Serendipity

New year, new update

And it's February, it's freezing and hopefully all the bugs have died. As soon as it warms up I'm going to start clearing and cleaning. I am currently planning what is going where and preparing myself for the big dig.
The plan is to take out the corrugated iron that is currently serving as the raised bed and replace it with sidings. unfortunately that means I have to dig a trench for a foundation which is going to need to be about a foot and half deep and about 20 feet long. I am going to be in so much pain

New Year, more digging

January was a complete washout as far as gardening went.

It was just too cold to do anything apart from sit indoors,

knit and make hearty soups.  On the bright side, the fact

it went below zero for several nights means that the bugs

should have died.  And there were always seed catalogues.

Now that the weather has warmed up a little, it was time 

to prepare all the vegetable beds.  This involved emptying

the compost bins and digging it all in.  I'm in the process

of raising one side of the garden so ended up shifting about

2 tons of dirt from one side to the other.  It's taken more or

less two weeks, (with breaks to lie on heat pads and groan).

During that time, Mina cut the blackberries back hard, and

hacked the living daylights out of the grapevine.

But now it is done.  All I have to do now is get pallets to 

create a larger compost area.  Finish digging up the 

blackcurrant bushes (they haven't produced for 2 years and

I don't actually like them that much anyway) and cover 

everything with black weed suppressant fabric.

THEN... I can start germinating.    I've already got

potatoes chitting in the shed and the asparagus

bed prepped.    March 9/10, two days before the 

full moon and everything is going in.

i don't know if it will work, but I'm going to try it this

year and see.

biodynamic agriculture

Moon planting

Planting by the moon, bright idea or lunacy

Maintenance

Well we finally had a good couple of days and I've spent it mainly hacking 

back the raspberries, digging over the spinach bed and planting the spinach.

That and bidding for 250m of horticultural fleece on ebay.  I'm not sure what I'll 

do with it all, but I'm sure it'll come in handy.

The upside of all the gardening is that my writers block has eased and I'm 

finally able to write something on the book. I signed up for NaNoWriMo, as I 

thought it would give me a kick up the rear to start writing instead of researching.  

Turns out I need to do more research.  But the characters started flowing this 

afternoon, so I'm just going to go with it and correct anything egregiously wrong 

in December.

Mixed lettuce

That is a collection of salad leaves.  Green Salad Bowl, Marvel of Four Season, Lambs Lettuce, Red

Cos and Little Gem.

 

Don't ask

It's been one of those summers.  We're not going to mention the garden where it did nothing but rain. 
Or the house, where the upstairs shower leaked into my bedroom.  Or the kitchen where the top floor flat
leaked down and shorted out all the circuits.  I'm seeing a water theme here and I'm really over it.

On the upside, I'm back blogging again.

Yay for autumn

Orchids from the Keukenhof

This is a group of pictures taken at the Beatrix pavilion, Keukenhof Gardens.

And  more.

And one more.

Cymbidium Alice Anderson 3

Keukenhof

We went to the  Keukenhof Gardens Via train to Schiphol and then a half hour or so
bus ride.  It had been a littledrizzly and we were worried that it would be raining, but we
got off the bus to clear blue skies.  Went to the cafe by the entrance for Pofferjies
(little puffy pancakes covered with sugar) which ticked off another thing in the list of food
to eat while in the Netherlands.  Thus fortified we started walking.  The gardens cover 70
acres with lots of pathways and formal beds planted with bulbs supplied by various bulb
companies.  There are also pavilions named after members of the Dutch Royal family
which have exhibitions of different types of flower and shops which sell bulbs.

The Nature Garden was a criss cross of walkways over a stream with a pebble beds and
a small waterfall.

Then we walked a bit more past solid plantings

We were there early in the season and it's been a cold spring so a lot of the plants were not
fully up.  The planting below will be blue instead of green and look like a stream flowing
through the yellow.

Then we hit the Beatrix pavilion where the orchids were on show. 
I'll do another post of just orchids later.

More walking along more plantings and there were places to sit and contemplate  

Then...TAdaaaaaaaa

Windmill

I was so happy, I snickered to myself for a good half an hour.
This was one of the neat little seating areas, very zen

Keukenhof seats

Starting to fade a little we headed for the Willem Alexander pavilion and BULBS
Again, I'll do individual shots in another post, this is just to give an idea of the size --
it was Enormous.

Dubbele Vroege T Monsella

Dubbelle Vroege T Flashpoint

Gefrangerde T Valery Gergiev

Gefranjerde T Mon Amour

Gefranjerde T Queensland

Completely flowered out at this point, we went for a drink and map consultation
and decided to skip the Oranje Nassau pavilion.

