Category: autumnal equinox

Allotment, Allotment Gardening, Autumn, autumnal equinox, chutney, Gardening, harvest, home made jam, Jam, Onions, Parsnips, plot 49, relish, rhubarb, Victoria Rhubarb

Gardener and Expectation…

Gardener Expectations

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Sunny Side up: pumpkins ripening under cover

As with the seasons, the garden is not required to be in harmony with the gardener’s expectations of it. Gardening and allotmenteering is a process of learning to work with what you have, and this year -more than any other in recent years – both the garden and the seasons have challenged even the most experienced gardener and Plantsman; but what a year it has been to date.
An old adage says that if you always expect the worst, then everything else will be a bonus, and whether or not you agree with the couched principle of this succinct aphorism, the experiential irony is not lost.
Skeptical commentary aside however, the year to date has presented us with both the best and worst of gardening times, and there is still one full quarter portion to run.

As usual, the arrival of the New Year heralded a new chapter in the gardener’s almanac and diary, but it was not too long before the great gardening expectation was consigned to a much longer than expected stay in winter’s stasis chamber, whence it seemed winter showed no shadow of parting at all. Yet depart it did, and in what seems little more than the blink of an eye the sheaves and sisters are being brought in…

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Jams and Chutneys and Sauces and Relish August 2018

And we too have been busy with the bringing-in…

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Moneymaker Tomatoes & the last of this year’s Rhubarb
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Parsnips and Peppers and dew drenched Florence Fennel
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Parsnips, Beans,Blackberries and Squashes
Allotment, Allotment Gardening, Autumn, autumnal equinox, best allotment, best in show, Dotty Dolly, Malahide Allotments, September, sowing seeds, The Barrow Bug, weather

Big It Was…

It was a big summer; with big sunshine and big temperatures and a big drought that will live big in the memory. And there you have it, past tense. A big summer it was; but now summer into autumn has slipped and this year’s transition is sudden and tangible.

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The Monster’s September song…

September, that great misplaced misnomer of the calendar year, tripping softly off the tongue, ripening memories of the big summer that was , safe that come the darker days September will fete us something to remember. And so we’ll gather and collect, and store-up, and we’ll treasure the harvest just as we’ll harvest the treasures from the big summer that was, and mindful that just as every gardener and grower begins the process of reaping and gathering, nature herself actually begins the cycle again, for come September nature begins sowing again, scattering her seeds abroad, and therein next summer is already sown…

 

Allotment Gardening, Autumn, autumn poetry, autumnal equinox, Cool Weather, courgettes, equinox, fox, new poetry, poetry

Equinox

Equinox…

Courgettes swell to squamos ooze;
Spent vines cling to the outer edge of the cosmos
Bed, desperate to maintain a grip on summer.

Late September, and summer’s doings come undone.
Drifts of leaves quicken the wood
And nights tighten grip on each new rising sun.

For a few days everything hangs in the balance:
A golden rosette decrees equal measure
To emptied-out beds and a pumpkin’s bright face

While tangible;  the dark end of bright things arrives
With the first grass frost, heightening track and tang of visiting fox:
And unseen, the hound of winter on its scent.

J.K. 22nd September 2016 ©
Paper Rose
A 1st Prize for the second year in a row… With a big big nod to my partner in grime Janette @janpaulkelly