pleasing things

found cat

. . the last bean

. . . the first squash!

. . . and a new old thing.

on show

Today I visited the Edinburgh and District Allotments and Garden Associations Show. I found out about the show too late to enter (not that anything I’ve grown would have won any prizes, mind, but I do have hopes next year for the “any knitted item” category). I really enjoyed myself — it was great to see everyone’s veggies and chat to fellow gardeners — and, despite the weather over the past couple of months, there were some marvelous vegetables on show.

The onions gave me serious onion envy, and I confess to a brief, wistful moment when I looked at the tomatoes. For, I am very sad to report that all of my tomato plants fell prey to blight. This was a distressing sight when I returned home from the Hebrides, but I also felt bad for my allotment buddy, who was kindly taking care of things, and in my absence witnessed the onset of the evil spore. (I was able to salvage a crop of green tomatoes for chutney, so all was not lost).

I took note of some evidently successful and interesting vegetable varieties. I definitely want to try milan purple tops (you can see some inbetween the swedes and the carrots – beautiful).

There were some gorgeous blooms on display, too. Dahlias in abundance.

I was very impressed with the stained glass panel that won the “art or sculpture” category. Here is a detail. . .

. . . but my favourite entry was this arrangement, “the dark heart of savoy” — it was awarded second prize in its category.

I love the rich colours, and the incorporation of all kinds of produce into the display — there are brambles, beetroot, and broccoli in there! I enjoyed chatting to the chap who entered it — he was very pleased with his prize.

After the show, I spent a glorious golden afternoon on the allotment. I started cutting back the unruly hawthorn hedge that is currently stealing sunlight light from my beans. The hedge must be tamed, and the veggies must have light. The hedge resisted, but me and my pruning saw won in the end. That said, despite the goggles and industrial protective gear I was wearing (which would lead any observer to assume that I’d just got out of the puzzle factory) I managed to cut myself several times (the blood actually spurted! hawthorn is evil!) There is more of this to be done, but I think I might leave battling the remainder of the hedge till Tom returns from his immunological extravaganza in Berlin. . .

(I chopped it).

Having been thoroughly inspired at the show, it was nice to come home with my own modest basket of veggies, and begin making plans for next year.

more neeps . . . more beer

In a mysterious repeat of last week’s missives, today we have more neeps . . and more beer. If I am now inhabiting a turnip-and-beer filled time warp, there are probably worse places to be.

Here you see my entirely non-literal rendition of the turnip tops

and here, how the turnip roots feed down into the soil . . I mean, ribbing.

I am absolutely loving the Jamieson & Smith 2 ply. The colours are so rich and saturated – but subtle too. I spent a very long time admiring their shade card and selecting colours — my favourite here being the lovely mutating golden green (shade fc12) which works really well with the more solid green of shade 118. And look at its feathery soft halo! Hurrah for Shetland!

As with the dollheid, I found myself interested in the effects of a decreasing repeat – that is, in the way the several segments of the crown resolve themselves into circles. With the stems, section divisions, and decreases forming solid lines, the crown of the tam has a simple, formal element to it, which to me is reminiscent of the early styles of 2-colour Scotch bonnet that one often sees in museum collections (I’ll find a photograph at some point to show you). I also enjoyed playing the four colours against each other to create different neepy effects, and particularly like the way the purple shade (fc56) is quietened by the grey (27).

Here in another rather dimly lit shot (taken late yesterday evening after greenhouse watering), is the neep in situ on its allotment, surrounded by other neeps.

The pattern (which I am now working on), will of course be called neepheid. (I have ravelled the project here, and hope to have things ready to go in a couple of weeks time).

Now, in our house, swede is a favoured synonym for head (“look at your big swede” “your giant swede won’t fit through that door” &c &c), and I did wonder about the wisdom of a near-tautological name…but I like neepheid, so neepheid it is.

