Monday, July 31, 2006

End of the sweet peas

People often ask me whether it is possible to grow cut flowers in Scotland - I try to supress the "well - yeah you donut- I'm doing it" response and warble on about the beautiful gardens in Scotland and so on. In fact it is easier to grow certain flowers in Scotland than anywhere else. Hardy annuals absolutely love it here - cool temperatures, masses of daylight and not too much of the bright sunshine that sends them into premature seed production. I have always been very proud if the fact that my sweetpeas are lusher than Sarah Raven's, though I have to admit that it is the climate and not any special talent, or feeding, or tying up.
This heatwave has negated all that - the sweetpeas have blustered into flowering madness, churning the flowers out and not worrying at all if their stems are only a couple of inches long. I have been unable to keep up with the full time job of picking and deadheading and I am now FED UP with them and shall be pulling up the plants tomorrow and replanting with seaholly seedlings for next year.
Today I have been painting the inside of my new office. It is an old St John's Ambulance - converted into a campervan in the 1970s and now here to be my office and encourage me to corall my mess to a place outside the house. The ambulance has been languishing in the drive for too long, and I have finally got round to painting over the brown plywood doors (with Farrow and Ball Cooking Apple Green no less) and chucking out the rather smelly foam cushions and curtains. It is fantastically well kitted out with masses of cupboards and storage - there are lots of bits of wood which I suspect make into tables or beds or something but I need someone with spacial sense to help me fit them together. I sort of imagine it as a calm green and gold oasis with lots of fabric covered boxfiles and an artistic looking pinboard. I expect that it will diminish into being a van filled with piles of paper within the month.

2 comments:

Heather said...

Farrow and Ball - so this is a delux office I take it?

Is this going to be another vehicle for me to fall in love with?

Heather

Jane said...

I suspect that it will be deluxeunder the rubble! - the paint is left over from the dining room shelves.
The ambulance is really cute - it was converted into a campervan by a Welsh family and is very well done, there are old 1970s fruit boxes for storing things above the cab and a cooker and sink.