Gardening Makes You Mad

Gardening makes you mad.

I don't mean in the angry sense - unless you have a pond iris that refuses to remain upright, that is. Picture me at 5 o' clock this morning rolling into the garden after a night of debauchery, looking like a young Frankenstein era Gene Wilder. 'Wow,' I said to myself as I saw the sunflowers had grown 5 cm in a day. 'Wow again,' I mumbled this time as I saw the dragon flowers were shooting up with the penny blacks...Then I saw the offending iris for the third time in a week lying down on its side in the pond. 'You stupid bunch of bastards!' I legged it down and got my precarious footing, dipping my hands in the water to find the big stones I'd slapped on the basket to hold it in place. Then I spent twenty minutes tying a bit of string round the willow tree, looping it round the sturdiest part of the iris at the bottom, and getting my arms smothered in rank pond weed. Yeah, hilarious, yeah?

Gardening makes you mad.

Casting my mind back to late April, I went to a leaving party for the delectable Mim and her boy Luca. It was a great night, lots of good company, drinking and the laughs that come with good people. I'd popped to the toilet because my bladder was (is!) so weak it often feels like a full water balloon on the tip of a pool cue. Then I saw it it. An empty toilet roll. GOLD. My immediate thought was - 'That will make a perfect house for one of my sweet peas.' So I stuffed it in my back pocket. But then I thought, 'Someone's going to see I have a toilet roll in my back pocket and think I'm a fucking idiot.' And they'd have been right. So I tried to surreptitiously get it in my coat pocket. Trouble was the coat had been moved from the living room, where everyone was partying. I went in and asked where my coat was, whereupon the ever helpful Luca rolled up and took me to the bedroom. I had to come clean, as I sheepishly drew out the toilet roll and tried to explain its purpose. And it didn't end there. After getting a ride home from Euan, I stopped off at Sam and Robbie Analogue's to shed a tear for Nelson. Imagine my glee when I saw about eight empty toilet rolls just chilling on the windowsill. I was like a man possessed, as I got a five finger discount on those bad boys. I walked home in the rain with my pockets full of cardboard.

Gardening makes you mad.

One of the long term projects you will have noticed as you've read this blog is the solardome. The heat sink has now been installed and is running a big cakey dream. The paving slabs are all in, creating a wonderful geodesic palace that wouldn't look out of place in an episode of Star Trek. Gone are the days of dirty shoes and bad acoustics! There's even a small patio of slabs on the outside which house a pot or  five. It took a proverbial kick in the a$$hole from Parsley to get me to do it. 'Don't be so defeatist, Ed,' she said, probably thinking 'Don't be such a sweaty defeatist little pig, Ed.' I just don't get the whole accurate vibe. Is it laziness or fear of failure? Tell you what isn't a failure - Alice's new geodesic climbing frame. It's supposed to take five plus hours to build if you're on your solo, but Parsley and I got it done in five hours, HA. Joke. Just when I thought the bolts were tight enough she'd fly in and scrutinise them - 'I can still see the blue bit Ed,' she screamed, 'these are no way tight enough! Get screwing you pig!' I ended up with stigmata.

Once it had a few coats of white spray paint it fitted in beautifully with the rest of the garden. We moved it around a few times. I predict that in the future Parsley will want it levitating.

Gardening makes you mad.

A thank you meal of Spanish chicken was on the cards Friday night. We were under the gazebo on our champagne campaign, still chuckling about Cakeatonne's radio 4 interview on BREAD. 'Hippy dippy.' You can always rely on Cakeatonne to come out with a classy strap line. It was windy so we headed into the dome, mirror ball spinning slowly, sending out pebbles of light. The champers was making us all a bit jolly. 'PEANUT BUTTER BONGOS YOU BANCH OF FUCKIN' DRONGOS,' we kept saying in an Aussie accent. The meal couldn't come soon enough. Vodka for afters...and then when it went dark the dome really came alive. Solar lights around the base, the mirror ball turning and some garage, drum and bass, hell, even club classics on Heart fm! We were taking to the podium to MC. Parsley screamed at us: 'Oregano, you have to mc about SPACE.' 'Cakeatonne you have to mc about CHEESE.' 'What should I do?' she cried, 'EBAY SNIPER,' I bellowed. 'Yeargh!' Parsley was hilarious.

