Veggie tales and the battle of weeds.

The past few weeks of glorious weather has meant the vegetable garden has finally had some TLC. It was seriously neglected over the summer as the Crofter had quite a lot to do while I was often out of commission or in a reduced role (forget any ‘pregnancy glow’, and less so when exhaustion/sickness has hit).

The little and often concept of tackling weeds was turfed out the window when sickness hit early on. That has resorted to a full scale weed war last week when I finally got a burst of energy and the ability to bend over without heartburn (the following day was an entirely different matter on looking like I must have run a marathon). Now, to an keen gardener, it will look appalling (all the photos are after I had worked, should have done a before!). But, given the neglect, I’m impressed how well a lot of the veg has done. I realise to all locals reading this, we had snow last week and have now had hard frost on multiple occasions. But to think back that soon after the seedlings were put out, we hit a drought (well, no rain and having to use something called a water can around here isn’t common). It then continued at temperatures which were more attuned to the ‘mad dogs and English men’ scenario.

Our gardening knowledge has increased over the years. But why things did so well given the neglect is unknown considering the competition with the weeds (and why did the parsnip not even make a half hearted attempt to show up?). As the frost is becoming more consistent, several things now need uplifted. No, it does not fill me nostalgia for being thankful for the harvest, more of a ‘oh look, more stones to be picked out’. Always an eye for future work. However, as I worked on the raised beds today, I discovered the heartburn was back, and with vengeance. Maybe I should think about sorting the croft’s paperwork for a bit…