A View (Of The Church) From The Road Near The Greenhouse; Further Reflections

For Christians, Easter is a time for both reflection and thanksgiving. The little church in the village where I live has a small but enthusiastic (if ageing) congregation. I know many of them to talk to and all of them on a “nodding acquaintance” basis. They worked hard to get ready for Easter Sunday, building a rock representation (from dry wall stone) of The Garden Of Gethsemane in the foyer and creating this simple but effective “decoration” to adorn the main door into the building. I didn’t attend the service, I’m an atheistically leaning agnostic with a healthy scepticism of all things religious, but my grandmother on my  distaff side was a Salvationist and a true believer. I may have wandered off track a little in my younger days, but I like to think that I now live by some of the moral values that she tried to instill in all of her grandchildren as she help to raise us. I wondered what she would make of a King Of England flirting with Islam and a Prime Minister (this same grandmother was a Labour voting Socialist all her life) who would go out of their way to relegate this nations “religion” to a commonality with Islam, Hinduism and any other “faith based” system you can think of. She was a wise old lady, I never really heard her swear (beyond the odd “bloody”), but I’m guessing she’d have been think something along the lines of “Bloody silly buggers”.

The right hand side of  what we now call (for want of a more apt term) “the allotment” is filling up nicely. I had planned to put my runner beans in from seedlings, but the levels of germination have been spectacular in their failings, so I’ve gone straight into the ground with a couple of rows. I did it with the peas last year (I’m sticking with the Hurst Greenshaft which did so well) and I’ve also (as a nod to Mrs C) put in a row of mangetout. If we get a half decent bit of weather early on, then I’m planning on putting a second row of peas in, which I will start off in the greenhouse and plant as seedlings, hopefully by the beginning of July. Some of this is new, some is tried and tested, but, as every rough gardener knows, no two years are the same.

Talking about “rough gardeners” I noticed that the time’s about right to give the potting table a good old tidy up. I honestly don’t know how it gets like this, every back end I square pots and seed tray lids away and every Spring, as if by magic, it ends up with me forever moving stuff to one side, so that I can make space for more stuff. A clear out might be in order, I have pots and plug containers coming out of my ears, some of them are so old that they virtually fall apart to the touch. I feel a tip run and a “Please help yourself” table coming on. I have lots of clay pots, which I don’t use anymore, but I’m loathe to get rid of them. I’m turning into a bit of a hoarder, I think, maybe it’s my age.

Probably the success story of the moment is the onion bed, although a couple aren’t quite keeping up with the majority, they’re mainly looking healthy and seem to be in a position (full sun, when it decides to shine) that suits them. I’m becoming impatient with lots of things, I only have two chilies that have germinated and none of my climbing beans or runners are through yet (I may sow some of these directly, too) so to see something doing reasonably well keeps me believing that everything else will follow. There aren’t any potatoes through yet, but I’m not too worried, just yet. Building & Maintenance does keep telling me “we’re always about a month behind” and he may well be right, but he can’t answer, when I ask “behind what”, beyond a cursory “down south”.

Against my better judgment, and having nothing better to do with the space, not to mention a spare bag of compost, I reluctantly decided to put some herbs and leaves in the raised bed next to the strawberries. I may transplant the leaves outside, once the weather picks up and I have set some parsley off in the “herb garden back at the ranch, but I’ll leave this small patch of parsley and basil in here. The challenge’s going to be in remembering to pick it (should it germinate) if I know I’m going to use it, rather than having to make the trip round of an evening, having forgotten it in the first place. Apparently, unless it’s a breed specifically for greenhouse production, lettuce always does better outside, so long as slugs and rabbits don’t get to it, of course.

The old Smallholders Encyclopaedia continues to produce the odd “pearl of wisdom”. It’s probably common knowledge in serious gardening circles, but I had no idea, until I chanced on it whilst browsing the onion section, that pests that prey on onions don’t like to be near carrots and pests, carrot fly in particular, that prey on carrots don’t like to be near onions.  I’ve extended this to include parsnips and, accordingly, I’ve put in three rows of carrots and two of parsnips in the same raised bed as the onions. I don’t intend using any pesticide, so I’m hoping that this “symbiotic” relationship isn’t just an old gardeners myth. Any road up, we’ll see what happens, soon enough. I’m more worried that the mix of soil and compost, although well turned over and raked, will be too “strong2 to allow these root crops to form aesthetic shapes, always assuming that they take in the first place.

I’ve yawked my self up a shortish hose, which allows me t do the waterin’ of the allotment area from the shed tap, rather than dragging the long hose out from the greenhouse, after a couple of false starts, mainly due to the water pressure being a bit higher than needed, resulting in a bit of a soaking for my bottom half, I managed to get everything working as required. A rare but welcome success in the corner cutting department, even more so because I achieved it without the help of the B&M department.

I had occasion to visit the theatre this last weekend, to take in a production of  Steinbecks “Of Mice And Men”. I’d seen a production of this same play, based on Steinbecks novella of the same title, at The Mercury Colchester in 2005. I’ve long been a fan of Steinbecks work and it’s true that he never shied away from touching on the more dubious aspects of our shared human nature, but he’s no Hubert Selby Junior or James Ellroy. Maybe it’s just me, but I can’t help but see this sign and the warnings it offers us, as yet another symptom of the degrading of “Englishmen”, at least that part of it where we get to make up our own minds about what we should and shouldn’t see at the theatre or on the tellybox. Similarly, if a young teenager has read the book and wants to see it acted out on a stage, does that young person need to be warned about its content? Great fiction (I count the majority of Steinbecks work in this category) is often challenging and thought provoking, that’s part of the reason people read it and part of the reason it stands the test of time.  This story is still the same as it was when written in 1937 and the play, which Steinbeck himself adapted that same year, is still the same as the one I watched in Colchester 20 years ago. Maybe my prior knowledge of the content, which does explore vaguely “adult” themes, has somehow inured me to the possibility that it might either scare me, or, worse still, turn me into a rapist or a murderer, but I don’t think so. Old curmudgeon I may be, but I don’t believe that anything Steinbeck ever wrote deserves to come with a “trigger warning”.

As an aside, this week a chap called Anas Sawar, another privately educated Labour politician of Muslim Pakistani heritage, has urged “British” Pakistanis to “take power” in councils, parliament, political parties and countries to allow Muslims to “dictate what is taught in schools”. There’s no doubt our young people get their heads filled with all sorts of nonsense at school, but if the teachings of Muhammad and an introduction to Shariah Law aren’t “anti-English” then I don’t know what is. This comes as no real surprise to me, and there’ll be plenty of people in this country who’ll shrug it off, but Islam is all about conquest. We ignore Mr. Anwars sentiments at our peril, because when he says “Pakistan” I’m guessing he really means Islam.
 

© Colin Cross 2025