Bzzzz August 2nd, 2015

It is before 6 a.m. on a Saturday morning. As I do every morning I stepped on the bathroom scale and then looked in the mirror. On some mornings the news is worse than others. Today was a bad news day. I know the 2 and 4 a.m. moonlight walks with a diarrheal dog didn’t help how I looked. And I gained two pounds overnight.

sarah on black rug

Poor little dog post-bath.

At that moment the thought occurred to me that I may be on the downhill side of life. And what’s weird is that I can’t even remember becoming a grownup. I mean, I still find myself wondering what I want to be when I grow up. I still get these ideas that I can pursue all sorts of careers and passions.

“I want to be a professional figure skater!”

“I’m going to start a rock-and-roll girl band!”

“I think I would make a really good private detective!”

“I know! I’ll go to medical school!”

Reality intrudes most days. The fact is that I have a house with a big yard and garden. I have three cars, two dogs, eight pet chickens, progressive lenses, 27 magazine and two newspaper subscriptions and four sets of dinnerware.

Yes, in fact, I do call it dinnerware. When was the last time you heard someone other than a grownup say the word “dinnerware?” Never, that’s when.

The sad fact is, the train has left the station on my being a figure-skating-rock-and-roll-private-detective-doctor.

I’m not going to reveal my age, so let’s just say I’m past the age at which someone would consider me to be a kid. I know, for example, that you would look at me and think “Yup, she’s a grownup.” And the signs are all there.

I know I’m a grownup because I’m the one who cleans up the dog vomit at 4 a.m.

I know I’m a grownup because wearing a string bikini is no longer an option. (You’re welcome.)

I know I’m a grownup because I sometimes turn on closed captioning to watch True Detective.

I know I’m a grownup because I have a reminder on my calendar to change the heating and air conditioning air filters on the first of the month. It’s a paper calendar.

I know I’m a grownup when I hear rap music.

And weeds. Weeds make me know I’m definitely a grownup. No child voluntarily weeds. But here I am, a grownup, wide awake before 6 a.m. on a Saturday morning with the great big to-do list sitting on the kitchen counter that says in big capital letters “PULL WEEDS.”

Oh yes. I have grownup written all over me. I think I have a t-shirt in the back of my closet that says “Keep Calm. I’m a Grownup.”

You know what? Even if I’m a grownup I should do something to make weeding fun—or at least make weeding funny.

Two weeds walk into a bar…

prostrate spurge

prostrate spurge

Hey, I think this funny weed idea has legs. Already we have some funny weed names. Quakgrass. Nutgrass. Prostrate spurge. Creeping Charlie. Pigweed. Henbit. Hairy bittercress. I know someone was poking fun when they were naming these things.

What else can make weeds funny? Limericks. Limericks are funny.

There once was a gardener in Maine

Who set out to kill the purslane.

Instead of a weed she killed her best steed.

And now she’s considered insane.

No wait. That’s not funny at all. Let’s try again.

There once was a gardener in Beed

Who set out to kill a big weed.

Instead of a hoe he used his big toe

And now the whole garden’s weed seed.

Hummmm. Maybe this better?

There once was a gardener named Cass

Who set out to kill some quakgrass.

Instead of a hoe she used her big toe

Of course she is now on her ass.

Oh well. Time to go be a grownup, drink coffee and pull some weeds.

Now let’s see…two weeds walk into a bar…

Posted In: Gardening Life, Humor

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Bzzzz July 23rd, 2015

Unless you count the jungle of house plants in my childhood and later college dorm rooms, I started gardening as a vegetable gardener rather than a flower or ornamentals gardener. After all, I do love food. I also come from a family in which practical and useful activities—such as fixing your own car, building a shed or growing your own food—are highly valued.

But even more than that, the intellectual part of me understands that food is grown from the ground thanks to the combination of sun, soil and rain. The romantic part of me, on the other hand, thinks that growing vegetables, herbs and fruits is somehow magic. When I grow a tomato, I can marvel at it for quite a long time before I get around to sinking my teeth into it. The cucumbers I pickle are more than mere jars of food. They are the product of my ability to do magic—to make something from practically nothing.

Down Place Greenhouse

Greenhouse at Down Place

Unlike some of my gardening friends, I have not had the advantage of a garden mentor—a parent or grandparent to show me how to stake tomatoes, wrangle rangy strawberry plants or identify which end of the bulb goes up. I have learned about gardening largely from reading books and killing plants. So when I digress from my reporting of my Big Fat English Garden Vacation to sneak behind the hedge and look at the little greenhouses and poke among the uneven rows of nursery pots, just understand that I’m still trying to figure out this whole gardening business. Part of me still believes that if I can just see how these incredible gardeners do things behind the scenes I may learn some secrets that will help transform my own garden into some version of the English ideal. For me, it’s like sneaking behind the magician’s curtain.

