All this work and no play has been incredibly dull for the family and very bad news for the garden, so I was very interested to read a news story about a job going at Wookey Hole in Somerset for a resident witch. I’m seriously thinking of jacking it all in, selling up and moving to the shires in the UK! I think after years of searching I may have found my perfect job…
Photos galore
I know I haven’t blogged much recently, but it’s not because I haven’t been gardening – and here’s the proof!
Work has totally monopolised my time, but every spare hour I’ve had off has been spent in the veg-patch. Three weeks ago it was almost exclusively weeds in there, but I’ve pulled and slashed and screamed and now they are mostly gone, to be replaced with some neat rows of seeds and seedlings.
Cropping at the moment are the usual herbs, radishes, lettuces, rhubarb, chard and very nearly strawberries. Starting to grow or recently planted are beetroot, beans, tomatoes, spuds, celery, carrots, artichokes, cucumbers, gherkins and pumpkins.
Realistically that’s probably all I’ll find time to do this year, so I’m concentrating on maximising the yield and keeping the weeds under control!
The blogroll thing
I asked people to recommend some blogs I might enjoy, as I never find time to look for them myself…
Here were your suggestions, they’re all great so take a look:
http://colouritgreen.wordpress.com/
http://compostbins.blogspot.com
http://contrarygoddess.blogspot.com/
http://apiferafarm.blogspot.com/
http://matronofhusbandry.wordpress.com/
http://doloresdays.blogspot.com/
As promised, they will all be added to my bloglist when I can get round to it.
I’m also sending a surprise gift to the best one, which in my humble opinion is…
She describes herself as a… “Gifted and very lovely English specimen having triffic times in France with husband and critters.”
I’ll be sending her a signed copy of Ian’s book, Coq & Bull, which I think she’ll enjoy. (You can find out more about it here.)
Interview with tomatolover.com
It’s always nice to have your ego groomed, so I was chuffed to bits to be asked to do an interview for tomatolover.com which is written by Sally Coleman.
Sally is trapped in the suburbs but has decided that this summer is the one when she will become self sufficient on a very small scale. Very small. In fact in one food only. In tomatoes.
Growing them in her small (mostly paved – whoops !) back garden .
In her quest she is learning all she can about tomatoes and how to grow them and then gathering it all on her blog. I’m pitching in by sharing our Smellysmallholding experience with her. Have a read of my tomato growing experiences and my plans for this year’s crop.
Springing into life
I’ve been madly busy at work, then went away and had a bout of flu followed by bronchitis… so it had been a while since I walked over to the veg patch. And when I did, I was greeted by a jungle of weeds, all the straw paths had sprouted and boasted luscious clumps of wheatgrass, whilst an actual carpet of buttercups had spread across the beds!
Why is it that weeds grow so virulently and rapidly in an inexorable assault on any patch of ground you try to cultivate – and yet the veg that you want to grow seem to have the most tentative grip on life and you only have to look at a lettuce seedling for it to crumple and die? If only we could eat dock and buttercups, our lives would be sorted!
Thankfully, hiding at the back of the veg-patch is a row of rhubarb, almost swamped by grass but clearly unbothered by it. Growing perennial veg is wonderful, once they’re established they just keep coming back and very little effort is needed. I love rhubarb, and the colour of the stalks is just amazing!
I’ve managed to pull out enough weeds to plant some lettuces, brussel sprouts, celery and stonehead cabbages. There is still some chard growing, plenty of herbs, rocket and hundreds of strawberries. Over the next couple of weeks I need to finish weeding and dig over all the beds in preparation of the great day (15th May) when all veg can be planted outside without fear of frost.
Birthday girl
Birthday weekend has just gone by, and I was tickled pink to wake up and find I’m still only 21!!
The weather has really sorted itself out recently and my birthday heralded the first daffodil in bloom, and the first yellow haze on the forsythia. There’s a definite hint of spring in the air, and although Saturday was a little grey Sunday was hot and we were all outside the entire day.
One of my birthday presents was a trip to the chicken seller. As you know, one of my new year’s resolutions was to breed our chickens for the table. Last year our chickens resisted all their natural urges and despite a lot of ‘attention’ from the cockerel they never went broody.
So this time I’ve gone for a different breed – we got five of these lovely dusky gold hens and a new cockerel, which makes a flock of ten, which I’ll add to every time I can scrape a few coins together.
The new girls are very friendly, and the kids spent at least and hour sitting in the sun stroking them. B also had the unusual honour of having an egg laid on him!!
My other present was a lemon tree. This one has quite a few blossom buds on it and at least four tiny lemons. I’ve never grown one before but we’re hoping to be able to drink a gin and tonic with a slice of our own lemon in it this summer!
