20 July 2012

Blessed are the weeds...

... for there's little doubt they'll inherit the earth. Or at least the bits of the earth that we think are ours and carefully tend and guard. Turn your back though (or go away to Holland for a few days) and there they are, en masse.

Yes, I was back up at the allotment this week and in spite of the wonderful efforts of my allotment partner to impose some sort of tidiness with a shears (thanks SOT), it was still amazing, not to mention depressing, to see the numbers of seedlings and more of dock, creeping buttercup, scutch grass, speedwell, bindweed, silverweed, thistle and many others whose names I'm not sure of. I spent a couple of hours weeding the onions and leeks, the beetroot and chard, and at the end of it all, I treated us to some fresh broad beans and Sharpe's Express potatoes. I had to harvest something! The beans were gorgeous. I haven't grown them before, but they'll be on the list from now on.

In the garden at home there's been a bit of harvesting going on too - some extreme fruit picking. The summer has been so dreadful that I haven't done some of the normal tasks in the fruit patch at home, so the raspberries and loganberries have been running a bit crazy, as have the gooseberries. Some judicious tying in and tidying is needed, but it's hard to do when everything is dripping wet. All of which means that picking fruit, particularly the loganberries, can mean getting snagged by thorny branches. It's worth it though - fresh raspberries and strawberries for breakfast make a nice start to the day. And loganberry jam is the best.

Still on a food theme, I added some 'Sauce Hollandaise' to the garden this week: a rather lovely Anthemis. It's a member of the Asteraceae family, which I have always known as the Compositae. I love the Compositae: think daisies, asters, sunflowers, heleniums, coneflowers, cornflowers, scabious... the list goes on and on. Their complexity is wonderful - what we perceive as a flower is actually a highly complex series of florets (the middle of your typical daisy) surrounded by a series of bracts (which look like the petals to most of us). And their success as colonisers is awe-inspiring, whether you're looking at it from the perspective of a frustrated gardener with a dandelion- and daisy-speckled lawn, or--on a slightly larger scale--considering that there are over 24,000 species in the family and they're on every continent except Antarctica.  There's something relentlessly cheery about the daisy-like flowers and I couldn't resist this particular Anthemis when I saw it. It has settled in nicely since, right in front of the glasshouse.

Here's a question: how can grazing trails be a clue that your garden bench needs cleaning? Hmmm, well if you can see them at all, it means there's so much algae on the bench that gastropods of some sort have been rasping away, leaving the telltale trails behind. Time to get out the sander and a damp cloth. Or better yet, get someone else out with same (thanks BvG).

I did various bits and pieces in the garden over the weekend, including a check of the fussy alpines in their very own Saint Emilion sandpit. But I also took some time to admire the emerging Agapanthus flowers, to sit on the now cleaned garden bench to admire the light-as-air flowerheads of Molinia caerula 'Transparent' and to enjoy the rare sunlight reflected in the pool.


Broad beans - from allotment to table in a couple of hours


yummm, Loganberry and Raspberry jam


Anthemis 'Sauce Hollandaise'

Gastropod grazing trail on garden bench

Spoilt alpines ...

Agapanthus flower starts to break free

Molinia caerula 'Transparent'

Sunlight in the pool

Sunlight in the park (and spot the Schnauzer)






4 comments:

  1. Gorgeous FB! Maybe next year I will expand into fruits/vegetables.

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  2. Thank you! I'd say go for the fruits first - they're less intense work and are such a treat.

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  3. Canonymous23 July, 2012

    Best schnauzer hunt ever!

    ReplyDelete