Grow Write Guild Prompt #10: Write about a plant that you do not understand. You tried. It died. What does it want?

Beetroot you bastard. It's not that I don't appreciate you. I adore you, you know I adore you. I go out of my way to buy you. I willingly pay for you. How can I love you more than that? And when I get you home I put you into a red flannel hash. And it seems like we are friends. We are friends aren't we?

Then why won't you grow? I've tried all different varieties: Cylindra, Boltardy, White, Choggia, Detroit. And the best you can do is a minuscule swell and a frantic bolt. I get that you might not like the conditions on the balcony. I try to put you in the biggest pots but still it's hot and dry. I'm sorry that I sowed you at just the wrong time this year. I'm sorry that you germinated to be met by a freak and harsh frost.

I'll do better. I'll do anything. so when I do my autumn sowing won't you grow for me?

[This post was written as a response to the 10th prompt of Gayla Trail's Grow Write Guild. Check it out.]

Grow Write Guild Prompt #9: Change the lyrics of a song to reflect your relationship with a particular plant or food crop

So this challenge was technically about changing the lyrics to a song but as I have a) terrible taste in music and b) no sense of rhythm I picked a poem. Sorry.

I flicked through my portable Dorothy Parker and found last years poem. I present it here unchanged.

The Apple Tree

When first we saw the apple tree

The boughs were dark and straight,

But never grief to give had we,

Though Spring delayed so late.

When last I came away from there

The boughs were heavy hung,

But little grief had I to spare

For Summer, perished young. 

But this year requires a little butchering. My apologies to Ms Parker.

First Year's Growing (which may be based on The Lady's Reward)

Lady, lady, never start

To turn your plot with all your heart;

Keep you grass looking green;

Or your neighbours might get mean.

If your fruit you want to cook,

Net it from that god damn rook,

Never allow the weeds to grow;

So tall you cannot use the hoe

With this weather you'll need to pray

To get a cherry flower in May.

Lady, lady, never speak

Of how much you hate leek-

She will never make friends, whose

Planting follows an unusual muse

Never complain your plot is bad,

They'll think for you it's just a fad.

Never let on you know what to do,

Or you'll get a talking to-

And if you get some veggies, kid,

You’ll be the first that ever did.

 

I know, I know. I actually getting veggies but the the yields are low because it's our first year and anyway it rhymes so there.

A second idea comes from Stephen who is convinced that Green Day's Good Riddance opens with 'Another turnip on the fork stuck in the road'

[This post was written as a response to the 9th prompt of Gayla Trail's Grow Write Guild. Check it out.]

Grow Write Guild Prompt #8: Write about the plant that best encapsulates the essence of summer.

When I was a kid summer started with the daises and daffodils turning the lacklustre playing field into something that would make the most hardened dinner lady smile. It marked the time when the playing field became something we could play on rather than stare at from the tarmac. It marked the countdown to the summer holidays.

Everything to me

But now I'm older, I'm wiser, I'm hungrier. My plant of summer is still a plant that's as common as muck (just like me). It slots itself into hedgerows, growing beautiful parasols of delicate white flowers. Seeing the bloom makes me happy. Smelling it, I know it's summer. Cooking the flowers into a cordial? Well then it's summer all year round.

This is my love note to Elderflower. You make my year Sweetheart.

[This post was written as a response to the 8th prompt of Gayla Trail's Grow Write Guild. Check it out.]

Grow Write Guild Prompt #7: Write about one plant that is currently in bloom

I'm often telling people who ask that I don't know anything about flowers. I'm a vegetable grower. I barely know a tulip from a daffodil, I'm not even going to attempt tulip vs narcissus.

In bloom, battered and beautiful

There are flowers I do know. Flowers I've picked to sell to local restaurants: borage, fennel, rocket, nasturtium, viola, elder, wild garlic, chive, dianthus, pea, broad bean, brassica flowers, calendula. Flowers I've dyed with: Californian poppies, calendula again, dandelion. Flowers that grew on the playground: daisy, dandelion, buttercup. And yes, even flowers I just like the look of: aquilegia, sweet peas, valerian, lilies.

