It is almost Thursday, and the Asda shopping is nearly upon us.
It is very quiet in the Lake District, but nevertheless there are gleams of hope, and I can now afford considerably more cheese and probably some flour and loo roll as well, if only they have any.
If I have a good night tonight we might even have wine.
I am not sorry to be sitting quietly on the taxi rank, because I have had a very busy day.
It has been the day of the First Great Tomato Massacre.
There will be more.
As you know, our conservatory had become a positive tomato jungle. I quite like this, but in the big bed at the end the tomatoes, along with the nasturtiums, had quite taken over.
I had always intended the end flower bed to be my happy and magical tropical paradise, with banana trees and lemon trees and orange trees and one day a mango tree, although I have never managed to find anywhere that has got one of these for sale.
If anybody knows any garden nurseries selling dwarf mango trees, let me know.
Instead what I had managed to produce was a massive tomato jungle. Tomato plants had erupted everywhere like green lava spurting from a volcano, and everything else had vanished in their inexorable path. They reached to the roof and pressed themselves longingly against the windows. They crawled over the back of the sofa and wound their way around the cushions. They wrapped themselves tightly around the trees, clutching them again and again and again in their hungry embrace.
They were still growing like mad, even though it is October, although they had stopped producing much in the way of tomatoes. They were still flowering with abundant enthusiasm, but in the autumnal absence of insects to pollinate them, the flowers were just withering and dying on the branch.
I know you can hand pollinate them, how much spare time do you think I have?
Today I thought it was time to take them out.
I considered this carefully.
In order to make room on the compost heap for massive piles of tomato foliage, I would need to dig it out.
If I was going to dig it out I would need somewhere to put the compost first.
I dragged the unsuccessful logs out of the unsuccessful mushroom farm in the tank in the corner. I do not know why this has not grown any mushrooms, because we followed the instructions, mostly. Maybe they will revive and grow some outside.
There was a massive spider in the unsuccessful mushroom tank, which made me accidentally squeak and frighten the dogs.
It was persuaded to migrate to the garden. It was very massive, almost as big as me, and I was very pleased when it finally agreed to hitch a ride on the end of a very long stick and retreat into a cave in next door’s wall.
I handled the rest of the logs carefully after that.
Once the logs were gone I turned my attention to the luxuriant foliage in the tropical bed.
It took a lot of dragging out.
I tried to save some of the non-tomato creepers, like the moon flowers, which meant a good deal of anxious unwinding, and when I had finished there was a pile of foliage as high as my waist.
After that I went into the garden and dug the compost out.
This is always a bit like carbon dating. You can follow the ebbs and flows of our dietary fads by looking in the compost heap. On the top were layers of current tea leaves and banana skins and melon rinds, covered with fallen tomato plant leaves.
Below those were some decomposing apples. Our neighbour brought us some apples from their orchard a while ago, and whilst most of them are still in a box, making me feel guilty and waiting until I get round to doing something productive and appley with them, some had not survived the sorting process, and were feeding worms in the compost heap.
Worms like fruit. They seem to like melon best of all. Do not believe any rubbish you read about worms liking to eat poo. We do not poo in the compost heap but even if we did, the worms would ignore it the way they ignore everything that isn’t melon rind. They congregate around the melon rinds in great squirmy pink mounds, and lay their eggs there. I try hard to remember that they are nice when I see them, but it is a bit difficult. Piles of worms are not pretty.
There were not as many worms as usual, but the ones that were there were huge, so I imagine it just isn’t the cubbing season for worms.
Below the apples were the stones from mangos, from last summer when we still had some tourists and funds were not so tight, and below that was beautiful, crumbly brown loamy soil.
I shovelled it and shovelled it and after a little while I had a huge mess on the conservatory floor, a tank half full of compost and a tropical bed that was almost looking nice.
I was just starting to clear up when half of the Peppers appeared at the back gate. I had promised to take her to Kendal where their camper van is having an operation at the garage, and time had galloped away with me like Pepper streaking off with her ball.
I was not sorry to stop.
Of course during the drive all of my muscles started to ache and stiffen, so when I got back I did not much want to do any more digging.
I shoved the sofa back and will carry on tomorrow.
It is lovely to see the banana tree again.
