h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi,

I saw you were Online, and, knowing youare a gardener, I imagine you can't feel like I do.
To-day I've set aside to "garden", but I keep looking for excuses to stay indoors.

The last one was: "See if I've got any messages", but, no, so here I am, looking to see who's around.

I thought you didn't have a p.c. at home. Are you at work then?
What is t you do?

I suppose I'd better make the effort, get dresses and go outside.
Maybe one more coffee?

See you

Catharina (FBN)(

Hi

Did you post your message on Sunday? I don't own a home PC, & I am unemployed, but I'm lucky enough to have a local library which opens from 10am to 4pm on Sundays (but sadly closed on Bank Holidays!).

I've been living at home for several years since my father died. There's a lot of work to do in the reasonably small garden where he used to spend 10 hours a day - a small garden but very high maintenance with many fast-growing plants and patches of lawn to manage. To be honest, my favourite time of year in the garden is mid-April when the ground has been dug, there are very few dandelions, and none of the plants are overgrown yet!

Current status of the garden:

Plum blossom dropped
Both lilac trees flowering
Green bobbles on holly bush
Cooking-apple blossom out
Eating-apple blossom totally non-existent
Potatoes showing through the ground
Sage buds appearing
Peony about to bloom
Enough tulips for a medium-sized float

And on my bedroom window-sill:

12 Chili pepper plants now 3 to 5" tall
Large leaves on basil
Broccoli shoots dying
No sign yet of pumpkin shoots

The chilis & pumpkins are this year's exciting experiments.

No gardening yesterday or today - it's freezing cold & raining here in Suffolk. Hope it was a lot better where you are.

Richard

Hi Rich,

No, I wrote some time last week when I saw your name "Online". Lurking, you see.

Your father sounds like my late husband, he was in the garden every moment he could. Even when it was dark he'd go around with a torch, looking for slugs.
He died almost 11 years ago and I had never done any gardening at all. All I did was collect leaves and small flowers for my flower-press. I make greeting cards.

As my husband died suddenly (he was mowing the lawn) I had no idea what to do outside and for a couple of years had a (sort-of) gardener who didn't know or do much but was a lovely man to talk to and we drank a lot of coffee.
But he is very ill now and suddenly I was there with a very overgrown garden and not knowing where to start.
So I had the whole lot dug up and landscaped. It's made things a lot easier and more interesting for me because I now have plants I've put in myself.

In the front is a lot of gravel with several flower-beds. The gravel is coarse and walking on it very painful, especially carrying a watering-can. There is a thick membrane under the gravel but that doesn't stop the weeds from pushing through.
It seems that a gardener's life is never easy.

Where we lived before we had a large veg.garden and I liked nothing better than in the evening, walk down the garden with a garden-fork over my shoulder and dig up a root of potatoes. There's nothing quite as exciting. You never know how many are going to appear and just when you think you've got them all, there's a few more.

It's cold and wet outside, I've got the heating on again, just looking out of the window you can see the weeds growing as I type.

I like to see the garden when the soil looks nice and dark with shrubs and flowers here and there, but everything grows so fast here (I'm in Sussex), every little space gets filled up.

Wonder what happened to your eating-apple blossom then?

See you soon, Rich.

Hi

The eating-apple tree is quite stunted, short & crooked, and it suffered an attack of 'woolly aphid' two years ago - those cotton wool strands which damage the branches. Also I'm not exactly an expert at pruning, and often cut off the wrong branches in November.

This week's special is rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb as there are tons of stalks ready to pick at the moment.

Hi

You'd better bring them along to the Cb and get Ruth to make us all a crumble.

I had a sick oak tree which had to be felled last year. It was my pride and joy and the back-garden was landscaped around it. It gave lovely shade in the summer.
The night before it was cut down I spent hours talking to it (Prince Charles isn't the only one) and I cried when they hacked it down.
I was very upset and then...
in the evening I sat on the bench by the back-door and in front of me a wonderful panorama. The sky! I'd never been able to see it before and suddenly I could witness the most wonderful sunsets.

The sad thing is that the birds had nowhere to go. The blackbird that serenaded me every night has gone to the neighbours and I don't know where the others are.
Are you fond of ?

XX

Hi

I know the feeling - used to have a peach tree in our garden, but it got a disease & had to be uprooted when I was about 10 years old. Sadly the only view it revealed was the back of our black wooden shed and the wall of the side house facing us. There's a birdbox on the back of the shed now, I often see blue tits trying it out, but the box seems to be more successful at attracting bumblebees.

I'm not fond of THAT way! I use the symbol because I was born in the Chinese Year of the Sheep (1967) and midway between the Hours of the Sheep (1pm to 3pm), so I am what the Chinese call a "Pure Sheep" sign.

Rich

Hi Rich,

Now, that shows what a pure mind I have because I hadn't even thought of THAT way. I can't believe that story is true anyway, can you? But one of my (lesser) friends used to work on a farm and she swears it is. I think I must have led a very sheltered life.

When my husband was still here, we had a tit-box on that oak and we were fasinated to see the tits going in and out with morsels of food, obviously to feed the babies.
Then we got worried because we had been anticipating the youngsters taking the first steps outside, but nothing happened. After a week my husband thought we ought to investigate and when he opened the box, there were 5 babies, all dead,little beaks wide open. It was such a dreadful sight, we took the tit-box away.

At the time there were 4 cats next-door and I saw one of them kill 5 tits in one day, so obviously that's where the parents had gone.

It put me off cats, although it wasn't their fault, they had to feed themselves.

We had a little cat too, Katie, who was so fat and lazy, she never chased any birds. Strangely enough, she would chase a leaf and play with it. I think she knew we would disapprove if she killed birds. That cat could read my mind. Honest! We had a squirrel who came to the back door for chocolate biscuits and it would jump over Katie who would doze on the doormat, in the sun. She just used to look up and go back to sleep.
Oh! Happy days!!!

See you,

Hi

We have a neighbouring cat which has taken a fancy to our garden and has slept there most of the day & night for years, because it would have to share its own house with 9 or 10 other cats & dogs. We find the occasional dead pigeon in the garden, but I don't mind those flying rats being wiped out...