This is the Message Centre for Effers;England.
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Sol Posted Sep 22, 2011
Now I'm really green with envy. Your garden sounds perfect. I like the idea of a wild flower meadow in particular. What kind of veggies do you grow?
Bulbs. We have some crocuses, some tulips and some small daffs, whatdayacallem? Narcicci?
I started with herbs in containers last year, but this year I found flowers very cheery, so some of the less hardy herbs, which don't thrive under my benign neglect will come indoors. Dill for example. You don't have a trick for growing dill do you?
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Effers;England. Posted Sep 22, 2011
>Your garden sounds perfect., No never that. That would be death...always evolving as it has since I moved in. And I forgot to mention the hawthorn tree that first appeared when as a tiny seedling 20 years ago..from a berry obviously dropped by a bird.
It's now a tree. It has this strange blossom I've not seen before. White with coral pink margins.
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Sol Posted Sep 22, 2011
My parents have an apple tree in their back garden which grew from a seed my brother planted when he was a boy.
Of course, it has grown and grown. But it never produced any apples.
And then suddenly out of the blue, apples.
And it't so big and sprawling that they (and the neighbours) now have far far more apples than they can possibly know what to do with. We have a lot of blackberry and apple jam and such in the house at the moment.
Anyway, I like the idea of you nurturing a passing seed all this time.
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Effers;England. Posted Sep 22, 2011
That apple tree sounds brilliant.
I didn't nurture the hawthorn. It fended for itself.
The only thing I did was move it from right near the yard to up the garden to a more sensible place.
Hawthorn are totally wild and indiginous..and the intense red berries this year against the dark green leaves are incredible.
Last winter the birds feasted on them.
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Sol Posted Sep 22, 2011
I bet you'll be getting a lot of insects and such as a result of your wildflowers too. I let my herbs go a bit to seed this year because the flowers seemed to be attracting the bees.
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Effers;England. Posted Sep 22, 2011
Not as many insects as I hoped for..but this London..but maybe the hard winter last year killed off more than usual.
The wildflower meadow should be even richer next year.
Some seeds take 2 years to germinate. I had to keep cutting it back this year to stop grasses crowding new suff germinating.
Next year it'll just be two cuttings.
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Sol Posted Sep 23, 2011
Where my husband's ancestral village is in Russia they still practice three field farming. You know, one field corn, the other legumes and the other fallow, rotate next year. B says that they are quite heavy handed with the isecticides when they want to be, but the other thing is they have so. Much. Land over there that this lack of intensive farming means that there are huge numbers of wildflowers and insects. And frogs. And bees, but that's cos a lot of people keep them in the countryside.
I was quite shocked. And I don;t come from a city originally.
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Effers;England. Posted Sep 23, 2011
That's fascinating.
When I first visited Russia it was via train from Budapest..so right across the endless expanse of the Ukraine and then into Russia. It was amazing how basic it all still was. Few roads just cart tracks.
Yeah I hunger for that old fashioned meadow orientated farming in which animals could graze. When I lived in Sussex there were still a few traditional meadows and they are amazing with still quite a few insects. It saddens me deeply of how much we have lost of that stuff which is so good for the soul.
BTW have you seen Tarkovsky's, Mirror? It's one of my all time favourite films..much of set in the Russian countryside.
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Sol Posted Sep 24, 2011
It still is pretty basic out there. Our village doesn't have a road. Barely a track. Lots of the people in the area still use a horse and cart to get around and have a family cow or goat to provide milk and such. No running water in the village house or our datcha, although that's more about a lack of a roundtoit. Still we'd have to do it ourselves rather than an authority.
I don't think I've seen the Mirror.
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Effers;England. Posted Sep 24, 2011
Oh god that sounds brilliant where you live.
Tarkovsky's Mirror is a very strange film and mixes up different generations of Russians..and also between the city and the landscape and forest.
It's to be taken almost as a poem. You just let all the connections in it flow over and into you.
I've seen it several times.
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Sol Posted Sep 24, 2011
Well, visit really rather than live. B's a city person through and through.
I think the trouble for people who do live there is that it's hard to escape if they want to.
Some people don't of course. We are friendly with a family of artists, who, being handy, make ends meet by doing odd jobs like helping to dig our well.
Their house is amazing. Lots of little rooms, and all the walls covered in murals.
The Mirror certainly sounds like a Russian film. I must see it.
I used to go to the Tretrakovskaya Gallery a lot - an all Russian art gallery. Some of the landscapes there are very evocative of their countryside (as you;d expect). Huge skies, flat grasslands, small barely perceptible cart track, tiny figure in the middle. Gives me agoraphobia, but the so does thinking about the size of the country.
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- 21: Effers;England. (Sep 22, 2011)
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