Rainfall and the Deluded Ambitions of Worms

I love earthworms, I really do.  I don't know why, exactly.  Possibly because they are so entirely defenceless, and so hugely beneficial to the garden.  I find them utterly charming.  The much vaunted New Zealand Flatworm invasion of a decade or so ago put the wind RIGHT up me, I can tell you.  I saw a film of one ingesting an earthworm which makes me shudder to this very day.  Ugh!

I wish I knew what it is about rain that gets the worms all fired up.  It's possibly as simple as the fact that the ground is a lot slipperier than usual.  Whatever it is, come a good downpour, all the worms in the world seem to feel an insurmountable urge to take on epic journeys above ground.  This morning's ghastly shower prompted just such a pilgrimage-yen in the local worm population.  The particular walk I took His Royal Hairiness on this morning includes a bridleway which is reasonably well travelled by dogwalkers, cyclists, horses and deer.  It therefore definitely does not constitute a safe place for a young worm to saunter about.

For as long as I can remember, the sight of worms above ground, desperately attempting to get from A to B, has provoked an insuperable reaction in me.  I have to help them.  They seem so earnest in their desire to get somewhere else, and I can't bear the thought of them being crushed under foot, paw, wheel, hoof etc.  And I'm always worried they'll drown.  There are few sadder sights on the average dog walk than a drowned worm, all white, swollen and flaccid.

Sometimes you don't get there in time.

Rivalled only by a worm who has dried out in the sun.  Tragic, I tell 'ee.  I do accept that I may be on my own here....

I don't want to come across all grandiose, chaps, but I have long suspected that I am probably some kind of vermicular goddess, hailed by worms as their saviour in troubled times, fabled, whispered about after dark, and used to frighten little worms when they're not eating all their soil up.

This morning alone, I potentially saved the lives of over 40 worms.  Yes.  I know *smiles serenely, and, admittedly, a little self-satisfiedly.*  I will allow you time to digest this truly awesome information, as I know it's a lot to take on board in one go.  While you're digesting, I'm going to take a couple of bows and soak up the applause.

What?  You're not impressed?!

Oh.  Well, it really IS just me, then.

If you are the one person out there who IS impressed, and who would like to join me in being a worm god or goddess, here are some things to bear in mind when Rescuing Worms.  You do, after all, want to be a force for good and not for evil.

First, ascertain that you are indeed looking at a worm:

Beware of imposters - in this case, sticks.

Next, when you have espied what does indeed prove to be a worm in a vulnerable position - such as worming its way across an expose path or marooned on an island of mud in the middle of a puddle - do not just jump in and thoughtlessly hurl it into the bushes.

Stop.  Observe.  Think.

Which way is the worm heading?!  AHA!  You see how easy it would be to become the scourge of the worm world, rather than the saviour?  You want to cause conversations like this:

"Hey, Barney - you'll never guess what!  I was in a bit of trouble out in The Open earlier.  It was a lot further to The Other Place than I thought, and there were seas forming all around me.  I'd already narrowly avoided being trampled by some big 'uge thing - no idea what it was - and I could 'ear something thumping towards me.  Well, blow me, I was suddenly 'oisted into the air!  I thought my number was up, mate, I won't lie to you, and was expecting the cruel chomp of a sharp beak any second, but the next thing I knew, I'd been set down PRECISELY where I had been trying to go!  I know, BRILLIANT, eh?  Must 'ave been some kinda Worm Goddess, or something, I reckon!"

(I suspect that most worms have trouble with their aspirants, by the way)

Rather than like this:

"Ere, did you 'ear what 'appened to Marilyn?!  She was doing the old Journey, you know the one, and she'd ALMOST made it, when some ruddy great big mysterious force come down and plonked 'er RIGHT back where she started!  Back to square one!  So she 'ad to start all over again, and 'alf way across second time 'round, she only bleedin' went and drowned, poor cow."

Worm heading East

Worm heading West

Another possible worm conversation to bear in mind is"

"Terrible what happened to Alistair, wasn't it?  Oh, you didn't hear?  He was doing His Journey, when something Moved him.  Celestine said he was left right out in the open and before he had chance to get to cover, a sodding great blackbird had swooped down and whisked him away.  Mind you, did you hear about the time when Ginger got Moved?  He was left right up on top of a dandelion!  Gave him dreadful vertigo and he threw his earth up everywhere before he managed to wriggle his way off."

So, put the worm a) where the worm wants to be, b) under cover and c) on the ground.

Worms everywhere will thank you.  The very earth itself will thank you.

