When is a weed not a weed?

Sowthistle , Filey roadside

I've missed the Lily of the Valley season completely . I did plant some on my allotment last year in a damp and partly shaded place , but its not established yet  or seen fit to have just one flower. I'm surprised by this as plants will flower if in distress for lack of water just because they need to produce seed to maintain the species. We in the land that time forgot OKA Filey had no rain during much of March and all of April until its showers started on 30th April .

We are not allowed to use hosepipes on our plots  but may fill all our receptacles, baths and posh containers looking like the  water towers of flat Holderness. 

I digress here for the sake of my family. 

Family anecdote

We Bruces grew up in the east Riding of Yorkshire and would often have an afternoon drive out to Hornsea  our nearest small resort. From the age of 3 , in 1950, I remember the drive well, first in Grandpa Bruces 1930 Alvis , and then  the 1960s  in our family Ford Prefect. I can't remembered what the reward actually was, might have been a penny or might have been a piece of mint rock from the sweet tin , but our father would always call out

'First one to see the Water Tower gets a .............'

Then would come the explanation of why the countryside here needed a water tower, and how they worked. Great Grandpa Bruce had been the Chief Waterworks engineer for Kingston upon Hull so perhaps that story was played out as well . Sister Christine and I worked out why the whole family except our Grandfather emigrated to to the USA in the 1890s as the Stoneferry Waterworks were decommissioned and he would have lost his house and much of his job .

So you see I love nothing more than working out how to irrigate my plot , and cover my baths to satisfy SBC who own the land.

I'm really grateful for the  running water even though I'm as far as possible from the taps and my hosepipes are fixed to the fence of my neighbour  to lead to my plot . The Allotments in the Fulham Palace road don't even have running water. Filling my baths takes an hour as I have 3 and 2 water barrels. I prefer rain in my water butts however as its pure and better for my wildlife ponds (4 washing up bowls sunk into ground).This year I've managed to get tadpoles from 2 friends to mix the gene-pool so to speak . I'm trying to get as many frogs as possible as slug control . The nasty huge continental slugs are beginning to invade Filey . I have to resort to massacre at present .

I'm waiting now for the appearance  of my favourite wild plants ;

•  Poor Mans Weather glass (Scarlet Pimpernel)
•  Quaking grass
• Mullein 
• Chickweed (for Petes budgies)
• Hop Trefoil 

and for my worst weeds

• Horsetail
• Bindweed 
• Couch Grass
• and was going to say Sow Thistle , but read to end of post 

The person on the allotment next to me is pleased with her Peppers, sown in February . She has really looked after them , pinched out the tops and potted them on . I watered for her yesterday in her absence and wondered how I was going to tell her that she was growing Common Orache , though may be eaten like spinach, is in my mind a weed.

I did my Dissertation on WEEDS in 1967. 

I was amused to hear that a friend in Sussex had been during this lockdown  watching a beautiful plant , now in full flower growing in her garden . So she googled it and found it was my enemy Sow Thistle.

What then is a weed, it is a plant growing where you don't want it , simple as that .

ENJOY!

Traveller's Joy or is it?

Bryonia dioica

Waiting at Beverley Station this afternoon after visit to aged parent I just couldn't believe the sound of the Blackbird sitting under the roof . I thought at first that it was a recording , a  cunning plot of Northern Rail to subdue hot  and frayed tempers, remembering the piped classical music at Croydon West Bus station installed for that very purpose. But no, fellow travellers and I could see the Blackbird, and the beautiful sound was spectacularly magnified by the shape of the glass roof. Beverley Station has to be one of the dullest pieces of architecture in the East Riding, but this traveller was cheered , calmed and uplifted by the sound of a masterpiece of design.

I am getting used to the walk to Lindum House now. I have my route all tried and tested and varied .Today I walked past the allotments and followed the footpath that skirts the fields all the way around the estate where Mother lives. It takes 20 minutes fast walking from the station, and I enjoy the seasons as seen in the hedgerows and trees. Today the Elderflowers are over and the berries beginning, the Hogweed is seeding and the first signs of pink of the flowers of Rosebay Willow Herb bode full summer.

