestation of weeds. This year however I used a weed knife and cleared half the lawn in a few hours. I really must recommend a weed knife. Compared with a hand fork it takes a third the time, a quarter the effort, and leaves the grass minimally damaged; whilst hand-forking is hard, long, sweaty labour that leaves your lawn looking like it lost a fight with a platoon of moles. Seriously, get a weed knife. Best tenner ever spent!
So yeah, all in all I'd say there's no overstating the boon that a little sunshine can bring to my garden. And of course as soon as there's hot sun on the grass you'll catch Bill outside, shedding his Winter stoicism in favour of his Summer friskiness!
"Once they figure a way to work a dead horse, we'll be next. Likely I'll be the first too. 'Edd,' they'll say, 'dying's no excuse for laying down no more, so get on up and take this spear, you've got first watch tonight.' Well, I shouldn't be so gloomy. Might be I'll die before they work it out."
– Eddison 'Dolorous Edd' Tollett
Well, my part in the Christmas Clean is drawing fast to a close, Gods be praised. My black dog, Shuck, tends to make an appearance around this time. Two generations of Atheists (though half of us were still part-raised as Taigs) and still we gotta get festive. My cynical nature reckons that the season isn't in full swing until I've called the tree a c**t to its face. I hate Christmas, so the little acts of cynical pseudo-rebellion (like insisting that being Christmas no.1 makes Killing In The Name a Christmas song) keep the black dog from swallowing me whole. I never take it too far though, on account of the fact that the rest of my family seem to like this ever-repurposed holiday, and that it is bizarrely easy to spoil it.
Gardening then. I've had to change my plans for the beds. It turns out that a person can't work a bed of 5'x5' without stepping into it, which defeats the object. Better than having six of those is having ten beds of 3'x5'. Either way it covers the same amount of ground, but this way I get to grow more solanaceae and alliums, fewer beans and apiaceae, plus I can include things that weren't in the six bed rotation such as peas, wheat and gourds. Here's the new plan; it's to be read clockwise in terms of a given bed, which actually means that the whole thing'll rotate anti-clockwise.
More tatties overall, but in a rotation that sees each bed growing legumes once every five years rather than once every six. The beds won't reach all the way to the Eastern fence. Instead, there'll be a strip of land a foot wide, from which I'll grow fruiting bushes and vines up trellis against the fence. This is also where I'll grow borage, as any area of soil that has fruit growing in it has a heavy drain on potassium.
Other than that, the garden's ticking over. Got some manure coming soon. Got the baseplate to the composter coming soon. Once Commercemas is over I can start building for the coming year. I'll get a tool cabinet and a couple of bat boxes built. The beds will be built in January. I'm thinking railway sleepers for the beds, but you've got to be careful in buying them. For beds, the law says I need timber not treated with creosote. The shed likely January or February. Once the shed is in situ I can work on trellis plus further bird houses, bat boxes and other things. BirdCam will follow the shed. The greenhouse tent will go up in March and the first seedlings will go into the garden shortly afterward. With luck I'll be getting in the first of the early Harvest in June.
Lastly then, the post Why Biology? has attracted enough interest (second most viewed post on the blog) that I reckon it's appropriate to go further back. Science for me started when I was a tiny kid. I had a microscope before I could write, but I'd document my methods and findings pictorially. At 4 I used to sit and watch that cartoon variously known as Once Upon A Time... Life, and How My Body Works. Mam got me a chemistry set when I was about 5 and I grew crystals of copper (II) sulphate. The big thing though was Lego. I had Lego throughout my childhood, starting from the day I was able to play with things without trying to eat them or fit them into the orifices of the head. Physics, mechanics, timing, all can be explored with enough Lego.
I don't think I was raised toward Science though, I think it's better to say that I wasn't raised away from it. I had the tools because I asked for them and showed genuine interest. The kids who grow up to consider Science are not those who were told to be curious, but those who weren't told not to be curious. If that makes sense? I dunno. ROLL VT!
