Kitchen Garden Forum

A very happy Mothers Day to all you wonderful Mums.

A touch rough out there this morning, very wet and very windy.

oldherbaceous wrote:A touch rough out there this morning, very wet and very windy.

A lot more lively than KG Forum, then

And i was only thinking Sunday, how busy things had got.

Things are very spring like down here, my early peas have flowers on and the bees are busy on the jostaberry flowers, ladybirds in evidence, plenty of rhubarb to pick, the herbs and chard are growing well again, my Robinson peas are beginning to climb. the pear and apple are blossoming. The garlic is doing well and ground is nicely moist for seeding. Have transplanted some self seeded foxgloves to a spare patch for the bees.

A sad day in the village today. The funeral of one of our very best friends and one of the few vegetable gardeners.

Dorothy gardened the small allotment in front of her council house and had a special way with neighbours. Whenever anyone admired her crops, say peas, she assumed their admiration had an ulterior motive and would always reply "Yes, they are good, aren't they? If you like peas go and grow your own bloody peas!"

She will be sadly missed. She used to come round every Monday morning to buy our eggs, feed the hens on cut-price bread she had bought on Sunday and give us all the gossip.

Dear Alan, i do hope the funeral went as well as funerals can go!

It's a shame when you lose a village character, and by the sounds of it, she was certainly that.
Villages need people like that to keep them alive.

At least we have still got Old Codger , but we have lost so many of them over the last ten years.

Morning OH

The funeral went fine, if you don't mind seeing a friend lowered into the ground, never to be seen again

Capal Seilo (or in proper Welsh Capel Siloh) was suitably packed and the retired minister who gave the teyrnged (tribute) to Dorothy said he had two words which summed her life up: gofal (care) and taclus (tidy). Gofal because, though a single woman, she showed concern for her neighbours - Mr Williams, 93 and still gardening, had a jelly from her every Sunday. Taclus because for her everything had to be just right and not an inch out of place, in her house (never a speck of dust, the brass always gleaming) and in her garden (everything in neat rows and never, never a weed to be seen).

"And before you let the sun in, mind he wipes his shoes."

I ache.

Still that's the outcome of;

doing the start of season service on the Howard 350
using it to mash five rods worth of Merry Tiller work from last weekend
then go deeper
then crossways
then one more shallow run with the handles offset
dismount the skid, one hour due to rust, first time on this chassis
mount the baulker
draw out six by thirty foot furrows
plant said furrows with spuds and earth up
pack away.

That was ten through to seven and I let a plot at three which ate about 45 minutes.

Have a hundred and one jobs to do here but think the family needs a break...so off to the beach tomorrow,

suncream and book I think

Hope you all have a great day

Dear Donedigging, hope you all have a lovely day on the beach, but do mind the sunburn.

Nice to read a post from you, early on a Sunday morning.

Looks like "April showers" are on the cards soon. Then we'll all feel smug at having done so much this weekend

Lovely bright and sunny morning here again. Very windy over the beach though.

Off to the allotment AGM this morning, so, much coffee and little work I think

Replaced the damaged roof felt and replaced rotted timbers on the shed today,going to do the same with the shed on my bottom allotment tomorrow then paint them with wood preservative so that they will withstand the vagaries of our British climate.
Heard that the council is at long last re-opening the College Farm site the Gabalfa area of Cardiff and it is rumoured that a farmer in the Vale of Glamorgan(Barry/Penarth area?)has ploughed a field for allotments at a rent of £120 per year,can't be a bad thing.
Potato haulms showing and nigh on every fruit tree in full blossom.Along with others on the site,have got the prayer mats out praying that we are not hit by a hard frost.