Friday, May 03, 2013

Sorrel, daffodils and pressure

Sorrel (Rumex acetosa) , sour tasting and often used in sauces and soups, but not  yet by me. It features in my little herb garden and often when its leaves are tender as they are now tempts me to repair the omission. This is not to be confused with the prettier but quite different plant wood sorrel (Oxalis acetosela)  sometimes known as Irish shamrock. It has clover like leaves and five petalled white flowers.  It too has a sour taste and like  true sorrel  contains oxalic acid. Wood sorrel , if I remember correctly,  when allowed to become rampant in a garden can, as a friend testifies, be hard to eradicate.

Although a pot of tulips is now in full  flame-like flower some daffodil bulbs which I planted in a pot at the same time last year have come to nothing. This is  not the first time I have been let down. Daffodils don't grow for me.

As I walk up the small street called Grove Avenue  I pass a woman in a cloud of spray cleaning the paint work of her house with a Karchner pressure washer. As I come level with her she switches it off allowing me to get through the haze dry as a bone. There is something pleasing about the power and simplicity of these machines, which has always attracted me though I have never used one.

 

1 comment:

Lucy said...

Karcher are a de rigueur lifestyle accessory here, so that the brand has become a verb, like hoover, most notoriously when Sarkozy after a spate of riots, said that it was time to 'karcherer la racaille des banlieux' or something similar. I sometimes wonder if they express, in appliance form, the Frenchman's desire to urinate as publicly and powerfully as possible.

Our village used to possess one Karcher which was passed around for general use (though not on any racaille), but then we all got our own, which seemed to me an illustration of how prosperity acts against community, though probably the original purchasers of the Karcher weren't sorry - I think in fact it was a shared purchase between two neighbours, but then the non-Karcher cheaper imitations, which are still nevertheless referred to as Karchers, in the manner of all vacuum cleaners being Hoovers, came along anyway so we could all afford one. Mine has now broken down and I tend to just use bleach and an ordinary hose.

For uses of sorrel, have a look here:

http://chocolateandzucchini.com/archives/2011/04/50_things_to_do_with_fresh_sorrel.php

The wild garlic I wasn't very optimistic about has come up much better this year, though I think the all the rain must have had something to do with it.