Sonnet LIII

Here are the bread--the wine--the table--the house:
a man's needs, and a woman's, and a life's.
Peace whirled through and settled in this place:
the common fire burned, to make this light.

Hail to your two hands, which fly and make
their white creations, the singing and the food:
salve! the wholesomeness of your busy feet;
viva! the ballerina who dances with the broom.

Those rugged rivers of water and of threat,
tortuous pavilions of the foam,
incendiary hives and reefs: today

they are this respite, your blood in mine,
this path, starry and blue as the night,
this never-ending simple tenderness.

Rosa "Constance Spry," which introduced the myrrh fragrance to the breeding of the English Roses, growing around an oil jar in the late afternoon sunshine.

Lurpak Bread Advert

And suddenly I'm watching the telly and this advert comes on. "Haven't you seen this?" I'm asked. "It's really good."

So I watch it, and do you know, they were right. It is really good. So let's bake bread and eat it with Lurpak, the whitest butter outside America.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s86-v8vn0CM

Pyrus communis "Doyenne du Comice"

I've counted them. Between seven and nine blossoms from each of 81 flower buds. That's hundreds of pears. This is clearly going to be my most severe horticultural test yet. I know the June Drop will sort out many of the fruits, but can I really show the discipline to reduce each cluster down to two fruits? From hundreds to 162? And to think last year this lovely espalier managed only one fruit bud on the lowest branch, all of which fell off in May. The bottom picture shows the clusters of rounded leaves and chocolate-purple racemes of the Akebia quinata, and try as I might, I can't detect its legendary spicy fragrance. Maybe I'm distracted by thoughts of juicily dripping pears eaten warm from the branch.

Caddie's Arrival at The Villa Fiorita

"Standing on this alien sunlit terrace, Caddie looked small, stocky, and very English, a little English bullock, thought Rob. He alone had looked beyond Hugh to her, until Fanny, quick to him, looked too. She saw the crumpled school dress and blazer, Caddie's dirty knees, wrinkled socks, and brown walking shoes white with dust; the locks of ginger hair, the panama askew, face blotted out with tears. Not very attractive for Rob, Fanny thought, wincing, but here she was wrong; Rob knew real grief when he saw it, and watching Caddie, he began to sense what this journey had been, and what lay behind it."

Rumer Godden The Battle of the Villa Fiorita

No Knead Bread From New York

Gardeners work with their hands in the soil and their eyes on the horizon. For the last two weeks I've been watching the hedgerows and roadsides begin to swell and fill out. It starts with the dying back of the daffodils towards the end of March. If you're lucky and live in a Labour controlled local authority, or within a competitive Britain in Bloom area, you'll probably have lots of daffs planted up along major roads and at the entry points to towns and villages. If not, you probably live in Swindon. Once the daffs die back, there's usually a pause when the roadsides look unusually plain and green and empty. Then the dandelions appear, gaudily, brashly, dazzlingly yellow. After the tall, graceful swaying of the daffs, these solid lumps of colour always make me think of Caddie, her Englishness, her plain loveliness.

The dandelions give way to their time clocks, then the hedges and verges start to gear themselves up for the main event, the appearance of hawthorn blossom and cow parsley. Huge, frothy whiteness spews out into the roads and every journey becomes a visual delight of sunshiny, English countryside in May boskiness. Full with potential, heavenly colours of white and green, the highways and bye-ways reflect all the hopes and joys of a lovely summer to come. May is without doubt the best time to be in England. Because between Shrove Tuesday and the end of June we don't go across to France. We stay in England, finish up the last of the French supplies in the pantry, and wait out the end of terms, end of exams. The uniforms are laundered and hung up until autumn, and then we depart for France. And during this time we hunger for proper French baguettes; tooth-crackingly crunchy French sticks that we start eating as we turn from the till; bread so crunchy you want to get home and dollop it with cherry jam, or smear it with red President butter; maybe a slick of yesterday's rillettes, adding a few cornichon, an olive perhaps. If I'm feeling fancy, I'll drizzle some olive oil and balsamic into shallow bowls and dip away. All this from the burgeoning English countryside.

