Grass, tools and evolution

I planted the lawn today.

  George now has no back garden for at least a week, maybe a fortnight.  I used aerator shoes to drive the seed in deep, like two inches deep.  Some's only an inch deep, having been raked in.  Some's at the surface, squashed in with my boots.  With any luck, a storm coming out of nowhere won't be as devastating a thing this year as it was last year.  We may end up with a half-decent lawn this Summer!  

  As thanks for putting the lawn in, I got given a lovely new edger.  I've never owned an edger before.  This one's a thing of beauty: dark hardwood handle, sturdy, quality lathework, and with a bright stainless steel blade.  I think I'm in love.  Can't wait to put in a proper border with it.  

Lastly then, the strawberries I planted last year are greening up and back on the grow.  More specifically: half of them are.  The other half are either dead or dormant.  Thankfully the surviving half are from all four cultivars planted.  This is a good thing because the weird second Winter we just had is not great for plants.  The limey London soil is definitely not great for fruiting plants (my strawbs are in compost, but there's soil beneath and the alkali is capable of creeping up).  

Those which survived are hardier to frost and more tolerant of the edaphic conditions than those which died.  

This is the basis of evolution.  Evolution depends upon life in the midst of death.  Those which survive go on to pass on those very genes which helped them survive.  This adapts the species to the prevailing conditions.  The surviving strawberries will propagate new plants - both vegetatively and sexually - until the Strawbrary is full.  Those new plants will be adapted to fit the prevailing conditions of my garden.  After a few more generations they'll have thoroughly evolved to fit the niche of "strawberry plant in Joey's Strawbrary", after which they'll need to evolve again before they'll be able to thrive half as well in any garden but mine.

Life plods on, as ever it has.

The Anthocyanin Test

I've used this one since I was a little kid.  Anthocyanin is a pigment found naturally in red cabbages and leaches into the water during boiling.  This test therefore comes free with a Sunday roast.  It acts as an indicator, changing colour in response to changes in pH.  It's a shotgun test, meaning that it sacrifices precision for breadth.  Don't worry that it's called anthocyanin, there's no cyanide involved, I've checked.  Cyan is simply a shade of blue; a purple chemical comes from a red cabbage and people name it for blue.  Chemists do have a weird sense of humour.

The range it covers is as follows:
Strong acid
Medium acid
Weak acid
Neutral
Weak alkali
Medium alkali
Strong alkali
Ridiculously strong alkali!

If your soil is strong enough to turn the solution white then you'll already know about it, having received prior treatment for chemical burns.  You should always start this test with a violet solution.  If your cabbage was cooked with London tap water like mine was then you'll start with a blue solution.  Titrate it back to violet using vinegar before running the test.  

In my case, the soil in the beds shifted slightly into the blue spectrum, which was surprising.  My soil is slightly alkali despite being a humus-rich loam.  The previous gardener must've gone berserk with the lime!  Most vegetables prefer slightly acid soils, so I'll have to amend the soil before I can plant the year's crops.  

Feel free to use this test at your own risk.  

In other news: George seems to think the circles around the holes in the birdhouses are eyes, looking at him. Every time he looks at them from an angle where only two can be seen he raises his hackles and growls.  We can now add the tree to the very long list of things that George believes have come to murder us all in our beds.  

Annoyances

  Someone changed the boiler recently.  The new one has a narrower flue and exhaust than the old one, which means the hole in the wall needed mortaring to a narrower gauge so as to be snug to the new pipe.  Fair enough, but they didn't put a tarpaulin down before they started mortaring, so the stuff went everywhere!

• It left indelible streaks on the patio.
• It discoloured a chunk of my bench, which'll mean an afternoon spent sanding and revarnishing.  
• It gummed up the head of my leaf rake.  
• It got on the lawn, shot the pH up through the roof and killed a square metre.  

  Grass likes a pH of between 5 and 7.5.  At 7.5 it gets sick, at 8.5 it dies.  I'm treating the area with citrate over the Winter so that I can try and reseed in the Spring.  Balls!  

In other news: aphids!

Things aren't all bad though.  I need some manure and Nathan (the mate with the horse) has offered to drive some round in the boot of his car.  This comes as a relief, because trying to cart a barrowload of poo on and off the train might raise a few eyebrows at the very least.  He drives up from Redhill to visit his partner in Boston Manor, so Strawberry Hill is about 50p's worth of petrol as a deviation from the normal route.  Easy peasy.

Life ain't all bad.