I love the path alongside the Beverley Allotments particularly, now that I have a vested interest . I have had a strange few weeks on my own allotment . The potatoes have slug holes, the path needs urgent cutting, and 'though I filled all the water baths with the hosepipe,one bath was completely empty the next day. I realised that it had siphoned back as I had left the hosepipe end beneath the water. I have had Gooseberry anxiety as I tried to decide whether picking time had arrived, and had to remove to the incinerator every Brassica plant as they had been infected by Swede midge. On the plus side the first Broad Beans were delicious, and my Clary for Summer weddings is coming on nicely.  

This traveller has had lots of joy reading her new Library Book on her train journeys . Val McDermid's , Northanger Abbey for  'The Austen project" might not have thrilled the critics , but I am loving it. Travelling is a suspension of time for me. I can do nothing but please myself how to spend the time between Filey and Beverley and Beverley and Filey. I always board the train where I see the Wheelchair sign and sit in the designated place for Carers when able to . Its best for every facility, and my faithful wicker trolley on wheels is in no ones way.  There are of course some places on the journey where looking out of the window is not optional ; the glacial valley from Hunmanby to Reighton Field, the view of the sea at the Sewerby end of Bridlington , the River Hull at Driffield, and the drain at Arram Carrs where the Heron is. Today I saw my first glimpse of a Poppy field just south of Driffield by the canal. 

All my 50 years  of botanising I have been mistaken . Today I realised it for the first time. This is not Travellers Joy (Clematis vitalba), it is White Bryony (Bryonia dioica).

The view from the taps

My new header is just that , a view from the taps. Colin says its very dull, as headers go, so it will just have a short airing in the cyberworld, whilst I concoct something more pleasing for my very own Waldemar

Januszczak.

Last week Colin surprised me by getting me 2 rolls of hosepiping and all the fittings. My allotment is not near the taps, but all the plumbing is ready to put in place . I had to get permission to run my water line across next doors plot and for it to stay there for those special fill the bath days. Ray the plot holder before Bernard and I,  has passed on to us a piece of land with all mod cons. In each corner of our produce plot is a bath. According to the legend by the taps , one may use hosepipes to fill  water cisterns on even days only. There is clearly a strict regime and rulebook behind the Filey Allotments. I dont think they realise yet that Maverick Margaret has joined them , for I'm sure I'll never know  whether it said odd or even unless standing over the standpipe. Colin will be relieved that I don't need him to walk to and fro carrying cans a furrowlong or how ever an allotment is, might be a chain or a perch. Somewhere in my memory of Cavendish Road Junior School is the fact that 22yards makes 1 chain.I think thats to do with Cricket pitches though.

Sizing of allotments

Cardoons or Globe Artichokes?

My new gardening year is beginning to take off.

 Reighton Nurseries are just the real thing. A family business where the "rooms" go on and on . If it lives in Reighton it will live in Filey,so exposed and windy is it there on Wolds Edge. 20 years ago we bought a Eucalyptus  tree for 10p. They are still only 50p. I will coppice it in a corner of my new plot. St Oswalds will always have some. 

My mind is going round and round.I am letting my enthusiasm run away from me. In my minds eye I see happy rows of Clary and Cosmos , growing perfectly for the stone Altar. I see lunches in the yard where we tuck into salads of rocket and beetroot . I see my drawers full of lavender sachets , and in 3 years I will be giving Asparagus away to all my friends .

Tomorrow however the double digging starts in earnest as Imogen and Nick will come and help me. I will take a flask , Colin will have the small boys and I will do my best with the couch grass.

Mine is the RHS 

My allotment partner has got a greenhouse from someone and is busy levelling the ground for it.

It just doesnt get any better.

I have 

• 6 Asparagus Crowns
•  pack garlic
• Arran pilot First earlies(chitting nicely in the spare room)
• 3 packs green manure seeds
• 5 packets Chard seeds
• pack Romanesco seeds

Tonights dilemma to lull me to sleep will be Cardoons or Artichokes?