Woman at the well

After Todays Reading H/T Emily Finch

Spring Clean

Lovely to have the sun out yesterday. 

It took me a long time to change from Nagging wife to Happy Gardener. 

Every year it is the same. I nag , nag , nag spouse about the importance of a can of Jeyes Fluid  and showing it intimately to the greenhouse. We never agree, as C is artistic, and into the look of things, especially where Garden Pots and plants  are concerned. He thinks Vine weevil grubs  are rare treats for blackbirds, and algae covered greenhouse windows spare the trouble of shading. 

I nagged and raved for an hour about science and soil and throwing away useless bits of ornamental tat from the greenhouse shelves. We agreed to keep what you see;

Really I am having to write this by way of an apology to my longsuffering C. He will read this , probably  a week after its posted, and the clean  GH shelves are laden with pots of this and that sprouting hopefully. He will be waiting for my 'Damping Off' speech and my annual 'wash out the watering cans' speech. I will be waiting for his 'too leggy' speech and his 'we don't want thousands of tomato plants' speech. We will have a good laugh, we are both right and wrong.

By suppertime last night we had had such a productive garden time together. We managed a job, (removing some old wooden planks) that was started 15 years ago. We decided that the Solanum was dead, and the grapevine was very much alive though looked dead. We said farewell to the Dead Acanthus, brought as a tiny plant from the Roman Forum in 1974, only to find it had sent a runner out about 50cm away , which was alive. I agonized at the state of my national collection of Echiums, 2 varieties only left, and C agonized at the loss of both our bay trees.  

Grandpa White(Sedum seboldeii, top right)) lives on for another year. Named by the family after Aunty Ann Whites father  all Cs family know it . We all have a bit.  It is Spring  for us , up again, out again and Im waiting for the lovely pink flowers. It doesnt care if the greenhouse has been swept out, cleaned out . 

I really am one

The Fileygardener in me has realised that I really am one. The long winter spent digitalising 35mm slides ,mine from 1969, my fathers from 1959, my aunts from 1960, is now left for rainy days when spouse is Coming and dining with me. We are back to Jeykll and Lutyens in our small garden. 

Today has been a perfect compost bin day. I  like the green box. It is a perfect perching place for Samson. I am not sure whether it is more effective as a wormery  than as a compost bin of the heap sort. The trouble is that it is very difficult to  aerate, wheras when I just had a heap I could poke it about with a fork from time to time. However, I have never found so many worms in a scant few cubic feet of vegetable half soil as I did today. I enjoyed a weird pleasure in recognising the labels of pineapples and mangoes from Dec  2010 unrotted and proclaiming past fruit salads. I never realised until today that two people could get through so many avocado pears. Not a teabag  left. My new brand rots down immediately, unlike PG tips. All the cardboard from our daily Aynsley Harriot cup a soup boxes was a memory only of Hot and Sour and  Spicy Lentil, not a letter or Logo could be recognized in the compost soup. 

I have emptied all the half-rot on to my old site de heap to await its next resting place after a final rot down. It will finish very quickly now . 

My veg beds are all ready, my Sweet Peas are waiting to be sown, a visit to Reighton is the next job. This is not really a Garden Centre. It is a proper Nursery, complete with Liverworts and acres of must buy  normal plants. It is a place to keep away from really, but I need several sacks of their own all purpose compost.

Not a single Echium pinina x wildpretti has survived the Filey winter. I had hundreds, in the greenhouse , in the garden , and even in the house. My Facebook Group We got an Echium through the winter  will soon get its update, because I didnt.   My Echium russicum is ok it would be if its Russian, my sp. lusitanicum is ok, which is a surprise since it comes from Portugal. 

So , I really am one , a Fileygardener.............