Trials and Tribulations

The Gitten - so christened by the children because she is a kitten AND a git - is on very thin ice indeed.  And I am considering taking a sledgehammer to the millimetre of ice upon which she is currently performing her own special feline version of Torville and Dean's Bolero with a degree of insouciance previously unsuspected.

Despite the relentless ghastliness of the rain, drip plop dripping from the skies with deep concentration, I have just been out to check on the veg patch (because I loff heeeem) and the greenhouse (because I loff heeeem, too).  Having watered the seedlings and plantlets in the greenhouse, which always feels odd when it's tipping down, I went outside in order to eye up, moodily, the fire-deformed waterbutt - of which, more later.  I then turned around to see how the radishes were faring under their new wire pigeon-proof (hopefully) net.  And that's when I saw it.  She - hang on, are you sitting down?  Good.  She has actually taken an actual crap on my actual carrots.  I know, right!?  Look! (or skip down a bit if you're feeling queasy):

The Actual Crap in the Actual Carrots

(small photo - you don't want this in close-up)

And of course, being a cat, not only has she done this grisly deed, but she's dug up half the bloody carrots to do it.  And then, when I came inside to hunt her down in order to work out what is the best angle from which to throttle the little bugger, I found her like this:

Butter Wouldn't Melt

Little SOD!  The worst thing is that it's actually put me off my carrots-to-be.  And the other worst thing is that she made that thoroughly endearing chirrupy noise when she saw me, which put me right off my murderous stride.  Grrrrr.  Anyway.  So how do you go about sewing up a cat's bum?  Answers on a postcard, please...

To add to all of this joy, when I checked further to see how the broad beans are getting along, this is what I found:

Not looking good, is it?  Something's clearly munching on the poor bastard.  Time I ordered me some nematodes.  I tried the other day, but the Green Gardener's website went berserk and tried to assassinate my laptop, so I need to find another source.  Not going THERE again.  Scary.  And something's nibbled one of the runners in the greenhouse, too, so I shall be out there in dead of night with a torch and a pair of hobnailed boots tonight.  Or I might just fashion a slug pub, if I can find some beer...

On the up side, the water butt situation is good.  The pre-fire greenhouse had two water butts connected to it - one for each side of the roof.  These were kept nicely filled by our great British weather, and have been most useful on many an occasion.  However, the people who installed the new greenhouse said that two water butts on a greenhouse of this size was unnecessary, or some such.  This puzzled me at the time, and I should probably have queried it then, but I was so excited about the new greenhouse that I just ignored it.  I figured that they would rig the guttering so that both sides of the roof fed into the same water butt.  What they actually did was rig it so that one side feeds into one water butt, and the other side just trickles on to the path.  Hmm.  I do HATE wasting anything, so I'd put a bucket under the drainpipe, which has been collecting a lot of water.  I'd then try to pour this brimming bucket into the top of the unconnected (and slightly deformed by the fire but still watertight I hope) water butt, but usually end up drenched and wasting half of the water.  The main reason for which I'd get drenched is that I stupidly forgot that the top of the water butt is not fixed, but easily removed.  So I've been trying to pour a heavy bucket full of water, at head height, into a hole the size of a small mug.  Hmmm.  Not very bright.  Anyway.  I've been hunting through the remaining fire wreckage to try to find a piece of pipe the right length to divert the water into the water butt.  This morning (pre Crapgate), I finally remembered that Mum and I had taken a few bits of the old greenhouse guttering around the side of the house when we rigged up the guttering on the bike shed.  Sure enough, the absolutely perfect sized piece (in fact, the original piece from before the fire - yesss!) was there, so all that lovely rain water is now no longer being squandered on the path, but being collected ready for use in the (please, please) hot, dry summer months.

Tadaaaa!  It's not the tidiest job, but it's too horrible out there to spend time doing it nicely, and as my Dad always says, if a job's worth doing, it's worth doing badly for the time being.

Happy St George's Day, everyone - hope the weather's better where you are.  I'm off to practise the violin.  At least it'll SOUND like I'm strangling the cat... some small consolation.

March and April in the Garden

The rest of the non-specific areas of the garden – i.e. “the garden” – continue to delight and defeat me in equal measure.  It’s lucky I’m not a fastidious gardener (except when it comes to things you can eat) as I’m sure the garden would drive such a person to distraction.  The minutiae of it are probably what delight me most.  Buds opening, leaves pushing up through the apparently unyielding earth, tiny spring flowers, insects buzzing around and doing their thing.  And the big picture is wonderful, too – it makes a great vista, its basic shape is good and it was well planned (not by me, I hasten to add!).  The little meadow bit at the top, with a mown path winding through the apple trees is my addition, and something I’m particularly pleased with, but most of the beds are proper shockers.  Unfortunately for the garden, but probably (hopefully) fortunately for the local wildlife, I find I am happy to live with this state of affairs.  So long as I can hold back the chaos from encroaching on the vegetable patch, I’m happy.

