Veg Plotting

After a tentative start last week (mainly due to lack of weeding), I'm happy to report the strawberries have swung into full scale production. This is one glut NAH and I have absolutely no problem in tackling. We each ate a massive bowlful last night whilst they were still warm from the sunshine.

Just a few of the books recommended by Flange readers to while away those hot afternoons this summer - click on the picture if you need a closer look As a reader of Gardeners' World magazine , I always look forward to the We Love (insert current month) for.. feature, not only for the luscious pictures of must-have plants, but also to read the accompanying words of the 'master of the simile', James Alexander Sinclair (JAS). Now Gardeners' World has branched out into the world of books, bringing out a series of (largeish) pocket guides for less than a fiver on the theme of 101. Thankfully these have nothing to do with the Orwellian room of doom and are much more useful, brimming with ideas for projects, pots, shady or problem places and growing to eat. JAS brings us the latest in the series, the pictured 101 Bold and Beautiful Flowers. The book is divided into colour-themed sections, thus helping gardeners to easily match flowers into their current plantings, or to p...

A multitude of treats yesterday - not only a whole new garden to explore, but with a personally conducted tour of it from the delightful R Pete Free (RPF), including the gardeners' domain, not usually seen by the public (see RPF's blog for further snippets). RPF's readers will already be familiar with Lytes Cary Manor , but nothing beats a sunny summer afternoon to really get to grips with a lovely manor house and garden. So lets take a peep through this very inviting door (one of many in perfect pose) and see what there is to see. Looking away from the manor house - in the Apostle Garden with a view beyond the garden gate to the 'Dovecote' Anyone for croquet? There's a day devoted to it on June 15th - a perfect Fathers' Day treat? Alternatively, hirers of the property's 'cottage' (actually a wing of the house, accomodating up to 14 people) can play to their heart's content The Graham Stuart Thomas border - redesigned by the great man in...

Until recently our local garden centre has rarely been the place to put me in a good mood. It's my plant source of last resort as their quality is variable, the choice is so-so and the prices are to the max. However, it's been a much more pleasurable experience of late. Much of this is down to going there with Threadspider - shopping with a friend is always so much better plus we usually stop off for coffee and cake at some point. However, I'm also finding much of comedy value there - I have been known to burst into fits of giggles, much to the consternation of passers by. In my defence I present the following evidence: This is what started it all back in February - dotty cup and saucer planters We were worried about the middle option for a while until we realised they're a type of candle I hate to think what's happened to these cats to give them that expression A number of questions occur to me here - why do I need something to put my spectacles on? ...

As I said on Tuesday , I'd never make a good journalist - I don't have the right sense of timing and probably not much of a nose for a good story. Take the above picture - see that lovely book on the left? I took the photo on April 3rd, read the book on April 4th and have planned to tell you all about it ever since. Not anymore, the lovely Emma T scooped me to the review today (click the link and then look in the Comments). Not only that, she's said pretty well all the things I wanted to say, only much better. So if you like gardening books, don't wait for me to review them here, hop on over to the Garden Monkey's Book Flange instead, add your views and put even more of them on your must read list! But it's even worse than that. NAH was up north a few weeks ago and frantically phoned me one morning to tell me the National Trust's garden survey project I'm volunteering on was being featured on Breakfast News and Radio 4. Sure enough, Killerton was aw...

Hmmm, I think I need to clean that out... My regular choir's finished for the summer now, but I've joined another one that's formed temporarily to Sing for Water , raising money for WaterAid . There's about 70 voices drawn from several choirs across Wiltshire and we have just 6 weeks to learn 7 songs. In reality it's 3 weeks to learn them as the last 3 weeks will be polishing the songs to performance standard. We met in Trowbridge for the first rehearsal on Tuesday night - 2 songs down, 5 to go! There were 3 choir leaders there, so the way of learning the songs was quite different to what we've been used to as the different parts could be learnt pretty much at the same time instead of our usual in turn. Our local performance takes place on 8th July and we'll then be going to London in September for the big Sing for Water concert at The Thames Festival , where a choir of 1,000 voices will be performing. We learnt a E Marabini , a South African song on Tuesda...

Last Saturday when I sat down to write a quick extra post for the day poking a little fun at myself, little did I realise what a response I was going to get, even from across the pond (thanks Rose )! A big thank you to everyone who's joined in - I don't think I've ever written anything that's had people writing whole essays in response :) So I don't think a couple of lines from me in my Comments box quite does it justice does it? In retrospect I was naive in thinking what I'd said wouldn't matter that much. After all, Gardeners' World is a national institution as far as most gardeners are concerned. We've grown up with it, probably tried at least one piece of advice seen on the programme and maybe even made some of Geoff Hamilton's projects, all with varying degrees of success. The continued popularity of Barnsdale isn't solely down to the hard work by Nick and Sue Hamilton - people still want to see what they regard as their second garde...

... Tywyn Cinema Last year NAH and I holidayed in Wales. We rented this cottage in a tiny village called Llanegryn, near Tywyn at the edge of Snowdonia National Park. We enjoyed our summer holiday so much, we returned for another week on October (see also my ABC Wednesday P post ) and will probably be returning later this month. Last June I'd just embarked on a seven month career break from work and so much was happening in our lives at that time, we were thinking very hard about how we wanted to change things for the future. I know that's often a common theme on holiday, but we really seriously went for it. Tywyn has an independent cinema and we went along both weeks to see the film on offer. We got talking to the proprietor on our second visit and it turned out he was thinking about his retirement and selling the business in the next couple of years. So on the way home to Chippenham our conversation went something like: NAH: I really liked Tywyn - it was so friendly there...

Sunday saw the start of National Volunteer Week , an annual celebration of the 22 million people who give up some of their time to volunteer on all sorts of projects. As you know, volunteering is very close to my heart , so I heartily recommend the Do-It site for finding out the many opportunities available in your area. I was going to do a post each day this week to celebrate volunteering and to tell you about some of the fabulous experiences I've had. However I've so much to tell you, I'm in the process of setting up a new blog as it just won't fit into bite sized little chunks here. It'll be an occasional blog, designed to capture lots of nuggets to cheer myself up when times get tough as well as telling you all about them. In the meantime, here's a taster of what's to come (in no particular order): Working at the Special Olympics in Dublin in 2003 Helping research the duck-billed platypus in Australia (plus I'll probably write-up my travel diary fro...

In spite of our cool spring, I'm really pleased with the fruit set on my trees this year. However, the 'June Drop' started a little earlier than usual, probably due to the high winds we had at the beginning of last week. Once they'd subsided I decided to set up my pheromone moth traps amongst my trees - one for plum moth and the other for codling. Gardening books say they're meant to indicate when to spray, but I'm of the opinion that if the traps are catching most of the males, then the females aren't going to lay many eggs to hatch into those horrible maggots in my fruit. I set them up last Thursday and it turned out to be just in time. On Saturday the plum moth trap (see below) had a number of moths (ha ha ha!); yesterday the codling moth trap had its first catch of the season.