• Maintenance, and decay

    Maintenance, and decay

    The windbreak on the finally dug asparagus bed takes the full force of the southerly squalls which form the usual airy backdrop to the garden. I find myself threading wire through the eyeholes in an attempt to reinforce the top, but it is raining really too hard to ignore, and too dark to easily see.…

  • The asparagus bed

    The asparagus bed

    This spring I planted a tray of asparagus seeds. This was done more in hope than anticipation. I was fully prepared for my generative experiment to fail, as so many have failed over the years. But the seeds germinated, pushing up tiny, frail shoots under the plastic covering I had swathed the tray in that…

  • Water water everywhere

    Water water everywhere

    But not in the garden.  It has been a dry summer: the Met Office reports around 50% of normal rainfall over the summer.  The past weeks have felt wetter, but literally digging beneath the surface of the ground reveals bone dry ground.  This is noticeable in the slow progress of the chicken run.  To avoid visits…

  • Pots

    Pots

    The pots around the back door are proliferating. In addition to two blueberry plants in large earthenware pots that accompanied us from our previous home, there is a miniature blueberry (Tom Thumb), a thyme in a badly cracked pot inherited from the previous owners, some bulbs which refused to flower this year, five gooseberry and…

  • A curve in the path

    A curve in the path

    It feels like a turning point in the garden. We are into the metrological autumn. This week has seen changes: the garden helpers are back to school, and the quotidian tasks of teaching jobs start to dominate. The dry weather has broken in a way which suddenly feels more permanent. We awake to fog, the…

  • Berries

    Berries

    The blackberries are ripe. Behind the vegetable patch we built is a steep bank up to an unruly beech hedge, and our neighbour’s decking. Once this contained some fir trees, of the christmas tree type, not lylandii, but still threatening to overwhelm everything. A first outing for the chainsaw was removing these, but the branches…