Best to let it speak for itself (you might notice that a lot of the so-called flower photos which follow are - ahem - actually weeds.  Let's pretend they're not, shall we....?).

Primroses

Pink primrose 

Bumbler, pollinating Lungwort

Orange-tip rescued from flappy panic in Greenhouse

Waterlily coming back to life after wintry dozing

Wisteria bud looking nice and plump, but possibly a little transparent.

Could have been frosted.  Only time will tell...

Trickle trickle

Hellebores, almost finished for this year - just in time to make way for Peonies

Buds on the Russet apple tree, poised to burst into blossom

A dandelion, which never got to open fully (mwaaahahaha)

Damn, missed this one.  Pretty, though...

And nice for the honey bees.  Shall leave them a few as penance for bee murder (see a previous blog)

In Other News

Happy to report relative lack of injuries, since hamstring recovered.   Until, that is, last weekend.  I was feeding R’s chickens, cat and plants as part of a reciprocal Easterly arrangement.  The girls had dashed into the henclosure and checked for eggs – very excitedly report that not only WAS there an egg, but the chicken had decorated it for us:

They then ran off to play on the swing, seesaw, zipwire etc…

while I dealt with both ends of the chickens’ requirements.  Having done this, I should have just walked away – just WALKED AWAY!  But O called to me and invited me to have a go on the zipwire.  Look, I really should have known better, okay?  M is a stripling lass of 9 and she has outgrown the zipwire.  I am considerably older, taller (but not for long) and, most importantly, heavier, than M.  Had I stopped to think, I may have realized that this whole zipwire thing was doomed to failure.  But I didn’t.  I breezily reached out for the holdy-onny bit which you hold on to, strolled to the top end of the wire, took a GOOD run-up, hoisted myself off the ground and was swiftly and unceremoniously dragged, screaming like a woman possessed, a good 20 yards along the ground (in my white trousers).  Yes, I know – it’s my own silly fault!  And I have a twisted ankle on one side, a sprained knee and scratched ankle on the other, and two very sore arms & shoulders to remind me not to do it again!  Thankfully, R's garden is not overlooked...

All else has been relatively quiet (by which I mean a mad whirlwind of one crisis after another, but nothing long-term or memorable).  I did think we were being invaded by bees last Thursday night, when I found no less than six in the hall and kitchen, but it turned out that they were probably just disorientated by that afternoon’s hail and thunder storms.  This has left me with an enduring sense of guilt, as after carefully catching and releasing the first four, I began to panic that there was a hive in the cupboard under the stairs, or my pants drawer or somewhere, and, as there is a history of serious bee-sting allergies in the family, as yet untested on the girls, I decided I had better start killing them, pour encourager les autres, as it were.  Now that it turns out that they were just lost and trying to find their way back to their hive, wherever that may be (but NOT in my pants drawer) (or under the stairs), I feel bloody awful about it.  Somehow, amends must be made.  Sorry, bees.

Yer Actual Veg Patch

Digging has commenced in the veg patch during the 6 blog-free weeks.  It is so noticeable that we missed a year, with having no tools, and losing all the plants last year.  The weeds are proper well established, m’loves, and the dreaded “Devil’s Guts” are ubiquitous, damn their eyes.

The girls and I have weeded out a raised bed each 

– the warmest ones at the north end of the patch – and I have planted parsnips, beetroot, carrots, lettuces and radishes.  

As always, the radishes are first up.  The effing pigeons have been very helpful in thinning them out (gits), 

so I have netted them 

– we’ll see if this dissuades the bastards, or if they just decide to limbo under the wire and get stuck in.  They are big, fat-breasted wood pigeons, who nest outside the bedroom window and coo like bloody bellows at sparrow-fart, but my Dad says I’m not to shoot them.  Not sure I could, anyway, even though I was sorely tempted when they ate all my purple-sprouting broccoli MINUTES before I was going to harvest it, back in 2010.  Actually, I COULD shoot them, but then I’d have to eat them and we’d probably all get lead poisoning from the pellets or something horribly karmic like that. 

The only greenhouse things I’ve planted out so far are three broad beans, which are not looking all that fabulous, to be honest.  

