Gardening
One of the best things about this time of year is the way the garden takes shape. I make no bones about my enjoyment of gardening. OK, I make some bones, but it’s OK. I’m 35 now and I can admit such things while I can back them up by the apathy of golf. Age is OK though. Clive James said the trick of growing older is not to stop the sliding, but to find a graceful way of staying slid.
The grounds of This House are literally festooned with pots and growbags alike in a riot of, well, green for the moment, but that’s all about to change.
We’ve got lobelia and clematis (which both sound rude, [*snork*]), petunias, marigolds, violets and dwarf sunflowers which grow to about two feet tall. There is a bird’s nest fern, a lilly hosta which produces tall stems of lavender flowers in mid summer, a bonsai sycamore which I’ve grown from scratch over the years after I potted a sapling I caught growing out the side of the house.
Hungry? I’ve got three kinds of bell peppers, six strawberry plants and two blueberry bushes. The berry plants are a few years old and look ready to go for it this year. Last year wasn’t bad, but this year? Look out. I’m growing a trough full of sprouting broccoli, three tomato plants, two courgettes and rhubarb in a big pot in between two pear trees I planted in the ground a couple of weeks ago. They are being trained against the fence, in holes in the patio I built. The space around the roots is filled in with a bluey slate that looks soft when it’s wet.
It’s a modest affair, even though it sounds like an industry. I don’t have much space and the sun does most of the work, but I like getting home from the day and going round with a watering can, pinching out sideshoots and thinking that one day, years from now, and if nothing changes, I’ll drink mint juleps in the shade of the trees I planted.
And if I don’t, then that’s OK. At least I got to plant them with an intention way back now.
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Old (er)
May 24th, 2007 at 9:17 am
I do not understand peoples fascination with gardening. I never have. My green-fingery extends to a basil plant on the kitchen windowsill, but I have never had the compulsion to actually plant something from scratch.
You are going to tell us you enjoy fishing as well next, aren’t you?
May 24th, 2007 at 9:48 am
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
Mr Angry grows his own basil!
*cough* girly man.
May 24th, 2007 at 1:34 pm
Noooo Katy - I bet he just buys a sprouting pot-full from his local supermarket!
Still kinda impressive though - a single man who buys fresh basil *sigh*
Sounds a lovely garden Cliff! I’m a bit impatient to garden - I want instant results and lots of rewards and I can’t be doing with caterpillars and blackfly etc… I couldn’t kill them but I hate that they swoop in and spoil everything!
One day…
May 24th, 2007 at 1:47 pm
One day, what? One day you’ll kill them?
Katy - heh heh. Look at Mr Angry! “Grrrrr, I’m so angry. GRRRRRRR, I grow my own basil.”
Angry - can you believe that Katy Newton? Jesus, man. Everyone’s laughing at you. Are you just going to take that?
Also - fishing’s awful. Long periods of boredom followed by sudden boughts of sticking a hook in the side of an animal’s gills (or eye) and braining it on the side of a sandwich tin. Not a great day out.
May 24th, 2007 at 1:58 pm
OK, let us be clear. I buy full grown plants, just like Sooz speculated.
Then I try and keep it alive as long as I can (I have a PB of two months).
I cook as well, and have been known to do the odd bit of dusting. But anyone who says I wear a pinny whilst doing it is lying.
May 24th, 2007 at 2:36 pm
Woah. Fighting talk there from Mr. Angry. Katy?
May 24th, 2007 at 2:48 pm
I am still laughing at “GRRRRR, I grow my own basil.”
May 24th, 2007 at 2:55 pm
In fact, I feel a haiku coming on.
May 24th, 2007 at 4:00 pm
I kill all plants all that come in contact with me, unintentionally. My green thumb is utterly discoloured. I envy you. (ooh! envy is associated with green, too).
May 24th, 2007 at 5:52 pm
I had a ti plant grown from a souvenier log for almost 20 years, it was 6 feet tall and just beautiful. And then I got cats.
May 25th, 2007 at 6:46 am
Cats is a very nasty disease for plants!
May 25th, 2007 at 8:27 pm
Yeah, it was pretty bad.