The delight of earthly gardens

After the ripening, picking and scoffing of what for a while had looked like being our only tomato, there are signs in the garden that the march of time has begun to catch up with the rest of the crop of tomatoes that appeared overnight about a month past and which has since multiplied and expanded with frightening speed.

Yes, there are indications that some at least, are beginning to ripen.

This inaugural crop is a-spawning: we will soon be deluged with tomatoes; there will be large tomatoes, small tomatoes, dried tomatoes, green tomato chutney, there will be er… other tomatoey stuff. Lots of it.

I believe that there should have been cucumbers, too, but we haven’t found them. I suspect that the sheer growth rate of everything else smothered them before they ever got started. The various varieties of lettuce, rocket and the clump of chives has defeated us by sheer weight of vegetation. As much as we eat, there is always more. A lot more. Now much of it has gone to seed – next year we will have to be far more brutal with the secateurs (though not so brutal that we kill the buggers).

Further down the garden we have figs gamely trying to grow, but what little ¹ I know about things gardeny or plantish suggests that they will not develop much further beyond the squamous green buboes they currently are. Not that I know what I would do with a fig anyway. I don’t know how to make fig rolls and dried figs are something that should only be eaten at Christmas time, and then only one Christmas in ten.

I haven’t looked in the cupboard recently to see how the cherry vodka is progressing. Lat time I looked the vodka had taken on a mild orangey hue – almost peach coloured. We are still a couple of weeks away from decanting the juice into another container and adding sugar to the mulch. I am beginning to worry that the whole thing may develop a parliamentary democracy before we have chance to finish it off and drink it. Again, next year we will harvest more, sooner – and hopefully a few will be redder.


¹This is a euphemism for ‘nothing.’

The delight of earthly gardens

After the ripening, picking and scoffing of what for a while had looked like being our only tomato, there are signs in the garden that the march of time has begun to catch up with the rest of the crop of tomatoes that appeared overnight about a month past and which has since multiplied and expanded with frightening speed.

Yes, there are indications that some at least, are beginning to ripen.

This inaugural crop is a-spawning: we will soon be deluged with tomatoes; there will be large tomatoes, small tomatoes, dried tomatoes, green tomato chutney, there will be er… other tomatoey stuff. Lots of it.

I believe that there should have been cucumbers, too, but we haven’t found them. I suspect that the sheer growth rate of everything else smothered them before they ever got started. The various varieties of lettuce, rocket and the clump of chives has defeated us by sheer weight of vegetation. As much as we eat, there is always more. A lot more. Now much of it has gone to seed – next year we will have to be far more brutal with the secateurs (though not so brutal that we kill the buggers).

Further down the garden we have figs gamely trying to grow, but what little ¹ I know about things gardeny or plantish suggests that they will not develop much further beyond the squamous green buboes they currently are. Not that I know what I would do with a fig anyway. I don’t know how to make fig rolls and dried figs are something that should only be eaten at Christmas time, and then only one Christmas in ten.

I haven’t looked in the cupboard recently to see how the cherry vodka is progressing. Lat time I looked the vodka had taken on a mild orangey hue – almost peach coloured. We are still a couple of weeks away from decanting the juice into another container and adding sugar to the mulch. I am beginning to worry that the whole thing may develop a parliamentary democracy before we have chance to finish it off and drink it. Again, next year we will harvest more, sooner – and hopefully a few will be redder.


¹This is a euphemism for ‘nothing.’