And don’t let me forget to tell you the story of the blue bird and the blue whale..... another true story from The Garden.
Fairies dwell in our garden. It’s always good to be away with them. We join for sustenance almost every dappled evening now, weeding and watering our vegetable patch and minds.
May. It sedates the cats and lifts the heart with beguiling shades of new life that surges before the eyes. When I listen hard I see more, and even deadening ear protectors for occasional tractor duty only seem to evoke dreamier enchantments.
There is so much to fill every minute, what with the need for paths through the waist-high grasses while avoiding the wild flowers, and especially now that the holiday cottage has awoken with the deepening of the warming seasons and the lengthening of the outside hours, when people want to change their rhythm for a while, to touch the earth, bare their knees, stare at stars and hear the cacophony of nature that we all call peace. The bookings calendar is, finally, beginning to fill through to September – air for the financial rubber ring. Still gaps though, in case you were wondering.
And in the office my book and screenplay ponderings blur with managing olive oil shipments and sales in the UK as customers wanting at least the summery taste of Mother’s Garden send their orders. Sales build as the word “freshness” spreads and I must re-visit my passionate thoughts on the delicious and healthy subject of the juice of the olive before flying back to the UK to give a presentation at Hunstanton Golf Club at the end of the month. I’ll then move on to London to see our Ella who has just finished her Film Foundation course at the University of the Arts.
We crack on early with the many tasks after a round of animals feeding and plant watering. Yet, when we flop for early evening English tea the meditative tasks of the vegetable garden inspire us to stand again. When approached in the right frame of mind it is not toil, but comfort, don’t you agree? The art, of course, is to tickle along, to make small but visible advances every day, and when we don’t there is a pang. There are the usually misses as well as the hits, and the occasional rewards of indescribable goodness for the table. But equally importantly, we need this gentle time, individually and as a couple.
Last night two new raised beds, prepared with a mix of mature pony poo and ash, were planted with aubergines and peppers. While Maggie carefully spread olive leaf mulch around them I puzzled over how best to increase on last year’s runner bean crop of four pods. The plants reached the top of the canes and we watered the leaves, flowers and roots, but it was most probably the heat that stopped the fruiting. We planted too late. This year the plants are deciding. They have shot again from last year’s roots. Can I create some sort of shade for them?
If the rampant lettuces are anything to go by we have got the soil balance about right for once. Next to go in are the tomato and melon seedlings, plus some more runner beans.
At the back of the house our peas, French beans, courgettes, onions and broad beans aren’t exactly flourishing , and I think I may lose two of the ten young olives I in the autumn. A third is looking unhappy too, so at first light I cleaned around them all, laid down some mulch, watered and talked.
Today I must strim down the grass touching the electric fence, grit my teeth and test the system, for another hog season is upon us, that time of year when midnight wild boar shed their shyness and come within feet of the farmhouse door in search of salad sustenance.
It was still 21 degrees at 9pm last night, but by sunrise there was dew and a zing in the air. Wrynecks, golden orioles and serins have joined the chorus, and the barn swallows and fig tree bee eaters chose the same day to wing in from Africa. Today I have been trying in vain to photograph the pair of short-toed eagles riding the blue river of light between the banks of the Catalonian mountains.
The wild asparagus season has waned, sadly, but we have had our fill, which reminds me of our very recent, extraordinary stay in Rutland, land of my ancestors, the Healey clan of Edith Weston. Two incidents made it extraordinary. First, we spied wild asparagus in England for the first time (but I am not at liberty to tell you where....) and, second, we were there when the earthquake struck. It felt like a truck had reversed into the building. Been to countless countries where the earth moves and never felt a twitch.
Ah yes. The blue bird and the blue whale.
Ever since I can remember we have had a large gourd shell that needed to be put to a good purpose. The hollow, hard, bulbous former vegetable had been lying about; beautiful to the eye, but unless we used it as a water carrier like ancient civilisations it was destined to be merely decorative and homeless. Like a great many useless things we can’t bear to throw away, it ended up moving around in the barn.
My nephew Yan, a musician, digging for bits to repair the dog kennel for us, saw it and asked if he could use it to make a kora harp. He’d learned to play and make them in Senegal. Great. One side was cut away, leaving two-thirds of the shell and the funnel neck intact. But he ran out of time and so the gourd shell returned to an old crate.
Then artist Paul, a regular visitor, spied it. I think it had moved to near the gardening bits and bobs by then. He thought it was perfect for an up-light. He painted it as a striking blue whale, with two small holes for eyes. We put it in the outside toilet near the holiday cottage swimming pool and, boy, did it shine. Once or twice.
But the convenience, which has western saloon bar swing doors for, er, ventilation, is rarely used at night, and not at all through the winter and spring.
Yesterday Maggie was in there, clearing and cleaning in preparation for our first guests of the season who arrive today. Only they will have to use the loos in the cottage, not the one with the whale light.
