June moths

 We've had the moth trap for around 10 months, though much of that was winder and a very cold spring. Moth identification is very difficult. Even within species, colourations differences appear huge! Nevertheless, I attempt some identification of the moths we've seen in June this year. 

The last one is the elephant hawk moth. Possibly our favourite moth. What a beauty!

Awakening

For my own amusement, I thought I'd re-start the blog in a fitful way. I've missed writing now that I've finished my EdD. I'm trying to get to grips with moth identification a bit, having bought a cheapish moth trap last year. It's a 'cheap' (well, cheaper than the alternatives) trap from NHBS. 

We can now identify heart and darts, swallow-tailed moths, setaceous Hebrew characters - the names of moths are poetry rolling from the tongue.

Child likes to get up at 6am anyway, but on a mothing night, we gallop down the stairs to see what delights await us in the box. OK, so a plethora of micro moths doesn't exactly lead to an experience like opening presents on Christmas day, but there is one moth we've had a few times, which feels like opening the special, big Christmas present from  under the tree. Who'd have thought that khaki and fuchsia  pink would go together so well?

The hummingbird hawk moth is a stunner, and a placid creature, too, willing to be admired and posed. 

Farewell, little shadow

 Bill Cat has been missing for over a week, presumed dead.

We got Bill, and his brother Ted, from a rescue centre around six months after we moved to Chester. They were around 18 months when we got them, so Bill made it to over 18 years old, Over the past 12 months, he'd become increasingly doddery and pretty much deaf. I thought last Spring might be the last time he felt the rising sun warm his black fur and old bones, making him smell of digestive biscuits, but he made it through to this spring. I always hoped I'd find him curled up in a favourite place, looking as if he fell asleep, but it wasn't to be.

However, he remained my shadow to the end. When out in the garden, there'd be a rustling in the undergrowth and Bill would appear for strokes and tickles behind the ear. I miss that now. Instead, the rustling is a blackbird, tossing leaves aside to look for worms. A lovely sight, but not Bill. I see something black in the house, in the corner of my eye, but it's a hoodie, flung on the floor by small child. I hear a noise, but it's the mewling of a circling gull, and not crazy old, deaf Bill letting us know he's around.

I haven't written on the blog for several years, but it seemed an appropriate place to say goodbye to an era. Both Bill and Ted starred in LAPCBADPOUB Day and many other posts over the years.

Farewell, our biscuity shadow. Go well. 

Wordless Wednesday - divine dahlias

 

Epimediums

Courtesy of new drive and pathway, we now have a nice, but narrow, border full of shiny new topsoil. It's going to be dry and it's relatively shady, and I have a hankering for epimediums as I think they'll grow there very nicely.

So, a question, if you don't mind? Can you recommend any epimediums that are pretty much evergreen, which have a bit of colour to their leaves for at least part of the year? We currently have Epimedium x warleyense in another thin narrow border at the back, and they've done well there for the past few years but I'd like something a little different. Are there plants that like similar conditions that combine well with epimediums? 

So many questions...

Reawakening

Many people get excited by gardening in the spring, when plants start to grow again, flowers pierce through the grey of winter and sun (maybe) warms the land's bones.

For some reason, I'm more excited by autumn. Hence the resurrection (probably albeit briefly) of this blog. It's 10C at the moment, and raining, but my interest in the garden is reawakening. I suspect many of us go through stages of disenchantment with our gardens; for me this has led to disinterest over the past few seasons, exacerbated by my ongoing course and all those other bits of life that get in the way. But a new driveway and path in the front garden, which has slightly reduced the size of the borders, has led to a reassessment of what we have and a reawakening of interest.

In late spring in recent years the front garden has been a chaotic climax of colour, with foxgloves, peonies, forget-me-nots and many other late spring flowers. Then flump. A big gap of overgrown greenness until late summer when the asters start, fighting to be seen between the ever-spreading Japanese anemones. Now we've had a few shrubs removed, and a couple of dwarf apple trees are also to go. This has prompted me to re-evaluate other overgrown shrubs and come to the conclusion that the whole area needs opening out again. Light and air. Shrubs planted quite closely when the front garden was new and bare are now intermingled and crowded, usurping the herbaceous plants that I love. The same has happened in the back garden. From herbaceous border to shrubbery; and right now, I'm not of the same mind of the Knights that go Ni. I do not want a shrubbery.

So, this autumn and winter there will be reappraisal, opening up, and a lifting of canopies. Time for a reawakening.

Poor pay in gardening? Blame Aristotle.