We headed towards the Historic Gardens

And then headed for the exit.  There is a permanent art exhibition with sculptures
dotted all over the grounds and this one we really liked.

On the way out was this rather funky water feature

Fountain

And this

Organ

It was a lovely old fashioned barrel organ which was playing an oompah
version of the Scissor Sisters "I don't feel like dancin". 

Amsterdam

As a present to ourselves, Mina and I went to Amsterdam at the end of March.
Weatherwise it wasn't such a good thing as it was still quite cold and damp, but
as we were inside for large chunks of the time it wasn't too bad.
We arrived on Sunday night, after going through the security theatre that even
provincial airports (Exeter) feel the need to play to reassure people they're not going to
be blown up.  The plane itself was a tin can with tiny seats and no air, which reminded me of
why I don't travel much anymore.
 
Arriving at  Schiphol was a pleasant entry into the sane normality the Dutch do so well.
We booked our tickets for the Keukenhof, bought the I-Amsterdam card
(combined entry into museums and travelcard) and return train tickets to the airport and
hoicked off to Centraal station.  Got a taxi to our hotel, Hotel de Lantaerne
dropped off our bags and boosted out for something to eat.  This is when it all started to go horribly wrong.
I'd researched places to eat within distance of our hotel, but we took a wrong turn out and missed
the junction.  By the time we had gone round in a circle and found the main drag we were homicidal
with hunger.  Fortunately the BOJO  restaurant had rapid service and we were given large portions of
noodles, meat and sauce. 

Sated, knackered and ready to fall over, we headed back to the hotel. Or so we thought.
In daylight, the route is nice and clear, in the evening with all of the streetlights
having light saving bulbs in which made everything really dim and maps completely unreadable
we got lost.  About two hours later, we found our hotel and realised why the guidebook had made
no sense.

Hotelview1

See the pretty bridge, see the way the bridge doesn't go across to the hotel, see the hotel in a
dead end.  We didn't.  In broad daylight, it's nice and clear --  at night, not so much.  To get to the
hotel from Leidsestraat you have to cross a bridge, walk along on the other side of the canal from
your hotel and then cross another bridge back over to get to it.  This was not that clear on the map.
After that, we didn't get lost at all :)
the big blue and orange houseboat is an extension of the police station

Policeextension

Monday we went to the  Rijksmuseum .  They've closed most of it for renovations and just have an
exhibition about the foundation, history and artistic glories of The Netherlands.  The curator of the
exhibition seemed to have a very dry sense of humour, some of the cards next to items were very
interestingly phrased.  I've been to the Rijksmuseum before and found that the closure of most of it
was a good thing as it's impossible to do the whole building without totally overloading your senses. 
This was a good way of seeing the high points without mentally melting down.  Seeing history from
another perspective was also interesting as the UK and NE have warred and traded together for
over 400 years.

After that overdose of Culture, we went for a  Canalboat Tour .  The recorded tourguide covered the
history of the canals and Amsterdam whilst travelling along a lot of water, and going right outside the
outer ring into the mouth of the Amstel past Centraal station and back into the city again.
It was an amazingly touristy thing to do, but it gave a completely different perspective to the city.

In the evening, we hooked up with friends ( Regina, Harm and Mark) and went to a tapas restaurant
 Brasserie "De Kelderhof"

Tapas1

where we managed to work our way through most of the menu.  It had a very funky ladies room with
cloth hand towels which you threw into a basket when done.  Afterwards we went to the Cafe Americain
in the American Hotel for hot chocolate with piles of whipped cream.  

Tuesday We started by walking to the Bloemarkt   which was an overload of flowers and bulbs. 
By the time we'd walked halfway down we were overwhelmed with choice and finally just bought
a couple of bulbs.

Bloemarkt

We went to the Hermitage  satellite which had an exhibition of Art Nouveau under the last Tsars
which was fab.  Glass, worked crystal and really amazing woodworking. It had a lot of Daum and
Galle and some examples of work by Tiffany, Lalique and Fabergé.
The parrot is the ancestor of every flying duck in interior decor.

Parrot3

After that, we went to a chinese  Nam Tin  for Dim Sum.  They were fine, but the service was appalling.
We figured that they feel that they'll never see us again so who cares, which was fine ten years ago
but is a bit of a mistake in the internet age as I'll be mentioning it in my review on Virtual Tourist which should have
a knock on effect as others are mentioning the same thing.  After that we walked up to the Westermarkt and then walked back to our hotel.

Completely whipped, we ate at the tapas place again and then went to bed early.

Wednesday we went to the Keukenhof.  it was drizzly when we left and I was a little twitchy that it
would be raining when we got there.  Nope.  The sun shone, we had pofferjies at one of the cafes and then
we walked, took photos and went ooooh a lot.  The next post will cover what we saw.

