Showing posts with label dream garden. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dream garden. Show all posts

Monday, 8 April 2013

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.]

Monday, 11 January 2010

Ready for the kill...

This post is probably the most icky thing I have ever written. It is not catching me at my most charitable moment or my most vegetarian.

I'm really quite ready to kill now.

All winter we have been dealing with fungus gnats. Which was all fine whatever when they where just hanging around the chilli (of chilli oil fame) that I was about to cut down. but when you attack my gorgeous, beautifully promising crocus bulbs it's time to get angry. And of course it doesn't help that they are in our bedroom now.

One of the most annoying qualities of these gnats is there lack of survival instincts. As in I'm boiling water for pasta and one flies in. Or a drink left on the side. Or mung beans sprouting. Which means a lot of waisted water, pulled faces and general shouts of 'ewwww'.

Summer numbers where kept low by a sticky sunflower on the window. In autumn I snapped and went mad with a can of fly spray. And as much as I love spreading poison around the house it's got to stop. And my current method of waiting till my skin is crawling and then snapping them out of the air is... well leaving me with messy hands.

Stephen has been making noises about carnivorous plants and I've seen this. I guess someone must find them yummy. And if they stay away from my seedlings well then...

Sunday, 2 August 2009

Goats' milk and marbled muffins



Clare and I nurture a fantasy of one day buying some farmland, where we'll build our dream home while I slowly convert most of the land to a nature reserve and Clare grows vegetables and looks after rescued animals. I imagine there would be a few goats, providing all the milk we'd need. However, until yesterday, when we noticed goats' milk in our local Tesco Metro, I had never tried it. It turned out to taste very similar to cows' milk. Today I used some to make Marbled Chocolate Muffins, from 1 mix, 50 muffins.

Thursday, 21 May 2009

Grass


Last night we where told that Chelsea has no lawns this year. All football jokes aside (because I don't know any) it's an interesting idea.

A friend of mine, visiting from the Netherlands, remarked that the British and a tendency to find an empty bit of land, plonk a lawn in it and sit there. It's what we do. But really is that the best way?

My favourite lawn in a good example of their darker side. The grand sweeping lawn of Cockington is a pure English village postcard. Against all odds a cricket pitch lies in the centre, the lawn slopes down on all sides. Trees, both natives and relics of a botanically minded ancestor, surround it.

Our image of this lawn is something pure and natural. Anglophiles and bankers wishing to escape to the country may even be swooning. But before a cricket pitch sat on that lawn, before the lawn itself that little patch of land was in use. It was home.

On that site stood the Almshouses. Almshouses are provided for the needy so it was quite a useful plot of land. Certainly if you live there you would think that a lawn was a wast. Not so for the people living inside the Manor. There quest for rural, sweeping 'what England should look like' views lead them to demolish the houses and put in grass. The almshouses where moved elsewhere. Must have sucked.

Still, more than a few years after the fact, I enjoy the lawn for lounging and reading. Others play cricket, some erect gazebos and have picnics. Not all lawns are like that though. I can't imagine reading on the ornamental patch of grass outside the flat. It's just there as punctuation in an expanse of parked cars.

Even if the grass is given up to the people it isn't always accessible. For the last couple of years the grass in Piccadilly Gardens (my favourite green space in the centre of Manchester) has been covered in 6' fencing. Each patch of grass takes it in turns to be replaced after the scorching sun has killed it off. While neighbors are left untouched for you to lie on the effect isn't the same.

So Chelsea doing away with lawns. Is is a victory for the little people who had their housed destroyed? Not really. In the most part what was once grass is currently hard landscaping (ie not plants). They make interesting viewing but is this really the type of garden design we should be looking at?

I have no idea. Lawns certainly have their uses. Aside form sitting they do give water somewhere to go other than sitting on tarmac. At the same time they are labour intensive for what they are. And the path to have a green, daisy free lawn is one of environmental irresponsibility. But when you have nothing but a few beams of wood suspended in the sky grass is a dream. And a welcome sight.

Wednesday, 8 April 2009

God damn it another garden round up

Seeds

We bought a (rather disappointing) gardening magazine that came with free seeds. Swede, courgette, dill, parsley and spring onion. I've wedged the dill and spring onions into this years planting plan everything else will have to wait.