It is a quirk of my brain that when asked to think of one - just one - I go ahead and think of those 22. Even narrowing it down to just those in bloom now it's still a big list. Instead I pick one that isn't on it at all.

Five white petals, yellow in the centre, barely noticeable and one of my favourite things

The strawberries are in bloom.

The flower of a fruit is the greatest flower of them all. It warms my veg growers soul. It turns into food. The petals drop, the centre pushes outwards, the colour changes from green to red. A strawberry flower is the most delicious promise hidden in the delicate, angelic white.

Promises, promises

[This post was written as a response to the 6th prompt of Gayla Trail's Grow Write Guild. Check it out.]

Grow Write Guild Prompt #6: Landscapes

Describing where I grew up to people who haven't been there is hard.

I grew up in a small town, yes, but a small town that was part of a sprawling conurbation. As people from Heywood we have our own identity (oh how we have our own identity) but we're never more than 45 minutes away from the centre of Manchester (by bus).

Miller Street, it's called that for a reason...

The house I grew up in was an end terrace. The yard outside contained a coal shed and an outdoor toilet (no longer used, I might add) Although it was built to be stuffed with a family on each floor we had the whole place for a small family of three, two, three, four, then five before we moved on. Most of the time it was just enough space.

The view from my childhood bedroom window (or rather the view from the street, camera angled up. Close enough) 

From my bedroom window you could see a cotton mill, closed down now, and it wasn't a rare site in my town. Clearly this was a place born in the industrial revolution. But for all of it's industrial ghosts we didn't want for green.  Even without taking into account into account how little time it took to walk into countryside proper and feed a horse with your palms flat. There was always some green. A road side verge filled with daisies, vast school playing fields, overgrown orphan patches and parks.

Parks. The biggest, the most beautiful and the crown jewel of the park is Queen's Park. I adored it as a child, it was my sanctuary when I was home from uni in the summers, I still stroll around it whenever I have the chance and remember it fondly from the other side of the country. You can sum up how the town and how I grew up like this: I may have lived on Miller Street but Queen's Park was at the end of it.

Once a boating lake in summer and ice rink in winter, now a home to some wonderful water loving birds

Queen's Park is a park in the most stunning Victorian tradition. When the family that originally owned it died out the ownership went to the crown. Queen Victoria who presumably heard the news and said 'I own land where now?' gave the land to the people of Heywood.

This park separates the park from the 'woods'. The wilderness of my childhood.

Let's leave behind Victorian England and go to the early nineties of last century when I was young. By this time the park had decayed to it's worst. Recently the park has been lucky enough to have been the recipient of a major regeneration. This is a good thing in that the park is stunning and a great place for the local people however it does mean I have no pictures of my park.

One of the only features without improvement: A pool left to fill in and full of  'weeds'

Let me describe it. My park is a park of decay. The gorgeous fountain, turned back on when I turned 19, had no water in it. It was covered in 'weeds' like a giant, stunning planter. I seem to remember roses growing over it but my plant identification wasn't as good back then. There where plinths without statues, the old turnstiles of the boat shed (but not much else of it) and every so often something would turn up missing or burnt out.

A jolly nice office

But my park is also a park of dignity. As a kid the biggest crime was stepping onto the flower beds. They where heroically kept perfect. In that working class way of finding someone commoner than you and looking down on them, absolute scorn was reserved for people who let their children ruin our flowers. The grass was always nicely clipped, the bowling green thriving, the band stand was full of graffiti and bands, and once a year the park was host to a fare.

Restored: the stunning fountain though I think it worked equally well as a planter

Those twin lessons shaped the gardener I am today. Watching nature overrun it's intricate Victorian confines gave me a respect for it's power and a taste for the aesthetics of decay. Watching a community take ownership of a space taught me that growing is not an individual pursuit but something that effects our community at it's core.

[This post was written as a response to the 6th prompt of Gayla Trail's Grow Write Guild. Check it out.]

