Our gardening project expands

 

Conductive continuity
 
As always happens when I begin a project with my conductive groups our work expands and different aspects of living become part of the whole conductive experience. As we wait patiently for the garden to grow, the first tomatoes have set but are we are a long way off harvesting, and we have many associated jobs to do as the project evolves into sometime bigger and more encompassing.

One of these jobs is naming the plants. We are not going to be quite so strict as at the Chelsea Flower Show, where every plant on show in the separate exhibits has to be labelled, but it is important that the children and adults who use the garden learn to recognise what has been planted. 

Later during the cookery classes they will also learn how to use the produce in different recipes and they can go out to pick what they need just outside the door; therefore they need to be able to recognise it.

So as the project evolves reading and writing came to the fore this week, as the children have been painting the plant-names on signs that they made last week. Those who wished also drew their own image of the plant in question.

We want our raised bed to look in top form when we celebrate our twenty-year conductive anniversary next Sunday, we expect our visitors will wish to take a look at and admire our ever expanding plot! 

In the heat, as our thoughts turn to cooling water, we are already thinking about our next project which is to find half a wooden barrel to make into a small water garden, then after this we will turn our talents again to painting, decorating some wooden fruit boxes to plant-up and perhaps sell next year at the summer fete.

We have a busy week ahead of us, during which our gardening plans will evolve to incorporate even more live skills and experiences.

Conductive gardening

Gardening has played an important role in my life since I was very young. I have not always had a garden myself but I have always had the garden in Norwich to fiddle around in; earlier beside my Mother and now under instruction from my Father. In fact I am soon off to lend Dad a helping hand in his home and garden, and hopefully to gather advice for our new project at work. 

My Dad caring for the tadpoles

Raised beds

I have always dabbled with gardening with my clients but always on a small scale, in pots and window boxes, although I would love to do some on the scale of the Chelsea Flower Show that I have enjoyed viewing this week.

My colleague and I decided that it was time that we got a bit more adventurous than a few pots, perhaps by growing herbs and salad vegetables for the cookery group. Since the Autumn we have been looking at the many types of raised beds that are available for flower- and veggie-growing.

A long search

In March I attended the trade fair for workshops for people with disability where I saw a wonderful wooden pyramid planted with herbs and strawberries, but the price was way above our budget. We kept on visiting garden centres, Googling and scanning the advertisement papers, searching for something that was not too bulky and was accessible for both wheelchair-users and children. This took some time but eventually we came up with what one little boy says 'Looks just like the crib that Jesus sleeps in!'

The Veg Trug

We ordered our raised bed and waited patiently for its delivery. It eventually arrived late on Friday afternoon and it was all that we could do to stop the children unpacking it immediately and starting to build it. After we explained that we needed our friendly carpenter to help us adjust the height and add some wheels the children were content with making a visit to the neighbour who is a retired engineer to borrow the spanners that we would need to put the Trig together another day.

Another day

The stroke group arrived another day and they too were eager to get involved with the garden project. The husband of one of our group members had built several raised beds in their rural garden so that his wife could continue growing fruit and veggies after she had suffered a stroke. They have both given us advice and shared their enthusiasm with us.

One of the other group members had already put together a teepee for the runner beans and he was just as eager to help the carpenter when he arrived to start on the Veg Trug. As you can see in the photographs they made a good team.

Down to earth

Once the Veg Trug was in place on the terrace we had lots of people admiring, it even though it was still empty. The children lined the inner surface with fleece and we gradually filled it with the many kilos of earth that the children’s bus driver delivered to us over the next few days.

Little Princess loves getting dirty so she was in her element but another child chose to work with rubber gloves on. The gloves only lasted a few minutes; when he saw the joy that the others experienced running their hands through the soil he soon discarded his gloves and has never used them since.

With the Veg Trug now full with soil all that was needed was a few plants. We had already sown lettuce and beans, parsley and basil and they were all ready to move on into the bigger bed.

