Indolence thwarted

I think I'm getting lazy.  No, actually, I know I'm getting lazy.  What with the recession, depression, whatever it is, I was really hoping that I wouldn't get much work this year.  Isn't that a terrible thing to confess to?  (Or to which to confess for any pedants reading this post.)  In my line of work everything usually goes quiet around November then revs up again on the second week of February.  I know this sounds pretty precise but ever since I've been designing gardens my first phone call/email of the season almost always comes then.  You know why, of course.  It's the time of year when people look out of their windows and realise that they have a featureless lump of mud and weeds posing as a garden in their backyard.

Anyway, garden design work in this particular year, filled with gloom and doom, redundancies, bankruptcies (not sure if that is even a word but never mind), Euro catastrophes etc was sure, I felt, to be thin on the ground, if not non-existent.  Endless days of pottering about on the allotment, taking leisurely bicycle rides, actually doing my own garden...lovely.  Hah!  Four whole weeks earlier than usual I've got three new jobs...and I can't even turn them down on the grounds that I don't like the people.  They're all lovely, and keen, and...rich.  What's happening? 

By the way, talking of pedants, my husband had a colleague who regularly pulled people up on their grammar.  One of his victims, stung by the criticsm, snapped back 'Oh, pedants are us' to which he replied 'I think you mean pedants are we.'

Oh well, back to the grindstone...sob...    

Hoe, hoe, hoe

I've got an allotment, and before you imagine you can hear the creak of someone jumping onto the bandwagon or think that I've gone all Joe Swifty, I've had mine for 15 years. Yes, back in the days when you were allowed a bit of convulvulus and sheds didn't have curtains from Kath Whatsername. I've also got a completely bonkers allotment neighbour.

'You don't find many of these around nowadays' he boomed the other day, effortlessly finding me as I hid behind the sweetcorn. 'It's really useful. Look.' Dropping to his knees he started stabbing at a row of beetroot.

'It's a hoe'
'You just don't find them anymore. Look at the workmanship'
'But, it's a hoe'

At this point he gave me the sort of pitying look I'd give him if I wasn't so nice (cowardly.)

'Why don't you get a handle put on it?'
'Now there's an idea. I know just the man for the job too. Real craftsman.'

Two days later he turned up with a broom handle stuck into the hoe. I was weeding on my knees with a hand fork, anathema to a hoer (which sounds a bit like an Irish lady of the night except that we don't get many of them on the allotments).

'I'd lend it to you, but you have to know how to use it properly' he said, just before the handle fell off.

Lil's return

She's back, full of the joy of life and completely unaware of how close she came to meeting her maker. Yesterday, for the first time since the accident, my lovely Lily was allowed to run off her harness (she can't have a lead yet because of the injury to her neck) did she enjoy it! I, on the other hand, was on tenterhooks in case she jumped too high, or ran too fast, or (God forbid) picked up a stick and swallowed it.

We were out for just 30 minutes, as opposed to her usual two hours, but when we got home she crashed out as though she had been running all day.

I took her to my favourite place in the whole world, along the Greensand Ridge to a place called Boughton Monchelsea (http://www.boughtonplace.co.uk/). From the ridge you look out over an ancient deer park to the Weald of Kent below. We walk there often, and I always come away from it feeling uplifted.

Anyway, things are thankfully getting back to normal...lots of gardening and pottering about the allotment, a fair bit of design work, and rehearsing for a play I'm in in the autumn, 'Stepping Out', which involves learning to tap dance! Now I'm no Cyd Charisse but I'm really enjoying the old step ball change and cramp rolls - even though it was so hot last night that we were all begging for mercy after two hours!

One more final pic of Lil and I promise I won't bore you any more. It's just so great that she's survived it

Allotted time and disappearing gooseberries

Well, I finally got back to my allotment after four weeks of neglect. I've been putting it off because I knew I was going to be apalled but...argggghhhh...!!!! Where to start? My garlic is rotting in the earth, broad beans are huge and probably as tough as old boots, peas desperate for water, mooli radish about to throw seed everywhere (and I don't even like the stuff), and the worst crime of all, plump, sweet raspberries rotting on the canes (not to mention the globe artichokes about to flower, for God's sake).

My husband has been entrusted with looking after it, but he's no gardener, bless him. During my enforced absence he thought all was well. And to be fair, he leaves the house at 6.30am and doesn't get home until around 8pm, so tending vegetables is a bit of a luxury.

The problem with my allotment is compounded by the fact that I took over the other half of the plot when the previous tenant gave it up, and decided that I would plant some fruit trees and give the rest over to a wildflower meadow and pond. What was I thinking? I'm a garden designer, for God's sake. I know how hard it is to establish a wild flower meadow. The soil was too rich and the grass has gone beserk and currently it's looking like a complete mess. I'm ashamed to show my face there until we can get it cut down and under control. Problem is that I live in a very small village so everyone knows how abysmally I've failed in the wild flower stakes. I spent a fortune on the seed too (it included about 20 wild flower seeds and 11 different grasses).

I have another, fruit related question. Last year I bought two half standards of London and Langley Gage gooseberries. This year, in spring and early summer, they were covered in blossom then fruit. They were completely protected by mesh had and been sprayed against the usual pests and protected against slugs, but all the fruit was stripped off them. Any ideas?