A few days late

It seems that a few flowers were feeling shy and did not want to appear in time for GBBD. But, given a little warmth and a little sunshine they have now been coaxed out of their bashful buds. Small, but all the more wonderful because of it - concentrated beauty.

This time just under two years ago, I was writing about sowing seeds far too early.

This time just under a year ago, I was writing about sowing seeds far too early. Interesting to see that the dwarf narcissi were out this time last year. They're several weeks behind this year.

This year, I haven't sown any seeds yet! It may take time, but I do eventually learn from my mistakes. But the shining sun is making my fingers itch to go and sow some...

Déjà lu

Not a gardening post, but something that came to me the other evening, as I started re-reading a book for the umpteenth time.


There are some books I return to time after time, despite having read them so often my eyes have nearly worn the print away. Winter nights are often the times when I do this, especially if I've had a hard day at work and my brain is still buzzing with all the problems of the day. Lazy summer afternoons sitting in shade in the garden may also see me reach for these favourites.

They are warm and comfortable, with the happy knowledge that there are no surprises to unsettle me during the read. It also doesn't matter when I near the end of these books. sometimes I'm enjoying a book so much that I don't want it to end. With these books, I don't mind reaching the end, as I know I'll pick the book up again in the future and enjoy it once more.

Books on this list vary in the frequency of re-reading - some may be read again after one or two years, others may not be revisited for three or four years. Top of the list is My Family and Other Animals, by Gerald Durrell - responsible for all magpies being referred to as Magenpies.

Another often revisited friend is Last Chance to See by the sadly missed Douglas Adams and also Mark Carwardine, looking at endangered animals around the world.

A book that I have read three or four times, and that is rather apt at the moment, with it being 200 years since his birth, is a biography of Charles Darwin. Fascinating insight into his life and times.

Finally, a book that will become of my déjà lu favourites, once I can bring myself to read it again, is The Time Travellers Wife. It is so sad that at the moment I can't face reading again yet, but it is such a good book that I know I will do at some point.

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day

Not much flowering at the moment chez Mouffetard, at least not much which is readily accessible and doesn't involve lying down in mud to photograph. so behold - a Hellebore.

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day is hosted by Carol at May Dreams Gardens

A study in red

We've never grown Hippeastrum (amaryllis) before. It has been great fun watching the dried looking bulb spring into life; the stem gradually lengthening, and finally the petals unfurling. So meet 'Red Lion'. It's ridiculously photogenic.

A shock of colour in a cold, white February.

Come Dine with Me

VP has come up with a meme which has required an awful lot of thought this evening.

Several guests have already been snaffled by other dinner party hosts this evening - my first thought was for Charles Darwin, but he's busy regaling VP with tales of the movements and habits of climbing plants.

My next thought was for Geoff Hamilton, but the Garden Monkey has got there first.

So, I then thought of the patron saint of guerilla gardeners - Ellen Willmott; being described as cantankerous, I'm sure she'd make an interesting dinner party guest.

I'm sure Bob Flowerdew would be a good laugh, as long as there were strict house rules on where he deposits his recycled cider. And it might be cheating slightly but I think David Attenborough might just be sneaked in - he has made programmes about plants, and has had a huge influence on my life - watching Life on Earth as a child opened my eyes to the natural wonders of the world.

Have to admit, it would be quite good fun to invite Alan Titchmarsh too. He may be a bit annoying at times, but his programmes have taught me a fair bit over the years, and it's always entertaining to see how his hair style changes. Not to mention his sideburns.

Not sure that I'd invite these two to dine with us though.

Thanks for exercising my brain this evening VP!

Compact and Bijou

SomeBeans has been busy. As we are giving up half an allotment and concentrating on the one allotment, we have had to do a little shed building. We bought a new shed, as we aren't big into skip diving, and so can't easily get hold of the raw materials to build your traditional allotment shed. So, a flat pack shed doesn't have so much character, but it does the important stuff, like keeping rain out. Hopefully.

The current shed on the half allotment has some character and enough internal iron bracing for it to withstand hurricane force winds. Not quite so sure about the new one.

Old shed - no, I'm not stood on one leg, it really does lean like that

The new shed has had quite a hard life so far - being too big to fit in the car, and not having the time to hang around the allotment to have it delivered straight there, SomeBeans had to take it to pieces, and then reassemble it when it had been taken down to the plot. So, the boards were prised off, the floor cut in half, the sides taken to pieces, carefully labelled, and then put back together again. Hopefully at some point in 2009 it will be dry enough to put some preservative on it. But I'm not holding my breath.

So, behold - a shed we can actually stand in, if not quite large enough for a garden party...

