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Archive for May, 2010

Vicarage Bluebells

Posted in Garden, tagged , , , , on 10 May, 2010| 8 Comments »

We recently went to visit the Engineer’s godmother on her family farm. We had a lovely walk up to a little wood where there are beautiful bluebells growing wild. She tells me that there are two types of bluebell that grow in the UK – wild English bluebells that are protected and special and Spanish incomer bluebells that are driving the genuine article out. A bit like grey squirrels, I guess.

Since we have bluebells in our Vicarage garden I then wanted to work out which ones we have. Since not all are blue (we also have whitebells and lilacbells) I suspect they are the Spanish variety. What do you think?

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The Vicarage Garden goes Edible

Posted in Garden, tagged , , , , , , , on 6 May, 2010| 8 Comments »

It’s our second spring in the Vicarage and this year I am planning vegetables. I’ve been inspired by Alys Fowler and her Edible Garden series on BBC2 (tho’ I’ve not watched as much of it as I’d like due to a lack of tv licence and running out of broadband download). I would like her hair, dresses and funny little dog. And garden, obviously.

Only a few plants were munched by the evil slugs...

So far I have planted masses of seeds in a plastic greenhouse (see pics) and fended off a some evil slugs who had a chomp when the first rain arrived after planting. I have ordered the Vicar about with a spade and he has kindly dug up small parts of a couple of our massive herbaceous borders so I have veggie space. He also planted out the sweet pea plants I succumbed to in the garden centre.

Normally he is the gardener and has managed a couple of allotments in our time in Vicar college and in curacy. Now he is generally too busy to do much gardening and has said that I have to be in charge. This is a new experience for me (in the garden, at least).

Since I’m so bad at housework, gardening has always seemed like an excessive luxury. Why tidy the garden when the house is such a mess? But I’m desperate for home-grown veggies so am attempting to do some growing this year. Hopefully with some help from my husband, who actually enjoys gardening when he’s out there. The kids love it as well, the Queen in particular. She’s in the school ‘EcoClub’ and spends almost every lunchtime gardening in the school’s new allotment.

Waiting in the ‘greenhouse’ for planting out I currently have the following:

  • Sweetcorn
  • Radishes
  • Mixed salad leaves
  • Broad beans
  • Runner beans
  • Sugar snap peas
  • Courgettes
  • Sunflowers
  • Er…I think that’s it just now

Our main veggie space for this season - starting small

Planting out is this weekend’s project. And fighting the slugs. Three little ones climbed into the greenhouse just after planting and sampled a good few of my germinating plants. Evil blighters. We moved the greenhouse out of the long grass and surrounded it with ash from the fire, which seems to have kept them off so far. The advice for planting out is used coffee grounds to keep them off. So I’m tanking myself up on caffeine for Saturday…

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The Joker – A self portrait

Posted in Family, Fun, tagged , , , , , , on 5 May, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Sorry about the lack of posting of late. Today I thought I’d check through my recent photos to prompt some of the creativity that’s been lacking. And I found all sorts of alien shots which indicate that persons other than myself have been out and about with my Fuji FinePix.

So I offer you one of them today, cleverly taken in the mirror in the hall:

Smug or cheeky… or both?

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