Fun as a Gran: The Gallery

Thursday 26 May 2011

The Gallery - My backyard

Tara has set this weeks theme as: My Backyard. It can be literally or metaphorically.

Well my backyard leaves a lot to be desired a horrible square of clay ground with no drainage, and right now due to the amount of rain we have had the grass is just a squelchy bog, and only life can be in pots as the ground is not remotely suitable for anyhting , as seen here with granddaughter, so my backyard will have to be metaphorical.

I am going to use my allotment. We are fortunate enough to have this just from passing comments made between varying people. About 18 months age we bumped into a lady who I use to help out occasionally a few years back, and got talking that we now lived in the town not out on the farm and we fancied an allotment, but the council list was nearly 60 people long and they have a turnover on average of 2 allotments a year, meaning I would still be waiting in my early 80's, by which time I feel the urge may have worn off a tad.

She had then been talking to a golfing friend of hers who knew of an elderly couple who had a large garden that they could not keep any more and had been looking for somebody to come along and make use of it, in return for keeping it tidy and utilising it fully.

So we got put in touch with said couple who live only 1 mile away from us, a nice walk-able distance even for my 15yr old dog, and hit it off and so we took over their garden. It wasn't in too bad a condition but they had had a gardener in a few times to tidy it, but they didn't want to keep paying a gardener just to tidy it when it could be used.

Last year we got hold of it quite late in the year and didn't get a brilliant crop out of it as it had not been fertilised but we got some poor quality potatoes but a fair crop of peas and beans. At the end of last year we trailed sea weed back from the beach and covered the garden in it, and upon digging it in this year there are signs of plenty of worms, when there were none last year at all, so it must have improved in quality since then.

This year we had an easy option for filling the allotment as my daughter won a small spring vegetable garden from rocket gardens, though we got a substitute for the peas. It would not have been my first choice for a garden as to much rabbit food for my husbands liking, but my daughter could not use it so I swapped her it for a curry hamper I won in another comp, waste not want not.

Most of this is not growing away merrily, but we have had a few casualties, the cauliflowers and the cabbages are totally gone, threw away the last rotted bits, and the dwarf beans have all withered in the last few weeks and the runner beans are now not far behind them, Feel they maybe just went in to early whilst the ground was still to cold and we were still having heavy over night frosts.