The Green Schoolyard

We have a shiny new sign.  Well, in truth, it is neither shiny nor new; it is ‘green’ as in recycled.  And it took my eye; largely because of the fact that the letters had been cleverly formed by leaving spaces unpainted white.

But I digress (so no change there then!)  I am here (again) because of our latest ‘workout’ in the garden (which I should probably start calling the Green Schoolyard).  Sadly we have had a bit of a problem.  Just take a look at this wheat.

Look closely; what do you notice?

What can possibly have happened to it?  Suggestions included the possibility that someone had walked on it or that it had blown over in the wind, or even that a hailstorm had flattened it.  But we learned that it was not that at all.  To help us understand, we were cunningly corralled into a squashed up roped-in place in order to ‘grow’ from tightly-packed seeds into tall, strong healthy plants.  And it turned out to be impossible for us to grow so tightly-packed without falling over.

The same would have been true for the growing wheat.  Seeds that had been too generously scattered left growing plants with too little space to become tall and strong.  Instead they just keeled over.  An important lesson noted to be remembered for next year.

And then we went off around the rest of the garden to look for similar signs of too-tightly-packed seeds having led to weak plants.  We quickly spotted floppy lettuces.  But with lettuces it didn’t matter too much because you can eat them.  Which we did!

There was work to be done too.  Warm sunny weather and rain had meant that everything (including things we hadn’t planted) had shot up. 

The roses were a profusion of colour…..

but in amongst the healthy peas…..

and run-away beans…..

were ‘weeds’…..

that needed to be cleared, in order to give more space to the plants that were supposed to be there.  So it was ‘all hands on deck’, removing them. 

Being careful to remove just the things that were not supposed to be there.  After all, we want to be able to harvest our strawberries and our cabbages…..

as well as pick the odd bunch of Sweet Williams and even sweeter lavender.   Mmmm!