I’m Awesome at Growing Corn

Posted on 6th February 2011 in Chickens, Field at the Front, Update, Vegetables

I’m not actually. I suck very very badly at growing corn. I had such high hopes when I planted the first batch of seed only to watch all 100 of them washed out of the soil by mega rain. That didn’t deter me – I live by the adage ‘If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again’ – so I tried again, planting a slightly smaller batch of 60 seeds, most of which lived to grow into kind of healthy looking corn plants.

They produced those thingys at the top that hold the pollen and they produced the thingys at the bottom that have the silks. The fact that the gales kicked in and the rains smashed down just as these two thingys eventuated should have been beside the point. I assumed it was a wet and wild ride for corn mating but I also assumed the deed had been done.
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The Face of Evil

Posted on 10th January 2011 in Crazy Car Man, Field at the Front, Sunflowers, Update

Do not be fooled by the pristine whiteness of it’s plumage. This bird has a soul as black as the pits of Hades. Blacker even – as black as Hades’ pits after a hard day chopping wood. It’s purpose in life is to make me run screaming out of the house, waving my arms and shrieking like a banshee. And the little snotrag waits until I’m within whacking distance before shrieking back and then taking to the heavens on it’s pristine white wings of wrath inducement.
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2010 Round Up

Posted on 2nd January 2011 in Carnivorous Plants, Chickens, Cooking, Crazy Car Man, Field at the Front, Foreign Lands, Hugh of River Cottage, Just Stuff, Musings, Not For Eating, Round Up, Sunflowers, The Bush, The England Files, Update

2010 was an absolute corker of a year. This garden malarkey sunk it’s teeth in with a vengeance and quite suddenly I was looking at the world with new eyes. I fell off a motorbike and got married in a Lahu hilltribe ceremony, I fell off a step and discovered Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, I got a new job and found a new career. And I grew loads of plants, battled snails and weeds, contended with Mother Nature’s temper tantrums, experimented madly, got things badly wrong and occasionally got them right.
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Bloated and Seedy

Posted on 20th December 2010 in Crazy Car Man, Just Stuff, Update, Vegetables

No, not me.  I know it’s the season of over-indulging, but I’m at work until Wednesday and so can’t really indulge in an ‘over’ kind of way until then.  Ask me at the end of the week, though, and my description of myself may more resemble the above.  Or I may just be too bloated to get off the floor to answer the question.
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Gratuitous Sunflower Shot

Posted on 14th December 2010 in Field at the Front, Not For Eating, Update

Because I love them and they’re starting to look like lions!

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The Sunflower Advocacy

Posted on 8th December 2010 in Crazy Car Man, Field at the Front, Not For Eating, Update

I came home from work today feeling a little bit hot, a little bit cranky, a little bit looking forward to a glass of New Zealand’s finest grape juice for big kids – I pulled up in a cloud of dust (I don’t know why, but the little car really likes to skid to a stop) and hauled out my grown up handbag (honestly, it’s bigger than the bag I take with me when Crazy Car Man and I travel – how I can get through months on the road with my worldly possessions stuffed into a 30 litre day pack and yet feel the need to carry enough luggage for a family of five with me when I go to the office is completely beyond me). I was, to be perfectly frank, in a mood.

And then I saw this….
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Hardcore or Mad – My Pursuit of the Third Sister

Posted on 5th December 2010 in Crazy Car Man, Field at the Front, Update, Vegetables

You know you’re either hardcore or mad when you spend your Saturday afternoon outside in the rain planting beans. Or maybe just desperate. Desperately hardcore or madly desperate, it’s all one and the same when the third sister needs to go in.

I wrote here about turning my Field at the Front into an experimental North American Indian field of food planted in a most companionable way. The corn went in and Ma N pulled the plug out of the great bathtub in the sky resulting in the corn seed being washed out of the earth and promptly eaten by birds. I shook my fist as the sky (a futile gesture but kind of satisfying in a Scarlett O’Hara kind of way) and railed at the birds for acting in a bird-like way (totally unacceptable behaviour when it’s to my disadvantage) before sighing in resignation and buying some more seed and planting it in tubs to ensure germination.
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The Flowering of Venus

Posted on 9th November 2010 in Books, Carnivorous Plants, Crazy Car Man, Update

It sounds like the kind of euphemistic prose you’d get in a certain type of romance novel – you know the ones I mean – the ones that have a liberal sprinkling of words like sword and lance and aren’t about sixteenth century military.

To get in the spirit of all things inspired by romance novels, I shall be referred to as Carrotelle de Summergarden and Crazy Car Man will henceforth be known as Count Automaniac of Kingswoodtopia. I have masses of titian curls and creamy shoulders (I’ve never understood that description) and the Count smoulders from beyond his lantern jaw (and smells just a little bit like car exhaust). Please feel free to give yourself a new, romance novel inspired name and description.
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Crazy Car Mon-et?

Posted on 28th October 2010 in Art, Bugs, Carnivorous Plants, Crazy Car Man, Update

My camera is pretty good, but it sucks severely at certain jobs. It’s a Sony Cybershot point and shoot digital piece of wonderment that my folks gave me about six years ago. It takes a great photo for an amateur camera – all the photos on my blog (unless otherwise credited) are taken with my Sony, and being the luddite that I am, there’s no tweaking or airbrushing – partly because I don’t know how to do it, and partly because I can’t be bothered. The camera has traveled through 21 countries with me and the Man and has never put a foot wrong.
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The Great Winter Tomato Hoax

Posted on 26th October 2010 in Armchair Gardening, Crazy Car Man, Fruit, Just Stuff, Not For Eating, Update

There is nothing better than a cheese and tomato sandwich, on really fresh bread, with salt and pepper. Even just writing about it makes me crave one.

Crazy Car Man doesn’t agree. In his opinion, until very very recently, the only thing a tomato was good for was making tomato sauce. And he has a point – in the shops, tomatoes are crap. In fact, in his opinion, tomatoes come in a close second to his most hated fruit, known as The Fruit of the Devil (seriously, he says it in capital letters), the dreaded pineapple.
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