build a pond

 after yesterday, now i feel a pond is feasible 

building a fence

 i'm mulling over building a fence. i love this idea, esp the ivy part so i think this will be happening 

office gardens

when i walk out the door in the morning i'm confronted by a giant sage bush, a plant we were told, wouldn't grow over winter in scotland. three years later and it's dominated both garlic and chives so successfully i haven't the heart to cut it back. also coming to the end of its season is our oregano weed. the last of the bees, grey backed and slowing now are still at the flowers. harvestmen have appeared plus a range of spiders. despite the prolonged warmth (by scottish standards) you can feel the autumn.

our neighbours, of course, aren't super impressed with our garden. too ragged, too unmowed (and this before we dug up half the lawn!) but i suspect even they are beginning to get it - no complaints this year as the cuckoo flowers pinked the front garden for spring.

back in the day i worked in occupational health for a while. the big victory i look back on was getting people to give up fizzy juice and drink water. i never would have conceived of bringing a garden indoors to enliven the horror that is cubicleland. not to say i haven't worked in a place where there were plants but it was only one company and the plants were sad things languishing in pots.

great then to be browsing spoon and tomato and come across this -




i saw a 'vegetised' wall in london last year but never dreamed it could continue into the workspace. pasona deserve massive credit for this - i can only imagine the battle whoever did it must have had! too often corporate types forget that happy workers are productive workers (happy being that state a worker can declare themselves rather than be bullied into!). decent food and decent environment don't cost much - the gains are in worker satisfaction and commitment. i doubt we'll be seeing anything like this in britain any time soon....

calocoris stysi

if you let your garden get overgrown it's time to see some unusual things start to arrive...

children of crake

after a decidedly mixed break t decides to have some time in the garden this last weekend. sure enough it's not long, the street these days being awash with the under sevens, when some of her wee pals arrive to see what she's about. what's that smell they demand. that's the herbs says t. it smells like poo, the girls declare and cover their faces. what's a herb asks one of them. you eat them on your food says t. horror from one, why from the other. because they taste nice, says t. the curious one deigns to smell a bit of sage, then a bit of oregano. the other does not. they cycle off.

they return. no t. where has she gone they ask each other. t returns and begins raking the grass. what're you doing they ask. i'm raking up the grass says t. why they ask in unison. because of i don't the dead grass will turn all yucky t say after some thought. how can you pick it up in your hands asks one of them. like this says t. oh they say and watch for a while. can we do that? i'm sure you could says t. can we come in your garden they ask. only if your mum says it's okay says t. why do we need to ask her they ask. because it's polite says t.

this causes some debate. they return to their own house. shortly after a noise that can only be described as bawling ensues. this is not uncommon. they return. a debate ensues on how big a bike they will soon own. that, and the fact that one of them still uses stabilisers and the other doesn't. the fact the gardening is over doesn't seem to bother them. their mother thinks that child labour in the garden, far from being a bad thing, should be encouraged, especially if it's not her garden.

briefly i appear. they are silent. as soon as i've gone they ask, who was that? t tells them. does he live here they ask. yes, says t. is he your husband they ask. no says t. who is he then they ask. he's my boyfriend says t. oh, they say, so where's your husband? t admits later that a rather more elaborate answer than the one she gives suggested itself to her! i don't have a husband she says. oh, say the girls.

later they will return en masse tho this time neither the garden nor i are interesting to them, more the fact that one of the girls has taken one the of the wee boys and 'squeezed his head'. his mother is not bothered by this but does want him to come in to the house as she's sleepy and wants to go to bed. he is unimpressed with this as a gambit to entice him away from the playing.

t comes back inside. i feel like that snowman in oryx and crake trying to explain stuff to the children of crake. and launches off into an exposition on children generally, the children of crake, the hymns in year of the flood and many things atwoodian. draw her a picture of a bunny will you margaret atwood and this is where that sort of caper leads. i firmly expect some sort of appearance of gardener hymns sometime in the near future.