So clicking into a favourite blog, what should appear but a bread crust reminiscent of French baguettes. I followed the links to the original article in the New York Times, and followed the recipe. The results truly are amazing. Try this no-knead bread from New York. My bread came out of the oven stuck to the dish, so maybe I'll run a butter paper over the base just before dropping in the bread/batter. But for a bread with that authentic, crunchy crust, this is almost as good as the real thing.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/08/dining/08mini.html?ex=1320642000&en=8b6c36e563bf5c05&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

The Warp and Weft of Creation

"The Devil spoke again and Primo felt himself tumbling, as he had tumbled into his aunt's stories, into a tale so webbed by silks of narrative and enchantment that everything material in the bedroom seemed diminished in size.

"Around Primo flickered the knights and path-finders, the light-bearers, kings and queens and humble folk who had once championed good and justice in his aunt's stories. The Devil's voice led him past these figures, beyond the plateau of the legends his aunt had known. It led him far beyond the sounds of his father's clocks so their ticking and tocking fell away like shattering crystal, taking with them time as he had always known it, and its confines. The Devil's voice, enchanting and alluring, like symphonic sound moving through layers of light, ahead of Primo, urged him not to fall behind.

"Primo had a sense of a membrane tearing and yielding passage to him, allowing him entrance past great walls of galaxies, through the corridors between them where star fields hummed and pulsed. On the tips of galactic spirals, child stars exploded to life; ancient red stars burst and died, showering magma-red across interstellar black velvet. Primo became aware of an extraordinary energy, one that seemed to enter into him and align with his very heartbeat. His whole being throbbed with it.

"He found himself on a great weaving, a work fashioned from pulsing energies and elaborate sequences of light. Successions of time threaded through and into each other, sequined with suns, pattered with luminosities, stitched through with the elements of silver and gold. Colours pure and rich blended with one another; scarlets; green of copper; greens of sap; browns of lichen; sanguinaria; safranine; white opal. Primo recognised the energies forming and re-forming in the warp and weft. They were the energies of forests and oceans, great savannahs and tundra. He was looking at the carpet of the earth but he was not on the earth. He was somewhere else. The Devil said he was showing him God, but this was not God. This was a carpet, a matting, a weaving. He spun round, panicking, suddenly aware of his minuscule size, his inconsequence in relation to this vast, seemingly non-ending masterpiece of design upon which he stood. He was but a small creature standing on a piece of woven infinity, and all about him now sounded a chorusing, a trumpeting of bird calls, the braying of wild beasts, and the sighs of fishes. He fell to his knees and saw that, embroidered into the weaving were tiny beads. Each was a piece of life, a whale, a fish, a serpent, a bird, a mantis, a wasp, a cedar, a yellowwood, a wildebeest...

"He became aware of a deep silence falling. A wind blew, lifting the edges of the weaving and sending a ripple across it. Primo now saw that it was unravelling, that whole pieces had burned away, were charred, frayed, shredded. The threads holding the beads had been torn, so the beads were loose, scattered about, falling off the tapestry. Falling to where? he wondered. Where? Primo scrambled to gather them up, but as he touched each one it turned to sand. He lept to his feet, sweat running down his face, terror seizing him."

Patricia Schonstein A Time Of Angels

Congratulations

Don't You Just Love The World Wide Web?

This is one of my favourite blogs. I know. It beggars belief. "A blog on the London Underground? Are you kidding?" I hear sceptics cry.

http://london-underground.blogspot.com/

Give it a try; see what you think. I like it. I like the blog for Monday, concerning the attempt to cut back on the amount of intercom announcements. Whoa, hold your hosses there, boy. Cut back on the number of intercom announcements? Are you insane or what? I remember a day out up in London years ago, when the brats were at primary school. The usual suspects; Tower Bridge, Houses of Parliament, Imperial War Museum (Holocaust Exhibition - omg so many baby shoes and nit combs), the Science Museum, a gallery for the talked about exhibition that year, the Sony Megastore place that's now closed to be replaced with a shopping place selling Punky Fish gear, Hyde Park, Horse Guards, etc etc. And the highlight? Waiting for our three hours delayed train at King's Cross St Pancras.

Bing Bong. "Good Evening, this is Midland Mainline. Just another update on the delays for passengers travelling on the train to xxx that was due to depart at xxx tonight. We have no further information regarding the delays to the arrival of the xxx train due to arrive at King's Cross St Pancras at xxx. As before, we will keep you updated every twenty minutes." Bing Bong.

