I really do and it goes back to my childhood. It’s not that I had an accident with a firework, simply that the cracks and bangs used to really upset my old dog. He spent the majority of the evening under a bed. I know that most children love the fireworks. Many charities depend on organised displays of them by worthwhile organisations, like the Lions, for funds. But I simply hate the whole thing.
I’m writing this mid-afternoon on 5 November and, already, the bangs are echoing around me. As some followers will know, we lost a planning appeal a couple of years ago and now, instead of being surrounded by fields on all sides, we have 142 houses built either side of our drive.
This means that my garden will be littered with spent rocket casings and their utterly useless sticks. I know its not malicious on behalf of my new neighbours, but still a wretched nuisance.
I also fear for the wildlife. On the still open sides of our property we have tawny and little owls who visit us most nights and a lot of pheasant pecking around during daylight hours. We have got a couple of feeders and I also scatter corn on the grass. Poor things, I wonder how they will cope with the noise and flashes of colour. Good job they are not able to read The Day of the Triffids!
We woke up this morning to our first fully white-over frost of the winter. I went out to feed the birds and the air was like chilled wine – wonderful. Mrs GG hates the cold but makes the best of it.
Good quality and well-rotted agricultural manure is increasingly difficult to obtain. We are very lucky as a farmer a few villages away has piles of really old stuff and allows me to collect up a couple of trailer loads each year. Its black, crumbly and does not smell of anything unpleasant.
I’ll put a layer over the veg garden and dig it in and the rest will go round Mrs GG’s roses. Because we’ve got a lot of grass, all the clippings are carefully stored in one area of the garden and separated by age. Some of it is five or six years old and whilst it does not have the nutritional value of manure, it’s a wonderful soil conditioner.
I’ll cover the entire surface of the herbaceous garden with a good thick layer. The worms will do the rest. It supresses weed growth in the spring and keeps roots warm and moist throughout the winter.
The one downside of have a lot of pheasant in the garden is they love to scratch away at the soil. And what is better – and easier – than a thick layer of well-rotted grass cuttings. So, having carefully covered the herbaceous, I’ll spend the rest of the winter going round, forking it back after Mr and Mrs Pheasant have had a good scratch around.
Happy Gardening!
PS The young are trying hard to get me into the 21st century. I’m now writing regular Tweets that can be found at https://twitter.com/ggrumpygardener
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