Yesterday was one of those glorious cold sunny January days, with everything bathed in sparkling light, a perfect day to take a photograph of an interesting juxtaposition of tree stems and branches, followed by an exhibition of the Northern Lights last night; also a day on which I found that my camera had taken a fatal hit in the external monitor. Today, by contrast, it’s one of those days familiar in Scotland when it seems as though the sun has hardly risen at all, so the photograph has had to wait. Instead, here is a photograph of my vegetable garden, taken last year in the early spring while the garden was empty, so no failures could be captured.
My vegetable-growing efforts are truly dismal, and this year I am changing drastically what I am going to try and grow. I intend to concentrate chiefly on salads of one sort and another, particularly what is expensive or difficult to find in shops, with a view of being self-sufficient all year round. I will try tomatoes again, which is rather chancy here, and last year was a complete failure. I intend to grow beetroot and carrots in quantity because we like them. Broad Beans I normally sow in the autumn and in the spring, and the autumn ones are an inch or two high already. Later I shall sow Runner Beans, staggered so as to try and avoid a glut, and I shall have one last try at French Beans, which we like a lot but for some reason have failed with so far. I fear there may not have been enough pollinating insects around.
And that’s all I shall attempt on the vegetable front. I shall have some space left over, which will be taken up with sweet peas, which last year were phenomenally successful.
The foreground of this picture shows Cornus sanguinia ‘Midwinter Fire’ with some daffodils around them, I think N. ‘Jetfire’.
