Royal Botanics and Exile

Yesterday after Mass Benedict Ambrose and I went to the Royal Botanical Gardens. B.A. thought we were going somewhere for a nice walk, but I just wanted to see how the vegetable gardens were getting on. Having been bitten by the gardening bug late in life, I got it bad. But, happily, B.A. himself remarked that the Botanics were lovelier and more interesting than he remembered and wondered why we don't go there more often. 

 

The fruit and vegetable gardens were very social, for there was an apple fancier behind a makeshift counter with different examples of apples before him, and a woman standing guard over the (literarily) prize-winning community garden vegetable displays. The apple fancier was quite interested in our cider project and suggested that next year B.A. give a demonstration. This B.A. was reluctant to do.  And, indeed without a car, it would be difficult to transport 14 or more kilos of apple bits to the Royal Botanical Gardens. ("Fortunately, we have here apples chopped up beforehand...") 

The layout of the fruit and vegetable gardens had very much changed since I was there earlier this summer, and the fruit was where I expected the vegetables to be. However, that was fine because I have been thinking about how to grow fruit trees and bushes along fences (espaliered) and wires (double cordoned) and there were several examples of these techniques. There were several kinds of apples, some pears, at least one plum, and a morello cherry. Inside large fruit cages (aluminium frames with plastic mesh) there were several carefully pruned bushes, including red currants, blackberries and tayberries. 

The "new" vegetable gardens, when I found them, were well worth seeing for their beautiful rows of different varieties of kale, squashes, courgettes, and beets, flanked by bug-repelling marigold. The "old vegetable gardens" still had the labels for various kinds of now-bolted lettuce and disappeared beans and peas and they were all planted over with bright autumn flowers--an excellent idea. 

There were happy pollinators--a new word for bees--all over the flowers, and I mistook part of the weather station  (founded in the 18th century) for a beehive. It turns out that when Edinburgh weather is measured and predicted, it is from the Botanics. Another interesting sight is, of course, the glass houses, begun in 1834. The enormous Temperate Palm House, built in 1858, exudes the confidence of Victorian Britain. It is really amazing. 

I had brought my phone, and the afternoon was punctuated with brief but important-to-me family communications from and to Canada. It's a good thing the day was so lovely, for otherwise I would have felt rather sad to be cut off from so much "back home." As it was, I was feeling very out of it by bedtime, and this morning I looked up flights and then the regulations. The regulations are still onerous for those in our situation, so we continue to wait. It's nice to see that Air Transat did not go under, though.