Bing Bong. "Good Evening, this is Midland Mainline. Just another update on the delays for passengers travelling on the train to xxx that was due to depart..."

And so it went on, every twenty minutes, until after nine o'clock, when the following announcement was made.

Bing Bong. "Good Evening, this is Midland Mainline. This is an update for passengers delayed for travel to xxx. We have been informed by the British Transport Police the the delays are due to a Body On The Line. We will keep you updated every twenty minutes. Thank you for your co-operation."

Suddenly, every passenger in the now crowded concourse changed their attitude and became accepting of the delay, all feelings of anger and annoyance disappeared and many people got on their mobiles to call home. "Mummy, what's a Body On The Line?" asked merci beaucoup enfant deux. And she and her brother learned that night that someone had despaired of the everlasting love of the Creator.

Never give up. Never despair. Never lose hope. Live for the next twenty minutes. Live.

Fruit Trees Warmed Against The Early Morning Sun

The deliciously purple plum, Prunus domesticus "Avalon" against a brown fig tree, Ficus carica. The Fig is particularly old, and its huge branches reach out over the garden walls, almost inviting gardeners to lean against them for a fag (head gardener's) and a gossip. The plum was planted several decades ago and survived a period of horticultural neglect by reverting back to its natural, goblet-shaped form. The original fan shape is long since gone but can still be seen to the back of the outward facing branches. Remedial pruning takes place gradually, and over the course of several seasons.

Early Morning Tulips and a Rather Fine Bleeding Heart

Tulipa "World's Favourite" sit in a raised bed under the emerging canopy of a lilac tree, possibly Syringia vulgaris "Madame Lemoine," the common lilac. To the left of the tulips sits another large, upright rosemary bush, raised from cuttings taken from the gorgeous herb garden at Hardwick Hall. To the right I have a delightful corkscrew hazel bush, Corylus avellana 'Contorta.' Last summer it produced its first cobnuts, small and round and incredibly fresh and juicy tasting when cracked open and eaten straight from the branch. And in the bottom picture, a white Bleeding Heart, Dicentra spectabilis "Alba," emerges unscathed from the heavy Derbyshire clay soil.

Scarlet Lily Beetle Arrives In Sunny Derbyshire

I found one of these on a rosemary bush yesterday afternoon. This little fellow looks so pretty, so red and those little black legs set off it's shiny wings beautifully. It's also one of the most determined and destructive garden pests, the scarlet lily beetle, Lilioceris lilii. Both the parent beetle and its brown grubs feed on the stems, leaves, buds and flowers of lilies and fritillaries. It is native to parts of Eurasia. It is known to have been introduced to Britain and Canada in the 1940s, possibly on imported lily bulbs. It is now a pest in much of southern England. The adults are active from late March or April to autumn. In spring they lay small groups of reddish brown eggs from which the grubs emerge. The grubs cover themselves with their wet, black excrement and often feed in groups, eating the leaves from the tips back to the stem. You can spray them, better to pick the adult beetles off and crush them under your boot. A satisfying crunch for this revolting pest.

I'm exhausted. My brain won't auto-compose lists; my arms ache and with any luck the tightness across my stomach is evidence that gardening really will keep tummies flat. My back never aches from digging, only from hoicking bloody great barrow loads of manure about the place. I awoke on Friday morning with a broken big toe on my left foot, hobbling about the kitchen as I made a flask, but after lacing up my work boots and getting out into the garden this appallingly painful fracture seemed to have sorted itself out. Ok, it was a stiff toe, not a fracture. Either way it was sore. To a virgo. And as we know all virgos are hypochondriacs because we haven't the time to be really ill, so we experience illness vicariously.