we have a bunch of wee kids in the street these days along with another bunch who are not so wee that we've seen growing up this past few years. it seems a shame that the family has been so limited in recent times and the role of those others, neighbours, friends etc so marginalised as to have been almost criminalised, esp if you're male. we're lucky not to have too much of this looperdom where we are but its effects can be felt at the very least. everything is a threat, everything a danger down to the food they eat (tho this fortunately means they don't rifle our berry crop!). it seems such a shame that we've got to this. children it seems to me benefit those around them so much and they in turn, when exposed to a variety of influences, are benefited themselves. i remember my own childhood in this respect with some fondness but even then i was aware that i just didn't have sufficient in the way of older people around me while i was growing up. the best i can do these days is to be seen reading or drawing outside, looking at insects in the garden or just generally being on my bike

- why are you going on your bike in football boots

- these aren't football boots, these are cycling shoes

- cycling shoes?

- yes, they have these wee clips on the bottom that attach me to the pedals

- can i see?

the (slightly) unbroken truth

after last month's shenanigans the mountain bikes have stayed firmly in the shed and it's been a ginger process of getting back on the road bike and seeing what my injured leg can do. all of which has been fine in the main despite not getting to see any of my mtb pals in an age and most likely another month before that starts happening again. i can cycle that much is true but i still can't get down on the bars going uphill without feeling an all too familiar tearing sensation in my right hip.

bothersome but not overcomeable. so, post the graeme obree advice, i get myself a carry freedom trailer, a device of sublime function that has also had the handy side effect that i very much doubt i will ever, ever use panniers again. i took it out last week for a test run (load = all my tools) and met these weegie guys escaping their environment for the loveliness of perthshire. not only could i keep up but they were well impressed by how little it impeded me on the downs or corners. you can feel it on the up - there's no dodging the extra kilos! - but i feel in this mode i should start to work on the belly (the groundwork for which i've put in) and wee beard that seems to characterise the touring cyclist. i may even ditch the clipless pedals and go old school!

so the plan for my return to form is a long half loop up from perth, braemar, cairngorms, down the great glen, around loch eil, down the coast of loch linnhe, into morvern, across to mull, over to oban and then down argyll to meet t at the end of the week in machrihanish for kayak and wave based fun. i do have a return via dunoon but no time to do it. it may be i get there quicker than planned if my leg holds up and i go easy but there's some choice hills along the way that may have a say in that!

today's the day i should've been away but, obviously, there's a severe weather warning and flooding so it looks like a day's delay and a sunday watching of some of t's 'creature feature' dvds on the couch. could be worse!

so what's been done during injury time? the jam making has been lovely and it's generally been berrytastic in the garden. the raspberries haven't done us so well this year (the wild season is just starting so we're not too bothered) but the red currants are a ruby red abundance. the beans and peas are now starting to really go for it so much beaniness in sage, tomato and olive oil. plus the first of the potatoes. we've had what maybe a bit of blight so they're all cut back and we've got all historical on the topic.

having comprehensively binned tv watching this month we've gotten all bookish. i have roasted thru a bunch of kenneth white essays while t has gone margaret atwood daft. she's wheeched thru oryx and drake (loved it), made plans on in the year of the flood, finished alias grace, done some of the poetry and is currently eyeing the blind assassin. all this after atwood's drawing of a bunny! me, my favourite read so far is zachary mason's lost books of the odyssey.

we've spent quite some time gearing up for the next set of outdooriness, keeping our motivation up over the last couple of days by having a good laugh watching some of alastair humphries videos (we highly recommend the tour of shetland on a brompton). we came across alastair via kate and the fact it turning out he was just down the road from us at strathpuffer and have been very taken with his notion of micro adventures. i put it to t that her recent paddle across loch lubnaig was just such. she retorted that it was no such thing. but you did something new and you faced your fears i said. because I WAS IN THE FRONT OF THE CANOE she asserted strongly and with feeling. no matter, the pair of us being out on the water, even if it was just for a short time and even, yes, even if she did have a panic attack it has been one of my top experiences of the year and i have no doubt she'll be back in the kayak in machrihanish (tho only if they really teeny-tiny waves!)

spring!

