Tag: garden

Grow your own!

Toy Food

Contrary to the label on the box, this is in fact Real Food, from the MERL vegetable patch!

The Museum of English Rural Life has a huge garden, about an acre, and there are currently two vegetable plots. One is planted in a wartime style, and the other is modern. Both of them are yielding lots and lots of vegetables, thanks to the hard work of the staff and volunteers.

At the moment there’s also a Grow Your Own! exhibition, which runs until September 1st. The exhibition explores how gardening and vegetable growing have become embedded in English culture.

For the children (and young at heart!) there’s a Gnome Trail to follow. There are seventeen garden gnomes dotted around the Museum and in the garden, and some of them are pretty well hidden.

Something I hadn’t anticipated when I started working at the Museum was the necessity of learning the phrase “Garden Gnome” in other languages. In French, they’re Nains de Jardins, and in German, Gartenzwerg.

According to folklore, garden gnomes come alive at night and help out in the garden. If that’s true, they’ve been doing an excellent job!

Full of beans. (And peas.)

Raindrops on my tiny pea shoots

Yesterday I was bemoaning the irony of having watered my potted vegetable plot, mere minutes before it started to rain. This little pea plant’s about three inches tall, and seems to be quite efficient at collecting all those tiny little drops!

Bean!

This morning I was feeling thoroughly miserable and germy and sorry for myself, and needed to find something to cheer me up. I came outside and this tiny bean was waiting for me.

I’ve grown vegetables before, but I usually cheat and buy them as little plants from the garden centre. Thanks to Sarah over at Skycarrots, who very generously gave me a whole bunch of seeds, this year I’ve started from scratch. It’s so exciting seeing how each little plant grows. I certainly never expected this one to pop up from the ground overnight, complete with bean still attached!

I have a lot to learn about growing my own fruit and vegetables, but I’m really looking forward to it.

Unexpected gardening.

I had been planning to work on a new dress today, but a slight difficulty with an incredible shrinking lining swiftly followed by an unexpected power cut sadly put paid to those plans!

While the power was out, I did something which I’ve been putting off for ages, and tackled the garden. I spent a couple of hours mostly chopping down the plants which had sneaked into our garden over next door’s fence.

My reward for all this hard work?

Robin

A new friend.

(I still want need a bigger zoom lens though!)