First the good news

It was a much nicer day today than the forecast would allow, sunny enough that I managed to wash and dry a load of washing in the afternoon - I wish I'd been more hopeful in the morning, could probably have done two or three loads.

 The first potatoes, not just the Swift but the Red Duke of York are showing. The Duke is a passionate purple tinged shoot, most exotic looking next to the rather sickly Swift. The onion sets, even though planted very late, are also showing life.

Rook has taken another tumble into the pond and survived. He wasn't just sopping wet but layered with thick mud indicating he'd gone in at the deep end and had to struggle to escape. I'm glad he seems to have learnt what to do as I fear a cat that panicked would come to a sorry end in the sucking quagmire of the silted up pool.

He hates to be brushed but he did eventually allow me to remove a substantial quantity of muck from his coat and was soon returned to shiny cleanliness.



However, almost continuous rain and strong winds interspersed with heavy hail storms in the last ten days mean that little useful work has been achieved in the garden and nearly all motivation to get anything at all done has been lost in feeling miserable and trying to keep warm. I'm wearing five layers of clothes topped off with an outdoor fleece jacket every day and don't need to dress up to go outside since the temperature in both places is much the same.

And although today has been a welcome respite the pattern is set to resume tomorrow with 100% chance of rain and high winds forecast, the rain continuing well into next week. It's tremendously depressing and despite starting some of the more tender plants like courgettes and morning glories I doubt it will ever be possible to let them outside.

Almost worse than that - can you hear me Google? - they've finally forced me to use their broken and confused new editing system for blogging. There were very few problems with the old one but the new one isn't WYSIWYG nor is the HTML pane much better. Laying things out is almost impossible in either mode and it's making me very cross indeed.

Slowly, very slowly

The skies over Normandy are cold and grey at least half of the time so far this April. It's not making it any easier to settle back into the routine of managing alone. I feel jumbled and lost, not sure what I should be doing or why, but life is beginning to assume some sort of pattern that will help hold things together although I'm having to use this blog as an aide-memoire to direct my actions - it's April I should be digging, that sort of thing.



This egg was on the ground below the big pear tree. Almost undamaged apart from one small puncture where yolk was leaking out I think it must have fallen after the nest was attacked by magpies this morning. I saw the wretched birds flying away when I first went out. I don't have my Girls Book of Egg Identifications handy so I can't tell you what sort of bird it might have become but it's a very pretty egg and I'm sorry it's dead.

By the way, all the photos today were taken with the Ixus330, my brilliant little point and shoot digital camera which is nearing 10 years old. I wish all cameras were as sturdy and long lasting.



Despite feeling abandoned and lost I've plenty of contact with people and need to think about planning ahead for our summer party here, which we've been promising without really thinking much further than that about it. It will be a handfasting and summer ball as well as a chance to view the new tractor. Applications on a postcard if you've not had your invitation already!



The bumble bees were out today, they have no existential doubts, they were gathering nectar from the dead nettles as fast as they possibly could and it was difficult to find one stopped for long enough to take a picture.



I'm hoping the cold nights we're still having won't prevent the pears and plums setting a good crop. The apples flower a couple of weeks later and are usually o.k.



Today I dug some onion patch, weeded the strawberries and did most of the cleaning in the greenhouse ready for the new season. It's so wonderfully warm in there I'm tempted to set up a desk and chair so I can sit with my laptop without my fingers freezing off.

Spud U like

Even photography is rusty after the winter break, that and forgetting to bring the charger with me which means I'm rationing use of the camera. It's almost like the old days with film and all that.

Anyway, between the April showers today I got the rest of the potatoes settled in their rows. The line up is as follows:

Swift - our favourite super first early
Red Duke of York - everybody's favourite first early but not one we usually do
Stroma - a lesser known potato that always does well for us
Shetland Black - can be very good in a good year and great in stew
Ambo - two rows, our favourite big general purpose early maincrop
British Queen - two rows, best for chips
Salad Blue - I like a row of these once in a while
Sarpo Mira - They're good, not great but good.
Pink Fir Apple - two rows, brilliantly flavoured potato and can be mashed or chipped
Arran Victory - lovely purple skin, good keeper

I'm going to have to read back to see what I was doing at this time in previous years. It just seems too cold and wintry to be starting any seeds but we're half way through April already.

So, what happened next?

So what really happened? The car broke down and the trip was cancelled. Plans for the wedding took over and we did nothing but clean, tidy and cook until the end of March.

I'm now a married woman again. It feels only slightly different - after 15 years of togetherness there's not much that's startlingly new to learn about each other but there is a little whisper of change. It'll be interesting to see where it leads.



And after the wedding, and fixing the car, we all came to France, husband, wife and three cats. It was a mini-heatwave when we arrived, more like summer than spring but that quickly reverted to chilly April weather.