I had to rush home to England so I missed the planting action but I was back again to witness the growing and share in the task of watering. Watering the Trug has been the best motivation for walking, standing and both arm and finger movement. The children like to share the tasks. Some bring the large watering cans filled with water to the terrace; others fill the smaller cans and then bring them to more children who walk sideways around the Veg Trug while watering the plants. 

Team work

It seems as if the work never ends. Not only are we learning how to grow plants, we are also learning about woodwork. With the guidance of the Dad of one of our youngsters we are making small wooden signs so that we can label all our plants, just like at the Chelsea Flower Show. So we have borrowed all the tools that we need and the children are not only handling plants and soil for the first time in their lives but also holding a hammer and banging in nails for the first time too! We will use our artistic skills to decorate the signs, then finally practise spelling and writing skills to write the names  of our produce.

Many thanks to all who have helped us to bring this project, that has long been a dream, into fruition.

Rueing the day

Our English country-garden

Bee orchid

My Grandmother's favourite rose

Last asparagus of the year and first red currants!

A friend I 'rescued' from a  bucket of water

The shallots that I strung up for Dad

That is my A-level pottery pot in the background. Almost an antique!

The new wild-flower garden

Home for a long weekend

Of course I do not rue the day that I went home, over two weeks ago now, to help my Dad after an operation on his hand to release the nerve squashed in the carpal tunnel. I do, however, rue just one moment of the following day, when I went out into Dad’s lovely garden, to pick some flowers for the kitchen windowsill, wearing just my shorts, a short-sleeved shirt and no gardening gloves.

Garden armour

When I work in my Dad’s garden I am nearly always well covered, from head to toe. At my Dad’s house, stored in my childhood bedroom, I have gardening gloves, hats for all seasons, several thick, long-sleeved shirts, long trousers and sturdy shoes.

I always wear these clothes for gardening but I do not change into them when I just go out to pick flowers.

Flower picking is something that I often do on a whim, even when wearing a summer dress and sandals. It is something I always joined in with spontaneously to help Mum as she made bouquets to take to market.

But not any longer! Those days have passed for ever.

From now on I will put on my gardening armour, whatever job I am doing.

The real gardening jobs

When I was at home at the beginning of July, on a flying five-day visit, I did lots of proper gardening, things like harvesting shallots, weeding the strawberries, the parsnips, the asparagus and beetroot, and tying up the roses. Things that I knew, if left undone, would be a worry to my Dad during the next week or two as he recovered from the operation on his hand. All of this work I did while well wrapped up in my gardening-armour. Not a stinging nettle, not a rose thorn, not even a thistle, managed to penetrate it.

The nice bits in between

I have been picking flowers in this garden for forty-four years! My mum and I used to make gorgeous bunches of country-garden flowers that she sold on the car-boot market. I still make up bunches for myself, my Dad, the neighbours and family and friends, whenever I am at home. Mum planted her garden with all sorts of unusual things to make these bouquets special.

Just as Mum always did, this time I also picked a few sprigs of rue to use as greenery in my flower arrangement. Its silvery leaves and yellowy flowers looked good amongst the lilies, marigolds, margaritas and roses that I had already found.

While I was picking the sprigs of rue I decided to give the plant a bit of a tidy up. I thinned it out and shook the tangled stalks apart that were heavy with rain water. The plant was beginning to hang down on to a lower path, between the flowerbed and the vegetable garden so when it rained it drooped and then brushed against our legs. I chopped this all down, with bunch of flowers in left hand and secateurs in the right, and by the time I had finished giving it a good shake and a trim it was looking quite a picture again.

I thought about Mum and how she would like to see that I am caring for her plants.

