Ball sport and cars.

I got invited to play tennis today. I lasted half an hour before I wimped out. My back was aching. Honestly. Instead of golfing on my return, I washed and polished the car, then set about fixing the dip beam bulbs. Both are now brilliant. Hurr hurr. Mata Hark is in Canada, her girls won their first match but no word on today's progress. They're eight hours plus behind the UK, so contact is arms' length.

Hey there and up she rises.

Well, it sems as if all in the garden is indeed rosy. With a downturn in the weather, a definite cold-spell bringing rain, came the final shoots of vegetables and the emergence of the runner beans.

And marauding ponies, intent on trampling to death the fruits of my labour. Yes, that's right, the ponies of our field decided that they wanted to get involved, and showed up to help me break the ground. They're only 6 months too late, but hey let's embrace the fact they turned up at all.

Ponies: can't live with them, can't turn them into furniture.


So, the shoots of the radish and beetroot have emerged in their little bedding-area, an old wheelbarrow tub, and I thinned them out by finding somewhere else to put them. An oil barrel had been cut in half and discarded, so i filled each half and planted the excess there.

They are doing well, worryingly better than their earth-planted brethren.

The Cucumbers are now in 6 inch pots, and will in all likely hood stay there, to be grown into climbers for the conservatory. Friends of mine had done this, and apart from being a fantastic aesthetic addition to their home, it was a source of much amusement. And lairy photos.

Shoots!

They are up! The first signs of life, after a week, are shoots of tenderest green, rising from the soil with an air of victory against all odds!

It should have a rousing soundtrack of french horns and cornets! Where is Jerry Bruckheimer when you need him!

OMG I'm so overcome with emotion i can't go 10 ! words without an exclamation mark!


No photos as yet; growth isn't so advanced as to stand the test of digital camera auto-focus.

So far, we have proof of life from;
Beetroots
Raddish
Carrots (could be weeds, we'll watch this closely)
Chinese Cabbage
Little Gem lettuce
Rocket/Wild Rocket
Runner Beans
Cucumber

I may have been a touch ambitious in planting the apple pips that come free with every royal gala and golden delicious that i buy. Chances are that it takes a really hot, mediterranean climate to produce such small, bitter fruits, unlike the granny smiths that grow large and sweet from our only working apple tree here (5 fruits a year, but they're good 'uns).

I now feel anxious.
I fear the predators, if only because they live like an underground resistance network, hiding by day and terrorising their targets by night.

So, the next phase of Operation Garden Market is to explore the work of Carrot Flies, snails and slugs, and determine which is the best way to keep them at bay.

Without resorting to Monsanto or Dow Corning...

Let The Weeding Commence

Karl von Clausewitz said 'War is nothing more than the continuation of politics by other means'.

I wonder if he'd ever tried weeding?. It seems to me that weeding is war continued by other means, setting nature, in it's rapacious appetite for growing small green things you don't want among the small green things you do, against the gardener
and your accelerated advancement towards arthritis.
And house-maid's knee.
And hypothermia.

And psychotic breaks, during which I lost the plot and attacked the bare soil with my hammer. I couldn't have 'done' a better John Cleese if i'd tried.

Maybe I shouldn't have started growing vegetables, but there was a spare patch of ill-defined ground at the side of the garden and I wanted it to do something.

I also like raddish.


So, I decided to seek catharsis with a blog garuanteed to attract no attention, thus protecting me from ridicule, yet offering a public avenue for the outpouring of my angst.

Now all i have to do is figure out how to work this blogging stuff out and we are flying.