We are all familiar with the associations of heads with vegetables–we’ve all seen Arcimboldo’s fabulous creations. But turnips seem to be particularly linked to daftness or eccentricity, and this interests me. Do the roots (ahem) of this association this lie in the enthusiasm that surrounded the the four crop rotation system in the eighteenth century? I was thinking about some of the ways that William Cobbett was satirised, and of Pope’s account of Lord “Turnip” Townsend . . . and then I recalled a passage in Mark Twain’s Roughing It about the unfortunate affliction of Mrs Beazley’s son, William:

“Turnips were the dream of her child’s young ambition. While other youths were frittering away in frivolous amusements the precious years of budding vigor which God had given them for useful preparation, this boy was patiently enriching his mind with information concerning turnips. The sentiment which he felt toward the turnip was akin to adoration. He could not think of the turnip without emotion; he could not speak of it calmly; he could not contemplate it without exaltation. He could not eat it without shedding tears. All the poetry in his sensitive nature was in sympathy with the gracious vegetable. With the earliest pipe of dawn he sought his patch, and when the curtaining night drove him from it he shut himself up with his books and garnered statistics till sleep overcame him. On rainy days he sat and talked hours together with his mother about turnips. When company came, he made it his loving duty to put aside everything else and converse with them all the day long of his great joy in the turnip. . .”

The comedic nature of the turnip interests me here. And a similar kind of comedy operates to slightly different effect in the character of Uncle Monty in Withnail and I . I am mulling over various thoughts about this, but in all the examples I can think of, vegetable obsessions seem to be a symptomatic of a particularly masculine eccentricity*. But I am a woman, and am proud to declare myself a turnip obsessive. I have much sympathy with William Beazley’s view of the “gracious vegetable”. What’s not to like? You can eat both the roots and tops, they are easy to grow, and they are a tasty crop pretty much all year round! I love turnips in all their neepiness, and shall sport my neepheid with pride!

Ah yes, beer: I was going to talk about beer. Tom has been doing more brewing, and has also written up a recipe for you. We’ll save that for the next post.

*I would be very interested to hear of women turnip obsessives, in fact or fiction, if any spring to your mind.

if you brought a big brown bag of them home

. . . I’d jump up and down and hope you’d toss me a carrot.*

No prizes for naming that tune. Or for guessing which vegetables are inspiring my knitting.

*a clue: during one session, percussion was notoriously provided by Paul Mc Cartney chewing a stick of celery.

GQT *

Sarah (possessor of much gardening wisdom) popped round for lunch today. The weather was just right for pottering about down the allotment, and I took the camera along so you can see how things are progressing.

The tomatoes and courgettes are ripening nicely, and at least some of the beans survived the Evil Slug Attack which decimated many of their comrades in their early stages. I love the beautiful blue borage flowers, and am pleased that the bees like it just as much as I. (Perhaps we need to get our hands on a bottle of Pimms?) After some enthusing about the flourishing leeks, and commiserations about the non-existent lettuce (slugs again – bah), we sowed “pronto” beetroot, chinese radish, and a few more varieties of turnip (my neep obsession deepens daily). Sarah inspected the pond. The resident frog did not appear, but I know he’s in there.

Her sweater makes me want to knit another one.

In the greenhouse, the grapes are abundant, and fill me with consternation. I can’t believe that the unruly woody thing I chopped back and trained across the roof a couple of months ago is producing these wonders. Now, I inherited this vine from Billy (the allotment’s former gardener), and, never having grown grapes before feel something of a novice. While poking about in my books tells me that these grapes are likely to be bianca, or black hamburgh, I don’t know how to distinguish grape varieties, and really have no clue what these are. Nor am I sure if a grape should look like this at this particular stage of growth. I’m a little worried by those black specks on the fruit too. . .

Can anyone help me out? Should I be concerned by the specks? Any tips that you may have for successful greenhouse grape-growing would really be very much appreciated. I have been happily dreaming of Tom incorporating these beauties into a tasty home-brewed beverage later in the season, and must make the dream A Reality.

Talking of making dreams reality, thanks so much for your support in my quest for the “promotional non-cereal breakfast product” (to paraphrase Liz), also known as The Dorset Cereals Eggcup of Dreams. This wee clip from Father Ted pretty much sums up my feelings.

done

(now available to watch on 4 OD)

Thanks, everyone! Now we must wait and see. . . .