I wonder whether Mum had known

I did the flower-picking on Thursday, my first full day in Norwich. On Friday it was a dull day, colder and windy so I spent the morning indoors, helping dad and making model houses, N-gauge, for my railway layout. It was while fiddling with the little houses that I first noticed dark red blotches on my arm. I suspected that it was due to an allergy to something that I had touched before breakfast. Was it the bleach, the glue, the washing powder or the lilies that grow beside the rose, that I tied back to stop it fluttering in the wind? I suspected at first it was the lilies or the bleach but the patterns on my arm indicated a more feathery plant.

An N-gauge village

By Saturday morning despite a day on Friday, of modelling and no gardening, and lashings of calamine lotion, my hand and arm were very red and swollen. And they hurt - inside and out!

I jumped on my bike and took myself to the walk-in surgery in the city centre. They confirmed a plant allergy and suggested anti-histamine, and to continue with the calamine. I was glad about that as the white, chalky zinc-oxide prevented me from seeing damaged skin and therefore I did not worry about it so much as I continued my work in the garden.

On Sunday there was no improvement, in fact I believe that it was worse, so I jumped on my bike once again and returned to the doctor. I was told to carry on with the same treatment, which in the end turned out to be the right thing even though at that time I did not know what the cause was.

I wonder whether when my Mum planted the rue in her garden she had known that not only is it a herb and a pretty cutting-plant but that it is also very harmful to the skin when combined with sunlight.

Rueing the day

I returned to Germany on the Monday, with my arm covered in calamine and protected with a sock and long sleeves despite the heat. As soon as I was home with access to the Internet I went Googling for names of toxic plants that cause skin irritations.

Out of a list of hundreds I discovered about twenty that grow in Dad’s garden, seven of which I had had close contact with, including parsley, parsnips, lilies, asparagus and potatoes leaves. 

It was not until I got to the R’s that I found the culprit – common rue! Rue, the plant that I had given a very thorough pruning with my right arm four days previously while picking a beautiful bunch of flowers.

My fast track course in photo-toxicology!

Before it reached its peak!

Yesterday

Today

What a great thing the Internet is. I was able to find out exactly what had caused the inflammation and blistering on my arm and was armed with both the Latin and German names when I turned up to see a German  doctor on Tuesday evening after work.

By this time I had a very red, swollen, blistering and throbbing forearm, a few red, blistery patches on my left wrist and some more on both knees!

At least I could now say with confidence what I thought was wrong with my skin. It looked like I had caught the lurgi, but I had in fact just rued the day!

I suggested to the doctor I had a photo-toxic reaction to Ruta graveolens –

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rue

So out came his iPhone and together we Googled Weinraute (Ruta graveolens). He agreed with me straight away, although he told me that the hairs of the processional oak-moth caterpillar can also have the same effect. However, I knew it was the rue.

I came away with cortisone and anti-biotic gel to rub in the “burns” and a week later a skin specialist advised the treatment to continue for two more weeks when a fatty cream can then be applied for many months to come. The specialist also advised 50plus sun protection cream until the spring, (I use this when I cycle anyway). I was told that those are second degree burns on my arm and that hopefully they will eventually fade.

On the mend

This drama all began over two weeks ago. My dad has since had the stitches removed from his hand; he is pain-free and is recovering movement very well. Yesterday was the first pain-free day that I have had since the red blotches appeared and the sunshine began to react on my skin, and today is the first day that I can type two-handed without tingling in my fingers and a burning feeling in my wrist. So it is time to get blogging again!

When I return to attack Dad’s garden again in September I shall certainly be wearing gardening-armour whenever I step outside the back door!

Notes

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rue

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phototoxicity

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytophotodermatitis

Lurgi— A nonsence word, Lurgi Strikes Britain, Goon Show, November, 1954

I took a trip in a flying ship

Yes, I am in England again

Several days ago I took a very bumpy ride over the Channel after my work in Northern Germany came to an end.

Flying out of one of Germany’s smaller airports my flying ship was a small, propeller-driven plane. I must admit that for the first time ever I was very pleased to feel the wheels touch down on England’s pleasant land. I had chosen a very stormy day for my journey.