I planted them just before we went away for a week, as they were far to big to be left in the greenhouse.  But as a result, they didn’t get a lot of water in their first week, and I didn’t get chance (aka I forgot) to harden them off before planting out, so it’s quite surprising they’re still struggling on.  Never mind – there’s a tray of 20-odd hardening off at the moment, plus 20-odd peas and mange-touts.  Come to think of it, maybe that Victory geezer did know what he was talking about….

Other than that, the raspberries are looking healthy – doesn’t seem to be much difference between the ones I experimentally cut right back and the ones I experimentally left gangly, so we’ll see what happens at fruit time.  Hopefully, lots, because I’m already dreaming of raspberry jam, raspberry vodka, and little tiny fairy cakes with a raspberry hidden inside each one…  Slurp!  O, meanwhile, is just dreaming of eating her way along the row, so I will have to tether her to the trampoline with a long rope.  The globe artichoke is also coming up nicely again, even though it had a second cycle last year.  I do wish I’d put it in a border somewhere – it is such a stunning plant and my borders are, frankly, rubbish.  At some point I’m going to stick loads of veg in the borders – artichokes, rhubarb – all that big, architectural stuff.  Just a matter of getting around to it.  Ah, the rhubarb is looking a bit better this year, too – it’s never been very good, but this could be its year.  Come on, rhubarb – you can do it!

In the Greenhouse

Runner beans and courgettes

Those of you who are kind enough to have become familiar with this blog will know that The Greenhouse is my favourite place in the world.

The children are utterly forbidden from bickering in it, as it is my sanctuary, my joy, my happy place.  So it's nice to see it full of stuff growing.

However.

I suspect that the man who wrote Dig On For Victory has shuffled off this mortal coil, m'loves, but I am tempted to trace his descendants and give one of them a bop on the snout.  All this successional sowing, and starting stuff early on in the greenhouse is well and good, but it doesn’t half leave you with a burgeoning plethora of plantlets which are too big to stay in their little newspaper pots, and insufficiently frost hardy to risk planting out.  To be fair to the man, when he wrote his book in the 1940s, I don't suppose that he was anticipating the mid-summer-style March of 2012, but I’m still a bit cross.  I hold my hands up, I do – I should have thought it through, but where’s the fun in that?

Good plan for lettuce growing - old length of guttering salvaged from pre-fire greenhouse, with a pot at each end to stop the soil dribbling out, but allow for drainage - seems to be working

Anyway, all this plentitude has resulted in my having to perform an undesirable task which I have never before had to resort to in my (minimal) veg gardening career – Potting On.  Sure, tomatoes, cucumbers, chillis and all the other things which stay in the greenhouse need to be moved to a bigger pot at some point, but I’ve always planted everything else a bit later, hardened it off for a week or so and then planted straight out – that’s the beauty of the little newspaper pots, y’see – you can just plant them straight in the ground. 

Broad beans, peas and mangetouts, being hardened orf

I DID have stacks and stacks of old plastic pots under the staging in the old greenhouse, but of course, they melted in the conflagration, so I was down to 20 or so.  Having already had to pot on the gitting tomatoes as I messed up my tomato hammock order by not noticing how many were in my basket, over-ordering, having to ring to reduce the number and find out three days later that they'd actually just cancelled the order not amended it, and then, once the hammocks had arrived and the first had been constructed, realized that last year’s growbags which I’d planned to put in them are easily twice the size of the hammocks and – bloody HELL – lost in clauses again – ugh – anyway – what with one thing and another, I had already had to pot on 14 tomatoes because the growbags – oh, you get the idea!  Anyway, I'd run out of my small remaining stock of pots rescued from the jaws of the hairy assistant.

So, on Tuesday I had to beg some old pots off my dear friend R.  After an emergency DASH to her house (which included a long lazy coffee and a chat while gazing ruminatively at her veg patch and eating Toffee House Fudge until we felt sick) and a DASH back armed with about 30 recycled plastic pots, I potted on seven butternut squash, 10 cayenne peppers, 12 courgettes and 16 runners (which are nearly a foot tall and can’t go out for at least a month – probably a bit longer!  Gaaaah!).

And so today finds me sat here in the greenhouse talking to you, surrounded by MUCH happier vegetable-producing machines (and the essential presence of my sidekick, His Royal Hairiness), with a lot of space on the staging and a lot of empty seed trays whispering “fill me, fiiiillllll me!”.  Apparently, I do not learn from my mistakes, as I am now mentally flicking through my seed store, jusssst out of the corner of my eye, you understand, and wondering what to plant next.  Oh, alRIGHT!  I admit it.  I have already made a tray’s worth of newspaper pots to fill – satisfied!?  But I am, at least, going back to my faithful friend, Mr Hessayon, and his Vegetable and Herb Expert.  He has never failed me yet.