Today I made a big order at Garden Organic: some seeds (but not too many, as you know my collection is of a size it might save the world from famine already), the fantastic aluminium tubes and connecting balls (the cage I made for my brassica is successfully keeping the birds off, it is sturdy and easy access), gloves (which never seem to last much) and a few other bits and bobs.The charity seems to be struggling, and they are not the only ones, as the Soil Association have also been asking for more money lately. So I hope the oder was a little help.
Another thing that I did and got me a bit of excitement back (after the last three very weak weeks) is enrolling in the Garden Organic experiments 2010. There are four:
- compost as a growing medium;
- growing tree spinach;
- surveying butterflies;
- slug barriers (which I most definitely would love to do)
and I signed up for three as it seems most appropriate for a horticulture student - I left the one on compost as I do not feel confident enough of my composting skills yet, and similarly I left the one about helping the University of Plymouth on a study on invertebrates in compost heaps.
Tonight I promise I will sit down and make a graph of all the plants' organs. I keep procrastinating on this, as is seems an unwieldy, enormous task, but it's no good: I am falling behind with my study schedule!
Studying science after some 20 years of humanities only is trying, and weird. On one side it is very schematic and logical as you would expect, but unexpectedly to me so many things are not known - i.e. the taxonomy of plants keeps changing as more knowledge is acquired: Kew magazine this month mentioned one such re-classification of plants based on DNA research has just completed.
It's fascinating, though, to learn more about such an important resource for humankind as plants are. It set me thinking again about nature and ecosystems versus science and technology and human ambitions. Maybe I will write more about it.
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