Gardening as a Pastime ( or a Farmers Garden) 80

Gardening as a Pastime(with tractors always in the picture)

The roses get the green fly, the taters get the blight
The cabbage get the caterpillars, what a blooming sight,
Apples there are plenty, grub hole in every one,
Birds have pecked the plums, the rot it has begun.

A gardening Blog

Many potential gardeners who work, and travel some distance to and from work, just physically do not have much time to do what they would like to do in the garden. Then there is the people who just cannot stand gardening, like a neighbour we had in the village, (the wheelwright), his wife loved her garden, and he was committed to mowing the lawns front and back, and always commented to who ever would listen, that his garden should be tarmac end to end, side to side, then each spring he could just sweep it off and paint it green.

This was about the time they were building the new M6 motorway, and different "cowboy" contractors were "peddling" tarmac at night and weekends, to do the drive or garden paths, at a rate never to beaten, cash only, right into their back pockets. However his wife would not here of it, and they kept to lawns and boarders on the front and a veg. plot and some lawn at the back of the house.
This is how I sum up gardening

Gardening as a Pastime

The lawns are mowed the grass removed, starve it if you can,
Start in March or sooner, cut it twice a week's the plan,
Grows like mad till the summer, then brown and crusty goes,
Precious water sprinkled on, the time and cost who knows.

Had the mower sharpened, through mole hills it has cut,
They're only after earth worms, to fill their little gut,
Got to have a blow hole, to push the soil out,
Maize of tunnels under the lawn, so tough and black and stout.

The roses get the green fly, the taters get the blight
The cabbage get the caterpillars, what a blooming sight,
Apples there are plenty, grub hole in every one,
Birds have pecked the plums, the rot it has begun.

The wasps are round the jam pot, flies around the meat,
Its summertime enjoy it, try getting out the heat,
Cooler in the evenings, sit in the garden to relax,
Midges bite your arms and legs, round ya head attacks.

Cut the hedge about three times, clearing up the leaves,

Hawthorne holly and brambles, full of thorns it heaves,

Fingers sore and bleeding, enjoy the job they say,

Out in fresh air and sunshine, all this work no pay.

Nettles in the corners, tackle then if you dare,
Just the lightest touch from one, it'll make you swear,
Cut they come again times ten, fresh and green as ever,
Save them for the butterflies, neglect'll mek ya look clever.

Green fingers what a laugh, muck builds up under nails,
It keeps you fit and healthy, keeps ya weight off the scales,
Organically grown is good for you, but pests they are a pest,
Work with nature is what they say; you can only do your best.

Countryman

This is the bit the misses looks after and is in charge of, were both getting no younger and the veg garden went some years ago. Its trim the lawn, trim the bushes, cut the hedge (with the tractor flail hedge cutter I can manage that job well) boarders and bedding plants to the minimum, just enough to give a bit of colour and interest.

This is my effort on the yard in an old concrete water trough a few years ago.

This is just a farmers view of a tub of flowers, one line of writing for the flowers, and six lines for the background, think thats pretty normal.

No farmer ever looks at the flowers twice, but study what in the background, an old upturned grain hopper, five bays filled with HAY, and some haylage under cover, silage bales are stacked outside out of the picture. My loader will only reach to stack three bales high, thats it on the Agrotron in the background, and the hedge cutter on the Fastrac. The old barn legs have started rotting and have had a tump of concrete two foot up the legs. Standing parked between the green tractor and the barn, the Landrover flat trailer with an old three furrow Fordson Elite Plough, trust me if you look real close, you can see two levers sticking up, to see a better picture of the plough press the tag "Tractors", or" Plough" it on the page or blog (Two More of my Tractors".



Around this time also that it was fashionable to sow turnips from the air in June /July into the standing crops of corn, (wheat barley or oats). In this case it was barley, and the top end of the field was a single cottage, folks came out of their village houses to watch the aerobatics as the plane swooped low over the crop, dodging hedge row trees, then up almost vertical, turn and back down for the next run.

The man in the cottage watched as it swooped and turned short of his house, having got a grandstand seat so to speak. In the next few months the crop of barley was combined, and the rain and moisture had germinated a good stand of turnips in the stubble, trouble was the cottage garden had also got turnips growing in the garden, and worse still, a full and vigorous crop was growing in the gutters and spouting all round the house.

Of coarse when the seed was being dropped no one knew why he was diving and swooping and the turnip seed is so fine and no dust trail as the seed fell.
It was only a few years that that aerial spreading of seeds and sprays lasted, as the drift into adjoining fields and crops, and houses brought it to be banned, so the turnips sprouting in the spouting only happened the one year in our village.

This same cottage, the occupant often went to the local market to take eggs to sell, often a sitting of hen and bantam eggs. It was in the spring he came home with a sitting of goose eggs, and set them under a couple of broody hens, they duly hatched and rapidly grew bigger than the old mother hen, they started running and flapping their wings when they were loosed out in the mornings , as geese do.
 Then to his amazement one morning they took off, and flew round and landed back in the garden, soon they flew off for half an hour or more but always came back. The sitting of eggs he had bought were that of Canadian Geese, and in the autumn one morning they took off and he never saw them again. No goose for Christmas for him.


If there is no gardener there is no garden
Stephen Covey