Positive, negative, interesting. (11-17 May)

Humph takes an interest in gardening - Positive, negative or interesting?

Permaculturalists love a nice acronym, and one of their favourites seems to be PNI (or, Positive, Negative, Interesting), so here’s a little Permie synopsis of this week:

Good things: this week’s Positives!

Transforming neglected spaces,
the ‘last frost’ of the season,
exciting delivery of birthday cheese!

Crap bits: this week’s Negatives…

being unprepared for drought,
being caught out by an unexpected frost after the ‘last frost’,
birthday cheese / raw egg / Covid hysteria combo.

Stuff that was interesting this week.

Nature gets a bit too cosy,
our wild front garden,
getting older.

…and this week’s weather.

Once again, the only constant this week was dryness. The temperature varied between extremes and we had a few really windy days which was damaging to newly transplanted beans and peonies on the verge of flowering. Namby-pamby showers over the weekend cooled the air, but didn’t make any significant difference to the parched soil.

Transforming our space

The paddock pathway is a great success, with considerably more walking and observing happening out there. I definitely need to apply this approach across the property and around the house - neglected spaces can be improved massively by just making it easier to spend time there.

The Last Frost…

Covering up the dry soil as much as possible in the veg garden

Towards the end of the week it looked as though the danger of frost was mostly passed, which gave me the welcome opportunity to plant out my monstrous runner beans. I planted them into a wig-wam structure and then wrapped the whole lot in bubble wrap secured with duck tape - super professional - just to be on the safe side.

…or not.

I guess I didn’t really believe that we’d still have frosts this far into May, but OF COURSE we can. This is Scotland and we live on a high moor. Thus, I lost two more trays of starts that I had so tenderly cultivated in the early spring. Next year I shall remain skeptical until the end of May.

Spring drought

Watering is becoming a significant task each morning, and I’m realising that our soil is not great. It is not holding much water which probably means there is very little organic matter. I’m going to try some green manures and hefty mulching over the winter to up the organic content. In the meantime, I realise how unprepared I am for drought. I have no way of collecting or conserving water and am currently pouring 10 watering cans of our spring water onto the garden each day. Repairs to the water tank are still a while off, which is a bit panic-making.

A bird in the larder is worth two in the …?

A lovely aspect of rural living is the opportunity to get close to nature, but you tend to want the interactions to happen outside the house. Discovering an irate coal-tit flapping about the larder first thing in the morning was less than awe-inspiring. Most likely he’d been in there some hours, but amazingly hadn’t helped himself to any of our provisions. We leave the larder window open a crack to keep the room cool and presumably he’d snuck in looking for a suitable nest spot. It took us an embarrassingly long time to get him out (much squealing and ducking) and I had to drop water into his beak to revive him after the distressing ordeal.

Birthday cheese and Covid malaise

Both Jim and I felt under the weather this week. Are we sick? Is it the Covid-malaise that seems to return every few days? Or were we just terribly hungover after our birthday celebrations? Most likely it’s a combination of all three, but on Sunday morning it caused us to feel like the end of the world was nigh (easy to believe as you survey a silent, empty landscape).

We rely so much on other people for many aspects of self-care [convivial culture, alternative therapies, going to the doctor/dentist/chiropodist, exercise that isn’t solitary walks] and although we fully recognize how lucky we are to be here in the countryside and to have eachother’s company, we are missing the company of other people. It didn’t help that Humphrey is sick again with some unidentified lurgy. When we don’t have his cheery little face and naughty antics to keep us buoyed, it’s easy to feel a bit low.

Morale was temporarily restored with the arrival of a parcel from Iain Mellis. Even in normal times it’s quite tough to get good cheese out here in dragon country, so having the good stuff delivered to one’s door during lockdown is super exciting. However, I had been a little over enthusiastic and included bread, milk and eggs in my order as well. The eggs had been royally squashed and had found their way into every possible nook, cranny and cheesy crevice. Thanks to Covid we normally spend considerable time and care decontaminating all shopping and items that come into the house. But this soggy, eggy munge of a situation scuppered our standard operations and I battled internally with my anxiety about Covid contamination and the desire not to waste so much precious food.

It’s so hard to know how to respond to this horrid state of affairs. In many ways, Jim and I are quite removed from the worst aspects of this crisis, but we still feel its effects and it manages to creep into every bit of our lives. Standing in the kitchen up to my elbows in raw egg slime, trying to carefully mop a sullied bit of Isle of Mull, I could feel laughter and tears of frustration vying for attention. I feel helpless in this ridiculous and awful situation, and the tears were for all the people who have had their lives irrevocably changed, and for all those beautiful aspects of ‘normal’ life that may never be regained.

Before: Our wee cottage back in the ‘90s

Our wild front garden

Long before our time, the front garden of this little Toll house was such a spectacle of blooms that tour buses would make a detour off the A68 to come and take a peek. When we moved in we were presented with photos of that time which show large formal beds, cascading hanging baskets and every patch of bare earth and crevice crammed with flowers. I must admit that regimented plantings of petunias are really not my thing, but I’d love our cottage to be surrounded by flowers again someday. The front garden has suffered over the last few months, what with serious flooding that carved deep channels through the beds, and then this spring drought. I’m sure the neighbours have cast a few tuts and raised eyebrows as they pass by. I haven’t done anything out there, other than pull a few weeds and prune back the fuchsia bushes, so it’s looking a little ‘wild’. Someday I’d love it to be a romantic haze of deep blues, purples and jewel toned flowers, but right now it is emulating our lockdown hairdos - rather unkempt. Nevertheless, the purple honesty (growing like weeds) and centurion are lovely, and there is about to be an eruption of giant daisies and lupin.

Getting old(er)

This week I turned 37, which is a pretty unremarkable number. Nevertheless, birthdays make you reflect on where you’ve been and where you’re headed.

Jim and I have our birthdays a day apart, and I share mine with my dad, so there was much impetus for reflection and wine drinking: a heady combination.

This birthday I find I am going grey, cultivating some pretty serious smile-lines, am unpaid and ‘self-employed’, and am taking my sweet time to come up with any kind of compelling ‘plan’. I drink too much and wonder if I’ll ever be able to regain my old fitness levels. I have to admit that I can no longer wear skinny jeans. My phone has stopped recognising my fingerprint, presumably because my hands have become so calloused and are permanently filthy from the garden. No number of manicures could cure this state of affairs. I wonder if my friends will recognise me post-lockdown? I wonder if the smell of dog is noticeable on my clothes? Am I still myself or has this quasi-hermitdom turned me into some kind of horrific garden troll?

But in many ways, lockdown has made me give fewer figs about how I’m supposed to look. My hands are tanned and rough because I finally have my own garden - something I’ve wanted for decades – and I’m getting stuck in. I have a wonderful man who doesn’t seem to mind my baggy trousers, and a wee dog who makes me howl with laughter. In many ways I feel more comfortable with myself than I ever have done. Getting older in our culture is pretty rough and there are so many expectations and fucked up standards that we just need to ignore, particularly the ones that tell you what you’re meant to be doing, what you should look like, or who you’re meant to be at any given life-stage. We spend far too much energy worrying about these things. Of course, I recognize there is a balance to found here and I don’t want to become so comfortable that I am terrifying to behold. Hopefully, the return to society will prevent that from happening.