Celebrity Chef Patch

Why is it that some things have to be learned over and over again? This weekend one of my friends reminded me that the best way to keep pigeons off my peas and broad beans was to hang some CD ROMs up over the veg patch.

I knew that! Why hadn’t I done anything about it? We’d done the same thing at the old house. Why did it take the consumption of practically two thirds of my painstakingly planted pea crop before the penny dropped? So, a big “Thank you” to my friend Penny, who put me back on the right path.

Until then, I had been muttering about purchasing an air rifle and indulging in some target practice. I quite fancied this option because you see it’s not just pigeons that have been pilfering in the veg patch, its pheasants too and if I’m to believe Roald Dahl (see “Danny, the Champion of the World”) if a pheasant comes onto your land, it’s your property. . . and so could rightfully end up in your pot. Now that’s a different slant on Growing Your Own.

I was out in all that weather yesterday, soon after Penny had left, rigging up my Pigeon Protection System (PPS). It started working immediately. Among the CDs now scaring them off is one of Heston Blumenthal’s. So, now I’ve got Marco’s garlic bulbs and Heston’s CDs. I’m wondering what other illustrious chef I can add to the mix. Surely Raymond Blanc (whose Manoir is just down the road), can provide something to add to the mix – perhaps a (biodegradable) carrier bag to wave in the wind and make rustling noises? On reflection, something tells me Raymond is probably above carrier bags . . . perhaps Anthony Worrall-Thompson might have some . . .

All we need to do now is to make the greenhouse water and rodent proof. Once that has been achieved I will be able to plant the seeds I have bought. The mice have feasted on the parsley I brought with me from the old house and on the allium bulbs I rescued from the compost heap when we moved in. Once again, it took me far too long to work out what was happening and react. By the time I reached for the mouse traps, there was no parsley and hardly any alliums left to be saved. I’ve put the remaining alliums back on the compost heap; they seem to be doing just fine.

I fear that making the greenhouse waterproof will be a somewhat tougher assignment. When it rains – which it has done rather a lot recently – water literally pours in through the gaps between the panes. I’ve now put buckets and trays down to catch most of it. There was almost two inches of water in one of the buckets by the end of yesterday. Its going to take a long time to dry out and once it does, there will be a lot putty to replace and a lot of rotten wood to cut out. It’s a good thing that a) Mr D is so practical b) the days are getting longer.

Postscript
In spite of the all the rain, it was an exciting weekend in the garden. As well as a harvest of vegetables to look forward to, it seems that we are now looking forward to a harvest of a different sort: frogspawn. On Saturday morning, an event occurred that was so noteworthy it actually enticed the children away from the television. There was a party going on in the pond!

I was so excited! There must have been six or eight frogs gallivanting around all over the place. It’s probably a little fanciful of me to say this but it was exactly as though they had all turned up from wherever else they’d been all year and were saying “Hello!” to each other. We watched events from the upstairs windows through binoculars for a while and then went downstairs for breakfast. Things had settled down a bit by the time we went outside and crept up to the pond but you could still see the frogs if you looked carefully. I have emphasised to the children that they must on no account bother the frogs. I am counting on them to decimate the slug population. The curious thing is that since then, they’ve kept a low profile. You could even say that they’ve been as quiet as mice.

Earwiggings

A child was asked to do a reading at his Primary School’s end of term service. The Mother was pleased because the boy was generally quite shy. As the Big Day approached however, he became more and more anxious. The Mother tried to encourage him, but the boy became increasingly upset. Finally, she decided to speak to the teacher, who said that he had wanted to do the reading.

The Mother was puzzled: “Why did you volunteer if you didn’t want to do it,” she asked him.

“I didn’t,” he replied. “I only put up my hand to ask if I could go to the loo.” "

New Year’s Resolutions

Well, it’s February, the dust has settled (literally) and I’m finally getting round to thinking about my New Year’s Resolutions . . . .

As we’re already so far into the year, I decided to discard the usual clichés such as: get fitter, drink less, be a nicer person, play with the children more . . . and try and choose things that were a bit more specific. Ten seemed like a good number:

1) Send Birthday cards on time and write Thank you letters/emails within one week(ish) of receiving presents. This also implies making sure that we know who we are going to send cards to and what date their birthday is. This will entail contacting everyone in our address book and verifying their address: we found out last summer that we’ve been sending cards to one friend of ours to their old address for three years!
2) Wrap ALL Christmas presents well before Christmas Eve – and label them securely. I know the children just tear the paper off but I actually felt embarrassed at the contrast between the crisp edges and curly ribbon adorning other people’s presents and the sellotape frenzy that characterised the ones wrapped by me.
3) Organise Eldest Son’s birthday party (10 January) BEFORE Christmas, not in a mad rush the week before.
4) Start a yoga or pilates class AS SOON AS POSSIBLE
5) Reinstate “two weekends on, two weekends off” principle with regard to having people round for dinner/going away for the weekend.
6) Swimming lessons for the children NOW.
7) Publicise Blog with a view to earning some money from it. This will entail becoming more web-literate - a tall order.
8) Do (at least) two things that make us significantly more environmentally friendly.
9) Arrange play dates and activities for the children’s holidays before the last day of term.
10) Seize the Day!

Looking at the above list, it is clear that a lot of these resolutions revolve around the concept of Being Organised. This means that living up to them will be a bit of a challenge because a large part of me rather likes not knowing what is going to happen next.

Ten years of boarding school, where life was run to rigorous timetables, has left me with a bit of a phobia about joining organisations, or even being organised. Too much predictability in my life makes me feel as if I am being suffocated. I like to see this aversion to planning as being flexible and spontaneous. Others, I am sure, see it as being disorganised and even – horrors! - lazy.

I don’t agree at all. I’m firmly in the Winnie the Pooh camp on this one. I cry every time I read the bit at the end of The House at Pooh Corner where Christopher Robin tells Pooh that he’s not going to be allowed to do nothing any more. To my mind, the crucial element of that last sentence is the use of the active verb “To Do”. “Doing nothing” is not passive. It’s about doing what you want to do, when you want to do it. It could be about lying around in bed reading books; it could equally be about going on long walks, or cycling, or playing tennis with the children.

As far as I’m concerned, being spontaneous actually involves quite a high level of something akin to organisation. You have to be ready for anything – or at least be able to improvise quickly. Suddenly finding that you have six children coming for tea actually requires a cool head and some creative cookery – it also helps to have a well-stocked freezer. Being able to say: “Yes!” when friends ring up on a Saturday morning that is unexpectedly frosty and sunny and say: “Fancy going sledging at Big Hill?” is fun. It gets the adrenalin going.

On the other hand, knowing that for the next two years you are going to be the Secretary of the school Parent Teacher Association, requires the inhalation of a rather large, deep, breath - but it can be done (I know it can, I did it).

So, where the children and our social life are concerned, I shall be getting my diary out and making an effort to be organised. All this effort, will, I hope, be balanced by the licence granted to me in my final resolution “Seize the Day!” After all, you never know what exciting opportunities might be coming round the corner. . .


ENDS