Grow Write Guild Prompt #5: Listen

I missed prompts 3+4 because I was busy with the planning and aftermath of the wedding for what seems like forever. Let's jump straight in with prompt five then.

Prompt five is all about listening to the sounds your garden makes so I've made two videos mainly to talk about the sounds I can hear from my balcony and allotment. Also there are some bits on what 'relaxing' sounds like to me (loud), how I feel about people who don't respect that gardening can sometimes be a job and is always work (they annoy me), and my feelings on getting pooped on (it sucks)

These are the balcony sounds:



And this is the allotment edition:



[This post was written as a response to the 5th prompt of Gayla Trail's Grow Write Guild. Check it out.]

Grow Write Guild Prompt #2: Describe your fantasy garden

Let's talk about the Sims. I love the Sims. I used to go buy it at opening time on release day. Not any more because of bugs but I used to do it with every new expansion pack, religiously. In the over a decade that I've been playing the various incarnations there is one thing that I've never been overly fond of and that is building.

Sure I can build my Sims the perfect house. I just don't want to. My game is more about getting a house and exploiting all the nooks and crannies, stuffing in all the stuff they need for life, making a home. The actual shape of the walls incidental, it's what you put in them that counts.

Garden anywhere, Wearing anything

And so my perfect garden is an urban back yard. Big enough to house some chickens but shoulder to shoulder with my neighbours. I want to fit my plants in, I want to be clever, to be challenged. I want a back yard and a front yard and I want them to be connected only by the house. I want to live in a terrace.

My Fridge Door: home to a giant inspiration board of gardening goodness

In my challenging, small, imperfect garden I want to grow vegetables. I want to grow nothing but vegetables. Even out front. Only 'nothing but vegetables' wouldn't really stick. Of course it wouldn't. And I'd end up with trees, herbs, edible flowers, not so edible flowers. Adopting anything that takes my fancy, no formal plan, just fitting things in where they can go.

I guess that it what makes this entry short, not to mention summing me up in my entirety. I design, live even, by reacting to what is put in front of me. I's not that I can't plan. It's just that I like chaos.

[This post was written as a response to the 2st prompt of Gayla Trail's Grow Write Guild. Check it out.]

Grow Write Guild Prompt #1: Write about your first plant

I was set up to fail with my first plant. Judging by what's aimed at kids I think most of us were. Novelty kits, beginners kits, Venus flytraps with colourful labels. Notoriously picky plants, vague instructions (water when needed but take care not to over water) and badly thought out pots seem standard.

 I once owned a gorgeous, beautifully designed novelty plant in a can. The instructions told me to add water to the odd mix of perlite and seeds and from that I would be able to grow lavender. It's just that easy. It just never germinated. But that wasn't my first plant. My first plant was back when I was a spotty teenager.

I really, desperately wanted my own herb garden but with no space for an inexperienced hands in our garden I was given a windowsill growing kit. It had compost, a tray with four sections, more seeds than strictly necessary and sparse instructions.

I can't even remember what all the seeds were. One was chives. I remember because it was disappointing.  Growing chives from seed is painfully boring. I've done it a couple of times and you can pretty much bet you aren't going to get a harvest in your first year. Ultimately worth it for an adult, not so much when you are still getting told off for scuffing your school shoes.

'sokay chives, I love you now

So I started my seeds at the wrong time of year, watching them as the germinated and did... not much for a long time. Eventually I killed them but if I didn't they wouldn't have lead much of a life. They would have been painfully cramped, lacked any nutrition, and any attempt to out them outside would have been met by winter. Perhaps they could have been micro veg but even if I'd known the term back then it would have been a ridiculous price per serving.

I never did get to figure out how to eat them. Probably for the best. They were put out of their misery when I tried to close my blinds one night. The tray knocked from the windowsill, all signs of life extinguished, compost in my carpet, me about to be yelled at.

 As you can see I was never cut out to be a gardener.

[This post was written as a response to the 1st prompt of Gayla Trail's Grow Write Guild. Check it out.]