A View From (The Little Plot Just By) The Greenhouse; The Manipulation Of “Britishness”

Since my last missive the weather’s taken a bit of a turn for the worse, but then it is summer in England. Some of the plants, as is the way with nature, are grateful for this, whilst others seem to bow their heads at the sheer relentlessness of the rain and wind. The carrots seem to be doing well, I’ve thinned them out as best as this rough gardener is able and I’ve found something of a talent (if you can call it that) for the once onerous task that is weeding, especially where the raised beds are concerned. I think it may simply be down to the fact that you can see an end to the job before you start it, unlike in the greenhouse, where it’s all a bit “Forth Bridge”. I’d just like to say, before my loyal reader starts, it looked far worse before I started!

Towards the back end of last year a pal turned up with two soft fruit bushes, believing, I suppose (though he didn’t say so in so many words) that because I grow tomatoes and the like I’d be happy to find a place for his tub bound cast offs. They wintered outside the shed, with their containers become more brittle by the day, but they survived and, as the B&M department had the strimmer out, undertaking the annual “side up” of the estate, we decided that rather than dumping them up the crags and saying they’d died back, we’d (that’s the Royal we) put them in the space between the plum and greengage trees. An unremarkable story in itself, but the soil we found once digging commenced is completely different to that in both the greenhouse and the outside plot, it being quite fine and sandy. As is the way of things, we bagged up what came out of the holes and I’m probably going to mix it into the carrot and leek bed before planting time next year. Waste not, want not!

I may well have mentioned, just in passing like, how inordinately proud I am of Vine Junior, a plant that I (sort of) nurtured from a cutting, having no idea whether or not it would even become viable, to the handsome specimen you see pictured which adorns the right hand side of the greenhouse. It’s now over ten feet long and seems well on track to be again producing a lovely crop of healthy looking, sweet and juicy grapes. It’s just had its second pruning of the year. In a month or so I’ll remove some of the less abundant bunches and allow, so long as the weather’s kind,  the stronger ones to grow on. The vines are very low maintenance too, a couple of pruning sessions a year and a drink of water now and again and they look after themselves.

A more “in depth” delve into my new found love of weeding. This is the bed that has both swede and kohl-rabi inhabiting the “top” half. The bottom had been unsuccessfully (probably because my eagerness got the better of me) planted with rows of white turnip, beetroot and chard (rainbow and green). All I ended up with were two chard, two beetroot and lots of weeds of varying shapes, sizes and shades of green. I probably already knew, but damp ground, patience, a tolerance for a bit of back pain and a gentle touch with the two-tined weeder can do wonders for a seed bed. I’ve reseeded the chard row, planted a second row of beetroot and put in two rows of French breakfast radish, just as a space filler. Let’s hope it’s second time lucky (if not, there’s unlikely to be a third).

I suppose it was inevitable, really, what with his little trip to the continent and his brush with the seamier side of life, but Burt’s taken to wearing his new hat at a very rakish angle and greeting everyone who comes anywhere near him, including pigeons and crows, with a slightly malevolent side-eye. He doesn’t say much, but then he doesn’t have to, the glance being sufficient to deter all but the most persistent. On the plus side, and although some of the human visitors continue to be a little bit wary of him, he’s doing the job he’s employed to do. The fence, thankfully, takes care of the growing numbers of rabbit which are returning to the area after a couple of years of myxomatosis driven hiatus.

I must have mentioned before that we have amphibians permanently (I think) resident in the greenhouse. The debate as to whether they’re toad or frogs is ongoing. To be honest, they all look the same to me, but we try to leave them undisturbed as they’re great pest control operatives. We also have mice, an altogether different kettle of fish. Any road up, something had been eating the bodies of trapped mice and although we thought it might be a stoat we weren’t blind to the idea that it might be a rat. So we set a trap. This little fellow seems to enjoy peanut butter as much as slugs and snails, because although we’ve never caught a rat, we did catch him. Unremarkable, you might say, but when I picked up the trap to dispose of the body it twitched! Bear in mind its head and one of its front legs were crushed, these rat traps don’t take prisoners, but I gently set the animal on the ground and gave it a drink of water. It was obviously both shocked and quite badly hurt, but I left it alone and went about my business. 30 minutes later and it was gone, whether off to die or off to find a slug to eat, who knows, but I hope it was the latter rather than the former.