it's that time of year where i'm itching to get back in the garden. this year, we're way more organised and instead of killing myself with the digging and the like i've been increasing our growing area ever so gradually, destroying the encroaching buttercups and generally getting stuff ready for the planting. which, despite our notions to the contrary we'll be leaving for a wee while yet it still being scotland and all.

spring has also seen me out in shorts for the first time this year, not quite sleeveless on the bike but with a gilet on the roadbike which isn't bad. it turns out two of my mountain bikes haven't survived the puffering and are getting some much needed bike shop r&r. in the meantime i've had the rohloff bike out finally for a bit of a test. true the noise of the hub sounds a bit weird but other than that it was all a bit of enclosed hub heaven. i finally got to tackle one of the steepest (and after the winter, most broken) roads around these parts last weekend, not as might be expected on my winter bike, but on a day when the sun split the sky, on the first run out of my main summer bike. it was sublime!

today's maybe not so nice but, after having taken t out for a promenade around the countryside i'll be taking the race bike out for its first outing. it looks like i'm signed up for some triathlon later in the year so the sooner i get get some distance and speed on some proper race gears the better.

big trips on the road bikes beckon. it may even be i can squeeze a coast to coats on the rohloff bike. more kayaking, a new canoe that the pair of us can go in, a bunch of islanding and in between of course, the garden gets to do a bit of growing. i can't wait. in the meantime if anyone's mulling over a visit to the lands of northern loveliness here's jimmy saville

Wir machen Sauerkraut im der schottischen Stil

which hopefully describes what we're about in some sort of germanic style.

yes the autumn is upon us and while, finally, our tomatoes are finally ripening what it really means is we can go out and pick a whole bunch of brambles, brambles the like of which i have never seen. what an abundance! the bushes in places look like they're hung with grapes!

so this evening we made both bramble jelly and bramble jam. still to come is rose hip syrup and (a new one on me) hawthorn jelly. not only that we finally (after the predations of last years butterflies) harvested our 3 kilo red cabbage from the front garden and, amongst other things, are having our first go at making pickled cabbage. t looks so fetching with purple hands!

later in the week we'll be doing something with the beetroot and then i'll be harvesting the root crop so we can have a big autumn roast and various soups.

autumn. i love it!

and in the garden (bee alert!)

more from the lawn (or what's left of it)

so, the post swine flu period. when i should be all recovered and the like. except i'm not. sparkling form on the bike last week but this week, post night shift, so not. the mystery hay fever that appeared post flu is much worse and i'm feeling just 'not right'. so much so i may even go to the comedy that is the gp. who will say something post viral, then i'll have to go back to work, take my own bloods and start from there.

anyway that could all get me down, esp as this afternoon it's actually sunny so i should really be on the bike but, as it is, i make a foray into the garden. which is blooming. i should take pictures and maybe later i shall. vegetables are growing out of the ground and we are eating them. it seems somehow magical.

i fiddle about with herbs and cold frames, replant some tomatoes. one side of the front of the house is full of trees, gages, bays and a lilac, so that i can sit down among them and the world recedes. our campaign to get bees in the garden has been so successful we're convinced there's a bumble bee nest in the fuchsia. the beans and peas are growing like they've a mind of their own.

shortly we (or rather the man i'm going to pay) is going to dig most of the rest fo the back garden up so we can plant even more fruit bushes and the likes. i can hardly wait. it turns out that the garden activity and its effect on the neighbours - not speaking to us, snidey comments, strife - is nothing new tho i'm hoping that amy's experience will be shared by us and people will engage at some point. we share plants with some other people down the road so we're hoping they'll be by soon so they can help us enthuse over our sweet pea hedge.

gardening enthusiasm was tempered somewhat by the news this week that the bbc is going to sell the blue peter garden and replace it with a virtual one. what a bag of arse. while they'll obviously have to be moving property to do away entirely with a garden constructed for children, particularly given the flabby state of the nation's offspring, and to replace it for yet another opportunity to flob in front of a computer seems particularly stupid. i am with brillat-savarin when he says le destinee de nations depend de la maniere dontelles se nourrissent. i suspect however that the health bit of all this will be overlooked by the daily mail types of this world and they'll demand it be preserved as part of the nation's heritage rather than just built elsewhere, bigger and better. I should take a picture of the kids garden down the road at the primary school and send it to the bbc tho i'd probably end up getting arrested.