A blue tit has built a nest in it and there are about eight eggs about to hatch.
We’ve turned the outside sign round from vacant to occupied.
Keep well, and happy gardening.
And if you like the tales for The Garden, please spread the word. The more the merrier.
There is so much to fill every minute, what with the need for paths through the waist-high grasses while avoiding the wild flowers, and especially now that the holiday cottage has awoken with the deepening of the warming seasons and the lengthening of the outside hours, when people want to change their rhythm for a while, to touch the earth, bare their knees, stare at stars and hear the cacophony of nature that we all call peace. The bookings calendar is, finally, beginning to fill through to September – air for the financial rubber ring. Still gaps though, in case you were wondering.
And in the office my book and screenplay ponderings blur with managing olive oil shipments and sales in the UK as customers wanting at least the summery taste of Mother’s Garden send their orders. Sales build as the word “freshness” spreads and I must re-visit my passionate thoughts on the delicious and healthy subject of the juice of the olive before flying back to the UK to give a presentation at Hunstanton Golf Club at the end of the month. I’ll then move on to London to see our Ella who has just finished her Film Foundation course at the University of the Arts.
We crack on early with the many tasks after a round of animals feeding and plant watering. Yet, when we flop for early evening English tea the meditative tasks of the vegetable garden inspire us to stand again. When approached in the right frame of mind it is not toil, but comfort, don’t you agree? The art, of course, is to tickle along, to make small but visible advances every day, and when we don’t there is a pang. There are the usually misses as well as the hits, and the occasional rewards of indescribable goodness for the table. But equally importantly, we need this gentle time, individually and as a couple.
Last night two new raised beds, prepared with a mix of mature pony poo and ash, were planted with aubergines and peppers. While Maggie carefully spread olive leaf mulch around them I puzzled over how best to increase on last year’s runner bean crop of four pods. The plants reached the top of the canes and we watered the leaves, flowers and roots, but it was most probably the heat that stopped the fruiting. We planted too late. This year the plants are deciding. They have shot again from last year’s roots. Can I create some sort of shade for them?
If the rampant lettuces are anything to go by we have got the soil balance about right for once. Next to go in are the tomato and melon seedlings, plus some more runner beans.
At the back of the house our peas, French beans, courgettes, onions and broad beans aren’t exactly flourishing , and I think I may lose two of the ten young olives I in the autumn. A third is looking unhappy too, so at first light I cleaned around them all, laid down some mulch, watered and talked.
Today I must strim down the grass touching the electric fence, grit my teeth and test the system, for another hog season is upon us, that time of year when midnight wild boar shed their shyness and come within feet of the farmhouse door in search of salad sustenance.
It was still 21 degrees at 9pm last night, but by sunrise there was dew and a zing in the air. Wrynecks, golden orioles and serins have joined the chorus, and the barn swallows and fig tree bee eaters chose the same day to wing in from Africa. Today I have been trying in vain to photograph the pair of short-toed eagles riding the blue river of light between the banks of the Catalonian mountains.
The wild asparagus season has waned, sadly, but we have had our fill, which reminds me of our very recent, extraordinary stay in Rutland, land of my ancestors, the Healey clan of Edith Weston. Two incidents made it extraordinary. First, we spied wild asparagus in England for the first time (but I am not at liberty to tell you where....) and, second, we were there when the earthquake struck. It felt like a truck had reversed into the building. Been to countless countries where the earth moves and never felt a twitch.
Ah yes. The blue bird and the blue whale.
Ever since I can remember we have had a large gourd shell that needed to be put to a good purpose. The hollow, hard, bulbous former vegetable had been lying about; beautiful to the eye, but unless we used it as a water carrier like ancient civilisations it was destined to be merely decorative and homeless. Like a great many useless things we can’t bear to throw away, it ended up moving around in the barn.
My nephew Yan, a musician, digging for bits to repair the dog kennel for us, saw it and asked if he could use it to make a kora harp. He’d learned to play and make them in Senegal. Great. One side was cut away, leaving two-thirds of the shell and the funnel neck intact. But he ran out of time and so the gourd shell returned to an old crate.
Then artist Paul, a regular visitor, spied it. I think it had moved to near the gardening bits and bobs by then. He thought it was perfect for an up-light. He painted it as a striking blue whale, with two small holes for eyes. We put it in the outside toilet near the holiday cottage swimming pool and, boy, did it shine. Once or twice.
But the convenience, which has western saloon bar swing doors for, er, ventilation, is rarely used at night, and not at all through the winter and spring.
Yesterday Maggie was in there, clearing and cleaning in preparation for our first guests of the season who arrive today. Only they will have to use the loos in the cottage, not the one with the whale light.
A blue tit has built a nest in it and there are about eight eggs about to hatch.
We’ve turned the outside sign round from vacant to occupied.
Keep well, and happy gardening.
And if you like the tales for The Garden, please spread the word. The more the merrier.
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