What a surprise I had when I got my first glimpse of my homeland through the clouds and saw that England’s green and pleasant land really was green! Spring had sprung while I was up there in the beautiful, white, sunlit, fluffy clouds.

I had flown in to spring time, having left behind me paths covered in sheets of ice, snow-covered hills, trees covered in frost and rime, and temperatures of minus 13C. I arrived to find rays of warm sunshine and the first signs of an English spring.

The English landscape

When I am up in a plane over England and it breaks through the clouds I know immediately where I am. I could recognize an English landscape beneath me even if I had been blind-folded and spun around and flown round the world twice. I always know when those fields below me belong to my home.

They are so different to aerial landscapes of any other country that I have ever flown over. I think it is the shape of the fields and the miles of hedgerows that give the game away. But it could also be the red-brick country houses and farms, or the double -ronted mansions in their landscaped estates. It could also be that cattle, sheep and pigs are grazing in the fields, or it could be that special colour green.

On the other hand it could be that something is ringing in my soul to tell me that I am home, that the eagle has landed.

I travelled to my family home from the airport by road and noticed how green some of the still bare branches were looking, and how daffodils where just waiting for a few hours of warmth from the sun to break through that papery wrapping.

On the land

Having left Germany in deepest winter it was very strange to go out into the walled garden of our family home the moment that I arrived, to say hello to my Mum, and to discover spring. With a carpet of early crocuses across the lawns and up the pathways, with clumps of snow drops and aconites dotted amongst them, catkins hanging from the hazelnut trees and furry, silver pussy-willows on the willow trees, spring certainly had shown itself here in Norfolk while I had still been wearing snow-boots only hours beforehand.

I have been working in the garden on and off since I arrived and have been discovering other signs of spring. A frog joined me as I weeded the flower beds where the green shoots of bulbs are beginning to show through the rich brown earth. I disturbed a sleeping bumble bee from its hibernation in the ground, and watched it buzz into life. The forget-me-not plants have red and black sleepy ladybirds in between their furry leaves, and the darker, pointed, glossy bluebell leaves have already shot up six inches over the short time that I have been here.

When the sun shines it warms my back as I bend over to pull out weeds, but there have also been days when the bitterly cold easterly winds have cut me in half and chased me back indoors.
But spring is here without a doubt, even the birds are beginning to sing. Yesterday I spotted a gold crest, Britain’s smallest bird, hopping around the fishpond, eating grubs. There has not been one of those in our garden for about ten years.

I have planted in my garden beans and peas and pickling cabbage

My balcony with peas, beans and rocket sticks

I met a giant in England who gave me a handful of beans

Well not quite. There was no giant, just a friend, and also there is no cabbage, but the beans and peas are busy climbing up the balcony. They will soon be in the trees, making their way to the land of giants, but their first stop will be the neighbour up above me.

When I was in England I helped both my Dad and a friend in their gardens. Dad’s beans and peas we planted together at Easter, at Whitsun I helped my friend plant the same.

Dad’s garden is huge so there is always a spot left to stick in the last few beans in the packet when the rows are full, but my friend’s garden is small so the peas and beans that were over were given to me and I have decided to have a go at veggie growing on the balcony.

It is not a very sunny spot but it is sheltered and warm so I thought it would be worth a try.

I arrived back from the UK in the late evening of June 4^th and immediately stuck my handful of seeds in the very wet compost wherever I found a space between the geraniums and the passion flowers. Within a week they were not only showing their first green shoots, some of them were six inches high. And just look at them now after only two weeks.

At the weekend I will be asking the neighbour upstairs to tie some strings to his balcony railings and drop them down to me. Any veggies that grow his way he is welcome to pick, I will be thrilled to see if something grows at all. I will be working away from home some days during the height of the summer so my gardening efforts may not come to anything but it is fun just the same watching them grown almost as quickly as Jack’s magic handful grew. They will make a lovely foliage covering for the green men to hide behind.