the wee untalkative lassie next door is obviously interested in the garden. does she even realise she can eat these plants? has she ever eaten berries off the bush? i doubt it. her mother refused all the bulbs we offered her and when she was given sunflowers to take home from school sneaked out at night to chop them down with scissors because she 'couldn't be bothered'. shameful. our response? a wall of sunflowers

so i guess it's never just about sitting in the garden even when it is. i wish i had a normal job where i could actually see my mates and they could give me a hard time about the plant growing instead of drinking myself senseless and despite not speaking to them i sometimes find myself wishing my parents could visit but the likelihood of that is about as much of the likelihood of me being out on the bike today. and i miss the lolling when t's there and i can adopt a more supervisory role. but maybe that's the advantage of being post viral. i can sit in the sun in between the rain, try to finish proust but really think about bachelard again, listen to the leaves rustle, the bees, let my eyes droop and enter the land of reverie

and in the garden...

revenge on the lawn and other (petty) vengeances

perhaps i should include mowing in the warm down routine of cycling. or perhaps i shouldn't. today i do and it's another hour or so of emotional deadness spared only by my leaving clumps of wild grass to annoy the neighbours with.

it strikes me that in amongst the clamour for energy saving in this time of climate change something is missing. how much energy do we expend on our little squares of green, our tonsured, billiard smooth lawns? too much surely. i blame the english and the french (i could construct an argument as to why but i haven't the breath).

near where i live there's a roundabout unremarkable for anything except that it's been seeded with a profusion of wildflowers and is currently a riot of colour. in a town marked (and given prizes for) its overly ornate, immaculately maintained yet still horrendous victorian style horticulture his roundabout is a corner (sic) of delight. i propose a campaign to eradicate the lawn, to replace it with the meadow, planted yes, but then left to its own devices. i propose that all government funding for horticulture, outside of historic gardens and playing fields, should immediately be cut and those areas left to become more biodiverse. those wishing to maintain their gardens as they are should be discouraged, even taxed, in favour of wild gardens or areas that actually produce food (hurrah for permaculture)

tear hanging baskets from public buildings, kick down the manicured hedges, flamethrower all fences. don't like urban graffiti - let the ivy do its work. as the weeds reclaim our cities i guarantee a more chilled out populace, free from the electronic whine of mowers, strimmers, where people travel by bike and prefer, instead of wasting in front of the TV, to lie back in the wild grasses, read a book or maybe even just look at the clouds

lawns. i hate them. yes, i do

i triumph over nature

the bikes may be lying idle in the shed and exercise limited to brief two minute sessions on the trainer but today i bite the bullet and venture into the untamed wilderness that is my garden.

yet within minutes my neighbour comes out also to tend to his snooker table perfect lawn. i attempt to make small talk. i am rebuffed. i can almost feel the curtain twitching two doors along. it's no challenge when it's short i say. with a smirk. as i combat the lush foliage he gives up on the non-mowing and instead adopts the high pitched whine of the strimmer, attending to invisible tufts of grass with all the attentiveness of someone with an obsessive compulsive disorder. in the end i can take it no longer and succumb to his pettiness, giving up the mowing right next to his geometric border, great tufts and hussocks of untamed grass, ragged edges, seed heads nodding in the wind.

frailty thy name is woman wrote shakespeare who obviously lived in a time before he'd seen a man and his lawnmower

mowing

what is it with the british and their lawns? outside of the diaspora, does this happen elsewhere? i can't bring to mind anywhere, although i'm prepared to concede i'm actively blotting out the memory. i should know something of how all this came about, courtesy of the superlative jenny uglow but i have to confess i've retained nothing

currently my garden looks like a summer meadow, criss crossed by the pathways and nesting places of the neighboorhood cats, but the weight of social disapproval is upon me so i have to go and get the lawnmower and, once again, cut it back to the roots