Down and dirty
Between the years 0 and 50 BG (Before Gardening) my eyes skipped automatically across certain programmes in the TV listings.
I don’t mean A Question of Sport or Friends repeats. I mean gardening programmes, mentions of which I hardly saw, as if there was nothing printed on the page.
I knew who Alan Titchmarsh was because he was born in the next street to ours. And it’s impossible not to have heard of Monty Don, the welly-wearing woman’s crumpet. But as to what either of them did when they got down and dirty, I had no idea.
Imagine my surprise a few months back when I found myself still sitting on the settee twenty minutes into Carol Klein’s ‘Cottage Garden’, the remote having gone limp in my hand.
I was impressed by her passion for her garden, her discernment in hiring interesting-looking men to finesse bush and hedge, and her roping-in of the camera-shy Mr CK for the heavy work. I particularly loved the scenes in her shed. It was always the middle of the night and she was always pricking out seedlings, adding a finishing layer of grit to the soil.
I still have no idea why she did the grit bit (I missed that) but I know a pleasing ritual when I see one. I hurried to the garden centre for grit of my own, and now have my own gravelled oblongs, like miniature Zen gardens.
Mini Zen gardens
I watched all those programmes. This is dangerous territory, I know. I’ll be listening to Gardener’s Question Time soon, a place from which few return.
For Dad’s part, he has always been a keen watcher of the TV weather forecast and an even keener complainer that they’ve got it wrong again. According to him, you might as well ignore everything they say. But he doesn’t, especially not nowadays when he wants to know whether we’ve passed the danger of frost.
Inaccuracy isn’t his only beef. ‘You can’t hear a bloody thing they say! ‘But then, they only give the poor blighters two minutes. They have to talk fast to fit all the words in.’
The subtitles are no help, telling of ‘a pig suede of cloud coming in from Norman Island.’
Dad goes on. ‘It’s over in a matter of seconds, and then you’re on to something completely different, like some halfwit drawing a diagram of the solar system in the sand with a stick or talking at you over his shoulder while he runs up a hill.’
An erstwhile scientist, Dad has no time for today’s informal presenting style. ‘And why do we have to have all that bloody music?’ he usually finishes.
He’s got a point. TV has its limitations. If I want gardening tips, I should probably ask the taciturn old gimmers down at the allotment, however unapproachable they seem.
Weather forecasters
And as for the weather, we can always fall back on the old-fashioned methods: watching the sky and noticing whether the cows in the fields are standing up or lying down.
Yes indeed Mandy. There was a posh bird with a speech impediment the other day standing irrelevantly on the bouncy Thames bridge telling me about how people in Tudor times didn’t have taps in their houses… Bet your dad switched over. And what about these forecasters who tell us it’ll be a “breezy old day”. Faux slang – ugh! Yeah, stick to seaweed.
mandy, your dad is doing a good job of becoming the amateur gardener’s National Treasure! long live the vox pop on the weathercasters. sheila
I marvel theat the cows all face in the same direction.
I know what you mean! I get a lovely warm glow as I settle down to watch GW on a Friday night and I sometimes wonder what my 20 year old self would do or say if she could see me now! Enjoyable as always Mandy.
Gravel helps to reduce the risk of your seedlings going mouldy and dying … Cows are very good weather forecasters – but at a bit of premium in urban settings!
Funny how priorities shift…
I can’t go to town! The seedlings will wilt!
Love from the mountains (it didn’t snow yesterday!!!)
I’m definitely with your dad on that one, Mandy. (And my Dad was the same. A lifelong gardener,he wrote the weather in every diary entry: it’s oddly comforting to know that I could just find out if we had frost on this date in 1967 …) Yep, give us cows and pine cones any day. Oh, and not forgetting the height at which the rooks nest.
May you and your dad have a fabulous season of allotmenting
Am continuing to enjoy the blog, Mandy. My father-in-law (85) has a wealth of weather forecasting tips gleaned from his time in Norfolk. These include ‘the moon lying on its back to hold in rain’(= dry weather the next day) and spying where birds are building their nests (high or low in a tree) to say whether the next season will be mild or not. If there are a lot of berries in late summer/autumn he always says it’s a sign of a hard winter ahead (natures way of providing food for wildlife to see them though tough times). He seems to have a better rate of success with these than the weather bods, perhaps we should hire him out?