'FIRST CLASS, SECOND CLASS, THIRD CLASS....PARCEL POST...PARCEL FORCE PARCEL FOOOOORCE!'

She shot the words Parcel Force out with an American accent so hard I thought she'd blow a window out!

Cakeatonne was bashful until he started telling us a story about a maggot farmer. It was a gem. As was getting a picture of Winks perched atop a branch shooting laser beams from her eyes!

It's Summer people, and all is riotous in our gardening universe. Gardening makes you mad, makes you do mad things - wear mad things, I'm still rocking my Stan Smith Adidas which are over a decade old. Gardening makes you laugh madly. Take Goldie on the Chelsea flower show: 'Who'd have thought it eh, me yeah? Drum and bass 'ead well into his courgettes? It's like I never used to like olives, now I eat them all the time.' Your garden's rubs mate! We roared with laughter.

Gardening make you mad and AMEN me say.

The Dome is Alive With the Sound of Chickens!

If you want something doing, give it to a busy person. Ok here's the checklist. Sir Cakeatonne and Parsley now have a baby, two cats, a solardome, an allotment and THREE CHICKENS. All you can say in such a situation is 'It's wicked.' That's brought a few chuckles on when we've been talking about the workload. It does seem comical. Are we ahead of the season by putting in all this time or are we merely grabbing on for dear life? Either way I'm saying yes instead of no to the tasks at hand, even if I lack the initiative Cakeatonne!

The excitement surrounding the arrival of the chucks has been palpable the last week or so. Parsley showed me the coop she'd bought (an Eglu classic!), which was housed in the solardome. A day later and the chucks were in there rolling about and pecking like they'd never left home.

Parsley and I had been on the allotment when we got the bugle call off Cakeatonne. We sped back to find his mount unmanned with bags of feed lying about. I thought they'd flown off and escaped. But no. We walked up to the dome and there was a big cardboard box with some eyeholes/handles. I could hear some furtive scratching from inside and some quiet clucking. I knelt down and had a look in. Had to suppress a wild laugh as I saw a huge startled orange eye looking back at me. 'There has to be some kind of bewildered wisdom in that chicken brain of yours,' I thought. We were all very trepid as I peeled off the tape and opened up the top of the box. Salt-n-Pepa and Spinderella! (We were going to call them TLC, after T-Boz, Lefteye and Chilli). There they were in their bed of shredded paper. 'There's no time like the present,' I said, and plunged my hands in to pick up the first chuck. She was a lot bigger than I thought but at the same time a lot lighter. It was like holding a bag of helium that had feathers and a beak. Placed her in the coop and off she went pecking away like nothing had happened. Then Cakeatonne grabbed Spinderella as I grabbed Pepa and we stood there grinning like idiots as Parsley took a photo. In the coop they went as we launched all types of compliments at them, 'Ooh look at those feathers, aren't they lovely,' or 'You may not be JLS but you're fucking wicked,' along with mixed seeds (a treat). Later they had marmite on toast and apples. Made me wanna be a chicken.

Great animals, these. We just stood there in a kind of trance, watching them do their thing. Poor winks was terrified of them, staring at them from the safety of the dome exterior. Eric just cast them smouldering glances from the far windowsill, looking every inch a Mr Rochester or Frank Zappa. Haha, he really was emanating some scorn. Or were you just jealous, Smethwick?

