Desperate times, desperate measures
Monday 4th May. Hugo had a clip booked for the day that lockdown happened. He has got shaggier and hotter and more ridiculous looking as spring has progressed into early summer. I bite the bullet and sharpen some scissors. Hugo adores being flat on his back with his feet in the air which at least makes trimming his tummy easy. I start with the less obvious bits to get some practice in, the inside of his ears, behind his knees. I have had enough haircuts to know that the trick is little bits of hair at a time, lots and lots of snipping. His back legs take on the appearance of a Yorkshire terrier with very knobbly knees, but all truly artistic projects go through a stage when they have to look worse before they look better.
His ears have defeated me.
Tuesday 5th May. My flower studio is now also my Zoom place. Although I am not doing any work with children, I am still assessing parents and giving evidence in Court. This morning, a complicated and emotional one. I am utterly absorbed and it is something of a shock to come out of it and be once again surrounded by little brown envelopes, string, boxes of seeds and all the detritus of my other life. So many are finding the lack of distance between home and work disconcerting and unsettling but I am comforted. There is a little hoggin courtyard outside my studio with an old picnic bench too rotten for picnicking at but perfect for pots and potting. I have left it completely wild just to see what grew and it is a perfect blend of corn poppies and cow parsley. There are sea hollies from I don’t know where, and a fat ox eye daisy plant. Wild strawberries and the odd self-sown nigella. I step out of my studio, away from the immersion in the troubles of another, and back into my own world.
Wednesday 6th May. The world has shrunk, and with that comes a tightening of relationships and an appreciation of the necessities of life. Bartering becomes the norm. I take paper bags from my studio (I am never going to do markets again ever and the only thing I ever use them for is sourdough deliveries to my mother) and leave them for Claire at Combe Dingle Nursery to sell her plug plants in. In return, I get six kohlrabi plugs, twelve of beetroot, and a bag of compost. We are both thrilled, which is the sign of a good deal. Unlike Trump, I believe in a win-win model of business.
Thursday 7th May. Everything seems full today. The growth is fast but strong and there are new flowers out everywhere I look. I start the day strong, clearing some nettles at the far end of the apple trees, layering the new bay of the compost heap, active, strong, physical. And then the sun climbs higher and it is properly hot. The girls lie in patches of dappled shade and dip their noses in buckets of rainwater. Hugo is more dedicated and follows me around, but with the air of a spaniel who wishes I would just sit still. By midday, I do, and we climb into the hammock for an indecently long rest. Hugo adores the hammock and races to jump in it if anyone goes near it. The girls are less enthusiastic, but can be persuaded. (Setters are sleeping machines, and they are never more comfortable than when they are on top of someone.)
The day slows after the busy morning, and by the evening, there is nothing to do but watch the moon rise over the hill.
Friday 8th May. Refreshing the weather forecast rarely changes its predictions, but I try. There is a frost predicted for early next week. I generally consider the last frost date to be mid April, as the field lies in a particularly sheltered valley in a particularly warm county. I have grown more pumpkin seedlings than is any way appropriate for a non-commercial operation but they are one of my absolute favourite things to grow and eat. I had been planning on planting them straight out into the pumpkin patch, a foot deep with well rotted manure. I cannot risk it. I just can’t. Although Monty Don was sowing squash as part of his jobs to the weekend, I am firmly convinced that it is too late. Also I sold all my Long Island Cheese seed in the heady panic of early lockdown and I ventured briefly into vegetable seed-mongery. They are starting to suffer in their little square pots (yellow leaves a dead giveaway sign of stress) so there is nothing for it but to pot on. Squash and pumpkins are hungry plants and so I had already sown them into multipurpose compost. Seed compost has very little nutritional value and is only really good at getting seeds through the germination stage. Then they need pricking out into something more sustaining. Pumpkins germinate fast and need that feeding, plus they don’t like root disturbance much, so it makes sense to just sow straight into multipurpose. Unfortunately they have outgrown their pots, but also the compost I had seemed to have no nutritional value at all so they are starting to look a bit wan. Potting up is a satisfying and slightly repetitively mindless process. Perfect.
My camera has deleted the most recent ones I took of my beautiful collection of squash, but this is what they looked like when they were littler.
Saturday 9th May. There are the fun bits of gardening, and then there is the weeding. For the first time I think in my life, I have spent so much time weeding that I feel almost on top of it. There is one bit I have been neglecting, and that is under the apple espaliers. The odd tulip pops up there which is my excuse to leave it alone in April, which means by May, it is a jungle. A cerinthe has self-seeded there and it is the only plant reliably smothered in bees, further postponing any intervention. But intervene I must and I decide to cut down the nettles and the couch grass and cover with Mypex (black landscape fabric) for a year. This no-dig method gets rid of most of the weeds whilst preserving the soil’s structure and integrity. Next Spring I can top dress with a few inches of compost and use it as a space for growing, rather than letting the weeds choke the trees.
Most weeds do not take a full year and can be suppressed just using cardboard and compost, which is what I have done in most of the rest of the field. However, I know that there is ground elder there and you need to be a bit assertive with that sort of thing.
This is one of the jobs that is a gift to my future self, and I know I will be grateful next year. More immediately, many of the seeds that I have sown in the last fortnight are starting to come up. I took a punt on some very old leek seed and the grass-like shoots are now showing amongst the poppies that have appeared every time I get a hoe out. Every beech plant is now covered in the most perfect leaves. A tray of Pennisetum Macrourum (African Feather Grass) seed has sprung up overnight.
There is mowing to be done, and a bonfire of clippings and woody stems too thick for the compost. Then there is pizza in the wood oven, home made goat’s cheese, and the deep satisfaction of a field set fair.
It’s down to her now, and to the sun and the rain.
