Weather gods

The weather gods were clearly paying attention.

Not half an hour after the fruit trees were settled in yesterday, it started to snow.  Not settling snow by any means, but those big white flakes that look pretty.

I clearly do have some impact with the weather.  Usually inconveniently, I must admit.  Once the grass starts growing, I only have to think about mowing the lawn and clouds will gather to chuck rain all over it.  Anyone in possession of a lawn will know that mowing when wet leads to backache and ripped turf.  Hence the hayfield we often have instead of neatly cut grass.

This time, however, I can feel suitably smug.

In the nick of time

Just, just got the fruit trees in on time.

Planted this morning as sleet fell.

A braeburn, a bramley and my longed-for humbug pear have all been bedded down in well dug soil, primed with the world's stinkiest manure.

Roses pruned.  Clothes changed (as it seems unfair to the Twelfth Night cast to have to be enthusiastic about a Maria sporting eau de manure).

Note to weather gods:  you may now snow.

Suddenly it's summer

It's very odd.  The last couple of days have been warm.  Really warm, as in teeshirt weather even for the non-hardy.  The qualification is necessary as we live in the tough north and for a lot of the population even a blizzard doesn't stop them from wearing midriff-baring tops.  What is even more bizarre is that I've been hearing fairly consistent rumours that October (due to arrive tomorrow) is scheduled for snow.  Mother Nature is playing some pretty strange games.

Friday sees me driving up the A66 to Bowes where I run the Drama Club and will shortly be beginning work on the nativity play (and I'm not going to whine about that until I have to).  Normally Bowes is the last bastion of wind-chill.  Anything resembling wind, rain, snow or frost hits it incredibly hard even when the rest of the county is reasonably unaffected.  Today it looked and felt like the kind of rural idyll Rupert Brook had in mind.

I did the obvious thing and hauled the whole class out to their amphitheatre.  I have mentioned that Bowes is a very pro-active school and among other things they have a very functional vegetable garden backed by a small amphitheatre.  Overlooking the hedge are a pair of brass giraffes.  I hadn't see them before and they were a bit of a shock.  "Oh - them," a helpful parent kindly enlightened me, "our Tanzanian exchange programme."

Over the mild surprise of two life-size brass giraffes, we went on with the session in which I got them to demonstrate as many appalling things to do on stage as possible.  It was a hilarious session and quite an informative one.  By the end they were putting their hands up and bellowing "She's looking at her feet!", "I can't hear her!", "She turned her back!", "We can hear them offstage!", "They don't know their lines!".  "So do you think you can do better than that?"  "YES!!!".  We'll see.  The nativity will be the acid test of that one, but some of it may sink in.

Our own vegetable and fruit tree order has just gone in.  Two apples (Bramley and Braeburn), a stripey humbug pear tree, some asparagus crowns, many onions, shallots and garlic for seasonal planting, many potatoes (first early, second early and maincrops), parsnips, cabbage, strawberries and probably some other bits I've forgotten.  Look upon the Humbug pear and be amazed.  Love at first sight.

Plants

Another plant and seed catalogue arrived this morning.  Excitment!  We can put in a proper order rather than just optimistically looking at the tangle of dying bindweed and giving up.

We do have a vegetable patch as well as a soft fruit bed.  It's a proper garden, ours.  We are far from properly equipped to look after it, but we do keep trying.  Efforts this year are made much easier by the team of gardeners we employed over the summer to dig out as much as possible in three days.  This extended to four days and wasn't finished, but it does look very much better.

There are two parts to the incentive.  One, we can actually accomplish something without despairing completely and giving up two trowels in.  Two, having spent quite a lot of money on getting the place sorted, it seems a wicked waste just to let it all happen again.  Bindweed, begone!  Dandelions, drop dead!  Creeping Buttercup, crawl away!

Hence our joy at the arrival of the catalogues.  It's a whole world of arcane mystery.  So much choice.  Do we take the long route and grow from seed, even though we have no cold frame or cloches?  Do we cheat a bit and buy starter plants?  Which types of potato will be best for a near to year round supply?  Leaving aside the whole vexed issue of salad v main crop, there are earlies and second earlies.  If we order now, we can get better deals on early onions, shallots and garlic, all of which overwinter well and exist in varieties which do not attract onion blight.

Among other things, looking at the list of stuff available has reminded us of how many vegetables we eat and enjoy.  This is despite years of looking sadly at each other and going "Oh, we must eat more veg."  Turns out we eat quite a few.  And of course will do so in enormous quantities if we end up with the list we're putting together.  It does feel virtuous.

Day of the damson

Operation Plum Cascade is now pretty much over, but the damsons remain.  Today will see them picked, pulped, jammed and otherwise converted into stuff-what-we-will-consume.  As I've mentioned, they are not easy to prepare.  Only by cooking will you ever extract those stones.

Damsons fall into that exciting category of fruit that it's nice to have, but troublesome to deal with.  Others are quinces and medlars.  Both are old-fashioned fruits for which there is little real use, but they have considerable charm.  Quinces take preparation to new heights of difficult.  They are rock like, even when ripe.  The Victorians used them as a moth repellent and to add a pleasing scent to clothes and bed linen and I can see why as they're all but indestructible.  The only time I've ever prepared them, I wrecked our kitchen cleaver.  Still, they have an allure.

Medlars are even stranger.  Here you have a fruit that you have to pick and allow to rot before it can be eaten.  This process is called bletting.  It a slightly arcane feel to it which I find irresistible.

And of course, this is the time of year to be ordering bare root fruit trees.  Tempting, very, very tempting.