Dogs and their business....

I was reading this this morning and chuckling to myself a bit. I don't have a dog - wouldn't do it just on the general principle that I am waaaay too feckless to be trusted with the life of an animal - but a friend of mine has an incredibly bouncy boxer dog.

Now - it's quite a cool dog, but by God it's made a mess of their lawn. Basically lazy (like me) they rarely bother mowing the grass, but with all the patches of dead, brown grass they have it's like some kind of crazy alternating mess of dense jungly foliage and bleak dead patches.

My personal solution? Sell the dog. The alternative appears to be "train the damn thing" (a task which is beyond them, it seems) or simply wash the lawn after it's finished doing what it's doing. I suppose this year, being as rainy as it is it's probably not that bad!

Can't Be Arsed

I'm suffering a real bout of "can't be arsed" at the moment. It might be the weather (lousy) or the fact that my wife's just a couple of months away from dropping sprog number 2 and the chances of me getting anything done in the garden after that date seem pretty remote, but whatever the reason... I haven't even set foot in it for a couple of weeks - let alone tended to the crap and the weeds and the straggly grass.

Of course - the longer this state of affairs persists, the worse and worse the prospect becomes! But one day... one day... ;)

Frosty Grass

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Originally uploaded by rolawn08

I took this pic of the extreme frost we had over the weekend. Frost damage is a real problem for all plants - especially when the frost is deep and sustained (as it has been over recent days).

Actually, the cell walls inside the plant do expand and deal with the effects of swollen water volume very well. The real problem comes when you stand on the blades of grass. Because of their frozen state they are extremely brittle and prone to damage.

The short version of this messsage? Stay off the grass!

Pictures....

OK, so I went out in the garden yesterday to capture the frost on the grass and my brocolli (which looks in all honesty like it's on the point of death) and I've no idea how to get them on here.... any suggestions?

Spring - Just Around the Corner!

Well it looks like winter '08 was one morning of snow and a bit of frost as the world seems to be succumbing to global warming (whatever - I'm a sceptic) which means I'm thinking about beginning things a little earlier this year. I'm pretty sure I started on with some of the planting a little late which meant that not only did the crappy weather hold things back, but the plants were coming into fruition too late in the season.

So - even though it means going outside in these inclement conditions I'll be out there with my cauliflower seed in the next week. If you're in Yorkshire, look out for me!

Back to work...

Well, at last the gardening begins. At the weekend, we finally got out to survey the ruins of last years' verg patch and decide on a plan of attack. The first and most obvious thing was the amount of catshit that's accumulated over the winter months. For some reason, the local toms have staked a claim to the patch as a kind of al fresco catlitter tray. It was a problem in the initial months last year, which we solved by depositing some kind of crazy blue substance around the perimeter - kind of like that weird gel stuff that was a popular substitute for soil in the late 80s.

So, some unpleasantries followed as we trowelled it away, leaving behind The Other Stuff - which basically means weeds.

Now, weed identification just ain't my strong point. As far as I'm aware The Observer's Book of Straggly Green Plants that May Or May Not Be Weeds has yet to be published. When it is, I'll be there queuing for my signed copy at Borders, make no doubt.

As it stands, there are a whole heap of plants that could fall into any one of the following categories:

1. Weeds - pesky... destroy!
2. Potential crops - I've no idea if I'm supposed to expect the things I planted last year to reappear this year
3. Flowers from elsewhere in the garden - seeds disseminate, germinate etc. Do I replant them gently, extirpate 'em? I've no idea!

Any suggestion, stick 'em on a postcard!

Soil

So at last I'm getting around to digging up the veg patch in preparation for this year's crop. Having cast aside the roots and straggly left overs of the things I grew last year (and, if I'm honest, some mouldy catshit) I'm left with a bare patch of soil where - in the fullness of time - seedlings will burst open in the indulgent motherly stare of the sun and bring forth their fruits upon this earth.

Alas, all this might be hampered by the sheer volume of glass, stones, broken tilework and sundry other earthy effluvia that characterises what passes for my top soil. Naturally, I need to dig it all out.. bag it... chuck it... refill it... but it's surprising just how much work this actually takes. In fact, we did the front garden last year and even a patch of earth about 9ft by 9ft yielded approximately 233 heavy bags of soil (which we replace with bark chippings, in case you are interested).

That's a lot of spadework when you are, like me, fundamentally a lazy sod. Still - if I want to eat straggly carrots again this year I suppose I should stop blogging about it and get cracking... more anon!