A start at comment catch-up

 

DrDia

. . . we’re very excitedly looking into aquaponics. No need to water your veggies/flowers/whatever when they’re growing in fish-fertilised water. Of course, more investigation is in order.

This is OBVIOUSLY not the solution for our future roses, but I’m pretty sure lots of other things can be coaxed to grow this way – yummy things.

YOU’RE GOING TO GROW YOUR VEGETABLES IN FISH CRAP?  FRESH, JUST-OUT-OF-THE-FISH, FLOATING-IN-THE-WATER FISH CRAP?  YOU’RE GOING TO GROW STUFF YOU MIGHT BE EATING RAW IN UNTREATED FISH CRAP?

I daresay I’m missing something.**  And I’ve got no problem with crap as a fertilizer—I buy ‘composted farmers’ manure’* at the farm-supply shop at regular intervals.  And during the sadly brief period at the old house where I HAD MY OWN HORSE, I used to pick out the paddocks (I was very popular with the stableyard crew) and compost pure horse manure*** at home under a black plastic tarp . . . and a year later the stuff was the most amazingly beautiful, crumbly, black, sweet-smelling compost . . . I could nearly eat it myself.

But I’m a little twitchy about the idea of fresh crap—aside from the fact that the standard horse, chicken or mixed-farmyard crap will burn your plants if it hasn’t been composted first.  I don’t think I know anything about fish crap;  the only water-originated fertilizer I know much about is seaweed derived.  Also, this is frivolous of me, but a lot of gardening is about how it looks.†  I’m such a dweeb about this that barring pruning accidents or the inevitable wastage involved in hoicking thirty feet of Souvenir de la Frelling Malmaison back over to my side of the wall again, I won’t cut flowers to bring indoors and put in vases.  I don’t really fancy feeling warm and affectionate to a lot of fish tanks.

Diane in MN

I haven’t read M.R. James in YEARS. I think I’ll get my knitting and watch that video. 

Diane and I are having a FASCINATING email conversation about this video.  You’re all missing out.††

Scribblous

I’m only surviving the summer because I discovered you can order fans online even when the stores run out.

Sigh.  And I’m too dumb to live. †††  Thank you.  Very, very, very slightly in my defense I’d checked John Lewis, which is the only department store I ever think of, on probably the one day this decade that they were out of stock, last year, I think, during the heat wave in, wasn’t it March?, and all us heat-haters were freaking out at this omen of a diabolical summer to come—and then we didn’t have summer.‡  Anyway they had sold out of every fan that cost less than £500 and was just a fan and didn’t also do the ironing and balance your chequebook.  My clothing and my bank balance wouldn’t know what hit them.  I prefer to spare them the shock.  Also, all I wanted was a fan, not an additional member of the family.  I suspect it was one of those situations like the year when I was a kid my family moved to upstate New York.  Upstate New York communities are very good at coping with snow.  But that year we had something like four feet in September.  Even upstate New York isn’t ready for major blizzards in September, and their snow ploughs were all off getting serviced for the winter to come.  There were a lot of red faces.  And a lot of snow on the roads.  John Lewis was probably not prepared for a run on small electric fans in March.  Anyway, I flounced off line again and decided it was my Fate to Fry.

Diane in MN

I appreciate bees, but I’m afraid of them and do not find them necessarily benign. And the big fuzzy ones that I’ve encountered are generally carpenter bees, solitary and territorial and swift to come after you. I won’t even get started on yellowjackets. But biting and stinging insects are drawn to my aura or whatever, so I’m a little neurotic about them.

I never found bees benign when I lived in the States.  I used to wonder why they all had such a death wish—since mostly they do die if they sting you—but I never doubted that they did.  Carpenter bees?  Shudder.  They’re so huge you can see the expression on their faces as they come after you and it’s not friendly.  And I was another one who had ‘chocolate cake with hot fudge sauce’ written all over me in bug language.  People used to tell me patronisingly that it was because I ate too much sugar.  I know other people who ate too much sugar and they didn’t get chewed on like hot buttered corn on the cob every year.  And I still eat too much sugar but the bugs don’t like the post-menopausal hag nearly as much as they liked the juicy young one.  Getting old is not all bad.

Abigailmm

Wow, AJLR, either you have exceptionally nice bees or you are a lot more careful than I am, or both.

Ajlr is keeping bees in England, and you are keeping them in the States.  I rest my case.

Diane in MN

When I’m gardening, I dress for insect avoidance (pants tucked into wellies, lightweight long-sleeved jacket, hat and headnet, and gloves) because we have mosquitoes and deerflies and TICKS. It does get VERY warm. And it’s not 100% foolproof, because the mosquitoes can bite you through your clothes. But at least it keeps the ticks off and the biting flies out of my face.

We have our share of wasps, too, but they’re generally not a big problem unless they’ve built a nest somewhere really troublesome, like at the door. Then it’s a job for the exterminators, and I hide in the house.

Oh, my, how I remember the Full Gardening Suit, a close cousin of the Space Exploration Suit, each in its way doing its best to protect you from a hostile environment.  I’m pretty sure I’ve said here before that getting bitten by black flies in Maine would make me literally feverish and ill—and any Mainer will turn pale‡‡ and trembly at the thought of a bad black fly season.  And they’re all bad.  Give me a bunch of pissed-off Cardassians any day.

We certainly have ticks here—I screw‡‡‡ them out of the hellcritters occasionally.  After most of sixty years of having dogs underfoot ticks still creep me out:  aside from the damage they can do they’re just ultimately icky.§  And I run away from wasps and hornets here just as vigorously, not to say frantically, as I did in the States—straight indoors to the exterminator’s phone number.

It’s been much too hot again today and tomorrow is supposed to be worse.  Joy.  And just to remind me—thanks, very thoughtful, but I didn’t really need reminding—that southern England is not a green and pleasant Eden, I’ve been absent-mindedly doing the watering in shorts, you know, so I don’t keel over with heatstroke or something.  With the result that the Gigantic Red Marks that came up on the backs of my legs last year . . . have returned.  It took MONTHS for them to fade last year ARRRRRRRGH but of course I’d forgotten all about them, when I put shorts on for the first time this year. . . .  I have no idea what causes these great maculae, except that it frelling lives in the frelling garden and—menopausal hormonal crash or no—I’m allergic to it.  Some things don’t change nearly enough.

* * *

* Composted farmers of course make the very best fertilizer

** Feel free to write a GUEST POST about what a short-sighted dolt I am.

*** I mean not mixed with whatever bedding is in their stalls.

† For example, right at the moment, my Ghislaine de Feligonde is amazing . . . but she also managed to break her stays in the wind, last weekend I think, and a vast agglomeration of her has fallen across the path.  What would be the path.  Which is why I haven’t posted photos.  I’ve been saying ‘I’ll tie her up tomorrow’ all this week.  If I don’t do it soon, she’ll go over.  Arrrrgh.  Gardening is such a sucker’s game.

†† I also recommend the knitting aspect.

††† See footnote **

‡ I liked it.

‡‡ Whatever colour you started out

‡‡‡ I have this little 90°-angle two-tined fork thing.  You hook it under the tick and start screwing, as if it’s a disgusting form of bolt.

§ One of those situations where you want to say OKAY, WHAT IS GOD’S PLAN ABOUT TICKS?