A is for me and asparagus

A

First letter. First post in 2012 A-Z challenge.  Best wishes and good luck to all who participate in it.

It also begins my name.  I'm not the biggest fan of Amanda.  It's an OK name, to be sure, but it always sounds a bit flabby to me and I deeply hate "Mandy" as an abbreviation.  Hate to the point that I simply blank it out as something I don't hear at all.

On the other hand, it could have been a great deal worse.  My father wanted to call me Cybora, in honour of cybernetics.  Mum did not approve, nor did she much like his alternative, Amaryllis.  She felt that naming a baby something that meant "little tinkling stream" was a bad idea.  Since she was around for the birth and he was not (busy having dinner somewhere - a story which is a microcosm of their relationship), she got her way and went with Amanda.

Mind you, I'd probably take Cybora like a shot now, but I'm glad I didn't have to get through school with it.

A is also for asparagus.  Fortuitously, we spent part of this morning planting the crowns.  Hopefully they will produce delectable vegetable spikes of goodness sometime in the next three years.  It's a slow business growing asparagus.  Patience and a deep compost filled pit are required.  We dutifully dug what looked like a narrow grave, filled it with manure.  Planted the crowns, watered them, hoisted the soil back over the top.  Now awaiting results.  Asparagus crowns look like diseased sea urchins at high tide.  Time, we hope, will turn them from this -

to this -

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.