Fine words and edible parsnips

I’ve blogged about parsnips before.

Parsnips are one of the more reliable crops on the allotment, as long as the frosts aren’t so long and so hard that we can’t lever them out of the ground. There’s a fine line between ensuring that the crop has experienced some frost to make them sweeter, and roots frozen into the ground until the earth finally decides to release them, generally after they have developed a core with a hardness of of 10 on the Mohs scale.

We have harvested some huuuugggggeeee parsnips this year. And although I love roast parsnips, parsnip soup and so on, my mind has recently been harking back to a certain failure from a couple of years ago. Yes – the parsnip cake experiment. Or chemical warfare as it turned out to be. It’s a confusing moment – seeing what smells like a delicious cake but not being able to eat it. It does strange things to the mind. The brain thinks “mmm – cake = lovely”. The taste buds, however, beg you not to take another mouthful.

Now, I don’t like to be outwitted by a root vegetable, and this culinary failure has been playing on my mind for some time. So, whilst idly searching the BBC Good Food website for parsnip recipes a month or so ago, I happened across another parsnip cake recipe. I put a link up when updating the seasonal recipes on my sidebar, but hadn’t plucked up the courage to actually make the cake. Until this weekend.

And so, it was with some trepidation that SomeBeans tried a small bite of the proffered cake. The poor chap – the last time I fed him parsnip cake, he accused me of trying to poison him (though not as effectively as I did with the Jerusalem artichokes…). But this time……

SUCCESS! A cake of delights. No acrid aftertaste. No vacillation of brain vs tastebuds. A moist, sweet cake. I have beaten the parsnip demon.

(We’ve eaten quite a lot of it, as you can see. Well, we do have a guest)

2011 Almanac – a review

In December of 2010 I wrote a blog post about what my 2011 gardening year would involve. As it’s now 2012, and it is obligatory to review the previous year (whether on TV, in the papers, in blogs, or in your own head), I thought I’d revisit my Almanac for 2011 post…

January:

Hmmm. I was a bit optimistic about planting my tulips belatedly. In the end I didn’t plant them until May. They didn’t grow.

Parsnips remained stuck in the ground until February, and then were the size of baobab trees, and just as edible. At least I didn’t make cake.

February:

I did order seed potatoes in both autumn and January. On the plus side, we have enough potatoes stored in the garage to see us through any food shortages over the next 12 months. As long as we don’t mind eating just potatoes.

March:

Yup, still no snowdrops.

April:

Hurrah, hurrah! I didn’t buy any lettuce seed this year. Unfortunately, I didn’t get round to sowing more than one lot of lettuce. Perhaps I should try VP’s 52 week salad challenge this year.

I sowed parsnip seeds and they came up! Freak warm weather conditions mean that this will not happen again.

May:

Ah yes, the weeds… I know foraging is all the rage, but to be honest, there’s a reason why we don’t eat most of these foods any more. I’m looking at you, ground elder, fat hen and bittercress. Although none of these taste as bad as the strawberry spinach we grew once and are forever cursed with. Eat soil – it’s tastier.

June:

Well, my skills with a hoe haven’t improved. I’m sure we didn’t need so many onions, anyway.

July:

I skipped planting out the poor, lanky sprouts and put them straight into the compost bin, thus cutting out the middleman and saving time and effort. Shop-bought sprouts for Xmas dinner; small sprout plants were bought and planted in September – they may just be producing sprouts in time for December 2012.

August:

Ah ha! A triumph! I only planted out 2 courgette plants. Isn’t it amazing how big the devils can grow when you turn your back for a week? This year, I might try hollowing one out and use it for punting down the River Dee.

Did someone say something about a drought? South East England may be lacking in water, but up here in the North West, the horsetails are growing so  lush that I fear to part them in case I come across some vicious predators from the past. Ah, wait – I did:

September:

I was as circumspect with the squash plants as I was with the courgettes this year. And yet, and yet… the growth was still sufficient to allow indigenous tribes to evolve and then, come October frosts, emerge blinking from the blackened foliage.

October:

I think you’ll find I was right about the achocha. Like eating small green porcupines. Except with less flavour.

November:

Ah yes, the pumpkin avalanche in the conservatory. I’m considering going into the decorating business – pumpkin puree makes very good wallpaper paste, and we have industrial quantities of pumpkins to get through.

December:

Ha ha! I’ve planted all my bulbs! It’s good that I’ve learnt something over 12 months. It’s nice to know that I must be at least as intelligent as a slime mould. Although slime moulds would probably be capable of remembering to buy snowdrops.

 

I will make no predictions about what 2012 will bring from a gardening point of view, except that we will have a new companion whilst doing it this year. At what age can babies recognise the difference between parsnip seedling leaves and ground elder?

