Actual Snow!

Hugelkultur

A couple of new garden projects this year - a wildflower meadow and hugelkultur. Two weeks ago I constructed my first Hugel and have now begun to Kultur it. I achieved a height of about 3 feet and it's about 10 feet long. So, perhaps not as high as is optimal, and it will settle. Though I can add to it in the fall. I've started it off mostly with bush beans and a few cucumber and courgette. I will be adding some chard, spinach and nasturtiums soon and perennials later.
Anyway, Ta-Da!

Winter Projects

Before leaving for Canada I did a little garden DIY. I built a half-timbered mock-Tudor birdhouse and constructed a wattle containment for the 'hedgerow' that I'm trying to beat back control. Happy to report that a pair of Great tits have set up housekeeping in the nestbox and I hear a chorus of peeps from within every time an adult flies back with it's beak full. Impossible to get a photo of entry or exit - just a blur.

Front Gardens of Note No.4

            Dundas Street near Euclid Avenue, Toronto

Front Gardens of Note No.3

(yes, they are plastic)

Front Gardens of Note No.2

One I took earlier - in Yorkshire. Oh yes, and I'm very chuffed to find this here blog on this here list!

Front Gardens of Note No.1

It's all happening!

The first radish seedlings have broken through the ground outside and all of the brassicas have germinated in the greenhouse. I spent the weekend debrambling and unearthing roots to enlarge the vegetable beds. Lots more to do. M. lopped off the tops of some shrubbery to allow more light through along the south border. And I sowed tomatoes seeds (10 varieties) in a tray on the dining room radiator.
4 Eggs today.

A Vegetable Garden

'A vegetable garden in the beginning looks so promising and then after all little by little grows nothing but vegetables, nothing but vegetables.'
Gertrude Stein

Mrs.Snooke's Tortoise

December 17th, 1774 - 'Mrs. Snooke's tortoise, after it had been buried more than a month, came forth & wandered round the garden in a disconsolate state, not knowing where to fix on a spot for it's retreat.'
Listen out for 'The Portrait of a Tortoise', a Hooting Yard holiday season special on ResonanceFM to be broadcast 12:20 on Boxing Day. I know that I will be tucked up in front of the radio with a turkey sandwich and a cup of tea for the occasion.

Today's Outlook

The trees are bare now. But the temperature reached 14° today and the bees are still foraging in the ivy. Saw a goldcrest on the espaliered apple and the hedge sparrow is back for the winter. A gaudy sunset - at 4 0'clock! Dressed the artichokes with straw to protect against the icy weather that the Met has forecast this weekend.

Tidy Up

"Brought away Mrs. Snooke's old tortoise, Timothy, which she values so much, & had treated kindly for near 40 years. When dug out of it's hybernaculum, it resented the insult by hissing."
Gilbert White 1780

Most of the weekend was spent raking, weeding, pruning and beating back the brambles. Satisfying toil against unruly nature as Richard Mabey puts it. I'm not leaving it very ruly, but want to get the big work done now rather than turf some little critter like Timothy the Tortoise or Betty the Bumblebee out of his or her hybernaculum in the middle of winter. With the help of the azada (which I can't recommend highly enough) I've grubbed up an area big enough for the planned hen run. This would have taken three times as long using a spade or fork. And then I built an almighty compost heap (my best ever) and moistened it with lashings of dilute widdle. However, rather than illustrate that, the picture below marks the progress of the oats sown 6 weeks ago.

On Visiting Two Yards

Happily Hooting Yard is back on the air again after having been quiet all summer while Resonance decamped to SE1. You can listen live on Thursdays at 6:30 or the repeat broadcast 1:00 Mondays. And I was more than a little pleased this week to find myself linked there in a piece which mooted a Peasant's Party for the U.K. Hear! Hear!
On Thursday's lunch break, I went to Pied Bull Yard to see the paintings which Julian Perry has produced on the Manor Garden Allotments - Sheds Lost to the Olympiad. The title of the show 'A Common Treasury' is a quote from the Digger's manifesto of 1649 which protested their right to grow food to feed themselves. " In the beginning of Time, the great Creator Reason, made the earth To Be a Common Treasury, to preserve Beasts, Birds, Fishes..."
The sheds themselves are now buried behind the 11 mile wall of the Olympic Security Zone.