A 'Scilly' sort of hello

[Armorel]

Hi All,

I arrived here yesterday and registered but am only now getting round to posting a 'hello' message

I'm Armorel and I've lived on Scilly for twenty seven years, having moved here with hubby in January 1981. We are 'islanders' as opposed to 'Scillonians' because there are extremely strict criteria for being a proper 'official' Scillonian, doncha know?

We have about half an acre of garden surrounding our house but it's a garden that pretty much looks after itself. We stick things in and if they grow, that's good. Mind you, with our climate, there aren't many plants that refuse to grow .... apart from rose cultivars We've got five Bramley apple trees that produce a heavy crop each year and hubby made 14 gallons of cider from the fruit last autumn. Even with help from friends, he's still drinking it ...

Our soil is almost pure sand and the beach is only fifty yards away from our back gate. While the climate here IS mild, it can also be extremely windy (we had 80+mph winds in mid December 2007) and it's a rare day when there isn't a breeze. With virtually no atmospheric pollution, the UV levels can be very high and my young avocado plant got its leaves badly scorched sitting on a south facing windowsill a couple of weeks ago. My 12ft x 18ft Alton cedarwood greenhouse needs a good coat of shading paint early in spring every year to protect the plants.

I'm mainly a greenhouse gardener and I dabble in container plants too. I have to confess to being an enthusiastic propagator of all sorts of seeds both straightforward and challenging. My collection of plants includes a lot of named pelargoniums, herbs, bulbs both ordinary and exotic, succulents, aloe vera, stapelia, hostas, and an assortment of odds and ends.

I've recently volunteered to help out our elderly uncle with his little veggie plot (he has Parkinsons and dementia but the gardening is a good activity for him and he needs encouraging so I'm going to share with him) I'm planning to start simply with lettuces, tomatoes in pots, outdoor cucumbers and gherkins, courgettes, and squash. Thus my current mission is to find out how to use seaweed on the garden because, as I said, there's usually heaps of the stuff within a short barrowhaul of our gate. However most of the advice seems to include washing the salt off it ... and we have a permanent hosepipe ban from May to September inclusive

*waves from across the water* Nice to meet you all!

Armorel

[carlseawolf]

hello and welcome , which island are you on as i worked there in 1984 on tresco / bryher .

[Armorel]

Hi and thanks for the welcome Carl,

I'm on 'The Big Island' of St. Marys ... but I lived in Devon during the 1970s (Paignton in Torbay then Collaton St. Mary)

Armorel

[Paul Wagland]

Hi Armorel - great introduction, welcome to the 'vine.

Gardening is great therapy so I hope it goes well with your uncle. Re the seaweed, can you fill a big tub with water and rinse it in that? I've always wondered how you prepare the stuff for the garden!

[Geo]

Waves back..from Brum...

Welcome Armorel

Geo..

[carlseawolf]

snap Amorel i worked in brixham from 86 - 92 on and off ,

P.S Paul it can be used strait as a mulch or dug in like manure or incorperated in to your compost heap , no washing required if fresh only if you gather the dried from the top of the beach

[Armorel]

Hi Paul,

I've got several 50gal waterbutts filled with rainwater but I'm loathe to use one of them to rinse the seaweed because I'm not sure how I'd get it out of the butt (vertically challenged gardener here) and the water would be too salty to use on the plants. I'm not allowed to use any tap water at all - the outside tap is only to be used if the butts are empty (we're on a water meter)

Hi Geo,

We visit Brum regularly (hubby was born in Solihull and M-i-L still lives in Moseley) on our way up and down country to fetch our daughter from college in Leicestershire

Armorel

[kernowyon]

hi, and welcome to the vine, a wee bit jealous of you as i have lived on St Marys when i was a kid, my sis was born on the island and we were both christened in the church on St Marys. use to visit my godparents once a year as we were growing up after we left the islands, but they have since moved to the mainland so have not been there for at least 20 years. they are truely a magical place.

[NOG]

Glad you are on here...my SKY didn't record an Island Parish tonigh so can you tell my what happend on the Islands this week.

Seaweed they say to wash it so that it does not make the Soil too salty...but as you are on an Island I think that it will already be very salty so I wouln't worry.

You could gather a load over winter and hang it on a line so that the rain washes it then use it in the spring. I would use it as a mulch and dig it in at the end of the season.

[nick the grief]

Hi All,

I arrived here yesterday and registered but am only now getting round to posting a 'hello' message ....

Hi Amorel,

Welcome to the vine ... I now have somewhere to stay when I go birding to the Scillies in exchange for my vast knowledge

[NOG]

Sorry another way....it could upset hubby.

Have a bath and when you get out bung the sea weed in. should be ok as long as you don't use too much bubble bath.

[piskieinboots]

hey there how lovely to live where you do so sooooo envious

*waves from Benson
*shouts Hi above 'copter noise

[Armorel]

Hi Kernowyn,

You're right - the islands truly are a magical place - but things have changed a bit in twenty years (more cars for a start )

NOG,

I have to confess, I rarely watch 'An Island Parish' so I can't tell you what happened in the program tonight (which was filmed last autumn anyway) and we 'sort of avoided' anything to do with the filming of the program. But then the program makers weren't exactly short of people who were happy to take part I think if I put seaweed in the bath, my poor husband would think I'd taken leave of my senses

Hi Nick,

You're a 'birder', eh? Can I send you a boxful of starlings? We have them nesting in three out of the four corners of our roof and they are SUCH a nuisance at times But I don't mind watching our resident flock strutting on the grass, digging out the leatherjackets!

Armorel

[Chiana]

Hi Armorel, nice to meet you too
My OH has fallen in love with your islands now that he's hooked on An Island Parish, have to say that I haven't seen it as I'm normally busy reading all the posts here He keeps saying he wants to move there and become a fisherman!
I look forward to reading about the different challenges you face over there, and hope your uncle benefits from the activity

[Armorel]

*waves and yells hello to Piskie over the helicopter noise*

I love living here and, on balance, I'd say the advantages of living on the islands definitely outweigh the disadvantage, but there are some shockers - like £150 for an adult return flight on the helicopter in the height of the summer

Hi Chiana,

Nice to meet you too

Island Parish has been very good for the Isles of Scilly but it tends to skim over the realities which can be harsher than people expect. Property prices are astronomical and few come onto the market, the cost of living is estimated to be at least 40% higher than the UK mainland and jobs aren't exactly plentiful unless you like the catering industry. The wife of the fisherman on Island Parish, Martin Bond, comes round in her van selling fresh fish but we've only seen her a couple of times since Christmas so perhaps he hasn't been able to get out fishing much recently

I suspect that islanders on Scilly have a unique attitude to life that enables them enjoy the often isolated surroundings of living on a blob of lowlying land just three and a half miles long and one and a half miles wide in the swell of the Atlantic ocean currents.

Armorel