Sunday 26 April 2015

A Week of Grubby Knees

It has been a glorious week of sun, see....dlings and pollinating!



On Monday afternoon we received the call to say that our neighbours' pear tree's were in blossom.
This is a call that we await every year and immediate action is called for. Marcus rounded up the troops and took the girls over the road so that they could gather the necessary blossom samples. As is probably apparent from the photograph, we have one small espalier pear tree in our garden. This was given to us five years ago when our friends moved to France. For the first three years it flowered but didn't produce a single fruit. Ideally pear trees should be planted in pairs!
Two years ago Marcus had the bright idea that we should attempt to pollinate the flowers manually. We asked around to find out if there were any pear trees local to us and found a match. The first year produced 6, the second 12 and, if we are going to follow a pattern here, this year, we are hoping for 18 fabulous comice pears!
The girls wafted their blossom samples under the flowers on our tree; flitting backwards and forwards like bees or butterflies (buzzing was optional!) and now we wait.


With all the warmth and sunshine that we have been enjoying our Garden Room (just a posh name for the Lean To) is beginning to look like a tropical rain forest. We desperately  need to pot things up or get them into the ground at the allotment.


Our tomato sowing in early March resulted in just the one cherry tomato plant (we are still waiting for the rest to pop up in the lawn!) and about a hundred beef steak tomato plants. We have already potted up and given away some of these. Yet, still we have a seed tray, a good three quarters full, with a dense forest of tomato seedlings that we need to find homes for.


A family trip to the allotment this weekend offered up the opportunity to test  the new drain pipe and water butt system on our shed. It works (at least it does if you carry a watering can of water from the water trough and pour it into the drain pipe!). Unfortunately a design flaw, that was not spotted in the original plans, meant that the water butt could not be raised off the ground to enable tap access in the usual manner. Instead, we have had to dig down and now have a 2 ft deep hole, directly in front of the tap! It works though!



1 comment:

  1. I didn't think it was all so technical. You should "Green Fingers" to your blog title!

    ReplyDelete