Ravendale House

We have quite a lot of grass here, and for someone of my diminutive stature and great age, to cut it all properly takes 3 days. There are 3 elements to the process.

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Today I’m going to allow myself to stray off topic and write about something non-gardening.

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Sweetcorn is such an amazing crop to grow. I sowed 33 seeds on Thursday and by yesterday morning 9 had germinated. This morning there were 26.

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Now there’s a big word to conjure with on a cold and wet Monday morning. Defined as the attribution of uniquely human characteristics to non-human creatures and beings, it can be seen at it’s best in cartoon characters such as Donald Duck and Top Cat or the delightful children’s book Alices Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.

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The compost and grow bags arrived today as promised, 4 bags of multi-purpose compost and 6 grow bags. I stowed the compost and one of the grow bags behind the shed, and the remaining 5 grow bags went in to the conservatory.

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I’ve spent this afternoon preparing the conservatory for the tomato plants proper. At the moment they’re in small pots dotted along the conservatory window-sill, but they urgently need to be planted up into grow bags.

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They say ‘one swallow doesn’t make a summer’ and I’m sure ‘they’ are right, but we saw our first one today and it felt good. To be honest, ornithologically speaking, I don’t know if they’re swallows or swifts that we get in the garden. All I do know is they turn up each year without fail and are a joy to watch.

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It’s now almost a week since the plug plants arrived, and to be honest the jury’s still out. The begonias certainly look better than they did, but neither they nor the geraniums have done much in the way of growing. Perhaps I should just be glad they’re still alive.

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The dandelions are back. Sometimes it feels like I spend my entire gardening life doing battle with weeds. One particular battle which I’ve been fighting, and losing, for the last 10 years is against the dandelions in the field and now they’re back.

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Today we had a day at the seaside, Skegness to be precise. The nearest thing I did to any gardening was watering the plants before we set off and again when we got back. Not a moment too soon for some of them, I was amazed how they’d dried out in just 4 or 5 hours.

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