Gardening in the rain

This blog is supposed to be about gardening as well as knitting, but I haven't been writing much about my garden this year. Mostly because it has been an abysmal year for gardening - altogether too wet, cold and dark to spend time outdoors. In previous years we visited the garden at least five times a week during the spring and summer. This year, we went down once a week, if that.

We had a few successes, though not unmitigated - only half the pink fir apple potatoes I planted came up, but the ones that survived were very tasty. We only managed to grow a couple of pumpkins, but one was enormous and made a perfect Halloween jack-o'-lantern. And the cabbage escaped the dreaded cabbage flies (but not, alas, a slug infestation).

The cabbage are the only things that are still producing right now, but I don't know how long they will survive the latest weather onslaught - floods!

Allotment under water

Neighbors under water

Allotment on the corner has merged with the stream

And it is not just the allotments - lots of houses and roads in South Oxford are under threat of flooding as well (or already inundated with water).

Abingdon Road on Tuesday morning

It hasn't even been raining much in the past few days, but the water keeps rising. Oxford is bounded on both sides by rivers - the Isis (Thames) to the west and the Cherwell to the east, and all the waterways are full to overflowing.

Cherwell covering University Parks

I suppose I should be grateful that the flooding held off this long - at least most of the garden was already put to bed. Otherwise I might have been tempted to give up on gardening permanently!