grainoftruth's Journal

The leaves were lovely. A good mixture of bitter and sweet leaves made for a very nice salad when mixed with tomatoes (shop bought – mine aren’t ready yet) and pan roasted pumpkin seeds and pine kernels.

A little disappointed this evening when I checked out the marrows/courgettes. One of the early fruits had rotted off – and I don’t know why. I’ve been watering the plants, so they are getting plenty of moisture.

It’s a mystery…

It is art? Something similar was exhibited in the Tate a while back. Do you remember the pile of bricks?

This is my version. OK, may be this is not exactly art. But it’s not an old barbecue that I’ve taken apart either. It’s just the remains of the base of the old garden shed that I had to replace a couple of years ago. I didn’t want to chuck the bricks away – they could come in useful – but I couldn’t make up my mind what to do with them.

So the are out of sight at the back of the garden, gradually gathering moss and insects. I guess it’s good for increasing bio-diversity. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it. :o)

Shoved in behind the Rose of Sharron is a rather brown, but surprisingly well preserved real Christmas tree.

Purchased from B&Q in December 2007, when this was a splendid two metre, gorgeous looking blue fir (I think) that promised not to drop its needles over the festive period. Looked lovely when decorated in the living room. Sadly, its glory days have faded (a lot!).

B&Q got it right; virtually all the needles are firmly attached to the branches of the tree. They won’t drop ever, I reckon. Not even if I were to sever the branches from the trunk and then jump up and down of them, mulching them into the soil. These are mutant needles; they might as well have been made from tinsel as they don’t compost either (tried that the year before. It must take about 10 years for these things to disintegrate – still have the trunk of THAT tree in the garden too, somewhere…)

You can’t see the Christmas tree from the patio doors. The Rose of Sharron does a wonderful job of hiding the brown branches behind its skirts of yellow flowers and intertwined twigs. Plus, it’s about 12 metres from the house – far enough away not to be noticed.

A hot pink flower on this Geranium means it overwintered from 2006! Amazing!

I noticed today that I have the first marrows – well, courgettes actually – I hate marrow!

We have three plants and two now have their first fruit. I hadn’t realised that they only set on female flowers. The male flowers don’t have fruit behind them.

Watering them most every evening at the moment too.

The first of the flowers are opening out. Not sure how long before the fruit starts to swell. Quite a few flowers are forming however – I’m thinking of picking a few early and doing them in tempura batter before deep frying them. Apparently, they’re very good like that.

I checked the six plants this evening and the very first fruit is visible. The flowers have been on a couple of the plants even before I put them into the troughs, but the first green blob is now clearly desernable.

I’ll leave it until the weekend before I start to put feed in the watering can.