Weeding the Web

A Valentine of Vegetables

Will you be my sweet potato?/Don't turnip your nose.

You're quite the hot tomato/The best the garden grows!

In celebration of St Valentine's Day, why not have a giggle over A Vegetable Valentine by Lois Walker.

It's a choral reading for children and if yours enjoy performing, this is charming and simple.

It's also a bit of a garden giggle.

 

Happy Christmas - and be kind to relatives

Christmas is a time when the generations are often in closer proximity for longer than usual, so, although the following video isn't specifically Christmassy, I thought it might give you a giggle (stick with it past the opening), and the touching list of "Blessed be...s" might help keep a few tempers

I hope you have a lovely Christmas and I'll look forward to seeing you again in the New Year.

Presents for gardeners: music you can dig

Here's something that I really hope someone's going to buy me for Christmas. If they don't, I'm just going to have to get it myself.

Jo Stephenson and Dan Woods not only know a fair amount about growing things, but have applied their musical talents to composing on matters that will be very familiar to gardeners.

Can You Dig It? is bursting with songs such as Derrick the Evil Pigeon and Gardener vs Slug, but my very favourite has to be Love Song to Alan Titchmarsh, and if you fancy a giggle I recommend you pop over to their website for a listen.

You can also buy the CD there. I think it's just the perfect Christmas present for a gardener.

Cartoon Art Trust Awards: botanist sums up garden insects

Regular visitors will know I'll grab any excuse for a cartoon. The 19th Cartoon Art Trust Awards held yesterday evening saw Mike Barfield awarded the Strip Cartoon Award. He was described as "possibly the only cartoonist with a first in Botany and Zoology".

His take on insects might be aimed at picnickers, but will make a few gardeners chuckle.

 

Presents for Gardeners: a personal cartoon

Some of you may have noticed the odd reference at the end of last week's post on gardening Christmas cards - a reminder to myself that I forgot (hah!) to remove (and no, it's not there any more). In a troll for suitable festive designs I'd come across Hoe Hoe Hoe by Martin Rolfe, which he designed to raise money for Thrive last year. It's a shame it's no longer available.

All is not lost, though, if you like Martin's work. as over at Martin's Online Sketch Book (where you can see lots of his watercolours), he's offering to create a cartoon to your brief for the astonishingly good value of £5. So, something of Husband wrapping his banana, perhaps? (That's banana plant. For winter. Honestly, some people!) Now, wouldn't that make a lovely, personal Christmas present? 

Christmas cards for gardeners

This probably isn't what you want to hear, but Christmas cards have to be bought some time.

It's thoughtful to give cards that reflect the interests of the person receiving it - or, failing that, fun to send something that you particularly like. It's surprisingly difficult, though, to find any aimed specifically at gardeners,

For Christmas cards with a gardening theme, check out Thrive's website. (Thrive is a charity working in social and therapeutic horticulture.) Their "Christmas Thyme" design is exclusive to them, but I particularly liked their well dressed shed [NB 2014: link removed as no longer viable].

Perennial has a much wider range of cards, to support their work with distressed professional horticulturalists. They've got quite a mix of gardening and non-gardening subjects and, again, I fell for the shed (pictured).

You might have spotted in the past that I have a particular soft spot for the humorous cartoons of Chris Madden which you buy under licence to produce yourself (a quick glance at his terms indicate a £15 rate for personal use). His website is much easier to navigate now, and he's got a good array of Christmas gardening subjects.

 

Brave gardener experiments in the interest of her viewers

Where did the time go? Can't believe I haven't posted yet this month. To come back with a bang, I thought you'd enjoy this film. It's priceless. And all power to Claire, who produces the lovely Claire's Allotment videos.

There's more about electric buttons below, but first, let's see how Claire braved the unknown, all in the name of blogging. As far as the rest of us are concerned - there's a lot to be said for vicarious experience!

