FORGETTING TO BE CAREFUL Another night of constant rain. Fields are sodden, roadside drains and ditches overflowing with dirty water-splash. But this morning t’aint so cold as was. The air smells clean as a whistle and sky is clear as a bell. We have our morning stroll round the garden. I’m on my second cup, [...]
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Posts Tagged ‘november’
6 December 2009 DIRTY NAILS’ BLOG by Joe Hashman FORGETTING TO BE CAREFUL
Sunday, December 6th, 200930 November 2009 DIRTY NAILS’ BLOG by Joe Hashman DIRTY NAILS T.V.
Monday, November 30th, 2009DIRTY NAILS T.V. I’ve started working with a chap called Colin. He’s a techno whizz and into videoing. We’re aiming to produce some 5 minute gardening films. It’s early doors yet. We’re still getting to know each other and how the other guy works, but much fun was had out on the plot this afternoon tending sprouts, [...]
Read More »29 November 2009 DIRTY NAILS’ BLOG by Joe Hashman OBSERVATIONS FROM THE A34…, HEDGEROW TREES UP FRINGFORD WAY, MILTON KEYNES CENTRAL
Sunday, November 29th, 2009OBSERVATIONS FROM THE A34 NEWBURY BY-PASS HEADING NORTH A MILE SOUTH OF CHIEVELEY SERVICES Hawthorn and hazel in a lay-by on the A34 Newbury by-pass are doing well. They bulge within their corrugated degradeable plastic tubes and make a fine, shrubby hedge behind the steel crash barrier and line of four evenly-spaced rubbish bins. These [...]
Read More »28 November 2009 DIRTY NAILS’ BLOG by Joe Hashman BOOTS
Saturday, November 28th, 2009BOOTS A pair of boots hang beside a door on what I think is Pinhoe Road in Exeter. Black leather work boots. Bound together by the laces, they dangle on a hook as if hung out to dry. As we drive by in the grey old falling rain, from the top deck of a bus I can [...]
Read More »27 November 2009 DIRTY NAILS’ BLOG by Joe Hashman TO AMERSHAM VIA HOLMER GREEN
Friday, November 27th, 2009TO AMERSHAM VIA HOLMER GREEN I left home a quarter to six a.m. and headed up the hill, out of town. Ivy Cross was already busy. I added to the mix by fueling up and paying at the pump. The onwards, in the dark across Salisbury Plain. Traffic flowed, a parallel two-way line of off-white lights and [...]
Read More »26 November 2009 DIRTY NAILS’ BLOG by Joe Hashman COLD HANDS
Thursday, November 26th, 2009COLD HANDS The bucket is full of roots. Of radish, celeriac, turnip, parsnip, swede, beetfruit*. All lifted within the last half-hour. Leaves twisted off ’cept the celeraic, which we save as flavoursome additions to soups and stews. Rubbed clean by hand in icy water, their array of colours revealed from beneath the dirt. All aromatic [...]
Read More »25 November 2009 DIRTY NAILS’ BLOG by Joe Hashman ONGOING…
Wednesday, November 25th, 2009ONGOING… The bed is straight down its longest edge, then turns a right angle not quite half as long again. The two far ends join with a sweeping curve so in effect it is shaped like a big, blunt-nosed triangle. These longest edges mirror neatly clipped beech hedges. One is shoulder, the other head, high. [...]
Read More »24 November 2009 DIRTY NAILS’ BLOG by Joe Hashman WHILE DIGGING OUT COMPOST
Tuesday, November 24th, 2009WHILE DIGGING OUT COMPOST Owd Robbie nigh on lands upon my boot, flutters to a fallen twig and back. In the moist and fertile crater, he finds many a good thing to eat, and joins me for a snack. A clutch of suprise new potatoes plucked, from the crumbly soil. Three of hen and one [...]
Read More »23 November 2009 DIRTY NAILS’ BLOG by Joe Hashman BIG LAND ISSUES IN GILLINGHAM
Monday, November 23rd, 2009Rapid development of land around Gillingham over the last decade or so has left the North Dorset town rather short of green space for other purposes. The problem stems from rapid high-density house building a few years ago. I decided to phone the Town Hall. It turns out that there are so few recreational areas [...]
Read More »22 November 2009 DIRTY NAILS’ BLOG by Joe Hashman IN THE MARL PIT
Sunday, November 22nd, 2009Tess is a fox who lives in West Dorset. She’s five years old now, which is ripe old age for this heavily persecuted species of wild dog. I’ve told Tess’s early history in A Vegetable Gardener’s Year on pages 48, 49 and 96. Yesterday I popped in on her adopted carers, Derek and Elizabeth, to [...]
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