Over this last week I've worked like a slave, but on so many different bits and pieces I feel as if I have achieved little. All my broad beans are now sown outside; the pea stick wigwams and A-frames are in place awaiting the planting out of the bean plants sown over the last couple of months; the drainpipes of early peas started off in the glass house have hardened off over the last week and are ready for planting out on Monday; the fruit canes are all cut out and tied in; the vines NOT pruned (they'd literally bleed to death); stakes removed from two fruit trees at last; hundreds of plug brassicas hardened off too, ready for planting out; trays and trays of annuals sown including another set of sweet peas; March sowings of annuals pricked out (my least favourite task); lawns and grass paths mowed; old borders dug over and heavily manured; a dozen trays of assorted winter squash sown; a bed of winter sown, winter sown, oh what is it called, the long thinnish leaves, green, always served as a salad with a bit of balsamic dressing at pubs, arugula, oh what is it called, anyway a row of that picked and eaten with, yes a balsamic dressing with a bit of fish; and at this point I lost the remaining dregs of my list-making abilities.

Physical exhaustion usually needs nothing more than a good old lie-in and a few early nights. The sunny weather since Friday and over today warms my bones and makes me sit outside on the terrace for every meal. I'm taking pictures in my garden, bringing cook books to the table to read at leisure, and absolutely refusing to cook two bone-idle teenagers a speck of food. Ok so I lied with that last point. Lolling about on the sofas last night with merci beacoup enfant deux I watched telly for two hours. Oh utter joy. Thank you God for helping the schedulers at BBC2 to make my Friday nights so joyful lately.

We began at 7pm with BBC4 on BBC2: Wainwright's Walks. Just sit back and be soothed watching someone else burn calories walking about in the "demanding Blencathra mountain."

At 7.30pm we moved on to Bill Oddie Goes Wild; bird watching in north Norfolk.

At 8pm we moved on to Christine's Garden, with (last) summer causing problems for the horticulturalist. I like the gentleness of this woman's series. I like her relationship with her neighbour Reg. I like Reg. I like everything about this series. I like the way it eases me into Friday night and the end of my working week and the start of the weekend.

At 8.30pm, the music Morning Light fills my house and signals the start of Gardener's World. All's right with the world.

Last Season's Swiss Chard "Bright Lights"

Spring Growth in The Peach Case

Here are the latest pictures from the peach case. The speed at which foliage grows at this time of year never ceases to amaze me, the rising sap urging all life upwards to the sun. And these pictures are taken just a fortnight after these. The first picture on both posts is of the same branch on one of the apricot fans. The Victorian brickwork gives an idea of the size of these little beauties. Hurry sun! Hurry rain! Each day my tummy anticipates apricots for lunch, eaten warm and juicy from the branch.

Friday Five: Great TV Moments

1. Parkinson interviewing Don McCullin, photographer and war photographer extraordinaire. I was very young, and allowed by rather farsighted parents to stay up late to watch this. I also remember Parkinson being interviewed years later and identifying his interview with McCullin as one of the most significant of his career.

2. Olga Korbut's floor routine at the 1972 Munich Olympics. She started an overnight craze for red woollen hair ties, and gymnastics of course.

3. The 1980 Iranian embassy seige, when the British public first heard of Kate Adie. And the SAS too.

4. The unknown man who brought a column of tanks to a standstill in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

5. The closing ceremony of the 2000 Sydney Olympics. Priscilla, Queen of the Desert meets stuffy Olympic traditions, and triumphs. And Kylie was never better.

Other great TV moments are listed here.

Some Delightful Mid-Spring Blooms

Primula polyantha "Dawn Ansell" a vigorous, naturalising double primrose, perfect for a shady woodland spot.

Muscari armeniacum, or grape hyacinths, are perfectly named, because their clusters of small, bell-shaped, cobalt-blue flowers look like bunches of upside-down grapes.

Prunus domestica "Warwickshire Drooper" blossoms hint at a bountiful plum harvest in early autumn / September.

"The small birds rejoice in the green leaves returning, the murmuring streamlet winds clear thro' the vale; the primroses blow in the dews of the morning, and wild scatter'd cowslips bedeck the green dale." Robert Burns.

Another delightful header from the Gardener's World website for April.

Potato Planting Guide

Seed potatoes are traditionally planted out on Easter Monday. I put mine in last week, and only because my head gardener put hers in the week before. Global warming shifts surprising areas of our lives. Each year I've grown two earlies (one a salad potato), and one variety of main crop. And each year, after the first couple of weeks digging up and boiling the first new potatoes, our appetites for these little treasures fade, and I'm left with a row or two that simply gets forgotten. This year I'm determined to grow just one variety of main crop, and one new potato. "New potato" means the same as "first earlies," that is, the first potato varieties ready for harvesting in the growing season, usually around about May or June / 10 weeks after planting. The next lot of potatoes ready for harvesting are called "second earlies"; and then the main crop potatoes are ready to be dug, having been in the ground long enough for most of the sugars to turn to starch, harvested after about twenty weeks . Less sweet than the first new potatoes, they are none the less the most flavoursome, lasting well into late winter in storage.

