i woke up this morning to seedlings. Well.. not quite woke up. more like woke up, struggled out of bed, went to the loo, rubbed my eyes, flushed the loo, then peeked at the tomato tray and realised i had seedlings. But you didn’t really need to know all that, did you? (tough. you got it now.)
and as a friend of mine pointed out last week… that first seedling of the season gets you all excited. well, it does me. doesn’t take a lot to get me excited and happy! so i ran for the camera and yes i had to take a picture of it. couple of pictures. not very good ones but you can see something vaguely green smudged. i did go to see if there were any other seedlings too but.. nothing doing yet. Oh, and the variety that grew first were the gardener’s delight ones. no sign of anything from moneymaker yet. maybe tomorrow.
I’m also posting pics of my effort to plant some seeds yesterday. Those are toilet rolls,
believe it or not – you can plant them, the whole thing, in the earth, the roots just grow through it as it decomposes – works very well for the kind of plant that doesn’t like root disturbance. and of course its nice and long – i planted dwarf french beans and sweetpeas in these, but i’ll probably do some more when i get back next tuesday (more on that below). the tray is an old tray that i was given when i bought a huge box of mushrooms from my regular veg stall up at Ashton under Lyne market (if you’re interested in buying veg from there, its the one on the corner of the outdoor market, nearest to marks n sparks, they’re very good) so, apart from the compost, its all recycled stuff. i got a huge bag of loo rolls, been saving them up since christmas. I’ll post here how it works.
i was going to do some digging today. hand on heart, i pwomise, i was. [ask Michiel if you don’t believe me]. but i didn’t sleep very well last night [period pains] and i’m still creaking like the door in an abandoned mining town with a ghost that’s swinging in the wind… and when i sat down at the puter to nurse my morning coffee to read an email from mum that the funeral had been set for this weekend, i decided that was it. no more digging till i get back. The reason is that the local kids are taking far too unhealthy an interest in my vegetable bed to be (still so tempted to tell them its a grave for them) and with me not being home, Michiel won’t be able to keep an eye on the garden all the time, and i really don’t want to come home to a bed thats either a) scattered all over the garden or b) so compacted i’ve got to dig it again. so the less there is for them to interfere with, the better.
I did get outside though. there was a big pile of wood that was dropped off last night from freecycle (thanks Vince!) for me to build my raised beds out of, so i set about stacking those up a bit more neatly (and hopefully the local kids will be less inclined to try to nick it to burn). once this was neatly stacked i pottered around some, half heartedly forked some of the grass bits that i’d dug up a few days before over to the fence with the fork, but my heart wasn’t in it (and my tummy was aching,
period pain) so i tidied up a bit more outside, finding old plastic plant pots, and some ceramic pots in the pile underneath the bedroom window, making a note of some plants i wanted to dig up and move (couple small lavenders, a small bay tree. must look those up, when best to move) as they’re where i want to put the greenhouse. i guess the kind of afternoon every gardener has once in a while. fun, though!
tomorrow is shopping day so i doubt i’ll get much done outside. might see if i can plant up some herbs for the kitchen though. I’m rapidly running out of space on windowsills so i’m going to have to give some thought to being productive and doing the best i can. March arrives next week and with luck, i can start getting direct sow things in the ground. That’s a point actually, something to do before i leave: find out about that compost!
~ Urbania to Stoneheads ~ 