Veg Out

Harlequin Ladybird Eggs

Predictably, the broad beans are swarming with blackfly, enough to support healthy colonies of both harlequin and seven spot ladybirds.

Flowery

Mid May

Do You Think You're Hard Enough?

Pumpkin plants grown from seed hardening off before planting out next week.

Rudderless

Quick - grab the tiller while there's no one at the helm ; )

Spot The Difference

Little changes

Tom's Out

Perhaps not the best time to plant out the first of the tomatoes now that the temperature at night has plummeted to a chilly 2° but they were getting leggy and root bound cooped up inside. At least they've got some protection, with perspex sheets salvaged from skips.

Buffalo Sound Mix Up

Oh - I seem to have been mixing up my Atlas Sound with my Avi Buffalo. Whatever, they're both jolly good and both on daytime radio, as long as 6Music keeps going.

Weevil Watch

Looks like weevils have been having a chomp on the broad bean leaves. It's not as serious a problem as the blackfly will be.



Cleared a patch of forget-me-nots and planted out some more peas.



Angelica's shot up and flowered early.



Still harvesting lots of broccoli, spinach and lettuce.

Berry Green

First gooseberries on this two year old bush.



Redcurrants waiting for the sun.

Green Day

Caroline Lucas elected as first Green Party MP.

Playing For Laughs

I've ranted before about the rib-tickling comedy series Ideal set in the world of disorganised crime in Salford, starring Johnny Vegas. Not only is it extremely funny but it also features snippets of dozens of excellent previously unheard tracks, thanks to writer, actor, producer and DJ Graham Duff. The last track in the final series, as Moz was seen leaving his flat for the first time, was a slow, grungy Cocteau Twins-esque number which turned out to be the oddly named 'Recent Bedroom' by Atlas Sound, aka Bradford Cox of Deerhunter.

Good to now hear Atlas Sound have made daytime radio, well, BBC 6Music at least, with singles from last year's great Logos album, like the catchy, singalong 'Shelia'.



Nothing much to laugh about on the telly at the moment, except reruns of fabulously kooky Flight Of The Conchords.

Reach For The Sky

Sweetcorn underway.

Parsley Sage Rosemary & Thyme

Are you going to Redland Fair? Well no, not this year as it happens. Much pottering to be done in the garden.

May Fayre

Peas



Chard



Spinach



Rhubarb

Chew Lips

In recent years a wet Spring has rather drowned the tulips and made them more susceptible to attack from slugs and snails. This year they're more likely to wilt in the relative drought.

Wet The Bed

Strawberries need buckets of water. Researchers have been working out at what points in the growth stage they most need water so that they can just be irrigated then, rather than all the time. These have had about 150 litres in the last week which should be well worth the effort in a couple of months.

Survivors

A few Lollo lettuce survived the harsh winter under a sheet of glass.

Legumes

Broad beans and peas on their way up, cloches off.

Red White & Purple

Red currant flowers



Victoria plum blossom



Sprouting broccoli

Anemone

Blue Screen

Like a blank Etch A Sketch. I imagine that if you live in Slough or anywhere near an airport, the peace is quite eerie.

Rhubarb Rhubarb

Avril 14th

Couldn't let the day pass without one of Richard's finest moments ...

Let Me Out

Almost all of the tomato seeds germinated and now they're straining for some light, wanting to go outside rather than be cooped up inside on the bathroom windowsill. Little do they know that there's snow forecast and while this may be another false alarm it's not worth taking the risk. Round about this time of year I always catch myself singing a bit of Prince's 'Sometimes It Snows In April'. A shame that he notoriously keeps all his tunes close to his chest otherwise I'd post a link.

Tom Jones

No - not that Tom Jones. This one was born Ralph Thomas Jones in Yorkshire, around the turn of the 20th century and married into the family. When he wasn't at the office, he used his carpentry skills to make things, like the model of his work bench and tools that he's rather shyly showing off for the local newspaper in this photo from 1954.



Hey presto! Here it is 56 years later. The male equivalent of a dolls house.



Not sure why he didn't finish this steel locomotive, which is sheer precision engineering.

I make a mess of whittling a stick.

Intermission

Back from the dead

Huzzah! There shall be purple sprouting broccoli for tea - some of it has survived the winter and has risen Lazarus-like from the dead.

Last Half Dozen

"What? You're closing down for good?" I asked the young guy at the grocer's shop today. I'd assumed that they were just closing a bit early for Easter and as usual before going on holiday were selling the stock at reduced prices. His boss had married a Lithuanian woman a year or two back - a photo of them in wedding garb at the Clifton Suspension Bridge had appeared in the local paper - and they'd told me a bit about their honeymoon in Egypt.

Mainly we just talked about eggs and egg boxes. Every so often I'd return a dozen empty boxes and depending on who was serving, I'd get a small discount. The boxes cost him 8p each so he was more than happy to knock 35p off each time I recycled a little stack of them, reducing the cost of half a dozen of the city's finest and largest free range eggs to £1. As it was, I'd gone along today for a 20 litre bag of compost that I could just about stagger home with over my shoulder.

"Oh I'm gutted for you" I told the young guy when he said that it all had to go by the end of the day. The hastily scrawled sign glimpsed out of the corner of the eye didn't bear looking at, but it instantly brought to mind the Manic Street Preachers' 'Everything Must Go.'

I easily quashed any feelings of schadenfreude at the fact that my compost was now going to be half price but I did peer towards the egg shelf and see the very last box and wonder what the feck I was going to do for eggs from now on. I made some small talk about the eggs coming from Bridgewater, but the young guy didn't know. Where was his boss? I desperately wanted to see him. "You sort me out and I'll sort you out" he'd said. I liked talk like that. And where was the beautiful Lithuanian woman, whose hair turned from blonde to black at some point?



All gone. End of a chapter. Well done all you numpties who bought all your eggs and veg and fruit from Tesco 50 metres away. Old Market and Lawrence Hill can support half a dozen massage parlours and sex shops but Church Road can't support one fruit and veg shop.

Backwards evolution?