I planted out 6 rows of King Edward, and because I left it too late to buy my preferred choice, International Kidney, my new potato is Swift.

Of course I know to double dig the ground, mixing the trough with well-rotted manure, then plant the seed potatoes or tubers at 12" (new potatoes) or 18" (main crop) distance apart in the row, with between 2' (new potatoes) or 2.5' (main crop) distance between rows. Then you have to earth up the haulms (the green leafy bits that grow from the tubers) as they reach through the soil, until by harvest time you have row upon row of Toblerone-like earthworks. Too much work my dears! Last year I dug an individual hole for each tuber, dropped it in, back filled with my spade and moved on down the row. Earthed them up as normal, and they gave as good a crop as ever. This year I'm moving even less soil, and used my bulb planter to take out a deep hole and dropped the tuber in. So let's see if all that digging of trenches does make any difference to yield. I suppose trenches were dug to loosen up the surrounding soil to enable the tubers to grow and swell; spring ploughing a week or two before planting does the same trick. And having read an article a few years ago debating the "to chit or not to chit" question, and reading that commercial growers never bother to chit, I experienced a horticultural epiphany of sorts, and abandoned chitting seed potatoes altogether. So let's see if my laziness / scientific approach to evidenced based horticulture works.

Potato Harvesting, Carl Larsson

Easter Sunday:

Early morning vapour trails.

Good Friday

Peach and nectarine stones buried amid the iron walkway running the length of the peach house.

Oxlips and Cowslips

Oxlips, or Primula elatior, above, are beautiful spring flowers naturalised throughout Europe in damp woods and meadows. Its flowers are the most perfect butter yellow and appear as clusters of as many as 10 or 30 flowers on a single stem 10-30 cm tall. Oxlips are often confused with cowslips, Primula veris, below, which have a similar general appearance although the oxlip has larger, pale yellow flowers more like a primrose, and a corolla tube without folds. The ancient name for cowslips is "paigles." Both take a season or two to settle in, but once happy in their chosen spot, these little delights will naturalise prolifically.

The last word surely rests with Shakespeare, and his sublime A Midsummer Night's Dream:
"I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine.
There sleeps Titania sometime of the night."

These few lines were enough to set me designing a shady part of my garden good enough for Titania, with grateful thanks to Helen Yemm, the journalist whose column in the Saturday Telegraph forms such a key part of my weekend.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/main.jhtml?xml=/gardening/2001/05/26/gyemm26.xml

Holy Thursday

Leonardo da Vinci, The Last Supper, (184 K)

1498

Fresco 460 x 880 cm

Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie (Refectory), Milan

http://history.hanover.edu/courses/art/leols.html

Spring Flowers

The increase in daytime temperatures and raised light levels stimulate the early flowering plants into growth. The primrose, the "Prima rosa" or first rose of the year is a well-known symbol of spring and especially of Easter. For generations, bunches have been picked to decorate churches after the long weeks of Lent. To the left of the photo is Polemonium caeruleum, ‘Apricot Delight.’ Its pinnate leaves are arranged like steps on a ladder hence it's common name Jacob's ladder, and the lilac-blue flowers have apricot yellow centres. A prolific self-seeder, this plant started life three seasons ago in one small pot in another border and now grows all over my garden. To the middle of the photo are the beautiful grape hyacinths, Muscari "Blue Angels" with their two-tone blue flowers and equally prolific lifestyle.

Palm Sunday

Dominus Flevit, Mount of Olives, Jerusalem

Going uphill from the Kidron valley towards the Mount of Olives, a small church stands watch over the city of Jerusalem. It is called "Dominus Flevit" (The Lord wept) a very suitable place to indicate the location for the Gospel account of Luke 19, 37-42.

http://198.62.75.1/www1/ofm/san/TSflevitmn.html