Wednesday 10 August 2011

O' Flouer o' Scotland...

Whin will we see yir likes agen?
oops - weeds
I'm just back from spending 3 weeks at home in Scotland, and instead of sitting on my behoochie creating digital farms on the internet (don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about!), I've been staging war against brambles, wild strawberries and other evil garden interlopers IN REAL LIFE! Yes indeed!

I swear to the Lord of the Undergrowth that it was an unfair fight, though. The garden itself has been left to its own devices for a few years while my Dad was unable to tend it, and some of it looks like it has never seen cultivation in its life, even though it was growing some very tidy bedding plants/shrubs/rows of veggies not 4 years ago. But thanks the the by-pass last year and a marvellous hip replacement, he's been back, hoe in hand, beating the living crap out of it.

fine scottish melons... as it were...

The vegetable plots are full of potatoes, peas, carrots, cabbage, broccoli, lettuce, onions, beetroot, butternut squash, and spinach... The rose garden is flourishing and already on 3rd/4th flowering. The greenhouse is fit to bursting with already-ripening tomatoes, peppers, melons and other hot-house goodies! The raspberries, redcurrants and strawberries have already been and gone (nom) and the rhubarb is still happily churning out stalks of goodness in every direction it can.

I gave myself the task of ruining the lives of the wild brambles and strawberries that had seeded and laid runners around the place. I mean. Sheesh. You'd think the brambles, being thorny and catchy and owners of long, LONG roots and generally mean-minded buggers would be the worse of the two, but the wild strawberries had infiltrated the whole garden with their subversive underground runners (no doubt stroking their pet white cats at the same time) and were impossible to remove completely.

< insert evil laugh here >

They look so innocent with their teeny tiny fruit and angelic white blossoms, but that pretty face conceals a malevolence of unfathomable (almost) proportions: They were down the sides of the pathways, choking the aubretia (the aubretia fought back, though); surrounding and UNDER the foundations of the greenhouse; strangling the lilac tree; suffocating the miniature roses; congesting the borders with throttling runners. Generally staging an all-out garden coup, and winning.


So I armed myself with a garden fork, a hand fork, a trowel, a small spade and some totally unprepared muscles, and went to work.

I have to say I had a lovely time digging and annihilating! Very cathartic (after the initial muscle shock had died down) and it was a real pleasure to see turf (I didn't mention the overgrown grasses, did I?) and tangles of wildness turn into beds of dark, brown, earthy lusciousness, ready for planting!

pretty wildness

Yet somehow, there's something very beautiful about wild flowers in the garden...  a splash of colour when the hardy perennials are still gearing up for their own shows...  Just don't tell Dad I said so!

Mair Bloag Weejits

Footerin' Aboot

Footerin' Aboot
Heh! I'm so funny!

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