THE 2011 PROJECT

For the past couple of years I have had a major new project each year. In 2009, it was learning to build; and last year it was this blog. Both of those will be continuing this year, but what will be new?

The answer is making a kitchen garden. I have felled a fair number of sycamore trees behind the house, where the wood was encroaching, and have cleared the ground between the stumps. Once the temperature gets above zero - which, apparently, it may not do for the rest of this month - I will get hold of Ole Milkman. He has, or - more correctly - has access to, some big machines for pulling up tree roots and churning up earth, which can be hired for the standard rural price of a couple of bottles of red wine. Once churned, I will sow grass and plant a couple of fruit trees; cherry probably, since we already have so many apple and pear trees.

While he is there, I will also ask him to plough up 50 sqm or so of the paddock for a kitchen garden. That is where the former owners of the house, who were farmers, used to have a kitchen garden, so I will in effect be going back to the original. My mother-in-law says that potatoes are a good thing to start with. So, armed with that advice and the gardening book that my wife gave me for Christmas, potatoes it shall be.

I thought about having a second new project, namely learning to play the drums. However, projects by definition have to have a fair probability of occurring, or they are silly. So I have dropped that one. After all, I doubt that Ole Milkman is also in a band.

Walter Blotscher