I couldn’t make a living from gardening. There are many reasons for this, the main one being that I’m a bit too slap-dash, not taking quite enough time and care to do things properly and, importantly, tidy up properly afterwards. However, there’s also another reason. Money.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not a high flier with a huge salary. I work part-time, term time and my salary reflects that. It doesn’t really reflect the experience and qualifications I’ve got, but it does me fine and lets me have school holidays off for looking after (not so) small child. But look at the pay of something like the National Trust. A head gardener can expect £27,000 pa. Not bad, but that head gardener has to have experience not just in all aspects of gardening, but also managing staff and volunteers, balancing budgets, delivering activities to visitors, managing contracts and ensuring the health and safety of staff and visitors. A gardener can earn £18,700 and an assistant gardener £8.46/hour (£16,500 if it weren’t a 6 month fixed term contract). For the assistant gardener role, you need qualifications, equipment use certificates and experience, so not exactly a job for an unqualified new starter.

Hmm.

So why is gardening so poorly paid? Well, I blame Aristotle.

You see, Aristotle believed there were five types of knowledge. I’ll talk about two. First, and what Aristotle considered the highest form of knowledge, is episteme – true (theoretical) knowledge. The sort you go off to university to study. Then there’s techne – skill. Over the approximately 2300 years since Aristotle, theoretical knowledge has always been privileged over technical knowledge. As much as we can’t live without builders, plumbers, and other skills-based jobs, including gardening, we really don’t value them. Just think how we categorise education – A levels good, BTECs bad. ‘Proper’ (academic) degrees good, vocational degrees are categorised as ‘Mickey Mouse degrees’ (the exceptions being things like medicine, which are vocational but, as Aristotle stressed, also involved theory and so were a ‘good thing’). So gardening? Bah, just techne, skills, to be looked down upon and paid poorly. Yes, yes, there’s a lot of knowledge in something like gardening (especially if we call it horticulture) but, you see, for those in power and who make up the rules, it’s the fact that at some point you get your hands dirty. It’s a skill. It’s manual. So, it has a lowly position and lowly pay.

That Aristotle, eh? What a card.

(Be thankful you haven't received the full 8,000 word exploration of forms of knowledge in relation to perception of academic roles...)

Sowing the seed...

Whoops. It's been a while. I had my head in books for most of the summer, and not interesting, garden-related books, sadly. It's surprising how well the garden just gets on and does its own thing most of the time. Like Bagpuss, it has spent the summer being saggy and a bit loose at the seams, but I still love it. And now I've one more thing to do, but in this case, I think it might rejuvenate my gardening mojo rather than remove it further from me.

In May, small child's school sent out a letter asking for parent volunteers for a whole range of things. Gardening was on the list. 'Oh', I thought, 'I'd quite like to help keep the grounds tidy, doing a bit of weeding in the raised beds', so I put my name down. A few weeks later I went in to see a teacher about what I could do to help in the garden. It seems they had more planned than an occasional bit of weeding after school.

So, I'm not quite sure how it happened but I'm now running an after school gardening club, once a week. At least until half term, when it will start to get too dingy. The plan is, if it goes well, to start it up again in late February.So for five weeks, I have a group of 13 children from age 5 to 11, and there's a waiting list. I have to admit to being rather nervous, particularly over the admin (making sure all the children were there, what to do if one wasn't) and the weather Oh, and the state of the raised beds.

The school  has three long raised beds - one for flowers, one that's sensory (herbs and lambs' ears mostly, and a fruit/veg bed which has a couple of dwarf apple trees. All are horrendously overgrown with weeds, rather more than my cursory glances had suggested. So our first lesson was weeding. As an adult who has gardened since a child, on and off, I make so many assumptions - I know what a weed is, what isn't a weed, and ho to get weeds out. It was challenging to take it back to what a weed is, why we want to weed, and just how we might do it with the rag tag of assorted tools I had brought along as school budget doesn't run to extras and there's a lag between us starting and the school trying to drum up some support.

Much of the lesson was an impromptu introduction to minibeasts, and that whilst slugs might eat the plants we want to grow we still must treat them properly and yes, it's fie to pick them up and relocate them in the hedge. We also found beetles, centipedes and a spider or two. All rather exciting. We even managed to sow a few hardy annual seeds (calendula and love-in-a-mist) because I wanted us to get something in the ground in the tiny corner of the raised bed we'd sort-of managed to clear. I will have to go back and get all the weed roots out at some point, but in 45 minutes we achieved a little bit of gardening. For the lad who lives in a flat, it was his first bit of gardening; for the girl whose grandma wins gardening competitions in the next town, it was a chance to grow the same seeds as her grandma. It was a chance to get dirty and to work together to achieve a little bit of tidiness. I *think* they enjoyed it. I didn't have a chance to draw breath; the 50 minutes was over so quickly.

Hopefully they'll want to come again this week. We're going to do more weeding - this time in the veg bed, before planting some broad beans. I'm also pre-soaking some broad beans so they can germinate them in a transparent container, held against the side by moist kitchen towels. Hopefully this 'quick fix' sign of plant growth will help mollify the year 6 child who was rather woeful when I told her the calendula she'd just planted would look lovely next May/June. She thought they'd be out next week.

Their enthusiasm was contagious. I'm looking at the garden with fresher eyes again. And I can't wait to see my gardeners again on Wednesday.

Wordless Wednesday: "I see you keep a bee"

Wordless Wednesday - Blushing