The Great Outdoors

So the experimental beans have made their journey to the Great Outdoors and are now planted in lovely Reading soil along with some chicken manure pellets. Goodness knows what will happen to them but as I suggested to the brother in charge of the experiment, they will either crop as if they are on steroids or die! So far so good after one night on their own although my dwarf beans (master piece) which also went out last night look decidedly peeved at being outside as opposed to my nice warm downstairs loo. Perhaps they are missing the smell of lavender air freshener?

The trial gutter beetroots also went out last night; whoever claimed it was an easy way to transplant seedlings into the ground was fibbing. The seedlings didn't seem to want to line up in the orderly fashion in which they have been growing in the gutters and instead decided to play hardball and refuse to vacate their cosy home or just aim for a different patch of ground. very frustrating so I ended up forcing the little blighters into the space I had put aside and wondered why on earth did I ever entertain the idea of gutters????

Everything in the greenhouse seems to be okay although I have the feeling they are craving warmer nights; no frosts here but still a bit nippy and I don't think my seedlings are that amused. My annuals, on the other hand, do seem to be thriving although unsurprisingly the elusive cleomes are adhering to their famous inability to germinate on demand and done sweet F A. Everything else looks like it may make it and this just leaves me with the decision on where in the garden are these little seeding-freely blighters going to go!

Brides and Beans

So it seems that younger brother and me have ongoing blogs about beans; obviously his doesn't hold the excitement of weddings on the side! Older brother has asked to incorporate his growing experiences but has been rejected on the grounds of not having the seeds to grow in the first place! I don't see any reason for him to submit plant photos and updates onto my blog as growing tomatoes in Japan could be considered interesting to some.

The beans are doing brilliantly; in fact everything is doing brilliantly now they are happy in their new greenhouse. The greenhouse took the beloved and I approximately eight to ten hours to build over four days but we did it without smashing a single pain of completely and utterly untoughened glass. I was chief in charge of rubber strips (ooer) and he was chief glass pane installer - it worked well and I feel very chuffed with myself given that I'm admittedly not that DIY inclined. It now sits on our lower deck in a lovely south-west facing spot and still allows us to be able to sit on the deck enjoying our sundowners (never had one but sounded good in this context) as the sun drops below the caretakers house at the bottom of the garden!

So all the seedlings both flowers and vegetables are doing well; so far the following veggies are in there, waiting to be planted out:

Both sets of trial climbing french beans

Spaghetti squash

Pink banana pumpkin

Plum tomato (san marzano)

Beef tomatoe (costoluto fiorentino)
Dangling cherry tomato (gartenperle)

Aubergine (moneymaker)

Sweet pepper (golden bell)

Kale (red bor)

A random brussels sprout (I think noisette but can't be sure until it grows to full size

Beetroot in guttering (chioggia)

Chilli peppers (Chayenne, Apache and something else)

Flowers doing their stuff include:

Zinnia (green envy)

Cosmos (purity)

Scabiosa (dwf QIS mix)

Centaurea (black boy and frosty mix)

Amaranthus (dwf pygmy something)

Ammi major (queen of africa)

Marigold (crackerjack)

Briza maxima

Nigella hispanica (struggling to survive at the moment)

Lots more to come but I wanted to see how the first batch faired especially the toms and other 'hot climate' veggies/fruit (depending on which camp you sit) although given the lovely sunshine we're currently having, I think they will thrive. Fingers crossed for that elusive successful tomato year! Waiting in the wings are my courgettes (tromboncinos) and cucumber (marketmore) plus some yellow beam pear cherry tomatoes and some corno di toro rosso peppers. These peppers are my 2008 garden extraordinary phenomenon - i planted three seeds and five have grown...if only money worked in that way!!

Trials and Tribulations

My brother's initiation of a website/blog of a family seed trial reminded me that I have been slack at writing horticulture-related blogs and instead focusing predominantly on weddings. In reality the garden holds a lot more interest and is something I share with the beloved so it really should hold just as much importance!

So the family B is holding a seed trial akin to those of BBC Gardeners World; it seemed a good idea at the time although I suspect it will descend into anarchy, arguments and skullduggery....or perhaps just a little competitiveness at the very least!

I can't remember for the life of me who is Mr or Miss or Mrs A, B, C or D but all I know is that my beans are doing brilliantly - both varieties! The first lot were a climbing french bean donated by the brother in the family and were called something like 'flumouxed' or 'flaccid' or something beginning with F...possibly. They were black and looked like...well a bean. They popped up from the soil within four days of being planted and have happily shot for the skies (utility room window) ever since. The other, much better (obviously as they were my donation to the trial) variety are called 'Bert's Beans' as they originated from a plant stall somewhere in Berkshire with no label. They should eventually be climbing, long, flat green french beans and were both scrumptious and productive last year. Anyway they are growing fabulously and like the others they are stretching for light and desparately awaiting the final pane of glass being added to the new greenhouse.

The new greenhouse is an interesting event; its been three days now and we're still only half way up with the glass but the intention is to finish it tonight and celebrate with a nice cup of tea.

Back in the Wedding Swing of Things? Not Quite!

Still got the florist to decide on...what fun! Will get mum involved and make a decision this weekend.

Talking of this weekend, lots of fun things await as we get ready for our menu tasting (YUM big style) and visit to see our vicar, Chris Brown. Already feeling all sorts of Catholic guilt about getting hitched in a CofE church but I don't suppose that ever goes away whatever one does in life - always blame things on the Catholic guilt complex!

Got lots to talk to him about:
Can we have the campanologists (posh word for bell ringers) and can we have them for free or a token fee as surely they must do ring bells for the love of it and not the huge earning potential?

