out of season

It was a beautiful warm, still, sunny day.  I keep finding more signs that spring is approaching.  In the so-called Italian garden in the turning circle, a group of purple dwarf iris have suddenly burst into bloom.   The last time I looked there were just the snouts of new buds emerging through the gravel.  Now there's an entire bunch of flowers, and another clump nearby not far behind.  In the back garden one witch hazel is fully out.  It is the mid-orange flowered variety Hamamelis x intermedia 'Orange Peel', and I sniffed the spicy fragrance on the air before I saw it.  The scent of witch hazel is a curious thing.  I seem to notice it more in wafts in passing than when I stick my nose right up against the flowers.

I hurried along and pruned the vines around the veg patch.  This is a task I meant to do before Christmas, or at least between Christmas and the New Year, as vines bleed badly once the sap is rising, and you are advised to finish pruning early.  I don't know why I didn't do it then, except that I was engrossed in other things and maybe the vine is not top of my list of concerns.  Due to errors and omissions in my record keeping process, I don't know what variety it is.  The grapes are white, and I'm sure I meant to choose one that was capable of setting edible fruit out of doors, since I never had any ambitions to make my own wine.  A couple of years ago I tried hard to do things by the book, and pruned it at the correct times, and thinned the bunches of grapes ruthlessly, and the fruits were still small and extremely pippy, though the chickens liked them.  The main job of the vine is really to clothe the wire rabbit fence that runs round the veg patch, and provide the odd leaf for cooking.  I quite like stuffed vine leaves, and it gives a smug feeling to be able to use home grown fresh leaves, instead of tinned.

I cut a couple of branches experimentally, and sap didn't gush forth, so I got on with it, since it was one of those jobs where the situation was only going to get worse the longer I left it.  It still didn't seem to be bleeding by the time I'd more or less finished, so with luck the sap is not rising that much yet, and it won't.  Maybe it will start later.  I'm not an expert on the cultivation of vines.  It makes a vast amount of growth each year, throwing out new shoots that are 3-4m long and longer.  Normally I keep trimming these through the summer to try and keep the whole thing in check, but the veg patch was mostly fallow last season, as I tried to catch up with everything else.

Another job that should have been done last autumn, ideally in September, was to scrantle* the meadow.  We did the back garden in the middle of that month, but never got on to the meadow.  I'm not sure why.  I think the Systems Administrator, who basically dislikes trudging up and down for hours pushing a power scythe and then having to collect large amounts of grass, hoped that it could get by without a cut every year.  I'm not crazy on the task either, and dislike repeatedly asking anyone to do anything, in case it could be construed as nagging, so we ended up with a communications failure, and it didn't get done.  We ended up scrantling the meadow this afternoon, as it has daffodils planted in it and I was beginning to worry that if we didn't do it soon their leaves would be through.  My part of the job is to rake the fallen grass aside, to clear the way for the next passage of the scythe.  I didn't check the exact time we started, but it must have taken us about an hour and a half, during which I raked continuously.  That should have burned off a couple of mince pies.  We'll leave it for a day or two in the hopes that it might dry out in the wind, and the SA will put the lawn tractor over it, and I'll have to rake it again.  We now have two trailer loads of weedy and rank grass to dispose of.  I'm hoping that they'll burn, chucked on a lively bonfire a forkful at a time.

*We borrowed this useful agricultural term from Stella Gibbons to describe the act of cutting long grass with a power scythe, since there isn't a verb specifically for that.  The exact nature of the original operation remains a mystery.

Addendum  I have done my bit to sabotage an on-line poll in the Guardian, while telling the exact truth.  It goes to show how misleading statistics can be.  The question was, will you be spending less in the sales this January than last, to which my response was No.  However, that doesn't have any positive implications for my confidence or spending power this year.  It's simply that since I spent nothing in the sales in 2011, I certainly wasn't going to spend less in 2012.  When I took part, with an hour to go until the poll closed, 80% of respondents had answered Yes.  I'm sure you shouldn't tell people how other people have voted on the same question if you want an accurate result, in case it influences what at least some of them say.

Christmas is over, thinking about fruit

The Christmas tree came down today.  It isn't quite twelth night, but it seemed time.  It had been up for a fortnight and I've been back to work.  It was a common cut Norway spruce, and it kept its needles extremely well.  This is probably because it was very fresh, and the house is rather cold.  It was a local tree, grown only twelve miles away, and in death it will not be wasted.  The branches will be shredded and used as mulch, and the trunk will go into the log burner.

I'll probably bestow the mulch on the blueberries.  They like acid soil and moisture, and a pine mulch should suit them fine.  They don't like manure, and the pine needles will remind me not to chuck 6X on them when I'm doing the black currants.  They need little in the way of care and maintenance, and are worth growing when you look at the price of a small punnet of blueberries in the supermarket.  I got a useful little recipe book from the Trehane stand at Hampton Court this year.  Blueberries simmered lightly with amaretto and spooned over crushed amaretti biscuits just before serving have gone down very well with the people I've tried them on so far.

I pruned the grapevine today, before the sap started to rise, so that it wouldn't bleed.  Due to a failure of record keeping I don't know what variety it is.  The grapes last year were vaguely grape flavoured, small and pippy, despite my best efforts at thinning, but the chickens liked them.  The leaves are excellent for dolmades, more use than the grapes really.

Back in November, before the snow started, I was going to get another cherry tree.  I said the same thing last year and then with the hard winter never got round to it.  I had better get myself organised, or I'll have missed my chance for another season.  It must have been a tough couple of years for bare root growers.