To top off a lovely weekend I spent some time turning over some of the new beds I need to make before planting-time; and then I finished off the afternoon by spending two hours scooping out a decade of stinking sludge and congealed fat from the septic tank filter which had ceased to pass water through and meant that none of the drains in the house functioned… I would have taken a photo of that too but you wouldn’t be able to eat for a week.
Lucky you
Orne County Council has just launched a blog in ENGLISH!
Good news for those of you still struggling with the language… the blog is all about the lovely county of Orne, it’s got news about the services and initiatives of the County Council, interviews, videos, etc.
Orne is the FIRST county in France to launch such a site which is aimed at people planning to move or already living in the area, rather than tourists. It is (brilliantly!) written by yours truly, so is guaranteed to be excellent!!
Visit in your droves or my children risk starvation!!!
Work and jobs
This started as a reply to Redfoprkhippie’s comment to my previous post about the Conspiracy of Employment, but it was too long so I’ll put it here.
Yes, I could GET USED to a job, but why would I WANT TO?? Most jobs (I’m not counting useful people like nurses, social-workers and Jordan) are pointless; they are simply mindnumbing ways of keeping economic units (that’s people, to you and me) on the endless treadmill of earn and spend. Schools are little more than factories for producing more economic units, which is why any sense of individualism, idealism or creativity is quickly stamped on – whether you’re a child or a teacher.
The whole of society is geared to making you want stuff (house, car, nice lingerie) so that you’ll go and get a job. Once you have a job you’re too tired to have any interesting ideas about life so you just become a brain-dead consumer of rubbish and plough all the money you’ve earned back into the economy.
If I was at home, I could make my own bread, jam, pasta, paint, I could repair my own boiler instead of calling in the plumber, etc. I’d have time to grow lots of veg and look after livestock. But that means I am no longer contributing money to my local economy, and I’m not earning so the government don’t get my taxes… the whole thing is incompatible with modern, western economics.
I’ve had plenty of jobs, and I have no problem with hard work – but I’d like to work at home and sadly I don’t have the cash needed to invest in those things which could subsequently earn me money; eg. renovate our B&B so that we can stay open in the winter, make a second B&B room, install energy-saving devices that reduce bills, etc etc. Overheads mean that I’m forced to get a job, but a job in rural France is never going to produce the kind of salary that could change our life. A few years ago we could survive with a sporadic hand-to-mouth income; but the cost of living has become much much higher in France and sadly that’s no longer possible.
Conspiracy
I’m not a conspiracy theorist, in fact whenever I’m feeling low I’ve found that listening to even a few minutes of David Icke can make me laugh so hard all my cares are forgotten, however… I think I have discovered a MASSIVE conspiracy which is affecting many, many people.
It’s called a “JOB”… You’ll have read recently that I got myself a “job” – it’s an office job involving smart shoes and moderate amounts of stress but no real power and the lowest salary possible. But what I didn’t realise when I first started turning up at 9 o’clock every day is that having a job completely RUINS YOUR LIFE!
I now get up at 6 o’clock every morning. I make huge amounts of coffee in order to get my eyes to open, tidy up, bake the bread that’s been rising overnight and then have a bath (no shower at the moment). At 7 I get the kids up, which isn’t easy as they understandably don’t want to get out of bed. They have breakfast, I get dressed and make packed lunches and flap around generally trying to put on eyeliner and feeling terrible. We get out of the house at 8, drop-off at school and then I drive to work.
After 8 hours working (I’m a web-monkey) I get in the car and drive to the school where the kids have been in the after-school club. We get home at around 6.10. I’m exhausted, crabby, pasty-faced and barely alive. I drink some wine because if you can’t have a bloody glass of wine after work then what’s the world coming to??!! Eat, drink some more wine, put the kids to bed and then at 9 o’clock I’m completely finished and can’t go on another second.
I fall into bed with a cup of tea, Ian finds something funny for us to watch on the internet (currently Peep Show, Nathan Barley, the IT Crowd) and by 10pm I am fast asleep.
At the weekend I am so knackered all I can do is have long hot baths and sit at the kitchen table with a pot of tea playing scrabble.
I can’t even imagine how I ever found the energy to dig in the garden, make jams and pickles, clean the house, do DIY, run a B&B? My life has completely finished, from one week to the next I manage to achieve NOTHING except the prolongation of a wage-packet which isn’t enough to live on yet a little too much to give up.
There must be millions and millions of people out there like this, wage-slaves in every sense of the word, and yet where’s the national outcry about the wasted lives, the kids who’s parents spend all weekend hiding under the duvet, all the dreams and hopes that can never be fulfilled because of this socially-imposed norm of going-to-work?
I think it’s time we told the world about this heartless, gratuitous cruelty to adults and put a stop to jobs!