Should have put this one at the top - how much does he charge to officiate at our wedding? Seems wrong in my mind that we should pay for his services but I think in reality we're paying for the administrative process i.e. signing the registar and making it legal as opposed to Chris Brown at x pounds an hour, additional hours charged as double time!!

Is he happy for us to have not particularly gaudy flowers at Advent?

Is he happy for us to include a non-religious reading from my niece? Winnie the Pooh to be precise...well at the moment although plans seem to change constantly with weddings.

Is he happy for us to have a remembrance candle for both Dads?

Again something that should have really come before flowers and music, what actually happens during the service??? How long is it - very essential for planning my time schedule for the day.

SO many things to ask we'll be glad to get to the venue and start eating!!!

Wedding Apathy

So I have two florists offering their services for the big day and I really haven't been bothered to getting round and sorting it. I have definitely reached wedding apathy - really right now, I don't care a jot about the big day itself and would really quite like it to be here. I'm not saying I don't enjoy thinking about it but planning it really is the most tedious thing I could possibly think to do with my spare time so much so that I can't be arsed to send the 'save the dates' and organise a florist. I'm determined to get more motivated this weekend and get those envelopes into the post box; now that Stan has agreed the basic guest list they can be posted and done with....oh the hassle!

I wonder if every bride goes through this stage? I suppose it doesn't help when you work as an Events Manager - kind of like being on a busman's holiday!!! I just can't get excited about colour schemes and flowers and what napkins to have and what favours to give out, blah, blah, blah. I really did go through a super excited phase when it had all just happened and there were magazines to look through, websites to waste my life browsing on, forums on which you could get fab ideas but more importantly see how not to do it, and so on. I can't believe that at one point I was quite happy paying £5 for a magazine which consisted almost solely of advertisements for wedding dresses, a few 'real life' i.e. got stacks of money weddings and other such tat. Basically we want it to be a fun, relaxed, informal, slightly traditional, meaningful celebration. We don't want to be obsessing about everything on the day and we certainly don't want it to be an uptight, military-like, formal chore.

I'm sure that I will get back into things and really I only have the following to sort:

Florist
Honeymoon
Transport
Bridesmaid Dresses
Menu & Drinkies
Favours - if we have them
Music
Invites
My Wedding Ring
Accommodation
Sunday Lunch the Next Day
Readings, Etc

Probably a few more things but its not much really is it?

So the plan for April is:

Send 'save the date' cards
Speak to vicar about various church-related items
Menu tasting - YUM
Decide on Florist
Confirm timings with String Quartet and pay deposit
Organise wedding insurance
Confirm that I can have three weeks leave from work
Me to start paying off some of Stan's wedding ring

Easy as Pie!

My Biggest Worry!

Now some brides may say they are worried most about the big moment of saying "I do" or more minor things such as making sure their guests are happy or that the food is nice but not for me these mere insignificant concerns. My biggest worry about the day itself is that no-one will dance...not one single person...not even a single shuffler around a hand bag or a drunken 'frog in a blender' attempt at dancing - no-one!!! With dancing, I generally have visions of school discos where the girls sat around the edge and the boys just gathered having 'a laugh' because after all dancing is for wimps! Stan wanted acoustic at first mainly as a result of listening to a very good band recommended by the venue but I thought too dull and definitely not dancing material. I fancied a live band with a bit of oompha and who could play anything from 'Build me up Buttercup' to 'Wonderwall' and more but that was looking like £1500 minimum - ouch! In the end we went for an English Ceilidh. I emphasise the 'English' as ceilidhs all tend to lumped into the Scottish culture and you end up getting 'oh so you must have Scottish roots' when you mention it to people. An English ceilidh is 'a more riotous and eclectic variation on English Folk, Barn or Country dancing' according to www.webfeet.org and does indeed have roots in Scottish dancing but all the same it is quite different!

I found our ceilidh band using an tried and tested method of finding anything in general - the well used and ubiquitous Googling. The first band looked half decent so I followed them to their website and they looked good, sounded good and seemed to have a great sense of humour which matched my own. Once half the band had arrived home from their annual ski trip, all was confirmed although we have bagsied (remember the word 'bagsy'?) that date we're still going to see them first hand in May...good chance for a dance and a laugh, which is ultimately what we want our wedding to be.

Photographer Frenzy

Dress done! Venue done! Next biggie...photographer.

Spent ages looking for a good one as it was such a key element - in my opinion photos are the lasting memories of your day because however good your grey cells are at remembering things, you are ultimately going to forget the best bits. When we're old and grey I still want to be able to sit down with my husband, look through our photos and go "Oh yes, remember that".

The prices were frankly astonishing and I do think that wedding photography is a hugely lucrative industry which can be abused at the mercy of brides but I also think that photography is an art and we pay a fortune for wonderful drawings/paintings/sculptures, etc, so why shouldn't we pay for wonderful photos. I also think that as photos are such key reminders of the day itself, it is a lot of pressure for someone to be under to come through with the goods so the happy couple should expect to pay for that pressure.

Anyway, we were happy (!) to pay a reasonable amount although not as much as some and not as less as others (predominantly because I couldn't find a reasonably priced photographer whose work I fell for). There were two things I felt were important in the selection: firstly the portfolio really had to stand out and ideally if I could see an entire album then that had to be consistently, good quality and secondly I needed to click with the photographer. If that person is going to be lurking around all day including taking snaps of me getting ready in my undies I want them to be someone I can be frank with, have a laugh with and generally feel as though they are part of the guest list.

I ended up with a very small selection from which I met two photographers. Both ticked the 'click with' criterium but one stood out as being passionate about their 'art' and that is what won them the business. I won't rave about them too much as I haven't seen the finished article but after the wedding I will be happy to rave/moan etc with names!!!

Job done!