* Gardener’s Question Time

neep

Nipped down the allotment this evening and couldn’t resist sampling one of these — now, no laughing, please — for this tiny neep fills me with an immense happiness. It is the first thing to come out of the ground that I have grown from seed on our allotment, and I am very proud of it. Just look at it! I love little tasty turnips, and am all too apt to drift into Cobbett-like rhapsodies about them . . .but I shall resist this here and just mention that this particular neep was gleefully incorporated into tonight’s vegetable stir fry supper and it was exceptionally, wonderfully turnippy.

birthday tea

Well, what else can you do when someone gets you a giant teacup for your birthday? This is how I spent yesterday evening.

All I can say about where I’m standing is that it was until recently waist-high with weeds, and that I am very proud of how that wall now looks since last week I thought it was just some sort of mossy hummock. I’m also pleased that my teacup (ahem, um, plantpot) co-ordinates so nicely with the trousers of my birthday buddy, Felix, who celebrates her 30th today. Happy Birthday Felix! I’m a bit older, but never too old to be ridiculous. And don’t worry, I took off the daft frock before I got on with some birthday digging. Cheers!

spent

You know when you get so physically tired that you can barely even speak? Well, I’ve been there a few times this week. It’s not an altogether unpleasant feeling — I find that toiling to the point of total exhaustion has a pleasing brain-clearing effect — at the end of an evening down the allotment, I’ve been too tired to think of anything much at all. But when I close my eyes to sleep, I still see the devilish shapes of marestail and shepherds purse dancing across my eyelids. Agch! Weeds! Weeds! I’ve been hacking them down, pulling them out and (as you see above) piling them up to dry. Today I began to burn ‘em.

Burn, weeds, burn!

Tackling the land at this stage really is a basic, physical struggle, but every day I notice that things are looking a little better. On Wednesday, for example, I cleared a mountain of ancient rubbish from out of the pond — including a long-dead newt, all bloated and white. But then yesterday, I found that a plump frog had happily re-established itself on the rocks I’d uncovered and weeded round.

frog buddy!

I weeded and mulched round the strawberries, and now they are ripening nicely

I found other fruits too

Never having had one before, the greenhouse is a luxury that I’m really enjoying — here come tomatoes. . .

People have been incredibly kind with seeds and plants: here are leeks – thanks to David and Mohini.

And though I’ve repainted the outside of the shed a nice allotment green to blend in with its surroundings, I allowed myself to go a bit beach-hut inside. . .

This shed has rooms. Rooms!

I planted out herbs and some other foolish things too — why not?

I love it all so much already.

ploughshares

It has been an insanely busy week! On top of the usual examining mountain that one must climb at this time of year, there has also been a whole lot of administrative gubbins that I’ve had to sort out quicksmart, as for the next couple of weeks my time is going to be taken up with. . . jury service. Amidst all of this, I have managed to spend a few precious and very excited hours here: yes, it is indeed the allotment. Honestly, I am completely blown away by it — I feel as if someone has given us an amazing gift of entirely unwarranted proportions. Actually, there’s no as if about it: someone has, and that someone is Billy, the bloke who tended it before us. . . (oh, and not forgetting the redoubtable Mr W of Edinburgh allotment services, who finally came through for us). Billy’s allotment is not just a piece of ground — it has an entire infrastructure. The sheds (note plural) come well-equipped with furniture, some tools (in reasonable nick), a stove and (joy!) a working chimney. There is also a greenhouse, a pond, well-built benches, fencing, and several bird boxes. The whole place is, of course hideously overgrown and in need of some repair — Billy can’t have done much here for the past season or two — but beneath the weeds we are beginning to uncover the shape of a thoughtfully laid out landscape. We are tackling the ground, and in a couple of small beds will be sowing what salad leaves and legumes we can — thanks to seeds from my dad (and some of you!) and a generous colleague who has donated squashes, tomatoes, and cucumbers.

Hacking my way through the undergrowth this week I have found many surprises, including an entire bed of strawberries battling stoically against the mare’s tail. Best of all, though, and in some wonderment, I discovered that the nettles of gigantic and primeval growth in the greenhouse disguised a thriving grape vine. I confess I was foolish enough to think of the eighteenth-century American women whose letters and diaries I read, many of whom were keen gardeners. These women’s politics – whether revolutionary or loyalist – often found articulation through the language of gardening, and they were fond of quoting that verse from the 4th chapter of Micah about sitting under one’s vine undisturbed. Whoa there! I’m getting historically carried away! Better get off down the allotment. . . .

at last

an allotment is ours!