So let me tell you about a few of the things I saw there behind the hedge.

In many American gardens I have visited, there is no obvious place where gardeners start and nurture plants before setting them into the ground or potting them up into a pretty container. In some American gardens it looks as if every flower and shrub comes straight from the nursery and gets plopped right into a hole waiting for it to arrive. In others there is a little stash of plants in nursery pots that look shoved behind a garage or under a deck in the hurry to tidy up for visitors. But I haven’t seen a lot of potting benches and even fewer greenhouses.

greenhouse at The Grange

 

greenhouse at Old Erringham Cottage

In contrast, every garden we visited on my recent English garden tour has a place tucked out of sight and around a corner to propagate plants. At one small town garden we visited the gardeners only had space for a small coldframe, but most gardens had at least a small greenhouse.

As you can imagine, a few of the greenhouses were picturesque or even architectural showcases in themselves. But surprisingly, most of the greenhouses I saw—even on the grand estates—were smallish, economical and utilitarian structures. Some were well-swept, quite tidy and visitor-ready, but others were a little bit messy. Oh they weren’t oh-my-god messy, just the kind of messy that happens when there is work in progress. Many times it looked as if the gardener had just stepped away from the potting bench for a cup of tea.

garden work area2

A few of the greenhouses housed tomatoes and cucumbers. If, like me, you are a vegetable gardener then you know that tomatoes and cucumbers like the warm summer weather that we have here in most of the U.S. I suppose the comparatively cool British summers aren’t all that conducive to growing these warmth-loving veggies in the open air, so they become coddled indoor veggies in the U.K.

Some of the greenhouses still had seed starting operations in progress while others had been mostly emptied out by the time we visited in mid-June. A good number of them seemed to have long-term plant boarders on the greenhouse shelves. One greenhouse even had a grape vine as thick as my arm growing through the potting bench, up the wall and covering the ceiling.

vine in greenhouse

Near the greenhouse there were the inevitable compost bins. As with the greenhouses, some were magazine-worthy (for a certain type of magazine anyway) while others were no more glamorous than layered yard waste, but they all had a compost operation going on.

When we asked the gardeners about whether they fertilize, even single gardener said, “Yes!” A couple of gardeners mentioned special tomato food. But most often they mentioned the liberal use of fish, blood and bone. In fact, I saw containers of fish, blood and bone fertilizer in a couple of the work sheds. When I returned home and Googled around to learn about similar fertilizer combinations here in the U.S., there were none. Strangely enough I did find a Miracle Grow (of all companies!) fish, blood and bone fertilizer available in the U.K.

fish blood and bone

Another thing I noticed in the greenhouses were plenty of terra cotta pots, although I didn’t see many actually put to use. The nursery plants were all in those ubiquitous black nursery pots–nothing at all fancy about that.

Potting Shed

Invariably, tools were carefully organized and well-maintained. There was no putting away a dirty shovel or hoe in these English gardens. I can’t say if they were regularly sharpened, but I’m willing to bet that they were and that the frugal Brits know the value of tool maintenance.

tool garage

Birds must be a major problem for gardeners growing berries and currants. But rather than tossing on a stiff (and often tangled) black plastic net like I do here in my garden, nearly all the fruiting plants were caged in proper, neatly constructed chicken wire houses, complete with little doors and sometimes with raised beds. It’s obviously working for them because the currents were gorgeous. We were there almost at peak picking time.

red currents

Berry house at Nyewood House

Come to think of it, the gardeners may have had their fruits protected to keep visitors like me from gobbling them right there by the bush. I mean, I had never had a gooseberry before. When no one was looking I picked and gobbled the first unprotected gooseberry I came across in one of the fancy gardens! Have you had one? It’s an interesting texture and a bit tart. But tasty. I can definitely see making gooseberry jam.

I have plenty of gorgeous photos of the actual gardens. I took 1,977 photos during my week-long tour, so it’s taking me a while to figure out how to share them. Check back!

A note about the photos: I haven’t identified the location of most of these photos. There is certainly nothing shameful about well-organized tools or greenhouses. But these photos are certainly not representative of the beautiful gardens we saw, so I’ll wait to identify the gardens with the pretty photos–to come.

You can read more about my Big Fat English Garden Vacation at:

About Those English Gardens

Did you enjoy this post? Please leave me a comment! I love to hear from readers.

 

 

Posted In: Gardening, Travel

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