They've already done a good job of tilling the soil, getting rid of weeds and eating seeds from our hands. The sensation of a warm chicken tongue on your palm is hilarious. And what good chicken would not lay an egg?! I had my first yesterday and it tasted awesome.

Happy G unit thymes (sic).

Project Solardome Part 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dy553E_oa0

Let's get that one out of the way for starters! Project Solardome!

I was up at 6.30 on Saturday morning, feeling raw as a potato, having had about three hours sleep - part excitement, part insomnia, part Czech rum. Parsley and Cakealot were equally ko'd when I went over to eat a vegetarian breakfast at their DOMEstead. So many changes this year.

We didn't get started proper until around nine, when the redoubtable Alex Johnson came in his Boratmobile - a beautiful mustard VW van, replete with tools. Same went for P&C. It was proper heist territory - glass suckers, stanley knives, power drills, rope; the works. We headed out to Lincoln, getting a bit lost, paying an extortionate amount at a toll booth, with me sleeping in the back seats. 0 stamina and endurance. But that was to change.

Rolled up to the house around 12. The dome was tucked away in the back garden / yard - betwixt a telegraph pole and a privet hedge. The owner was hilarious : a purple faced loon who called his cat Mum. We kept hearing him periodically coming out of the house saying 'Hellllllooooo Muuuuuum!' It took us a while to work out what was going on.

The dome itself was very impressive. In the photos it looks fairly small but I assure you the effect is quite the opposite. A dead robin was a bad omen! So be it. Parsley talked with Alex

about how we were going to go about taking it down (start from the top and work your way down - I guarantee I'd have messed this up if left to my own devices). Then she numbered all the glass panes - 120 if I'm not mistaken - whilst I removed nuts from what I can only describe as metal oysters, then WD40'd a load of nuts on the inside for later, coping was removed, I was as ever clueless and needed directing.

The biggest part of the job was removing the silicone which was holding the glass in place. Palette knives, stanleys, toothbrushes and warm soapy water - everything came into play. Alex and Parsley initially tackled the highest panes, with Cakealot and I scrimping and scraping the lower tiers of glass. Thereafter it was all change. With the first few panes being brought down (the very first cracked, our morale never did) we took some time out to assess the situation and eat. The predicted four hour takedown plan became so much longer.

It was slow work - with a very careful series of readjustments being made to how the glass was stored in the van - lots of bubble wrap and old blankets and an advanced lesson in trigonometry and spatial awareness. All the while purple conk was screaming hello Mam, his yappy dogs were going mental, it was getting colder. Time was not on our side - or rather the light wasn't. Indeed we worked right through to nine o' clock.

Once all the glass had been removed (no mean task), we still had to take down the frame - a colossal geodesic nightmare! I left the boys to that one, taking out the bottom vents / segments that were resting on breeze blocks, and carrying materials, tools etc to the van. The stars were out and I managed to identify Ursa Major. Pat on the back for a manifestly cold Oregano.

This was hands down one of the longest most exhausting days of work I've done in a long time and I did a third of what Cakealot, Alex and Parsley did. Yet, I loved it. I would do it again and I would recommend GEODESIC SOLAR DOMES to everyone. Do I want a unique geodesic focal point in my garden? Yes please! Do I want practical applications and benefits for my plants and veg? Yes please! Do I want to wake up the morning after helping transport a solardome, feeling like I've been shot? Yes please!

Remember this is only part 1. There will be many more to follow, as so far we have only transported it from Lincoln to the domestead. Weeee!

Adendum: A few years back Minda and I came up with a list of dome related puns. Four pages of A4 were filled. Here's a rundown of some of the better ones :

chrome dome

Big Trouble in Little Dome Town

White Men Can't Dome

Obi-Wan ka Dome Me

Dome2D2

System of a Dome

Domeformers

Home Adome

Buffy the Dome Slayer

Eastenddome

Dome and Away

Somebody answer the bleedin DOME

Die Another Dome

Dome White and the Seven Domes

Etc!