A happy gardening new year to you all. May your seedlings flourish.

A year in pictures

January

Christmas Box (Sarcococca), placed by the front door, so it is easy to remember to bend down and smell its glorious fragrance on a dark winter day.

February

Iris ‘Katharine Hodgkin’ – perfection in miniature. Well worth spending 15 minutes getting cold knees to admire her.

March

Spring is here – cold knees again, but for a blast of golden sunshine.

April

Early sunshine brings out the butterflies. In this case, mating orange-tips.

May

Normal weather resumes, dampening the petals (but not the brilliant colour)  of the beautiful Meconopsis.

June

I spent some of May and June playing with the camera, learning about depth of field.

July

As always, July brings bright colours to the ‘late summer border’ (sounds considerably grander than it is!)

August

Rhapsody in blue – the hard-working and beautiful Aster x frikartii ‘Monch’ is a star in the front garden, starting in late July and going on until the end of September.

September

Almost as beautiful as a flower in the garden – the garden spider. I wish I was as keen on their cousins, the house spider – as it’s around September that these monstrous beasties make themselves known in the house.

October

What better advert is there for allowing ivy to grow in your garden? A red admiral enjoying some late October sun.

November

Early November sees the brilliant colours of witch hazel leaves shine through the dull days.

December

 

A New Year’s Eve rose – Tess of the D’Urbervilles.

Wordless Wednesday - Orange Peel fungus

Contracting world

I will gloss over the lack of posts for two months.

As Beetle continues to germinate within, I find my world contracting slightly. I’ve not visited any gardens recently, the allotment becomes something of an effort, and the weather has meant that plot visits have been short. Thanks to SomeBeans, we do have some home-grown veg to consume tomorrow – though I have failed on sprout timings this year (they may be ready for Easter).

Dark nights and wet weekends have meant I’ve even neglected the garden. We had some quite major works done in the back garden at the end of October, but I didn’t even blog about them. The patio has gradually, in the eight years we’ve been here, sunk, cracked, been broken by frosts, and made very uneven. The reason for these problems was revealed during excavations – they were laid on around 6” of sand, and that was about it. The long steps were impractical, meaning that you walked along from kitchen door to garage with one foot on one level and the other foot on another level. So, we got a more useable space.   

 

At the bottom of the garden, there were two cherry trees, rendered ugly by around 20 years of what I shall call ‘lollipopping’. We’d been meaning to get them cut back for a while, as they had grown a lot and shadowed over the greenhouse. A chat with the rear neighbour about them shading his garden, however, galvanised me into more drastic action. Why pay someone to come in and perpetuate the monstrous lollipopping? We could clear out the bottom areas (also over planted with a laburnum sloping into another neighbour’s garden) and a deformed holly. Disadvantages, of course, are that we have lost some habitat for birds and insects, and some summer shade, for when the sun does (occasionally) come out. Advantages are regaining light for the greenhouse, and a new area to plant up with hopefully more attractive trees, shrubs and perennials. An ugly gravel/rock corner has been disposed of, and replaced with patio. Not mould-breaking design, I admit, but a nicer, more useable corner of garden. The gravel/rock corner had annoyed me since we first moved in.

 

As you can see, it is yet to be planted up. We have put one plant in; which will grow to give some screening against the house in the background. We chose an Amelanchier ‘Robin Hill’ which will give us colour in the spring and also the autumn, much more attractively than the cherries did. To this will be added some shrubs and spring/winter interest planting.

Since these works were completed in November, I’ve barely ventured into the garden, but some sunshine this morning saw me tidying the front garden. Normally I leave a lot of the herbaceous plant growth in place until spring, but might have my hands full in a couple of months time, so this morning saw me cutting back and pulling weeds up on my hands and knees.

Perhaps not an elegant position to be in, but needs must (and it does tie in with the title of this blog!), and it has two distinct advantages – firstly, it is, apparently a good position to be in to encourage Beetle to adopt the correct position for birth (at his last scan he was breech, which means a Caesarean if he stays like that). Secondly, it gave me a close-up view of the bulbs starting to push their way through the soil to the air. There’s still a long time for winter to appear, but a few green shoots bring happiness and hope for a good new year.

Merry Christmas x

Thank you, Dr Seuss: Oh! The things that you’ll grow!

So far, we have only bought one thing Beetle related, for fear of tempting fate. However, I’m pleased to announce that the one thing is a compendium of Dr Seuss stories.

Although it will be a good few years until he will be able to appreciate it, one of my favourites is ‘Oh, the Places you’ll go’.

So, with very heavy thanks to Dr Seuss, I thought I would present the gardener’s version of this lovely story…

 

Oh, the things that you’ll grow

 

Horticulture

That’s the thing that we do

When we’re growing plants

It’s such great fun too!

