I made a conscious decision this year not to bother with the garden. What with training and fundraising for the walk I figured the last thing I needed was putting pressure on myself to maintain a bunch of cabbages too.
So I just fed and watered the chickens, collected the eggs, and pretty much ignored the jungle rapidly springing up around me. This is the tidiest section of it. Forgive the quality of the photo but it was taken in low light on my crappy phone camera:
Of course the fact my petrol strimmer gave up the ghost didn’t really help. There are large sections of my garden which are too undulating and wild to be tackled with a mere lawnmower. And once the nettles and the brambles realised I was not going to be hacking at them every couple of weeks they lost no time in reclaiming vast swathes in the name of mother nature.
I did plant some veg though, namely a couple of pumpkin plants which I knew would be both vigorous and prickly enough to dissuade the weeds and the eager beaks of the chickens. I also planted a load of strawberries in tyres in the front yard. This has worked really well and I intend extending my collection next year with all the triffid like runners that are sprouting the moment.
Also unbenown to me I had unwittingly planted some potatoes. Or rather the potatoes I had missed when i harvested them last year had planted themselves. Considering they were an unplanned crop and you aren’t actually supposed to plant spuds in the same place two years running I didn’t get too bad a haul.
So now that the walk is over and done with I can get back on with tending old McHughes farm. I spent a very enjoyable afternoon over the weekend hacking away at the undergrowth with my brand new petrol strimmer (ooo shiny!). And then I spent a slightly less enjoyable couple of hours wrestling with bindweed and nettles in my shrubberies. Things now look a fair bit better than they did.
Not that they will ever look actually good I hasten to add. We have a large garden, but it’s an awkward one. I carved it out over the space of four or five years from a bramble clogged hillside using only a petrol strimmer, a spade, a ton of cheap agricultural grade wood, and a complete lack of planning or forethought. It will never look anything other than “rustic”. And that’s on a good day.
Still, I’m rather proud of it. I can look at it and hand on heart say “I built that”.
But the most exciting thing going on in the garden is that I’m currently bidding for this on ebay:
To the ill informed this may look like a old bath, but you and I know better. It is a duckpond!
Yes, I’m getting Ducks! And it’s all thanks to the wonderful John Grey who is exceptionally generously incubating me some of his Indian runner duck eggs. Soon I will have three of these little beauties joining the chickens in destroying the garden
I am exceptionally excited.
Quack quack.
