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Gardening

Milo

Karen and I went to the awesome Hare Hatch Sheeplands on Saturday, this time to buy some fruit bushes for the allotment. Bernard fell asleep in the car on the way over.

*What’s the plan?* I asked.

“You’re going to stay in the car while I go and buy the fruit bushes. I’m being decisive, for once. I hope you like it.”

*I do like it. Feel free to buy me some nougat from the farm shop.* I said, while I pulled into a parking space.

She made it clear that this was not going to happen.

So I sat in the car, listening to Jonathan Ross, with Bernard snoozing in the back. Some time later, she returned.

“I brought you something.”

Milo

Meet Milo. The name owes its existence to a terrible, terrible pun.

More context.

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Gardening Photos

Fork

fork

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Gardening Photos

Hey, Free Rhubarb!

hey, free rhubarb!

The *Hey, Free Rhubarb!* as mentioned before.

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Gardening Photos

Jade plant

Jade plant

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About Me Gaming Gardening IAMOWIM Meander Music Parenting

Busy week

It’s been a busy week, which is why things have been quiet round here. Here’s what’s been going down.

Allotment

Karen and I have spent a lot of time on the allotment. Whereas it did look like this, it now looks like this:

allotment

We’ve cleared a lot of brambles, dismantled the rotted cold frame, had a big bonfire, and put some carpet down to suppress weeds. We also found some rhubarb of the variety *Hey, Free Rhubarb!* and planted it in an appropriate location. It’s progress, definitely.

My first MP3 player

On Wednesday I got my first ever MP3 player. As you can see, I’m right on the cutting edge here.

It’s not even a state-of-the-art device. It’s a Creative Zen Stone, a little thing with 2 GB of storage and no LCD display. For £30, you can’t go far wrong. I also got a little FM transmitter so that I can play it through my car stereo, which is now over 5 years old.

Electrocuting myself

While investigating a faulty kitchen light, I think that I may have accidentally electrocuted myself. I have a small blister on my thumb, and one on my forefinger, where I pinched a screw. As far as I can see, it’s not radiating heat, so electrocution seems the likely candidate. In hindsight, it should have been obvious that said screw would be live.

Playing Tomb Raider

I rented Tomb Raider Anniversary for a week. I played the original, many years ago, and it’s interesting to see what has been added and what has been taken away. I’ve bought a second hand copy so that I can complete it at my leisure.

Teaching Bernard to spell his name

Not putting too much pressure on him at this early stage, obviously, but it does yield such gems as this one:

Bernard: “R”
Me: “No, that’s not an ‘r’, it’s an ‘n’.”
Bernard: “Buck, buck.”
Me: “Heh, not ‘hen’. ‘N’.”

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Gardening Stunt 2007

The blackberries are already thriving

*This is a companion piece to a similarly-themed article on Karen’s site which, all things being equal, should be published at roughly the same time.*

We’re getting an allotment!

My role in this project is very much as hired muscle. I think it’s going to be up to me to do all the digging and clearing and other manual labour. Hopefully this means that Karen will be the Weed Queen and keep all of that stuff in check.

Since uniting with Karen, I don’t really do much cooking, it’s true. I’m not a completely incapable cook, and if she went away for a while I am sure that I’d be able to pick up where I left off. But in the absence of such a situation, we have a mutually beneficial arrangement. I haven’t had to do much cooking for the last 3 years, and she has rarely had to touch a vacuum cleaner. I mop floors, do all the car admin, get the TV license, take the bin bags out on Mondays, trim the ivy, make the bed and keep her WordPress installation up to date, she does the laundry and grocery shopping. We’re both happy with the division of labour.

So when it comes to deciding what to grow at the allotment, I have to defer to her. And if she asks me what I think we should do, I’ll give her my ideas (Hey! How about we plant everything *diagonally*?!?!?! ((yes, I really did make this suggestion)) ) and she’ll smile politely, somewhat condescendingly, and ignore my stupid ideas. Because, truth be told, I’m like the three year old with a plastic hammer who is “helping” his dad to put up a fence.

But what I do know for certain is that we need a shed. A huge great big shed, mounted on stilts, in case it rains.

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Gardening

The decline of Snappy

Regular readers will be familiar with Snappy, the venus fly trap that I have been nurturing for the last two years.

This afternoon, Karen and I were in the conservatory, pouring wormery juice onto the plants therein. She looked out into the garden.

“Is that Snappy’s pot, out there on the table?”

I followed her line of sight.

Oh God no. Please, no. Shit.

Snappy must have been out there for a few weeks, because he was well and truly drowned. Now, I know that they can survive underwater for months at a time, but we’ve also had a few frosts in recent weeks, which can’t have done him any good. He’s not looking well. Not at all. I think that this is the end.

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Critters Gardening

Snail

Snail

I love taking photos of snails. Can’t stand slugs though. Ugh. Slugs.

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Critters Gardening Top Photos

Baby Pirates

Cryptolaemus larva

Since introducing Cryptolaemus and Leptomastix to my conservatory three weeks ago I have been fretting constantly. The problem is that after releasing 9 of the former and about 50 of the latter into the room, they dispersed rapidly, and I didn’t really see much of them after that. I was worried that they had all disappeared entirely, either by finding a fissure somewhere that leads to the outside world, or at the hands of some unknown predator (eg a spider).

You can imagine my elation this morning when I spotted three or four of these creatures meandering amongst the mealybugs. A quick google confirmed my suspicion – they are Crypto babies!

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Gardening

I am a failure, and I can’t deny it any longer

All winter long, I yearned for summer. For all the usual reasons, but also because we’d just moved into a new house and I was looking forward to getting out there and spending lots of time tending our fantastic new garden.

Things didn’t exactly turn out as planned. I was doing okay for a little while, and I even did a bit of fence maintenance, but on the whole, things haven’t progressed perfectly smoothly. Let’s compare what I have and haven’t done, shall we?

Have done

* Dead-headed all the roses (mostly)
* Repaired a couple of fences
* Kept the place clear of Japanese Knotweed (mostly)
* Kept the paths clear of overhanging branches (mostly)

Haven’t done

* Replaced the rotten planks in the gazebo
* Severed the thick trunk of the wisteria that is currently prising my gazebo apart
* Kept the gravel free of weeds
* Kept the borders free of weeds
* Fixed the water feature
* Removed lots of dead branches ((there are lots of places where plants have been cut off at the base as a drastic pruning method, but the dead stems have not yet been removed. It is not a trivial task, as they are tangled up with the roses etc))
* Pruned the wisteria properly (should have done that in July)
* Replaced the rotten garden chair
* Disposed of an old fence post

In summary, my garden terrifies me. It is an oppressive force in my life which I try to forget about whenever possible.

The problem is that it used to be such a nice garden 12 months ago, before we moved in. I was really looking forward to maintaining it at the same level. But I have been unable to, and I have found myself in a downward spiral where my fear of “ruining” it has prevented me from being as assertive as I should have been. Plus, I’m also quite lazy, when all is said and done.

As I see it, I have a couple of options.

1. Hire someone to come in and do the work. A gardener, if you will.
2. Cut everything back down to ground level with a chainsaw and see what survives.
3. Napalm.
4. Combination of chainsaw and napalm, because they’re both awesome, and I can’t choose between them.

What are your thoughts? Graybo, you must be around here somewhere. Tell me what to do.