Thursday, November 15, 2007
Furrows
First potato furrow now complete, having taken three sessions. Two more potato and one runner bean furrow to go. Maybe we will be done by Christmas.
Having had a fairly hard frost last night, decided that winter had arrived and it was a good time to buy some more gooseberries - the five I had from Deacons in the Isle of Wight now being down to 2 looking OK and 1 not looking so OK. So off to Chessington Garden Centre, where after fighting our way through large sheds full of Christmas fare of one sort or another, finally arrived at a section with plants. In due course we discover a total of four gooseberry plants at £10 a pop, 1 Careless and 3 something I had not heard of. Rather surprised at the price - gooseberry plants being very easy to propagate and grow - just stick a strong looking 1 year shoot of around 6 inches into the ground in the Autumn and by the Autumn of the following year one should have a decent plant, give or take a bit of watering and weeding. Unfortunately, in my poor ground the plants I already have have not produced suitable shoots this year so buying it is. However, after some umming and ahhing, decided that a trip to Wisley would be worth while. Having got there decided that the relation of Wisley - which used to be a specimen garden grown by a learned society - to Chessington was roughly that of Waitrose to Sainsbury. Wisley was a bit more tasteful but was given over to Christmas fare and inorganic goods in much the same way as Chessington. They were even errecting some huge marquees in the car park, presumably for some Christmas festivity or other. Anything to turn a buck. The gooseberries turned out to come from the same wholesaler that Chessington used and were the same price, but to be fair, instead of 4 plants they had several dozen, and instead of two varieties they had half a dozen or so. So settled for 2 Careless and 2 Invicta. We will see if they do better than the plants from Deacons.
We also wonder how long it is before the place is bought out by some attraction company who would make more out of the brand and the large site than the learned society does. Rather in the way that the RAC and the AA have both been sold off.
Depressed to read this morning of a middle aged gent being kicked to death by half a dozen or so drunken youths outside his house in some Northern suburb. What sort of people are we bringing into the world? I wonder how much we have lost in this connection with the demise of the local pub. There was a time when the local pub was a place where such youth would smoke, drink and play, no doubt causing a certain amount of annoyance, but at least under some sort of adult control. Now, with cheap booze from the supermarkets they just do it in the streets without any sort of control at all. And banning smoking in pubs is just one more nail in the coffin. What with said cheap booze, the fact that they are often sitting on a much larger bit of real estate than the pub business can justify, people not needing to escape from cramped shared homes and one thing and another, they are on the way out. Perhaps I should write a PhD on why golf clubs are doing OK and local pubs are not. So long as it did not involve my taking up golf - something I have managed to steer well clear of so far.
Having had a fairly hard frost last night, decided that winter had arrived and it was a good time to buy some more gooseberries - the five I had from Deacons in the Isle of Wight now being down to 2 looking OK and 1 not looking so OK. So off to Chessington Garden Centre, where after fighting our way through large sheds full of Christmas fare of one sort or another, finally arrived at a section with plants. In due course we discover a total of four gooseberry plants at £10 a pop, 1 Careless and 3 something I had not heard of. Rather surprised at the price - gooseberry plants being very easy to propagate and grow - just stick a strong looking 1 year shoot of around 6 inches into the ground in the Autumn and by the Autumn of the following year one should have a decent plant, give or take a bit of watering and weeding. Unfortunately, in my poor ground the plants I already have have not produced suitable shoots this year so buying it is. However, after some umming and ahhing, decided that a trip to Wisley would be worth while. Having got there decided that the relation of Wisley - which used to be a specimen garden grown by a learned society - to Chessington was roughly that of Waitrose to Sainsbury. Wisley was a bit more tasteful but was given over to Christmas fare and inorganic goods in much the same way as Chessington. They were even errecting some huge marquees in the car park, presumably for some Christmas festivity or other. Anything to turn a buck. The gooseberries turned out to come from the same wholesaler that Chessington used and were the same price, but to be fair, instead of 4 plants they had several dozen, and instead of two varieties they had half a dozen or so. So settled for 2 Careless and 2 Invicta. We will see if they do better than the plants from Deacons.
We also wonder how long it is before the place is bought out by some attraction company who would make more out of the brand and the large site than the learned society does. Rather in the way that the RAC and the AA have both been sold off.
Depressed to read this morning of a middle aged gent being kicked to death by half a dozen or so drunken youths outside his house in some Northern suburb. What sort of people are we bringing into the world? I wonder how much we have lost in this connection with the demise of the local pub. There was a time when the local pub was a place where such youth would smoke, drink and play, no doubt causing a certain amount of annoyance, but at least under some sort of adult control. Now, with cheap booze from the supermarkets they just do it in the streets without any sort of control at all. And banning smoking in pubs is just one more nail in the coffin. What with said cheap booze, the fact that they are often sitting on a much larger bit of real estate than the pub business can justify, people not needing to escape from cramped shared homes and one thing and another, they are on the way out. Perhaps I should write a PhD on why golf clubs are doing OK and local pubs are not. So long as it did not involve my taking up golf - something I have managed to steer well clear of so far.
# posted by Jim @ 7:48 AM 
