Saturday 20thJuly

All year it has seemed one mad rush; commuting from one house to another, and one of the casualties has been the garden at Walton.  But this weekend we managed to fit in a visit and one of the tasks was to tidy up the garden.

Well, with such a late spring and now a hot summer spell everything has gone wild.  There was a mad profusion of plants and even the cemented over cracks between the crazy paving was erupting as weeds found a way to break through.   For my birthday in March my sister bought me an unusual present; some potatoes.  Seed potatoes and three grow bags to plant them in, which I did some time in April.   For a few weeks I watered them assiduously, but with the last month or so being flying visits only I had neglected them.

Well, of course they are all dead.  What did I expect with this heat.  However intact in the soil were quite a nice crop of very small new potatoes, enough for two or three meals – so after all, all was not lost.

Hidden away in the undergrowth too I discovered last year’s rhubarb plant, that had done absolutely nothing while I tendered the garden, but now with total neglect I have several long stalks of rich red rhubarb……yum, yum.

The garden has been hacked back considerably and now looks half decent again, but I wonder whether you actually get better results with neglect than nurture.