Lovage and Love-age

Lovage is back!!

Regular readers will know that I'm very fond of Lovage and it is a regular contributor to tasty nosh in the Wilbury household. Indeed it plays a big role in Wilma Wilbury's famed fish stew. Not for nothing is its German name Maggikraut.

It's a perennial and it's reappearance is eagerly anticipated. I've topdressed it with National Growmore so am hoping for big things.

And look at yon rhubarb thicket.


It'll soon be time for a Rhubarb Bellini.

And as for Love-age, forgive the excruciating pun but it seemed appropriate somehow, given that our son, on the weekend of his 30th birthday, has got engaged. We're delighted and very proud of them both.

I'll need a posh frock now! Possibly even a frockless evening strap? Steady on Wilbury.

Pipped

I've been following, and bidding on, a greenhouse on eBay. 8ft x 6ft. It was local which was a big plus but still needed complete dismantling (& reassembly of course).

It went for £123 which was more than I was prepared to pay. Rule of thumb is something like - if a new one (Homebase or B&Q) costs £250 I'm not prepared to pay half that if I have to dismantle it, transport it and reassemble it. Doesn't seem like much of a bargain after all that!

But I'm watching five more.

A Blessed Miracle

Last autumn, on the last occasion when I wanted to use it, my venerable petrol lawn mower declined to start. It really really declined, several times; so the lawn has been shaggy all winter.

Cleared the shed out a bit today. Looked sternly at the lawn mower (which has had the same tank of petrol sitting in for 5 months now), primed it, pulled the cord twice and halle-chuffing-lujah; it started.

Perhaps the winter rest has done it good (or mayhap I have mower-repairing pixies in the shed?).

Any road up, lawn's cut!

Busy today......

...... but no photos because I stupidly forgot to put the memory card back in the camera.

The onion plantation is done, after a good going over with Growmore. Apparently they used to call it National Growmore during the war years. I suppose it was like (well, in spirit anyway) that malt extract and clinic orange juice us deprived kids in 't North used to get when we were little. Not that I knew I was deprived, but I did like the malt extract especially. Virol, I think it was called.

Anyway, digressing merrily today, a gazillion onions and shallots in PLUS half a row of garlic. This is breaking all the conventions that garlic should be planted before Xmas and needs a good spell of cold weather. This has had neither but they were still selling it at the garden centre so it should be OK?? Mind you one of the bulbs was mouldy and the other two were past their best. Still, if I get any garlic at all it'll be a bonus.

Half the raspberroonies are now tied up with string - no, not in a brown paper package, that's just silly - and, wait for it, six Asparagus crowns planted. It'll be 2011 before they are properly productive. They're immediately downhill from the rhubarb (which is brilliant this year) and between the plum tree (which needs to get it's arse in gear or it's out - 1 plum last year; get a grip) and the hazel thicket (which needs coppicing; get me, I've so much land I need to go out and coppice the hazel!! It's quite a small thicket, but it does need coppicing). This is all beginning to sound like an "area for stuff which will be there a long time"

And I've got a touch of sun and wind burn. Yippee! Hasta la Vista, baby.

David Douglas - a human touch

I was at Kew last Monday, looking at archive correspondence from/to/about David Douglas. The first letter I picked up, dated March 23 (my birthday) 1835 was from John Douglas (DD's brother) to William Hooker at the Glasgow Botanic Garden. It was the first letter written by John after learning of his brother's death, far away in Hawaii, and he records his "distress at David's death".

This is the first time I've ever seen Douglas referred to in a family way - he's normally referred to as simply Douglas, or Mr Douglas or, after his stay in California, Dr Douglas. I thought that was really quite touching.

Incidentally, William Jackson Hooker and his son Joseph Dalton Hooker were the intellectual powerhouses of Kew throughout the 19th century. There is an excellent biography - the Hookers of Kew - which I commend to your attention, although if you go round nowadays asking for the Hookers of Kew you might get quite a different sort of attention.

It's that time of year.....

..... to get on with sowing.

Here are the plugs I transplanted a month or so ago, all doing nicely.

