back to the garden

All I said about this was that I was taken by surprise with respect to new allegations, and though I managed to say what those allegations were, that is the digging up of the garden, I didn’t make anything of it. I should’ve dwelt on it as capturing very effectively all that was wrong with this co-op, where you don’t have to raise your voice or become abusive in order to shatter someone’s spirit. All you have to do is make quiet insinuations against a person’s integrity, on this issue and then again on that, piling unsubstantiated claim on top of unsubstantiated claim, so that the poor crushed ‘enemy of the co-op’ doesn’t know where to begin in terms of defending herself. I mean, the squadron leader had really done me a favour by showing just how casually destructive she could be, but I’d stuffed up the opportunity to take advantage of it. However, the trio who sat on the panel struck us all as being a very reasonable and cluey bunch, and I reckon they’ll have sorted much of that stuff out for themselves

So goodbye to all that. Now to return to something a bit more down to earth, like gardening. My lemon verbena’s doing particularly well as luck would have it, and I’ve been meaning to research the plant. It doesn’t like the cold weather, and there’s not been much of that lately, and it obviously likes my soil as well as weather conditions. Interestingly it likes plenty of water – I’m always feeling that I’m not watering enough, and plenty of my plants have died, but not I think due to the lack of water. My bay has died, one that I really wanted to survive, likely due to lack of shade. Ditto the gingko. Fruit trees are all doing well though, the two established ones bearing plenty of fruit, and the new ones, the lemon, the fig and the cumquat newly flourishing with the addition of mulch and osmocote.

Lemon verbena (Lippia citriodora) comes from South America and its leaves have a very pure and intense lemon scent. The plant is attractive and easy to grow, by my reckoning. It was once very popular in European gardens but has for reasons unknown fallen out of favour. It has never been a commonly used flavouring herb, but it can be used in soups and to flavour fish and poultry, but it’s more commonly and perhaps more effectively used in intensifying the flavour of desserts and drinks. So now I’m off to prepare some fruit for the custard (instant custard powder) that Mat’s making, and I’ll add a few verbena leaves (probably to Mat’s disgust).

Well, that was a waste of time. Mat has all the aesthetic sense of a Porsche and Nissan Skyline-obsessed sixteen-year-old, and simply tossed my decorative verbena leaf out. I tried to get him to partake of the delightful lemon aroma, which involved chasing him round the house. Anyway they’re not particularly edible I’ve since discovered, though they might be worth adding early and later removing, like bay.