Weeding the Web

The Gardener's Hymn

With the thought that flowers and vegetables aren't the only things growing larger in the garden at the moment, here's a fun alternative to All Things Bright and Beautiful. It's by Barbara Robinson.

Go on, sing it through and have a giggle. 

If you fancy a copy for your wall, her agent Anne Hill tells me that you're likely to be able to find it attractively printed, complete with illustrations far more attractive than the photo here, in the shop of most of our cathedrals.

With thanks to Barbara and Anne for permitting me to reproduce it here.

The Gardener’s Hymn

All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small
All things wise and wonderful, the Lord God made them all.

But what we never mention, though gardeners know it’s true
Is when He made the goodies, He made the baddies too.

All things spray and swattable, disasters great and small
All things paraquatable, the Lord God made them all.

The greenfly on the roses, the maggots in the peas,
Manure that fills our noses, He also gave us these.

The fungus on the goose-gogs, the club root on the greens,
The slugs that eat the lettuce and chew the aubergines.

The drought that kills the fuchsias, the frost that nips the buds,
The rain that drowns the seedlings, the blight that hits the spuds.

The midges and the mosquitoes, the nettles and the weeds,
The pigeons in the green stuff, the sparrows on the seeds.

The fly that get the carrots, the wasp that eats the plums,
How black the gardener’s outlook, though green may be his thumb.

But still we gard'ners labour, midst vegetables and flowers,
And pray that what hits neighbours, will somehow bypass ours.

All things bright and beautiful...

 

Rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb

In my post Cutting off the Rhubarb's Flower Bud: what are we missing? I included a picture of said flower and pointed out that it wasn't really worth the wait. The other reason you shouldn't let your rhubarb flower is that it could well be the end of the plant.

Which is what happened to mine. The plant pictured died down for winter, never to be seen again. It had always been a weakling anyway, being Glaskins Perpetual grown from seed.

It takes some time for seed-grown rhubarb to bulk up enough to produce a good number of sticks (I'd personally say longer than the two years suggested on The Rhubarb Compendium, a comprehensive and excellently referenced site, but I didn't exactly cosset my plant).

We still have a plant of Glaskins Perpetual, around eight years on, and although it does now produce numerous sticks, they are spindly affairs that mean you need twice as many as you might pick from, say, a Victoria. On the whole, I'd go for planting crowns of rhubarb (that's the root part, if you're not sure), widely available in seed catalogues. Altogether more robust, producing thicker stalks.

The snakeshead fritillary checks back in

I thought I’d lost mine. They were barely there anyway, as the enormous number of snakeshead fritillary bulbs bought from the local market turned out to be an enormous number of grape hyacinths, with a few fritillaries thrown in. One spreads like a weed; the other doesn’t. Guess which?

Their numbers dwindled annually (from four to one) and they didn’t appear at all last year. Which is when I used their space next to the fence to site tomato plants in bottomless pots. This year I’ve had a (near) explosion – six fritillaries coyly preen themselves in the long grass, like teenage girls done up to the nines, but lacking the self-confidence to look you in the eye.

So why have they returned? Well, the spot where I put them used to be under a sycamore. Bit shady, but retaining some moisture. When the sycamore fell down, they suddenly found themselves dry and sun-baked, a definite no-no for this fritillary, which thrives in water meadows.

Retro plants - the 1970s are back

With my finger on the pulse of the latest trends (why are you laughing?), it seemed only right that we should watch Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? recently (highly recommended – still full of fun and pathos after all these years). And we were transfixed. Not by a particular witticism or bravura acting, but by the wallpaper…and the carpet…and the sofa…and the curtains. Each was patterned. Differently. It reminded me why I was so glad that the '70s ended.

But, of course, the '70s are back. We’ve had flares (sorry, boot-cuts) for some time and now big patterned wallpaper and hideously patterned china have hit the shops. And, as observed by Apartment Therapy, plants from the '70s are also back; a fiddle-leaved ficus is pictured here in the Peter Dunham interior in an article in Elle Decor.

For anyone wondering what a plant from the seventies might be, we’re talking Rubber Plant, Spider Plant, Jade Plant or Crassula Ovata (that’s Money Plant to a lot of us, though not the one that's much loved in feng shui, which is Pachira Aquatic, often grown as bonsai), Snake Plant (or Mother-in-Law’s Tongue). All, you’ll notice, large leaved and boldly shaped (so you could pick them out against those competing patterns) and mostly, doggedly green (so you could pick them out… etc., etc.).

The other advantage for those days of stagflation was that they’re pretty independent (I did once kill a Spider Plant but only with grim determination), which perhaps, as we’re all going to have to work like navvies in these straitened times, is why they’re enjoying a comeback now.