Thanks for your smashing comments, everyone. I do love seeing what you come up with! And really value the advice, too.
John, seaweed is a new one on me – can you elaborate?
Thanks, Sheila!
Lamar, I read somewhere that cows and other animals facing in the same direction is also weather related, but I’m not sure how. Do you know?
Maria and Kathy, I’m with you all the way. Have you read the poem ‘Repression’ by C K Williams? It’s all about something similar:
http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2000/11/02
Reb, thanks for that explanation. I’m happy adding gravel just for the pleasure of it (I love the crunchy sound too) but it’s great to know there’s some rational justification also.
Glynis, pine cones? And (I include you here too Irene) height of nests? Please say more.
Crikey, we could write a book with all this fabulous gardener’s lore!
Seaweed: hang it up on yer shed Mand. Fondle it – if it’s moist, it’ll rain, if dry, not. Or something. Allegedly. Or maybe people just like fondling bladderwrack.
Oooh, pervy! It may be a good way to get Mr MS down there. Will grab a handful next time we’re by t’sea. And I’ll get some seaweed too.
mmmmm Monty Don, I’ll help him with his pricking out, anytime.
You are a dirty girl, Ginny! I always knew it.
You’ve never listened to GQT? You’re pulling our legs, of course.
I loved reading this Mandy. I too have trouble understanding the forecast. When younger I thought ‘summary’ was a description – couldn’t get how it could be both rainy and summary. But come on, those cows are photoshopped, you can’t fool me.
Hi mandy,
always love the releuctant gardener; live subtitles are fantastic! Royal adviser on interminable pre wedding coverage offered this advice to kate middleton if she was unsure of anything – ‘ask people in the north’. We all know that anyway. tell your Dad a room loop has revolutionised my TV watching (have to have hearing aids though + it cuts out any conversation as you can only hear the tele
Jim, I regard GQT as very strong liquor indeed. I’m still only at the lemonade shandy stage, myself.
LOL Terry! But photoshopped cows can be good forecasters, too.
Marilyn, thanks for the loop advice. It’s great that you are a conniseur of live subtitles! ‘Ask people in the north’!! That’s a classic.
Ok I feel well guilty about this one. Frost in spring, to me is an inconvenience of having to scrape the car when already late for work! But, and this is my big but,(how we laugh when our teacher said this) to the allotment people, this is loosing sleep stuff!! This is good for me, I can rejoice in your merit Mandy.
LOL, Joe! Yes, ’tis a primitive world down at the allotments: anxious faces yesterday, checking whether Tuesday night’s frost had done any damage…
Here in Bristol anxious faces are searching the skies for a cloud that might drop some rain on us. Everything is growing apace as long as you can give it some water. Time and again the weather forecast on TV promises us some but it passes us by. But it is wise to keep old net curtains handy in May in case frost threatens. Mulching your seedlings with gravel will keep competing weeds at bay and help with drainage, Mandy.
Hello Marion! I love the idea of recycling old net curtains to keep the frost at bay. Especially as they look rather like a hard frost themselves when draped over plants.
I agree with your Dad about the music. I’m very hard of hearing and I find it frustrating to try and listen to words when the LSO is blasting away in the background. Most times they get the weather right is when they’re talki ng in hindsight. Good old Dad keep on striking a blow for us deaffies.
Jim
Good ole deaffies, Jim. I am fast becoming one myself.
Mandy
Having been put onto your site by Jane Rogers at Sheffield I was intrigued then engrossed by the reluctant gardener. So many truths to be found there. The inevitability of becoming a gardnerer was one of many things that should be explained to you as chidlren but never are, like the fact you’ll become your parents’ parent eventually whether you want to or not or that, when you have children of your own, you will eat second-hand food. I was certain I would never love gardening, it would always be a chore and then, one day, in the drizzle I’m pruning a rose in preference to the rugby on the TV. And I just loved the Lady of Shallot, the patron saint of the horticulturally bewildered… May your mulch never dry and your weeds never linger long…
Very well put, Geoff: inevitability it is. As for pruning a rose in drizzle instead of watching the rugby – that’s proper. When I was in London recently, a friend and I spent the whole weekend looking round other people’s allotments. What happened to the boozing and clubbing of yesteryear?