We were pleased to find the leeks had survived the attentions of the deer this time, depressed by the complete destruction of the main bed of purple sprouting and kale (the spare plants in the back garden show it would have been a bumper crop) and unsurprised to find that most, if not all, of the oca had returned to a state of nature.

There are also some healthy parsnips and salsify to harvest and the onions and garlic planted last autumn are looking o.k.

The man has now returned to the UK to continue his work as a world famous scientist and I'm left here alone to get on with it. Potato planting is started, a very late attempt at getting onion sets in continues but my head is in a different place and plans are not forming quickly or at all. Expect to see a good deal of hand waving and confusion in the next few posts.

Is this the real life ...

or just fantasy?

It's been a long winter break this year, and we've not been able to get to the farm at all, even at Christmas. I have been holed up in my English office/workroom fulminating and generally being depressed about it all. Living in two places is so not my thing.

But today, by cavalierly manipulations, putting off appointments, skiving off work and generally just deciding to do it I think we're going to head over there and see if it's still standing.

Naturally this raises problems of its own. How are the tender new seedlings of chillies and herbs going to manage in my absence from here? Will I be able to catch the cats? Will we freeze to death when we arrive, having chosen our week so badly that it's probably going to be the coldest of the winter so far? So many questions.

I'll let you know when I get there. Until soon, I hope.

New Seeds

You'll need to click through and view the original on Flickr to read the packets.

It's that time of the year again and once more the deadly sin of greed has overwhelmed any good sense I might have had about taking on too much or wasting money on long shots.

As well as some Unwins seeds which were in my xmas stocking I've indulged in orders with Chiltern Seeds, Realseeds and the HSL. I rather fear that this may not be the last of it.

Anyway, along with some things that I've saved in the past but allowed to lapse, some hopeless recurring failures that I'm going to try one more time, Capers and Perilla please step forward, and a selection of chillies for the greenhouse there are a few oddities which I'm trying as part of the usual experimentation.

Oenothera Biennis is something I've been coddling along from a chance weed plant that popped up in Newport Pagnell. I was hoping to collect enough seed to try for a row in the vegetable patch so that the roots could be assessed for the kitchen but I've only managed to keep one saved seedling going in France which didn't flower last year as I hoped (they're biennial, just like it says on the packet but this one seems to want another year) so I've bought some seed in to avoid wasting any more time.

There are any number of odd salad leaves around, I'm very tempted by Salsola, also known as Agretti, but the cost of the seeds is prohibitive so I've put that on hold and instead decided to try Buckshorn Plantain because you can never have too many edible weeds in a garden.

I've also got some Edible Chrysanthemum. I have grown this before but never really got to grips with cooking it, so it's worth another go and if I don't like it the flowers are very pretty and brighten up the vegetable patch nicely.

Now I'm going to step away from the computer, because during the course of writing this I inadvertently opened the Seeds of Italy site and I must be strong...

Hope

This is the first crop I ever took from the Ulluco that I bought from Realseeds in 2008. Look pretty don't they? Since then it's been a steadily spiralling descent into entropy and failure. The harvest I got from these in 2009 was tiny, the harvest from those in 2010 laughable, just five baked bean sized tubers from which by some miracle three survived to make plants.

During 2011 I adopted a strategy of maximum care. The little plants were cosseted and kept in a big well fed and watered tub of compost. My plan was to keep them outside during the summer and then move them indoors for November and December. The dark couldn't hurt them and the cold house would still be frost and rodent free. They grew vigorously and I had hopes of rejuvenating the seed stock with a substantial harvest.

In November I noticed the top growth was looking a bit shabby but it was autumn, it didn't seem unreasonable - until I picked up the pot to move it inside and all the leafy stems fell off. Vine weevils had invaded the pot and chewed away all the roots. I found three baked bean tubers this time and only one of them has made a shoot.

But I couldn't bear to throw away the strong, if wilted, foliage. I washed it off well and replanted the chewed stems deeply into fresh compost. Ulluco are stem rooters and it was my last best hope to save them. The pot was sealed into an air filled plastic bag as a makeshift propagator. It didn't work exactly, the stems had recognised they must die and the winter light sealed their fate but there was enough juice left in those doomed top shoots to quietly produce half a dozen good sized tubers. I didn't realise it until just a day ago but clearing the windowsill for some new cuttings I picked up the pot to throw it away and spotted colourful tubers under the decayed leaves. I have enough of the pink spotted variety for half a dozen new plants and a few too small to classify for colour that might also produce viable starts.

To say I'm pleased is an understatement. These are not throw them in the ground Peruvian imports like Oca and potatoes by any means but this determination to keep growing against the odds means that my mismanagement over four years can be ameliorated, I might finally get to learn how to grow these vegetables successfully. Fingers crossed.