KW-20 The Month of Must

what's it got in it's pockets?

In both the linguistic and temporal worlds of the garden, the Month of May, with rough winds shaking its darling buds, and the modal / defective verb may have very little to do with each other. The verb, with it’s choices, options and prevarications gives us nuance and the ability to say no. Or yes. I may well. To be allowed to.

The gardening month allows us no such latitudes. This is the month of urgency and action. All things that are to be done shall be done, and sharpish, laddie. January, February, March, April, Must.

By the end of this week, I should have completely cleared and mostly refilled all of the vegetable beds. The pumpkins will be last, and the roots will be first, and the times they are a-changin’.

In the polytunnel, and scattered around The Barracks, are maybe 100 tomatoes, 40 or so squashes, cucumbers, courgettes and pumpkins. There are tens of thousands of seeds for roots and grains and greens. First to go in, maybe even today because I prepped the ground over the last few days, will be the lettuces. They are all from saved seed, and bursting at the seams of their modules ready to let loose in the warming soil. After that, sunflowers and sweetcorn and the outdoor tomatoes.

The tomato house is currently struggling to find its way to the top of the priority chain, and has probably been pushed down a step further by the pig house. The porkers are pretty fine where they are right now. The ground is hard and completely cleared, but they are getting a wheelbarrow of delicious tasty weeds every day. I think the grass under their feet thing is more important to me than it is to them. They spend all day sunbathing and mudwallowing anyway.

This weekend, I am hosting the timber framing workshop. At the moment, there might be three of us, or seven. If there was just me, the pig house would still get built, but with more people, we can do it more interestingly and learn together about how this whole roundwood thing works. It’s going to be fun, and we shall end it with the running of the pigs and then plant up their yard with roots and grasses and sunflowers for them to munch on when they come back again in 6 months or so.

A pig yesterday. I need to post a front-on photo some time. I have far too many porcineologists telling me that they are fat. A) They are pigs B) they are streamlined and built for speed. If you don’t believe me, you are urged to come and feed them for a week, get to know them!

If you were to tell me A Thing, not even necessarily a super secret squirrel secret, then I would keep it to myself so tightly that it causes quantum paradoxes. That information is now lost forever, absorbed into the event horizon, unobservable, unknowable to outside observers.

My own secrets, however, I will tell to strangers. Not even secrets. Just things probably best kept to myself. And especially things that have no interest to anyone else whatsoever. I think that makes me a bore?

Anyway. On top of that, even when I am trying to hold on to my excitement, the most secrecy I can pull off is to allude to the existence of a thing and not a peeps further, which then just annoys everyone even more. So let’s forget it, and pretend I didn’t say a thing, right? At least until the thing which is not even a thing yet, leaves my own head and is real enough in the universe to have been discussed between two parties. Yes, let’s do that!

In the next paragraph, we’re going to talk about frost damage. The rhododendron in the middle of the lawn is a good indicator for the future fruit harvest. I have never known it to bloom so heavily, so hard and for so long. Usually, it chucks out some very delicate little flowers which fall off in the first shower, or turn themselves inwards to show their pink underbellies, and then fall of within a few days. The display this year has just been getting better and better.

And we have made it through the Ice Saints. Actually not, there are three more days of them, but we really have made it through. I spent a sleepless night stoking a fire in the polytunnel. From around 2am to just before 6, the outside temperature dropped to minus 3. The inside stayed at a constant 6 positive all night. Nothing died. Minus three is not the worst that it could have been, but four or more hours of it would certainly have done for the delicate plants. The orchard seems ok. Not much had started to blossom and that which had seems to have made it through just fine. Except perhaps the James Grieve which is a shame, because he is supposed to flower for just about the whole of the season, and stands centrally amongst the apple trees as a universal pollinator. He is definitely showing some signs of cold stress, but then don’t we all from time to time? Mostly, early signs are that it should be a very good year for tree fruit.

With that burst of optimism, then, I shall go and get on with things. I shall be off to accumulate the blisters, aches and grazes of The Month of Must. If anyone wants to rise to the spontaneity challenge of coming this weekend to help with the pigs, that would be most welcome and I shall see you then. For the rest of you, I wish you blue skies and a fair wind

with much Piratey love

Your loving Pirate Ben

xoxo