loose ends

I filled the bed in the vegetable patch where the potatoes are supposed to go with compost from the remains of the great heap, and planted the potatoes.  I suppose it would have been traditional to do this on Good Friday, but I was busy doing other things that day.  A date that moves from year to year and takes no account of the weather seems a very arbitrary guide to gardening anyway. April 6th felt as good a date as any.  The great heap grows rather good potatoes from the odd old tuber that's got left in there, so it will be interesting to see if it can deliver the goods when moved to a bed in the veg patch.

I inspected the spot where I'd sown the broad beans, but there was nothing.  The sowing date on the label said 22nd March.  I checked the germination time for broad beans later on in my Doctor Hessayon guide (still the most useful vegetable book I have.  By now you have to ignore practically everything he says about disease control, because he is heavily chemical dependent and most of them have been withdrawn, but the basic stuff about spacing and timings is easy to find.  His book is not nearly so pretty or aspirational as those glossy publications about ornamental potagers and French vegetable gardens, but it is my go-to place for the germination times of broad beans).  The book said 7 to 14 days.  Hmn.  That's about now.  Maybe I should sow some more in pots in the greenhouse, risking the root aphid and coping with the complete lack of space somehow.

Some loose ends.  The Systems Administrator really liked the mincemeat pie, so I might have to persist with the impossible pastry, and go easier with the milk next time.  I wasn't convinced the grated apple added anything, and the tart would be quicker to make without it.  I did think it might work with a layer of cherry jam and some tinned cherries, or fresh if you had any.  The idea of the mixture of jam and whole cherries is not mine, I borrowed it from a slightly complicated looking Dan Lepard recipe for a cherry polenta cake I haven't tried yet.

The camera showed a procession of rabbits going up and down the line of the hedge, so our guess that it was a bunny highway was correct.  The Systems Administrator who viewed the camera footage said it was a veritable Mekong trail for rabbits, and we could bomb the garden and napalm the vegetation.  The camera is now set up on the lowest corner of that bed, to try and get some idea where they are coming from, though the first thing the SA will see tomorrow is a lot of pictures of chickens, because two of them headed straight down there when I let them out.

A really old loose end.  We got rid of the rats under the shed, but had to resort to poison when after a fortnight we had not zapped a single one in the electric rat zapper.  I fear the answer is to keep a very keen eye on the shed, and deploy warfarin at the first sign of infestation without messing about with other methods.  It would probably use less poison in the end than letting them establish themselves while trying unsuccessfully to electrocute or trap them.

I am delighted that the new Radio 3 controller, stung by the critical report on Radio 3's dumbed down wannabe Classic FM tendencies, has dropped the awful format of the current breakfast show. No more phone-ins, hurrah.  I am not a bit interested in hearing about why somebody I've never met or heard of likes Handel's Messiah.  Radio 3 lost me at noon last Thursday since the Composer of the Week was Judith Weir.  I really can't take to her music, nor the Thursday afternoon opera.  Opera on the radio so there is no dancing or costumes or set to look at, sung in a language you don't speak and when you don't already know the plot, tends to be pretty tedious.  Over the Easter break I've been listening to Classic FM's Hall of Fame.  The idea of voting for one's favourite three pieces of music is clearly preposterous, but the outcome is entertaining and on the whole the great British public has pretty good taste.  I don't think Judith Weir made it into the top three hundred, though.