Dreaming in technicolour

Still haven’t made it to Arbutus to buy a sprinkler and the situation is desperate. If there is to be any hope of anything growing in my rototilled veggie patch, I am going to have to give it a serious soak, as it is bone dry just below the surface. So I borrow Pat’s sprinkler and make an annoying discovery: either the sprinkler doesn’t work (unlikely, as Pat’s been using it) or our chronically low water pressure is insufficient to make sprinkler go back and forth. My money is on the latter. Bugger.

Turn the water off, detach the sprinkler, turn the water back on and stand there for 20 minutes spraying the plot.

I am dreaming in technicolour. While most of the lettuce, rocket, peas and broccoli appear to be clinging to life, I think the beets and carrots have gone to meet their maker.

Who was I trying to kid? (Myself, apparently.) This plot doesn’t have what it takes to sustain anything. I should have bought some manure and dug it in properly. Or, even better, stuck with my original plan to build some raised beds and use actual top soil. Instead, lacking time and money for planks and topsoil, and, most importantly, the patience to do the job right (oh, the curse of the triple Scorpio), I’ve ploughed on with what I’ve got (not that I actually ploughed). Sigh.

The lettuce and rocket and broccoli and peas may confound my expectations, but I no longer live in hope.



Nothing for it but a trip to the garden store where I buy two scrawny, but flowering tomato plants to add to the little raised bed which actually has some composted soil in it. All is, after all, not lost. I do actually have tomatoes and pumpkins and spaghetti squash and, if seeing is believing (which I doubt) red peppers growing.

The new cherry tomato plants are Tumblers, the variety Ben and I grew with such success our first summer in Walthamstow, so perhaps I do still live in hope.


The rest of the salad I eat later in the summer may continue to be store bought, but at least I’ll have my own tomatoes and in the autumn there will be pumpkin soup and squash to eat. And it does look quite pretty (if I don’t spend too much time looking at the barren vegetable plot). Oh, yes, and the blackberries are coming along nicely. So, all is not lost.

An evening in the pub playing pool and drinking pints with Pat cheers me up for a while. Normally, on the rare occasions I win, it is because he’s missed the eight ball or potted the cue ball by accident and defaulted. Tonight I’m on a role. Actually win one game by potting my three remaining balls and the eight ball in one go. As rare an occurrence as the solitary 180 I once scored in a darts game. I genuinely win a second game. Unheard of. We’re tied at three all (one of the three, in truth being one of the aforementioned wins by default) and I’ve potted my last ball. I take aim at the eight ball, miss it completely and pot the cue ball instead. Grrrr.

Still, turns out Pat has (bless him) cut some planks to replace the missing ones on the garden bench, so sometime soon there will be somewhere safe to sit. Won’t that be nice?

A trip to Nanaimo today to get Mike’s wheelchair repaired and the World Cup final tomorrow (hoera Nederlands!), so taking the weekend (other than wasting water on the dead zone) off.