Politics

I approach today's shoot-out with heavy heart. Optimism has been so often misplaced; maybe it’ll work better this way.

Let’s pass briskly on…

Comments

I was grateful to Jennifer (day before yesterday) and Ron for their agreement with my fault-finding over IK. Jennifer points out – I’d missed it – that EZ’s Old Man is named “Arthur” in a picture caption. Franklin has it right in the text, of course. That’s appalling. She also says that the color-theory article doesn’t make much sense: I shall seize on the excuse to skip it.

I am grateful, too, for further endorsements of Lisa Lloyd’s “A Fine Fleece”. I’d have overlooked it, thinking it just for spinners (of whom I wish I was one, but that’s another story).

Knitting

Should reach Thomas-the-Elder’s first heel today, especially as there is a Drummond Place committee meeting this evening. Not to boast or anything, but I can turn a heel at a committee meeting if circumstances demand.

And since that’s all there is to say about that, I shall try to raise my sagging spirits by talking about vegetable growing.

Courgettes

Last year, we had beautiful weather in April and for the first four or five days of May, and that was it – end of summer. But on the 4th or 5th of May, not knowing what was to come, I bought a little courgette plant from a garden shop in Milnathort. Usually, I plant seeds in the open ground mid-May.

The places for the courgettes had already been prepared (as they have this year) – holes dug, half-filled with manure, filled in, marked with sticks. I planted the little courgette and covered it with a sawn-off plastic water bottle of which we have many, left over from our year without water.

It suffered terribly for the rest of May – maybe it hadn’t been hardened off properly. But it came through and – here’s the point – all summer long remained ahead of the directly-sown ones.

So this year I started a few from seed on a windowsill in about mid-April. They have all come up nicely, and I worry about how they will manage when I go to London tomorrow. I’ve put them out – the weather has suddenly turned summer, after a dismal April – and screwed them down into the herb trough, as you see, so that they can draw up some help from below if the weather is parching. There could still be a frost, but the warmth of the building should protect them. So far, they seem very happy out there. True leaves are beginning to develop. They’re an Italian sort, called “Fruili” I think.

I am full of foreboding about London.