New shed - not quite such a character, but room to swing a cat. At least a relatively patient cat, who doesn't mind a few cracks round the head

We're just waiting for the spring winds, and fully expect to go down the plot one day and see a pair of stripey stockings with ruby slippers at the end sticking out from under the shed.

Thank you SomeBeans!

Great British flavour combinations

Part 1 in a series of 1.

Chicken and Leek

ARKive

I've been a bit remiss on the blogging front recently - both posting on my own blog, and also visiting the blogs of others. More the Infrequent Gardener than the Inelegant Gardener. Work has been getting in the way of the important things in life. I hope to catch up on peoples' blogs over the next few weeks, so expect my normal service of banal comments on your blogs to resume shortly!

I'm not even going to post about gardening now, but about a website I discovered a while ago, and rediscovered yesterday evening, when I should have been working. Needless to say, once I rediscovered it, I didn't get much work done. The website is called ARKive and describes itself as ..." a unique collection of thousands of videos, images and fact-files illustrating the world's species."

It is an amazing collection of images and information on a whole host of animals and plants, which is continually being updated. It covers most animals you'll have heard of, and many, many you won't have heard of.

Some favourites chez Mouffetard include:
- Goodfellow's Tree Kangaroo (otherwise known as the Ornate Tree Kangaroo, which suggests the creature is decorated with curlicues and perhaps patterned with paisley). The tree kangaroo may have evolved to take advantage of an empty ecological niche, but it doesn't look particularly at home in its new niche.

- The Pangolin - how cool are they?

- Allen's Slippery Frog - you can just imagine the conversation between the people who discovered that as they decided what to call it. Dave: "what shall we call it?"; Allen; "Argh, I've dropped the darn thing".

- Flightless Scaly Tailed Squirrel. why they had to specify its flightlessness in its name, I don't know. I know that there are some 'flying' squirrels, but flightless is pretty much the default setting for a squirrel. Perhaps it's related to the Flightless Hippo and the Flightless Aardvark.

- Maputaland Cannibal Snail - I could do with a few of those to put the fear of god into the many snails in my garden.

- Satanic leaf-Tailed Gecko - amazing looking creature with a wonderful name. Its species name is phantasticus, which it most certainly is.

Edit: I've added Verreaux's Sifaka - which bears an uncanny resemblence to Barry Cryer

Another edit: I wasn't going to add another one, but I challenge you to guess what a Tasselled Wobbegong is before you look. Half animal, half bath mat.

I could go on listing them forever - every time I look I discover lots more wonderful organisms.
Please do have a look at this wonderful website, and if you come across something fun or fascinating, let me know!

Ivy - a study

It has been sunny this afternoon, so I have been playing with the macro lens again. There aren't many flowers about, but plenty of buds and new shoots - the hellebores are just about ready to burst into a floral chorus ion the next week or two.

The best photos of the afternoon, however, have turned out to be of something which I haven't planted - wild ivy growing up a cherry near the end of the garden, and a visitor from next doo, which clothes some of the fencing. The sun brings out the beautiful colour of the stem.

A useful plant for wildlife, flowering late in the year when nectar is scarce, and providing berries. Natural England lists the animals which use ivy.

New Year Inertia

I think that we have safely passed the point in the new year when we all rush to make resolutions, only to feel like failures when we fail to go to the gym/lose weight/be nice to small kittens and so on.

I don't make resolutions.

So, this year, I wish to celebrate New Year Inertias - the things I do wrong or fail to do every year, each time vowing that next year I'll do it properly.

Amongst my many inertias that I will continue this year are:

• failing to label seedlings and rows of veg properly, meaning that I have no idea what I've planted. I'm always certain that I'll remember what I've planted. I always fail to remember what I've planted.
• Not putting fleece over the carrots, thinking that the carrot root flies will magically forget their raison d'etre and fly over my carrots. I'm doomed to tunnelled carrots forever.
• Not promptly planting out new purchases, but leaving them to languish on the patio until I eventually get around to it.
• Failing to sow veg successionally, so that I have a huge glut for a fortnight, where we eat solely one vegetable, and then have to wait a month for another veg to mature.
• Failing to plant out delicate young seedlings at the right time, so that they become angry, contorted seedlings desperate to escape from their pots.
• Not thinning out seedlings, as it just feels wrong and evil to pluck out healthily growing plants, just bcause they're too close together. This is despite the fact that I know that they grow much better when thinned.
• Buying too many seeds. I have enough lettuce and carrot seed packets to keep Chester fed with these veg for the next 10 years.

To mis-quote George Satayana: "Those who do not learn from their foolish gardening mistakes are doomed to repeat them."

Happy 2009 - may you learn from your mistakes.