I’ve tried to grow brassica of different types on more than one occasion, with varying levels of success. Mostly, it has to be said from complete and abysmal to “at least we have one stalk of Cavalo Nero that the cabbage whites and their multitudinous offspring didn’t quite decimate” levels. I even bought a proper piece of netting last year (I knew it was butterfly netting because it said so on the label) but my inherent laziness and commitment to rough gardening meant that all I did with it was drape it over a hastily constructed cane frame (if you could even call it a frame) and hope for the best. I got the worst. Fast forward almost 12 months and, following discussions with the B&M department, which sometimes take far longer than they should, this dedicated brassica bed, with cabbage, brussels, cavalo and (hopefully) turnips appeared. This thing of beauty and wonder was constructed and fitted, complete with a handy notched stick, utilising said netting, some handy timber off cuts, a couple of decent hinges and a few lengths of 25mm water pipe. More left overs from the construction of my house. The old “don’t throw that away it might come in handy one day” adage pays off, again (we fervently hope).

I was lucky enough, although it entailed an earlier than usual start, to witness the first flight of some of the 70 or so balloons which took part in the inaugural Troutbeck Balloon Festival and a wonderful spectacle it was, too. Meanwhile, the political narrative, especially surrounding the tragic and senseless murder of Henry Nowak,  continues to frame the ordinary folk of this country as the bad guys, simply for the crime of not being British enough. Some days ago, following comments by JD Vance, amongst others, concerning “two tier” policing we were again treated to a lesson in “who we are as a nation” by a bevy of politicians, led, unsurprisingly, by our very own toolmakers son. When fentanyl addict and convicted home invader George Floyd died (according to the law murdered at the hands of the police) Starmer and just about everyone else in British politics couldn’t wait to vocally and repeatedly politicise his death, even going so far as to “take the knee” in support of an organisation called Black Lives Matter (thereby hangs another story of corruption and malfeasance).

Mr Nowak may well have been beyond help by the time the police arrived on the scene, but their actions and the way they treated him were, in my very humble opinion, both racist in their intent and directly traceable back to the way Floyds’ death was turned into a “cause celebre” by the whole “Progressive Liberal” cognoscenti. Politicians, the media and the vast majority of talking heads included. The “rage and anger” that was felt around the world at Floyds’ death was, (according to David Lammy) perfectly justified. Many US Democrat politicians actually praised the riots at the time. Riots which led to over 40 deaths over the following couple of years. The bottom line to all this; although it’s fine for our self appointed masters to get on their high horses about the death of a junkie 3,000 miles away, for American citizens to riot over it and for statues to be torn down in both America and here, British people aren’t supposed to get angry when a young man, lying handcuffed and bleeding out, is arrested for a “racist” assault as he takes his dying breath. Why? Because it isn’t “who we are as a nation and people” and because we’re a “tolerant and welcoming” people.

Tolerant and welcoming we may well be, but there are limits to tolerance. It isn’t anyone’s place to tell me, or any one of us for that matter, how we should feel when such things occur. I’m not who Keir Starmer (or any other politician or talking head) says I am, I’m myself and I’ve every right to be angry and to feel “cold hard rage”, not just at the way Henry Nowak was killed, not just at the callousness of the way the police treated him as he lay dying, but also at the hypocritical way our reputation for tolerance is now turned against us in a cynical effort to manipulate us into accepting the unacceptable and tolerating the intolerable, for fear of being labelled as both racist and “Un-British”. For far too long now the answer, when we’ve been confronted with the foulest of deeds, has been to put a match to a tealight, promise that lessons will be learned and sing a pop song. I don’t think the lessons have ever been learned and, unless there’s a real sea change throughout all our once great British institutions, from top to bottom, I doubt they ever will be. I think we may well be at a crossroads.
 

© Colin Cross 2026