And here are the ones I bought today (just in time, the season for plug plants is drawing towards its close I think) + piles and piles of sowing.


And finally, here they are in their heated propagator - aka the conservatory. This is an annual ritual which Wilma Wilbury has just about got used to!

Douglas justifies his position, 1826

David Douglas, in spring 1826, had decided [previous post] to stay on another year in the Pacific Northwest, collecting specimens for the Horticultural Society. But he clearly felt he needed to justify his decision:

"However, I am uncertain how far I may be justified in so doing. ....Two considerations presented themselves: first, I am incurring very little expense; second, being laid up an invalid last autumn during my seed harvest, I doubtless lost many interesting things which I would otherwise have had.

Lest the former [the additional cost of staying an extra year] should be made any objection to , most cheerfully will I labour for this year without any remuneration, if I only get wherewith to purchase a little clothing."

On this day in 1804.....

......The Royal Horticultural Society, dedicated to advancing good gardening, is founded by Joseph Wedgewood. It wasn't actually Royal at that time, that came later.

On this day in 1804 David Douglas, Botanist and Plant Collector extraordinaire, was only four years old. Douglas's explorations in the 1820s & 1830s were funded by the Horticultural Society before his death in dreadful circumstances on Hawaii in 1834.

Long-time readers of this blog will recall that I'm involved in making a TV documentary on Douglas's life and works. Last year this blog followed his footsteps contemporaneously across North America to York Factory on the shores of Hudson's Bay, culminating in a filming trip at York Factory with polar bears and other adventures. To bring you up to date, the film crew have just returned from Hawaii where they filmed at Douglas's grave and the site of his death (without me, sadly, altho I've been to these locations before).

We start filming again in the UK in May, with a week in London and a week in Scotland. I'm off to the RHS and Kew on Monday to discuss details. In the meantime parallel blogging (Woody in 2009, Douglas in 1826) will resume shortly. For the moment, here is Douglas considering his position in the Pacific Northwest, Feb 1826:

"From what I have seen in the country, and what I have been enabled to do, there is still much to be done; after a careful consideration as to the propriety of remaining for a season longer than instructed to do, I have resolved not to leave for another year to come. From what I have seen of the upper country towards the headwaters of this river [the Columbia] and the boundless track contiguous to the Rocky Mountains, I cannot in justice to the Horticultural Society's interests do otherwise."

Finally, here's an offer you don't get very often - I do slide lectures/talks on David Douglas to anyone who'll listen. No charge, just pay my expenses in getting there & back. Post a comment if interested.

This lunchtime, I are mostly cooking.......

...... lumps of lamb, bashed flat and flashed in a frying pan.

It seemed like a good idea, with a long day at the allotment planned, to take the means of cooking lunch. With regard to meat, I belong to the "see meat, bash meat, flash meat, eat meat" school of cookery; in other words I'm a bloke.

Camping stove + 2 small rumps of lamb + 1 huge tomato + bread & butter = enough lunch to keep a hungry chappy happy.


Then I put the kettle on.

Burning Man Festival comes to Allotment 81

Well, almost. I do want to go to the Burning Man Festival but fear I may be too old and terminally uncool. There's also the small matter of it being in Nevada.

For the moment I'll content myself with burning piles of rubbish and dig-dig-digging it. Look how much bindweed I got out of section 3 this morning.

I've also sown my Sweet Pea seeds. The RHS advice says to nick the hard seed coat opposite the growing point, to help the seed hydrate. Good advice of course, but has anyone with normal size fingers ever tried doing it? Ye Gods. I concluded that there was a fair old risk of taking a finger end off, and making no inroads on the seed coat at all. They'll have to hydrate without any help from me.

I plough the fields and scatter, the good seed......

....... on my potting bench.


If I can get this lot dealt with this year I'll be well pleased.

Go with the flow? Brambles a Go-Go?

I've been wondering whether my approach to the 'wild' blackberries on the plot is wrong. They seem ineradicable, so perhaps I should work with them rather than against them. Perhaps I should regard them as bounty; a free source of extra blackberry plants and train them against a 'post & wire' framework rather than try, literally fruitlessly, to root them out. It won't work everywhere of course or the plot will end up only growing brambles but I can think of three places where I could do this immediately. Watch this space (or, pedantically, that space).

