A fighting chance

Being a strong, independent woman is all very well and good, but, as previously noted, getting the frames onto the beds is a two-person job and I am but one person. So I ring Cec to ask if he might be able to help me shift them back.

“What about the netting?” he asks. I tell him it’s already attached. “Wow,” he says, “you don’t waste time.” Do I detect a note of admiration in his voice? Possibly. (Possibly not.) He says he is off island today, but can pop round tomorrow. That’s fine. There is plenty else to keep me busy in the garden, because the plumber was here yesterday.

What, you may ask, does this have to do with anything? I’ll tell you.

I have a wonderful plumber. If he comes over and discovers there’s a quick fix to the problem (as is sometimes the case), he doesn’t even charge me. Then there are the times when there is no quick fix, as was the case four years ago when I fried the pump. (My fault entirely, as I’d failed to turn the hose off after watering the garden.) I asked him how much it would be to replace the pump. He told me it would be about $1000. When he saw the look of horror on my face, he said he’d see if he could find a reconditioned pump. Final cost: $200. (As I said, I have a wonderful plumber.)

Several weeks ago I rang to tell him the well pump sounded as if it was going into overdrive when I ran water for more than a minute. “Uh, oh,” he said (echoing my own thoughts). Then I said the magic words: “So I switched over to the cistern and that seems to be working fine.” These are the magic words because they tell him I’m okay for water for the foreseeable, so the free house call can wait while he attends to paying customers.  Now that we’re well into April and it seems to be the end of the rain, the situation is somewhat more pressing, so he turns up. Apparently I need a new float mechanism which he says he will come back with in two days. And he does. Hurrah!

Why hurrah? Because I need the well to water the garden properly.

So, back to the garden.

First job of the morning is shifting the two flowering-nicely, orphan raspberry plants from their current location to the beds which will be covered by the frames.

Second job of the day, prior to planting some seeds, is to give the main vegetable bed a thorough soak. (An inspection has revealed that under the first, moist inch, the soil is bone dry. So much for the extra rain we had last winter.)  An hour later, the bed is ready and the planting begins.

And here we have it, folks: peas (regular and mange tout), and rows of carrots, beets, spinach, lettuce and rocket.

And I still have more than an hour before I have to leave for rehearsal, so I give the small bed (from whence the orphan raspberries have recently been removed) the same soaking and plant some squash seeds.

All given (for the first time, I now realise, in a long time) a fighting chance. Fingers crossed.

Arghhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yesterday I had leafy wisteria and clematis vines entwined in the back fence of the garden. Even though the clematis failed to flower this year (apparently this is not uncommon when clematises – clemati? – are replanted), the leafy vines spreading across the fence did look quite pretty. 

This morning when I went down to water the garden, there were no leaves left on the vines of either plant. 

A quick look around the rest of the garden reassures me that he didn’t get into the garden itself, merely managed to squeeze in between the trees and the fence. Bastard, bastard, bastard. 

Elsewhere, in long overdue garden news… 

The spaghetti squash plant, despite a profusion of flowers, has produced one squash. The baby watermelon plant, despite a profusion of flowers, has produced one baby watermelon. 

Disappointing realisation that all the squash seeds I planted that actually sprouted are scallopinis. Which is fine, I suppose, except I really did want more acorn squash this summer and it’s now too late to do anything about it. Oh, well.

The courgette plant, which wasn’t looking too promising, is now producing at a decent clip. (Recently made my first batch of Becky’s excellent courgette and gorgonzola soup.)

One nice surprise: For the first time since I planted it two or three years ago, the pink gooseberry bush has produced fruit this year.

Hardly enough for the gooseberry fool I was dreaming of when I planted it, but tasty nonetheless.

The cherry tomatoes are still producing an abundance of fruit.

Given the tastiness of the yellow cherry tomatoes I planted last summer (after fucking Bambo ate all the red ones), I decided to plant another one this year. This is it.

You can’t fool me. Not only are these tomatoes not yellow, they are three times the size of the cherry tomatoes. (Tasty, admittedly, but not what I thought I was buying at the market back in May.

Like the ridiculously early raspberries, the blackberries are ridiculously early this year. 

Started picking them in mid-July and genuinely cannot keep up. This would be a good year to make jam – if I was a jam maker, but I’m not. Even sharing them with Pat, there is an overabundance. I’ve already frozen about two pounds of them. (Good to know I may not have to buy any frozen berries for my cereal over the winter.)

Another nice surprise in “the back 40”. When it occurred to me a couple of months ago that deer do not eat rhododendrons, I decided to plant a couple in the back. Assumed at the time that they were well past flowering time, but look!

One of them is flowering now. And very pretty the flowers are. 

I’m pleased to report that, touch wood (short pause for me to touch both the desk and my head), the well is still holding up. (Or should I say filling up?) An ongoing worry nonetheless.

Apologies that the updates have been so few and far between, but what can I say? I’d rather be in the garden on the swing with Stella and a good book than in the house writing about the garden at my desk.