Good things do happen!

We all know that good things happen,  however we very rarely hear about it as it gets lost amongst the doom and gloom stories.  So following in the footsteps of GGG Editor Henriette who pledged in her Inspiration = Happy post to write positively,  I thought that I would try and start doing some positive blogging too. Starting with this story!  By the way although the story is not exactly breaking news,  I thought it was a good place to start.

Endangered Monkeys Found in Vietnam

Scientists from the World Wide Wildlife Fund (WWF) and Conservation International,  discovered the largest known population of rare Grey-Shanked Doucs in a remote part of Vietnam.  The Grey-Shanked Doucs is considered one of the 25 most endangered primates.  The species has only been recorded in the five central Vietnamese provinces.

Thus the discovery of over 100 of these primates is fantastic news! It really raises hopes that endangered monkeys can be saved from extinction.  What’s more as only a small part of the area has been surveyed,  scientists believe that there may be significantly more Grey-Shanked Doucs living in the adjacent forest.  Lets hope that there is!

Photo Source: Funbury’s Flikr Photostream

Its fair to say that the veg patch and indeed my whole garden has been neglected during the past couple of months.

I’ve just realised that my last veg patch post was 29th June and since then a combination of endless rain and working long hours has meant that the garden had to take a back seat. I’ve kept looking at it out of the window and feeling less and less like tackling the jungle that it had become.

However, on Saturday we had some beautiful warm weather and I was in the mood to get the garden neat and tidy and show my veggies the TLC they’d been lacking. It was a good plan and I did quite well until I hurt my back and had to abandon the job part way through. Now the garden is just half messy.

Rain rain go away…

I thought I’d give you an update on the veggies anyway. I’d been feeling really bad because I had quite high hopes for this year, trying lots of new things and hoping to actually get food from the garden to the table but unfortunately it won’t be the success I’d wished for. I’m not going to beat myself up though, this is the first year and we’ve had exceptionally bad weather. So many other (more experienced) gardeners have told me about how they’ve been disappointed with their crops too so I guess I’ll just put it down to experience.

In the greenhouse

The tomatoes have become very tall and most of the flowers and fruit came out at the tops, touching the roof. I’m assuming that this is because of the lack of sunshine and the plants have reached up for the light. There are a few small fruit on each plant but the ones inside the greenhouse are not much better than the ones I tried outside. Here are the biggest tomatoes on one plant and they’re showing now sign of ripening yet.

I find the cucumbers to be really strange plants, they send out tendrils that grab hold of the tomatoes. I’m not entirely sure if I’m growing the cucumbers properly (in large pots, letting the leaves and stalks dangle down) but there are signs of tiny little cucumbers which have really sharp spikes on them.

The sweet peppers are growing tall and now flowering despite being munched on by aphids and the jalepenos’ stalks are becoming stronger and changing colour.

If anyone else is growing similar plants in their greenhouse I’d love to know whether they’re flowering or produced any fruit / veg yet. Last year at this time we were collecting tomatoes by the bowful!

Potato experiment

Just to see what would happen I put some old Wilja potatoes in a couple of buckets. They were already just sprouting but it didn’t take long for their tall, leafy stems to shoot right up. I think I can just see a small green potato under the surface of the compost but I’m not sure if and when I will actually get any potatoes from these. They seem pretty hardy though and haven’t been affected much by the rain.

Cannot live by radish alone

I nearly forgot to mention that we did actually get some radish although I know that is no great achievement as children learn to grow these at school. This was our second batch, the first in April were great, really big and peppery but this time I only managed to get 3 worth eating and they had hardly any flavour. The only thing that had been different this time was lack of warmth and sunshine, they’d been fed and watered in exactly the same way. Del, the rabbit, enjoyed eating the leaves anyway.

Outside

Embarrassingly my cabbage, spinach, broccoli and onions have all nearly been devoured by slugs, snails and caterpillars. I never did get round to buying biological controls for them and the barriers that I put up were obviously not enough. I’m going to leave what is left in the veg patch and see what happens, then maybe re-think the whole thing next year, plan a little better and prepare for the worst. I want to add carrots, courgettes and peas next year too.

However, one of my favourite things is the sweetcorn. That has been happily getting taller in the greenhouse with very little attention. So, I decided to re-pot them and put them outside to see if they would get even taller and eventually produce some cobs. Again I don’t really know what I’m doing and going for a ‘suck it and see’ approach – can anyone tell me, is it too late for the sweetcorn to produce veg now? I was slightly cautious about moving them outdoors because I thought I might go to them the next day and find they’d disappeared into some creepy crawly’s stomach but they’re still there and I’m sure they’ve got even taller in the past few days.

So, how have your veggies been doing? Get in touch and tell us your veg patch stories.

Don’t tell anyone but I love canals and their towpaths !

At the weekend I cycle from my little village to work about 5 miles away completely off road. I manage to escape the loud roar of traffic, noxious car fumes and selfish car drivers to the nearby peaceful, green canal path.

Anyone who frequents this part of the world will know about the special community spirit which exists between the dog walkers, cyclists, those out for a stroll and the barge folk who enjoy this space. It’s so refreshing that on my way to work complete stangers wish me good morning and pass a comment about the weather. Canals are great for wildlife spotting too, a few months back a moorhen and her brood of chicks trotted out in front of me. I also share the path with ducks, swans, coots and the occasional rabbit and kingfisher darting here and there.

With the warmer weather approaching I would urge everyone to ditch the car, get on your bike or use shank’s pony and explore the lovely backwaters of our land. If you can cycle or walk to work via a towpath even better, you wont find a more enjoyable, tranquil way or greener way to get to work.

Kate  GreenFinder

I recently discovered the benefits of aromatherapy. It’s not as though I’d previously dismissed it, it just hadn’t really occurred to me to use it for anything other than helping to relax. After visiting the doctor for a couple of years with the same ailment and just being given stronger and stronger antibiotics I decided it was time to go elsewhere.

I have to say I was amazed at the results. Who would have thought that a little bottle of smelly stuff could make all the difference? Pretty soon I was evangelizing the wonders of eucalyptus and how it can cure all ills, well sinusitis anyway.

After listening to me going on and on, one of my good friends bought me two excellent aromatherapy books for Christmas by Valerie Ann Worwood; ‘The Fragrant Mind’ and ‘The Fragrant Pharmacy’. When I read Valerie’s explanation of how these highly concentrated oils are extracted from a particular plant or tree I immediately wondered what the implications are. For example, it takes 8 million hand-picked Jasmine blossoms (which must be picked on the first day they open) to produce one kilo of oil and a sandalwood tree must be 30 years old before it is cut.

So, what goes into growing such vast amounts of these various plants and who is employed to pick and distil them? Is this being done in a green and fair way?

I have seen & bought organic eucalyptus oil in the shops but assuming this is an abundant source in Australia I hadn’t really thought beyond being satisfied with the organic mark.

I have done a little research on the internet and found some sites which sell organic and fair trade oils. Here are a few of them:
La Maison Afrique -In fact this site provides a great insight into how their essential oils are produced and how the farmers are involved.
Greenline
Faith – Holistics Made Easy
Materia Aromatica
Quinessence

What I would really love though is for someone who knows about aromatherapy to tell us more about how essential oils can be produced whilst still respecting people and the environment. I love my little bottle of eucalyptus but I’d hate to think that whilst it’s making me better, for someone else its making things worse.

Aromatherapists, essential oil enthusiasts or anyone who wants to have a say get in touch and tell us what you think.

By the way, any Vic Reeves fans who noticed the “Smell to get well” reference, extra brownie points for you!