At last, it has arrived. Summer has finally bestowed blue skies, sunshine and warmth upon us here at Overtown and the plants are looking grateful for it.
I’ve had company in the garden today, greeted first thing by a beautiful little toad who has taken up residence in the greenhouse. She earns her keep dispatching slugs that try to gain entrance and we are enormously grateful due what appears to be an unfathomable surge in the slug population this year. We owe a lot to the toads.
The House-martins are busy also, sweeping from the eves of the manor, across the lawns in search of insects emerging from the meadow, which has revealed precious jewels to us this year in the form of bee orchids.
The Great Spotted woodpecker visits the bird feeder by the kitchen window as I walk from the greenhouse, through the ornamental garden into the vegetable plot. It is a relief. Nancy has been looking after things and I see she has watered what would have otherwise been a collection of seriously parched plants. The past week has seen the ground well and truly baked which can be a worry as my time here is limited. At the end of the working day I have to trust that we’ve done enough to establish our seedlings in the soil and that nature's biological controls keep things in check in my absence. So far so good. As I’ve mentioned, the toads are out in force, I’ve seen a song thrush on more than one occasion poised at the top of the sweetpea teepee and I am routinely accompanied by robins and blackbirds as I disturb the soil lifting weeds. These are the guardians of this garden and the surrounding countryside that I feel truly lucky to sink into each time I visit.
Jan has arrived. She’s put on her gloves and wastes no time tidying the edges on the vegetable beds, which we both agree are most pleasing when they’re nice and crisp. She tells me about her granddaughter's prom, and I realise that, while I feel like I am at the beginning of something,
for others they are coming to the end. Schools are very nearly out for summer and today we will be handing out awards to the students of Horizon College who visit weekly to work in the garden. Nancy has begun preparing, arranging tables outside and finishing cakes and decorations with more students and the help of her daughter Zara.
Finally the troops arrive and set to their tasks, weeding, watering and harvesting the radish that have grown gargantuan. The Chairs of the Wroughton Gardening Club have agreed to hand out the awards and join us for tea and cake and it is a pleasure to show them all the work that has been achieved in such a short space of time. At award time everybody gathers on the lawn, including the Manor dogs, Willow, Bruno and the infamous Frank, and a hubble bubble of laughter breaks out as Nancy rushes to a from the kitchen searching for a missing certificate. The gathering is celebratory, joyous, and now complete. Most of these students have finished their time with us and next year will bring new faces. Awards are handed out and far too much cake is consumed. I need a sit down. A successful morning all round.
The quiet returns, and I go back to my weeding.
It’s been a slow start to the gardening year, not only due to the prolonged greyness but because I am somewhat late to the garden itself. It was only April when I agreed to take up the mantle of Kitchen Gardener at Overtown and I was required to hit the earth running, which has so far been a truly fulfilling challenge. With help from our work experience team from Horizons college, fuelled by Nancy’s cake, we have the beginnings of what is finally promising to be a bountiful harvest.