So, rather Claire than me! Apparently, they can also make you produce a lot of saliva, which must be quite fetching with all that anaesthesia going on.

Electric Daisies are enjoying a bit of publicity at the moment, and are also known as Electric Buttons and, in the States, as Szechuan or Sansho Buttons. This is what James Wong says on his website about what them:

This fizzy 'space dust'-like effect - which my mates liken to licking a 9 volt battery - is produced by the pain-relieving agent spilanthol, which has meant that the plant has been traditionally used to treat toothache, mouth ulcers & sore throats for centuries. Spilanthol's muscle relaxing effects have even meant that an extract of the plant has found it's way into high-end face creams that claim to have a natural 'botox' effect.

In fact, the plant Acmella oleracea (syn. Spilanthes oleracea) is indeed known as the Toothache Plant.

I can't help feeling that the main application is medicinal, and herb expert Isabell Shipard gives instructions for use on toothache, mouth ulcers, cuts and acne. (No one mentions whether they'd be useful for anyone with Sjorgen's Syndrome, but it sounds possible.) But that hasn't stopped bright sparks thinking of ways to inflict them on the public.

In an NPR broadcast from 2009 Keith Dusko, director of operations for Haru, a chain of restaurants in New York, Boston and Philadelphia, described how he'd added them to cocktails, and a Washington DC chef was about to add them to a curry dish. A gimmick, if ever I heard one. But if he hasn't already, I'm willing to bet that our own Heston Blumenthal will experiment with possibilities.

Here's a chance to listen to what happened when programme presenter Robert Smith decided to have a whole one, and the explanation of spilanthol's effect on the trigeminal nerve.

Incidentally, if you actually do want to grow these little electric zingers, you can get them from Suttons.

Raising a song in the vegetable garden

Have your courgettes got away from you?  There's usually one, isn't there? You'd swear it wasn't there at all, then you wander around the garden with an idle coffee in hand and come across this enormous Zeppelin that has apparently landed overnight.

Last spring I gathered together some songs that you might be tempted to hum in the veg garden. Since then, I've been in touch with Lisa who runs the lovely Turning Earth blog from her Yorkshire garden. It's really worth a visit, especially if you're looking for help on a particular type of planting, such as on walls, in shade, for foliage, for scent, all advice drawn from her experience in her Yorkshire garden.

Lisa remembered a super little song from her parents' record collection,which she enjoyed as a child, "aware that he was probably being a bit rude, in that rather innocent "Carry On" films way". Well, we all know what courgettes grow up to be, if we don't catch them in time. Enjoy.

 

 

Still time to catch garden cartoons by Bateman

Just a reminder, in case, like me, you're always thinking "Ooh, I'd like to do that" and then forgetting to note down dates. 

The Cartoon Museum's exhibition of H M Bateman runs until 22nd July. Still time to to catch a super show, with some chuckle-worthy garden references.

In this one - The Rollers, from The Strand Magazine 1933 - note how the skinny little gardener is making up for the lack of his neighbour's bulk with a great big roller. Or is he just skinny because of all that energy expended?

I could make a cheap female jibe about men and their equipment, but I won't.

Images © H M Bateman Designs. With thanks to the Cartoon Museum.

Gardening cartoons: the delight of H M Bateman

Cartoonists are visual poets. They speak volumes with an economy of expression.  It hasn't always been like this. Nineteenth-century cartoons, à la Punch, tended to be illustrations to lengthy jokes, captioned beneath.

Henry Mayo Bateman (1887-1970) helped change all that and the exhibition that's just opened at The Cartoon Museum goes a fair way to proving their claim that he was "the first modern master of twentieth-century cartooning".

I've been familiar with Bateman for many years - especially his painfully observed strip "It's All in the Game", of a cricketer self-importantly arranging his wicket only to be bowled out (and over) on his very first ball.

Husband knew nothing about Bateman, and was bowled over himself, when we visited the museum last week. Bateman has an acute feel for society's mores and characters.