When it rains, it pours

I tried to convince my daughters we were having snake for dinner last night but they rolled their eyes and groaned “not courgettes AGAIN”.

Yes, it’s that time of year when the courgettes are coming in thick and fast. I’ve now exhausted my repertoire of courgette recipes, been through the  chop-them-up-very-small-and-sneak-them-in-everything phase, given away as many as possible (I think people are starting to avoid me) and yet there are still courgettes left over.

All this despite growing only a modest two plants this year.

In spring it’s always tempting to sow more seed because the summer courgette glut is a distant memory and they are so ridiculously easy to grow – provided you have a reasonable amount of space in a sunny spot and you can get the young plants to survive any slug and snail attacks. I swear by crushed eggshells, applied regularly in a circular barrier around the small plants.

There’s only one thing for it, time to search for a recipe for chocolate courgette cake. Let’s hope it calls for more than one courgette.

Diary of a Guerrilla Gardener

Inspired by all the reports of community gardening around London, we have the urge to “green up” some neglected land. After a quick street survey, we decide to start with the tree pit outside our house.

A bit of research on guerrilla gardening reveals that a key element to planting tree pits is to choose low value, tough plants as there is a reasonable probability they will get trampled, damaged or stolen. And even without all that, tree pits are not the most hospitable environments for little plants with poor, compacted soil and the competition of a mature tree for water and nutrients. We just happen to have a surplus of geraniums that have been sat around in trays for weeks so they seem like the ideal candidates.

The biggest surprise in our guerrilla gardening experiment is just how bad the soil in the tree pit is. It might have been easier to break through concrete but we persevere despite some strange looks from passers-by. It’s fortunate that we chose plants with small rootballs because I don’t think we would have been able to chisel out holes any bigger.

We add a bit of compost in a vain attempt to try and improve the soil, plant the geraniums and water copiously. We top with a bit of bark as a mulch and a sprinkle of wildflower seed balls.

It all looks quite smart and we feel pleased with ourselves.

We pop out every few days to water our new plants and several neighbours comment on how lovely it looks. It’s all going really well and we decide we might expand our guerrilla gardening horizons to something altogether more ambitious.

A week later we notice a large, sloppy circle of dog poo in the middle of the geraniums (sorry to be so graphic, hope you’re not eating). Cue lots of muttering about irresponsible dog owners. My husband suggests that it might provide a source of manure for the plants, “looking on the bright side”.

Then a day later, on the other side of the tree pit, the bark has been removed. Completely removed, there isn’t a trace of bark left.  And half of the plants are gone too.  Seriously, what kind of person would do something like that? Someone worse than an irresponsible dog owner, that’s for sure.  Now considering installing CCTV outside our house to catch the culprits should they decide to strike again.

The seed balls have all disappeared with the bark too, so if you spot anyone around London with a small amount of bark that suddenly starts sprouting wildflowers, do let us know.

Summer holidays and a trip down memory lane

Day 3 of the school summer holidays and I’ve already had the urge to retreat to a darkened room and sob quietly.

But you’ll be pleased to hear that I managed to pull myself together and we spent the afternoon doing something much more constructive; making garden notebooks.

The inspiration for this came from our big summer project – decluttering the house. We’ve lived here for 19 years and we’re a family of hoarders, so a huge clear out is long overdue. Yesterday’s cupboard revealed all sorts of lovely letters written by my daughters when they were much younger, back in a time when it was completely normal for them to write me notes telling me that they loved me. No surprise that they’re hugely embarrassed by this now.

And I’d forgotten that I’d gone through a phase of buying them notebooks for various holidays and getting them to write/draw holiday diaries. We spent ages reading through those and we still haven’t quite finished clearing that cupboard out.  That sparked the idea of making some garden notebooks to record all of the gardening we’ll be doing over the coming weeks.

We made our notebooks from some white card and printer paper, bound together with garden twine and an embroidery needle. If you don’t feel like decorating your own notebook you could download this beautifully illustrated garden notebook cover instead.

And finally, my favourite letter from our trip down memory lane was from my eldest daughter and it went along the lines of: “Dear Mummy, I am very sorry for the pretend kick. It won’t happen again. I am so very sorry. PS Could I have a banana please?”.