I've planted some beetroot, spring onion and carrots in my giant roots tub. Planting beetroot clockwise around the edge and spring onion and carrot in rows until I run out of room. A few more spinach beets and salad bowl lettuce went into the salad pot.

Shoots

Cauliflower and beefsteak tomatoes have appeared. I planted a late clove of garlic out of frustration that all my cloves had sprouted. After weeks of silence that has shot up.

Swaps

A tomato plant for a rosemary. The rosemary is waiting optimistically for me to get it a new pot. God damn those things are hard to carry home though!

Unfortunately my hands where shaking too much for a picture (that's what I get for gardening in my PJs) but it's wild Wednesday tonight.

Wednesday, 4 June 2008

The Utter Pointlessness of Browsing Bulbs

I'm going to have to talk to the garden powers-that-be before I make any orders but I want:

Alliums are insane, pretty and purple. I aspire to be all these things. Dad's garden would benefit from a couple of grapefruit sized gigantium or, if I was to be sensible, firmament would do well too. I'd like to see hollandicum in the guerrilla garden eventually (native no but purple yes) but shall have to talk to my partner in crime. I also adore cristopii.

Narcissus are almost guaranteed, I am English after all. They are also just for me as I can grow them in a container in my as-yet-unmaterialised living space. I may illicitly pop some in planters around Manchester too. Spread the love. My gardening note book has "daffodils - spellbinder" scribbled down but I don't know where I came up with that. Or why my dyslexia turned it into dandelions first. (I can tell the difference, I swear) I do lean towards the red and the white. Take romance or Doctor Hugh for example (or a shopping list)

I'm also hoping to plant up some snowdrops indoors so I can experience the seasons without leaving the computer.


Thursday, 29 May 2008

Geography

There is a lot of drama involved in saying where I garden now. Lets just say that I garden in pots. That way I can leave out the depression and living at my mums boyfriends house and them splitting up resulting in me having to move.

Now I'm living in my Dad's house and the pots are doing well. I'm staying here for a whopping one month though. I'm moving down to Torquay for the summer to be with my boyfriend (and earn money) So I guess Dad will have to babysit the pots.

So how can I garden? Well I plan on adding to my pot family even if I have to leave them in the hands of other people for a couple of months. I imagine my boyfriends windowsill can hold a few. I also have permission to mess with a bit of my Dad's garden so he and my Gran will have something to look at. And I don't have permission to garden in Torquay but I will anyway. The boyfriend and I hope to start Guerrilla Gardening down there.

I'm also collecting ideas together for when I have somewhere to live all of my own (or rented). That is my Dream Garden and I hope you don't mind me ranting about it.

Wednesday, 28 May 2008

Inspiration

What inspired me to get my hands dirty? A couple of weeks ago my boyfriend was about to go on the train back to Torquay. We spend the day just hanging around in Manchester. We had vegan chocolate cake, he bought me books and then we went into Urbis.

I'd never been in before but now it is my new favorite place. The second floor had a exhibition on urban gardening. And I was in awe.

I was incredibly impressed by the lovely French Flower Boxes hung on walls and perched on counters. I did dream of owning some but I'm told shipping would be a problem. I also spent my time reading On Guerrilla Gardening in a fake living room, fake cooking in a fake kitchen and leaving a real notice on a fake notice board.

Eventually, like every time I go to a museum, we wound up in the gift shop. There weren't many planty-type things but I saw these adorable plants in a can. The top is like a ring pull can of tomatoes and you rip it right off. The bottom is like a coke can which drains onto something like the top of a pringles tin. The Boyfriend bought me Lavender and Dahlias and that night I started growing my first plants.

The next day I was passing through Manchester on my way to a doctors appointment and picked up some instant poppies and chives. That weeks visit to the supermarket involved me returning with a plant and a bird feeder. My third visit to the exhibition and I finally bought On Guerrilla Gardening along with some other gardening books from Waterstones. I was even staying in to watch Chelsea.

I'm writing this now on the night after my fourth visit. I took my cousin Kelsie and found some new things to play with. A Paper Potter was used to make a fleet of tiny paper tubs. We even taught a little girl how to do it too. Then we decorated our own pot holders using porcelain markers. The pot inside contains an expertly planted sunflower seed. I think we where a little above the target audience but they didn't seem to mind.

So that's how I came to garden. Without a garden. But we will come to that later and, probably, often.