Sunday, May 10, 2009

Welsh onions, saw, swifts

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As long as I have had a vegetable garden I have always grown Welsh onions. They form bunches at the root, and you simply harvest the shoots from the base. A shoot, apart from providing something like a large spring onion, will grow into a new bunch of onions, if set in the earth. They constantly renew themselves at the root. If you left them , they would form globular, blue flowers. To encourage them to form thicker bunches, I remove the buds, as I did here after taking the photograph.

I hear the panting breath of a saw and smell the dust fresh from its teeth.

First there are their distinctive shrill cries. Then I see them above the rooftops: the summer's first swifts.

6 comments:

Roderick Robinson said...

I notice string stretched across the earth. I applaud such technicality.

Unknown said...

I should have removed the string which was there to assist in the sowing of seeds in a straight line, behind the onions. Technically speaking, it should not have been in the photograph.

The Crow said...

Friend Joe:

I am tickled by your photo of the onion tops. They look like something Dr. Seuss might have drawn. Delightful!

Your garden soil looks rich, too; composty, not heavy, good mix. Shows the true gardener's handiwork, I think.

Anonymous said...

We look out for the swifts every year, and listen for their screeching.

I just learnt about your blog yesterday, and I love the organising principle: let's all notice the things that make us happy!

Penny

Unknown said...

Crow: Don't you think the onions look like the domes which you see in pictures of the Kremlin?

Penny: I'm glad to meet a fellow swift lover. Watching their aerobatics when you get close enough never ceases to amaze and entertain. Did you know that swifts roost on the wing?

The Crow said...

Yes, they do, Joe. I'd love to see those in person.

I think it is the slight curls at the very tips that remind me of Seuss' drawings.

:)