Long Mizzle Garden

 Hello m' soggy bottoms,   Long time no gossip! I have some rather exciting news to reveal ... After two years on the waiting list, I am now proud custodian of a beautiful allotment plot. I received a very exciting email in the last week of March asking if I was still interested in one. Of course the answer was an excited YES and I was offered the opportunity to check out three different plots. After my Sunday morning sea swim, I arrived looking salty & bedraggled to meet with the lady who manages the old farmer's field on behalf of her father-in-law. Turns out it is the same gorgeous lady that runs my favourite local charity shop. Initially I thought I'd go for a half-plot. (In the UK, allotments are classed as either full-plot, half-plot, or sometimes even quarter-plot). That was until I saw the full plot on offer, with beautiful established apple trees, gooseberries, raspberries, currant bushes and rhubarb galore. Plus, the plot had another major selling point - a pa...

 Hello m' perky porpoises, What did the sea know of the land?  Through every crevice, every vein of man it had ran.  Stored in his bone marrow, out through his bowels,  down to the sewers and treatment plants. Who was listening, when the core was changing? Were the whales singing? L.B   It is around this time of year that I start to get excited about piles of seaweed. It has been a long Cornish tradition to barrel it up from the beach, following a favouring gale. Who knows what other useful items can be found for the garden: driftwood, unusual pebbles, shells, a random welly, netting, interesting rusty pots, fisherman floats if one is especially lucky. The seaweed I collect from above the shore line and spread it flat across my garden beds. I used to rinse it in rainwater first, but now I just leave it to the winter weather. By spring, it has shriveled up to almost nothing, and can be satisfyingly crunched up in the hand. I am a believer in feeding the soil...

 Hello m' happy potters, As promised here are the results of Long Mizzle's bank holiday weekend transformations. Before the overlap fence was dull, tired and grey. Here it is with a 'before' applied 'sad filter' (just like they do on makeover programmes on t' tele eh). Now it is 'sage green', revitalized and ready for the fig tree to be trained along it, and for me to dance around in my best summer gaudy dress.  Although not quite the colour I was expecting, it certainly makes the patio tulips jump out - Quite accidentally, it also it picks up the colour of one of the houseboat roofs over in the creek -     I had exciting news last Sunday. My dad called to say he'd made me a potting bench and could he deliver it that afternoon.  Of course I said "YES PLEASE". It's made from old bed slats and spare bits of wood for legs. Mam painted it with teak oil and it smells gorgeous. Isn't it great!? We all had a cuppa in the garden and Ma...