From Esther - THE RAIN IT RAINETH EVERY DAY
It doesn't stop. Everything is green and lush.
That's enough, thank you.
(Rain.)
For a bit.
A few years ago I grew an impressive group of tomatoes. The plants were huge and fruitful and the wonder of anyone addicted to side-
shooting. (I don't.) (Side-shoot.) Secretly, I attributed this success to my recently demised guinea pigs who had had their run on that bit of garden. Then blight set in. Baskets of shrivelling, fossilising, thick-skinned, un-ripening tomatoes with brown marks. Delicious. Ha!I left it a few seasons.
Last year - tall, sturdy plants with lots of flowers. The flowers fell off.
This year. One plant in the ground. Fruit appearing. Two in pots (with fruit appearing). (Another in a pot too small. No fruit appearing. Ignore that one.)
Rain.
Rain.
Flowers hanging damp and dripping - how's a pollinator supposed to get in there? Self-pollinating? No, everything's stuck. Stuck together petals. Pollen turned to mush.
Oh, the joys of life! Hey nonny-no!
I once heard that the foll-diddle-rolls in Elizabethan madrigals are where the rude bits have been censored - or to hint at things which could only be sung out loud in taverns. Swearing to music!
I think Wessex Water might have resisted the temptation to hand VP an invitation to tour the Sewage Works the very moment she got off the train. That's carrying a Dorset welcome to un-necessarily enthusiastic lengths, I would say.
And I think the park gardener who decided to chainsaw the bushes by the bench where we were eating our lunch-time picnic could have done his hedge tidying before her visit, not have waited until she was here.
The people who tarmaced the way home just about managed to finish in time - as long as we kept moving, our feet didn't stick to the ground.
I think Worthing and Didcott might have asked her if she minded her trainers being caked in grey Lyme Mud . . . or Kimmeridge Clay . . . or whatever it is . . . before they took her on that particular sea-side walk. (That's another route where you have to keep moving. If you don't, you sink. And you keep sinking, or sink as far as your knees (or something) until the Coast Guards come.) (Lucky they kept walking!) It's good for strengthening your leg muscles. Your shoes are much heavier when you reach home than when you started out.
And it didn't rain on the day she arrived.
Or much the next day.
Then it did.
And it still is.
(Raining.)
And I would have quite liked not to have had a fit while she was here. Still, it wasn't a 'bad' one - and that's life, isn't it? Rain and falling off your chair. And having VP catch you when you do. (Begin to fall off your chair!)
(Thanks VP.)
(Mega.)
Hmm.
(I'm hoping she'll come back some time. Then we'll be able to have the coffee on the beach we promised her - and as we would have done if it hadn't rained . . . and take her to see the woods-which-I-thought-Ming-had-taken-her-to-except-I've-just-discovered-he-took-her-to-see-his-favourite-road-instead. (Favourite road indeed!)
Esther Montgomery's Blog is at 'Esther's Boring Garden Blog'.
2 comments:
I think tomatoes (at least heirlooms) are in fact self-pollinating. And my empty rain barrels are envious of your downpours! :)
Hello Monica - we usually tap the tomato flowers as we pass to help with pollination - but the petals are all stuck together so there's no room inside for anything to happen.
And we have one F1 hybrid variety - I don't know how that pollinates but I tap it anyway! If it needs a partner or a bee to officiate at the wedding - it's sunk!
You could go swimming in the water collected in our wheelbarrow!
(It's now afternoon and the sun has come out - things are looking up. Hurray!)
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