This has all been triggered by some proper work. Halle-chuffing-lujah. Proper work at last; amazing how energising it can be. So today I've pruned the Autumn Bliss, banged in posts for them, pruned the grapevine, pruned the blackberries and cut up into manageable chunks the Rogue Hawthorn I cut down before Xmas.

And mid-morning a skein of around 50 geese went over, honking furiously. Needless to say the camera was nowhere to hand.

Too cold to transplant, says Aladdin

I've bought the first plug plants of the year Geraniums of course, and Bidens, Fuschia & Surfinia Petunias.Buying small in February means I get lots for the money and can grow them on in the conservatory so that when it's proper planting-out time I've got loads of big healthy plants. That's the plan and it usually works. Even better if I had a greenhouse.

But, having bought them, I can't transplant them for a day or two. The compost has been in the shed so is perishing cold. I've filled the seed trays with compost and left it to warm up for a day or so before I dare plant the plugs.

In the meantime, here they are. The paraffin lamp beside them is an original Aladdin, at least 60 years old and a family heirloom.
It was the only source of light in the first house I can remember as a child. Even in my teens when we were living in a council house (without central heating) that lamp was placed in the bathroom an hour before anyone wanted a bath, just to warm the room up (a bit).

Even now, it's very handy in power cuts and you can still get a full range of spare parts for it.

Rhubarb 1 : Snow 0

Last weekend at the plot the snow was very much in retreat. Leeks were just fine but winner of the "Bring it On, I'll Shrug it Off" prize goes to the rhubarb. Can't wait to see how the big clods of rhubarb I transplanted last year do.

[What???? can't wait to see how your rhubarb does?? Get a life, Wilbury; do something exciting with a new mattock]

Passwords on Blogs

Why?

Don't see the point, myself. If you're blogging you are, by definition, offering your thoughts to the world.

If you want to restrict it to a chosen few write them a letter

Gloomy David Douglas - New Year's Day, 1826

As you'll perhaps recall, I'm doing some parallel blogging again this year, of the allotment in 2009 and David Douglas (botanist & plant collector extraordinaire, 1799-1834) in 1826. At that time he is at the Fort Vancouver headquarters of the Hudson's Bay Co'y in the Pacific Northwest.

To refresh the story in 2009 for new readers, I am involved in making a TV documentary on Douglas's life and achievements, with colleagues from the Oregon Cultural Heritage Commission, in the USA, and the UK Forestry Commission. Filming is almost complete in Oregon and Canada, it starts in Hawaii (sadly not with me) in February, and then we're in London and Scotland in May. A premiere is scheduled for Douglas's birthplace in Perth, as part of the Scottish Year of Homecoming, for October.

Anyway, here he is on New Year's Day 1826 clearly feeling a bit sorry for himself. A hangover perhaps?

Commencing a year in such a far removed corner of the earth, where I am nearly destitute of civilised society, there is some scope for reflection. In 1824 I was on the Atlantic on my way to England; 1825 between the island of Juan Fernandez & the Galapagos in the Pacific. I am now here and God only knows where I may be the next. In all probability, if a change does not take place, I will shortly be consigned to the tomb. I can die satisfied with myself. I never have given cause for remonstrance or pain to an individual on earth. I am in my twenty-seventh year.

Douglas is being unnecessarily gloomy here, although in fact he had only another eight years left before a grisly end on Hawaii. I've stood where he died and also where he is buried in downtown Honolulu.

A small custom has grown up of toasting his grave with a wee dram. I did that on my visit and will be having a wee dram in his memory tonight on Burns Night. (The Memorial cairn you see behind me in the first photo was erected by the now-defunct Burns Club of Hilo, on the Big Island of Hawaii, in 1934 to commemorate the centenary of his death).

What, no allotmenting?

January looks like being the month of no allotment work. Here's the reason:


I'm not usually that porky, honest. It's bloating from the operation!

