Gardening leave

All aboard!  Uplander (with Tickety-Boo and crew behind) heading for London

I have abandoned ship again, just for a few days, and am starting to regret attempting to fit in an entire day's gardening for clients and the planting of my 'Kestrel' second early spuds this evening.  Under the circumstances a hot bath is a very tempting prospect, but I dare not get out of the reach of the phone just yet in case there's a 'ship to shore' call to let me know where everyone else is now, and where and when I should rejoin the cruise.

'Braunston Turn', Grand Union Canal

One of the things I love about narrowboating - on our little Luddite boat, at any rate - is the sense of escaping from the whirl of modern civilisation. 

Nothing stops for tea - handover of a brew while locking!

Last week was a particularly good example as I managed to miss all of the hype around the funeral of the not-much-missed-around-here Margaret Hilda Thatcher.  Though not always a fan of the man's questionable line in 'comedy', in one episode of 'Mock the Week', Frankie Boyle once came up with a marvellous cost-saving alternative to the lavish state affair we have apparently squndered millions on - that if the Government could merely provide everyone in Scotland with a shovel, they could dig a hole so deep they could hand Mrs T over to the Devil in person!  Pure genius; just a shame that Boyle's humour too often becomes Mock the Weak.

Blisworth Tunnel.  If you thought you could get out of the rain in here, think again!

I also have no idea who, where or what 'Broadchurch' is.  Or was.  And don't confuse me with someone who cares, either.

 

Stoke Bruerne.  An idyllic village - except there's nowhere to buy bread, milk or stamps!

The only snag of this retreat from technology is the one I'm now encountering; namely, that the loveliest, quietest, most picturesque overnight moorings generally have completely unreliable 'phone and internet connectivity.  While I can usually handle this, it's a nightmare for my friend Chrissie who is attempting to finalise all manner of key PR issues for the very festival we are attending.  Despite having the latest smartphone and all manner of electronic wizardry to keep her computer connected, it's a nightly struggle to regain contact with the 21st Century, and one which is often lost.  It probably doesn't help that narrowboats are all steel, so to get any signal on a phone usually means going on deck, or holding up against a window.

Collision course!

So, all being well, I'll be rejoining the expedition soon, in time for the journey through London, which I have been looking forward to, since while boating through the spring countryside is extremely pleasant, urban landscapes from canals can be fascinating too.  The only problem is - after all that digging today, am I actually going to be up to doing my fair share of lock work?

Staying afloat

Slow boat to Little Venice

If things have been quiet on this blog recently, there's a very good reason for it.  Naturally, you'll be thinking, spring has finally arrived and so Sarah will have lots to do in her garden and her customers' gardens, and it's lighter in the evenings too.  But no - just as that ought to be the case, I'm engaged in a different enterprise altogether.  Jon and I are off to Little Venice, near Paddington in West London, for a canal festival - Canalway Cavalcade - over the May Day Bank Holiday weekend, and because narrowboats only move at four miles per hour, we have to go now.

Actually, we've gone.  Jon and the boat are down in Rugby after a week spent cruising the Trent and Mersey, Coventry and North Oxford Canals, while I'm home briefly to attend college, round up the post, deal with essential emails and then catch the train back to rejoin him.  There is no time for gardening, though I did find time to give the publishers the 'OK' for the final proof of the sequel to 'Severe Discomfort' to be released into the world.  You can find it here, the opening few chapters at least, but if you haven't read the first book, don't start on this one unless you want a major 'spoiler' from part one: check out 'Severe Discomfort' first (there's a Kindle version now, Amazon users).
http://www.completelynovel.com/books/continual-supervision

Hopefully, relief crew permitting, I'll have a whole week at home next time to properly manage the 'launch' of this volume and catch up on some paid gardening work, and to plant our main crop potatoes, though I haven't been idle on the boat.  The paints have been out, inside at least, and if the opportunity arises to barter one or two of these for boatyard services such as fuel and WC pump-out, that will be no bad thing.



Our boat, 'Uplander II', is very much a Luddite ship, with no TV, mains electricity (unless connected up to a shore line) or Internet access, so it'll be silent running for the rest of the week.  You might be able to catch some of our adventures on another blog, as we are due to rendeavous with friends on another vessel which doesn't reject the evils of modern technology shortly.  You might find a few photos and references to us turning up on Chrissie Smith's blog at:  http://cavalcadeodyssey.blogspot.co.uk/

In the meantime, he's the answer to one of those age-old questions.  If you've ever been at a football match and the chant 'who ate all the pies?' has started, the answer is actually me, at the Greyhound pub at Hawkesbury Junction, near Coventry.  Here's the proof...

A trio of supposed 'mini pies'!

Good job there are so many locks to work through on the next stage of our journey!

Endless Winter

It's 8th April today, and there are still snowdrops in full flower in my garden (see photo).

Don't get me wrong: I love snowdrops.  But there's a time and a place for them, and April isn't it, even up here in North Staffordshire.  But since there's still some snow too, I suppose you can't blame them for being confused.

We were in Cornwall last week, but although we had anticipated a little spring fix from this, we were disappointed in that respect.  There were quite a few primroses about, but we've seen them at Christmas down there before now, and apparently local horticulturalists had a rotten year for daffodil sales with nothing much ready for Mothering Sunday and everything a bit beaten up by Easter, after heavy rain and persistent strong, easterly winds.

In our garden there are a few daffs about, mostly the little "Tete-a-Tete" cultivar and "February Gold", which have just opened, defiantly oblivious to its name.  Not that the narcissi here have any regard for the Trades Descriptions Act at the best of times.  "St Patrick's Day" are never open in time, but if they manage to put on a show by St George's Day this year, they will be doing well.

Not losing the plot - busy day on the allotment

Despite this, there's something that has to be done at this time of year, come what may, and that's the planting of First Early potatoes.  We got ours in on the allotment yesterday.  Three different cultivars - Colleen, Cosmos and Swift, and for once it actually felt almost like spring, with lighter winds and some pale sunshine.  It was similar today, despite a less optimistic forecast, as we prepared our plots at Reaseheath for what, in theory, was the same exercise, though there's more than one way to plant a spud...

On the allotment, I dug over the whole plot to work in some of that most gruesomely-named fertiliser, 'blood, fish and bone', estimating the quantity, before digging individual trowel holes about 15cm deep for each tater, judging the rows by eye at 45cm centres in both directions, using my long trowel handle for guidance.  At college, matters had to be done to proper RHS specifications.  Exactly 400g of fertiliser was weighed out (fun in a stiff breeze) and scattered evenly over the area to be planted, lightly forked in ('Will you stop DIGGING!' Harry ordered me - so I tried not to lift too much soil) and then two perfectly spaced, taut garden lines positioned 75cm apart.  Using draw hoes we took two out lovely neat V-profiled trenches, before retrieving our chitted spuds from their nice warm greenhouse and spacing them neatly into what must have felt to the spuds like an icy tomb.

Naturally, I couldn't resist an experiment, so have spaced one row at 30cm centres and the second at 20cm, to see which gives the higher yield - I'm expecting smaller spuds from those spaced closer together, but with more tubers...?  We shall see.  But the main thing is, they are all in.  Mission accomplished, we went to the pub.

At home, I still have the bulk of my second early and main crop spuds to plant, but that will have to wait for the next few weeks, as something of a completely non-gardening nature will be taking priority. 
Here's a clue... 

Must go now - I have a boat to catch!