The peas are toast

Get up and go out to water the garden before the sun gets on it. Discover when I do that the peas have also given up the ghost. Bloody hell, if I can’t even grow peas in this soil – peas, for god’s sake – what hope is there for anything else being produced? I think I may actually get some lettuce and rocket, and the broccoli does seem to be holding its own (though there is a long way to go before I will ever be able to eat any). This is very dispiriting – even if I know it’s all my own fault for starting too late and not doing the job properly.

Okay, I am now determined. Next year I will do it right. Get the raised beds built. Get some proper topsoil. Grow things – lots of things – from seed. Meanwhile, however, this big bed of undoubtedly barren soil mocks me (which, in fairness, it has every right to do). Some sort of intervention is needed.


Another trip to the garden store. I buy two well advanced cherry tomato plants and stick them in the sunniest corner of the vegetable plot (which is also where the compost box used to be situated so might actually have some nutrients lurking in the soil). As I’m doing so, Sally and Jamie pass by. She asks me what today’s garden project is and I tell her I’ve given up on growing anything from seed this year and am hoping to rescue the situation with the addition of some ready grown plants. She nods at the sagacity of this decision which gives me some validation (though not much – again, my own bloody fault).


At the garden shop I’ve also picked up a tray of bedding flowers, having decided that (a) the garden needs more colour and (b) that I want to do something to link up Jenny and Clancy’s graves.


The flowers, like my grandiose garden plans, are somewhat past their sell by date, the last of the lobelia (only one blue left) rather on the straggly side, but the geraniums look fairly fit. I’m hoping that (unlike the beets, carrots and peas) they will rally. When I’m finished it does look quite pretty. Occurs to me as I admire my handiwork that this new flower bed is in exactly the spot I used to have a pink flamingo imbedded in the ground (before some bastard at some point stole it). I’m thinking I need a replacement.


And there are even a couple of daisy-like (can’t remember the actual name of them) plants left over which I put in the rose/lilac bed. They’re perennials which I had a lot of luck with in Walthamstow and I’m hoping these will grow as well in Gabriola as they did in London. (See? I do still live in hope.) A bud is actually appearing on my poor scrappily surviving rose bush which pleases me no end and to some extent (though not entirely) compensates for the fact that the roses on the second bush I bought a few weeks ago don’t seem to want to open properly. Grrr.

Go inside to get a glass of lemonade, come back out to inspect my domain. Really, considering where I started

I really haven’t done too badly. (Thought a little reminder might be useful here.)


There are tomatoes appearing already on the Tumbler plants I put in last week. I have fresh herbs to cook with every night (I did have to buy a replacement basil for the one the bloody slugs had ravaged).


There will be a profusion of blackberries next month for crumbles. Okay, okay, the blackberries were growing there before we bought the house, so this crop will have nothing to do with my efforts this summer, but, still, there will be blackberries from my garden and I’m sure the pruning Pat and I did has contributed to the yield.

Speaking of Pat, just look at the bench:


The missing planks, bless him, have been replaced. Yes, it still needs more sanding of peeling paint, but it is once again a functional bench and, when it’s had another sand and a coat of paint it will be as good as new. Bit of a metaphor for the whole project, really.