Serfdom - 1215 and 1961

One of the bonuses of recovering from an appendix op is that I'm getting lots of reading done. This week I've been reading 1215 - The Year of Magna Carta by Danny Danziger & John Gillingham.

They make the point, in discussing the status of people at that time, that slavery in Britain was ended not long after the Norman conquest in 1066 and "by the 1120s Englishmen looked upon slavery as a barbarous custom happily no longer practised in their modern and civilised society".

Fast forward to 1215, when "Although a serf and his family were in effect bought and sold when the land on which he lived, his villein tenancy, was bought and sold, no individual serf was separated from his or her family and taken to market to be sold in the way that slaves - human cattle - had been. Serfs were not slaves. But they felt unfree and with reason. A long struggle lay ahead, in which the great rebellion of 1381, the Peasants Revolt, was the principal landmark, before serfdom was at last ended, although it has never been formally abolished."

Now fast forward again to 1961, at which point I am 11 years old. My father was a farm labourer living in a tied cottage which went with the job; no job = no house. The farmer, who was my mother's cousin (or perhaps uncle), decided to retire and sell the farm. He didn't trouble himself to inform or consult my mother or my father (his only employee). They found out only when they saw the farm sale advertised in the local newspaper.

The sale went ahead and my father's employment duly transferred to the new owner, who promptly decided he didn't want my father. He sacked him and moved to evict us from the house; no job = no house.

Arguably, my father could have resolved this much earlier by seeking other work. After all everyone has a common law right to choose who they work for. But no job (or perhaps different job) = no house and that's a hard decision to take when you're supporting a family.

This whole farm labourer & tied cottage arrangement for the rural poor seems to me uncomfortably close to serfdom, alive and well in 1961. I believe my father's employment status then was little better than a serf, and wonder whether I was then, almost 750 years after Magna Carta, the son of a serf?

History close enough to touch?

Those of you who have followed this blog over the last couple of years will be familiar with my interest (obsession?) with the life and works of David Douglas, botanist and plant collector 1799-1834. I have followed him around the world, including to sub-arctic Canada last summer and am making a TV documentary on his life. One of my themes is that history, far from being a dry and dusty subject which happened long long ago, can be surprisingly close.

Now let me tell you about Eugenie Fraser. Born Yevgheniya Ghermanovna Scholts, in Archangel, of Russian-Scots parents she died only in 2002, aged 96, in Edinburgh. Her obituary is on Times Online and her story of her life is available on Amazon. As a newborn baby in 1905 she was taken by sledge, swaddled in furs against the Archangel winter, to the house of an old family retainer, Nanny Shalovchika. Nanny professed herself content that she had now nursed four generations of the same family.

But the point about Nanny Shalovchika is that she was 105, born in 1800. She remembered seeing Napoleon’s troops fleeing down the roads of Smolensk after the battle of Smolensk in 1812 (she was already 12!), and had a son killed in the Crimean war.

In the lives of just two people, one of whom died only six years ago, we can reach back right to 1800 (David Douglas was born in 1799). History is indeed sometimes almost close enough to touch.

More on Douglas shortly, including his own gloomy assessment of his life expectancy, back in 1826.

But for the meantime, tomorrow, was serfdom alive and well in the UK as late as 1961?

Woody regrets.......

..... his recent lack of input and failure to wish you all Happy New Year etc.

Sadly, I have been hors de combat (and count myself lucky not to have been turned into an old horse de combat and made into pies)

Sequence runs something like this:

Sat 3rd Jan, emergency admission to hospital with suspected appendicitis. (Lots of opportunity for fantasy driving from Wilma Wilbury in her ambulance manque - aka Ford Ka - , leaning out of car shouting Nee Nah, Nee Nah, Outta my Way, Suckers)

Anyway, at the very end of a long and increasingly painful day, acute appendicitis was confirmed and my about-to-perforate appendix and I went our separate ways. It's fair to say that neither us will be hoping for a reconciliation.

I'm currently stapled together in the lower abdomen and off work for a month. I've been having a whole host of VERY weird morphine-related hallucinations but they seem to be ebbing away now and I'm beginning to keep food down. Allotmenting remains a distant prospect at present.