 

You have twigs in your hair

You have mud on your shoes

You can plant what you want

Anything that you choose.

 

It’s up to you. And you’ll grow what you grow

And you are the gardener who’ll decide where they’ll go.

 

You’ll examine the pots. Look ‘em over with care

Some will be scrawny, half dead, so it pays to beware

With your head full of plans and your boot full of pots

You’re too smart to buy any with mildews or rots.

 

And you may not like any

That you’d want to feed,

In that case, of course,

You can grow them from seed.

 

There’s a lot more to choose

What have you to lose?

 

In seed catalogues and websites

You’ll so often find

There’s so many to choose from

You’ll go out of your mind.

 

And when you start clicking

On ‘buy these now’

Don’t start counting pennies,

That’ll furrow your brow.

 

Oh! THE THINGS THAT YOU’LL GROW!

 

You’ll be knee deep in compost!

You’ll dream of seedlings!

You’ll think that you’re queen of

All the green things.

 

They won’t grow straggly, because they’ll have the light.

They’ll grow oh so strongly, gain vigour and height.

Whatever you grow, you’ll get the best of the crop.

Whatever you sow, it just won’t want to stop.

 

Except when it don’t

Because, sometimes, it won’t.

 

I’m sorry to say so,

But sadly it’s true,

That damp off

And die off

Can happen to you.

 

You can get all het up

About seedlings that collapse

And your compost that dries out

Producing hard-to-break caps.

 

You’ll forget to pot on

So plant roots will coil round

So when you do plant them,

They’ll just die in the ground.

 

You’ll start to avoid

The greenhouse or plot

You’re embarrassed to look at

Those plants you forgot.

 

You’ll start to lose face

And your poor pot bound Queen Anne’s Lace

Will long to find its roots in a place

But for now it is sat in a most useless place.

The Waiting Place...

 

...For seedlings just waiting.

Waiting for a drop of rain

Or towards the light to crane

Or to move to the cold frame

Or for the waterlog to drain

Poor plants just waiting.

 

NO!

That’s not their fate!

 

Somehow you’ll catch up

On all that pricking and potting

You’ll find the sun shines

And stops damping and rotting.

 

Oh the things that you’ll grow! There are beds to be dug!

There are mulches to spread. There is water to lug!

And the beautiful flowers that you’ll see unfurl

Will make you the happiest gardening girl.

 

Success! The plants will grow and grow,

With the help of your weed-crushing hoe.

 

And will your plants succeed?

Yes! They will, indeed!

Flowers and produce success guaranteed!

Time flies…

OMG! As I believe they say nowadays.

An idle thought this evening made me go back and check a previous blog post from a few years ago. And due to some sort of (cat-like?) sixth sense, I discover that it is precisely THREE WHOLE YEARS since LAPCPADPOUB Day. Oh my.

Maybe next year, it will be resurrected – now there’s a threat!

For old time’s sake:

There once was a gardening blogger

Who posted a memory jogger

About cats wot were mad

And poems so bad

It made many folk want to flog her.

I thank you.

The Language of Flowers - a book review

I read quite a lot; just occasionally, I remember to blog about the books afterwards. SomeBeans is much better at blogging about the books he’s read. However, when I have been given a book to look at, I thought I ought to make the effort!

I’m sure a fair few garden bloggers have been approached about reviewing The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh, with that of Esther Montgomery being one review that I have seen and enjoyed.

To be honest, if I had seen the book in the bookshop, I would probably have avoided it – a pretty cover featuring swirly writing and a fair amount of pink would have had me moving on to other books quite rapidly. Whilst the copy I have was given to me by the publisher,  have to say that I would have been happy to spend the money after just a few pages of the book.

The language of flowers (as oppose to The Language of Flowers – the book) is something that I learnt a little about quite some time ago. I think I must have heard about it from a great aunt, and something of the romance of it has stuck in my mind ever since. Flowers were used in Victorian times to express a wide range of messages and emotions., in a subtle way. I suppose this lives on with the rather predictable red rose of expensive Valentine’s Day today, declaring ‘love’. How much nicer and more thoughtful it might be to receive a more personal message within a bouquet – perhaps Stock and Cosmos.

So, to the book. I don’t want to give the story away, so perhaps a few hints using the language of flowers. The story is a bouquet of aquiliegia, buttercup, lavender, peony, white roses and cirsium. Yet around and through these are wound trails of  hawthorn, lilac, moss, and above all, daffodils.*

A book to read in long sittings, perhaps as the nights draw in. A book to enjoy. And a new language to learn.

*If you’d like to know what this bouquet means, you can find out here.

Wordless Wednesday – Monstrous Carbuncle (Malvern Autumn show)

Wordless Wednesday - hoverfly