Flowered out, we went back to Amsterdam, found the Pancake Bakery and had pancakes. 
Stopped off to see Regina, walked back along the Prinsengracht, took some photos and then went
back to the hotel to pack.

Thursday am we dropped our cases at the left luggage at Centraal and then went for another walk
along the canals.  We stopped in at the Tulip Museum and bought a couple of Amaryllis bulbs, had another hot chocolate, and then walked some more.  We had to have covered about seven miles a day, but it was so easy because its so wonderfully flat--especially compare to Torquay, the town of seven hills :)

Then we went to Schiphol, sane security procedures except that I had my brand new water bottle confiscated because it wasn't in a sealed bag, but at least we didn't have to take off our shoes, jacket and empty our pockets.  Arrived back home, totally knackered and promptly went down with a virus which we probably caught on the plane.  I started feeling sniffly on the friday and by Saturday was in bed with a temperature and Mina going haa, this is what happens when you don't take vitamins.  Two days later, she went down with it too.  We've spent the last two weeks feeling like crap which is why this post is delayed.  But we're better now.
 

Mine all mine

Ah Easter Sunday.  A day when the bunny brings eggs: ).  It's another co-option of a pagan tradition by the Christian church, but fine by me.
Easter tradition

This is my booty. 

I had a creme egg for breakfast this am and nearly went into sugar shock.  I think they're sweeter this year.

Close isobars

BBC NEWS | In Pictures | Your pictures of the UK storms

http://news.bbc.c...

storm pictures

Well, that's what the weatherbod is blaming the storms on.  80mph gusts of wind making spooky whooo noises outside the window and the rain coming down sideways.  I didn't have to leave the house today, so have spent it inside
watching updates drinking hot chocolate and feeling grateful that I'm not out there.

I am not taking this as a portent for the summer! 

I haven't been updating this...

I haven't been updating this blog as I basically gave up in disgust in July
due to all the rain we had last year.  It didn't give anything a chance to grow without
going mouldy and my tomatoes got blight.  I was overcome with despair and thought, stuff it.

Then all the magazines doing their end of the year roundups had all the professional gardeners
moaning about how bad it had been and I figured that if the BBC gardeners got blight it wasn't just me and I
should have another go.  I've been working my way through a xmas present Vegetables in a
Small Garden and I've had a wonderful time with the seed catalogues  :)

RHS Vegetables in a Small Garden: Simple Steps to Success (RHS)

The last two months have been spent digging bits over, adding compost and digging again.  Didn't see the point of blogging it--mud is not all that attractive to photo.  My beds are now covered in black plastic waiting for the weather to warm up, the raspberries have been cut back hard, I've cleaned out the greenhouse and...TADAAA
I planted some seeds today.

Windowsill

I have some on the windowsill in pure vermiculite --
Tomato tumbling tom
Broad Bean bunyards exhibition
Dwarf Bean tasman
Sweet Pea high scent cream




And some in the greenhouse in a mixture of john innes no 2 and vermiculite

Greenhouse1

Lettuces -- red salad bowl, mikola, little gem, chartwell romaine, winter density
cos, besson rouge.
Tomato balconi yellow for the hanging baskets
Flowers -- Escholzia (californian poppy), Coleus rainbow mixed, Nemesia
carnival mixed, Pansy black beauty.

We cheated a bit at the garden centre and bought some plug plants.  Petunias, Diascias, Lobelia string of pearls, Broad Bean aquadulce and Marigolds.  I have never had any luck getting lobelias to germinate so no problems buying them in.  I'll start some more Marigolds but I wanted a head start as companion planting around the beans

Greenhouse2

I keep having to remind myself it's only just March and there's no heat in the green house.
Easter weekend will be the big seed planting blowout. 

Weekend update

Well it finally stopped raining and we had a chance to go out into the garden, harvest the peas and beans and cut back the ever encroaching convulus. 

Beansnpeasharvest

The lettuces were starting to get water logged so I did a big harvest, and handed them out.  Next door came over to cut back his trees which were overhanging the fence so we gave him a big colander full and then the tenants came home so we gave them a bagful each, which hasn't really made a dent in the grown ones.   I planted lollo rosso in the small bed and filled in where I'd taken stuff out.  The greenhouse is still full -- I have another thirty or so little gem, fifteen Mikola and about twenty mixed lettuce ready to go out in about a week--aaargh. 

Lollo rossa seedlings

And we have potatoes!!!!.  You are supposed to wait three weeks after they flower before harvesting, so that puts it at the end of July before we can eat them.

Potatoes in flower