On Unidentified Insect Infestation of An Apple Tree

You know that feeling you get the first time you find nits in your child's hair? I had that feeling just there now, on my evening patrol of the fruit trees. I found a ball of fluff stuck between some leaves on an upper branches of an apple tree.* I bent in for a closer inspection, and as realisation dawned my arms broke out in shivery goosebumps and I said to myself, "Oh my god, I'm going to be sick." A fat cluster of cobwebby-fine fluff had been spun between a pair of leaf clusters, full with little black dots, rather like the tiny black seeds that fall from cut roses onto your window ledges. And then I saw them; squirming lines of black and grey caterpillars inside this fluff ball, like some revolting THING out of Alien2. It was so sickening I can't even bear to search the RHS pest web pages for guidance. I just picked off the two leaf clusters and that THING between them, and dropped the lot into the dustbin. Yuk yuk yuk. And as I write this my arms itch as if caterpillars were crawling along them, infesting me. Now my head's itching. I bet yours is itching too. That's the thing with infestations, you can't escape psychological damage.

* Grafted onto a dwarf rootstock.

I Found a Picture on Google

Tent Caterpillar
http://hflp.sdstate.edu/Pestalrt/alert903.htm

Biennial Bearing

Few of the apple trees have blossomed this spring, and what blossoms there were were few and far between. Turning to the RHS website for advice yields the following:

"Biennial bearing occurs when apples have 'on' years, with abundant crops, and 'off' years when little is gathered. Some apples, 'Laxton's Superb' and 'Beauty of Bath' for example, do this naturally, while others are tipped into this mode by a frosty spring for example, when no blossom is pollinated. Without a crop to support, the trees use their resources to produce flower buds leading to tremendous blossom the following year. The resulting heavy crop reduces the trees' resources, so that little blossom is made for the following year.

"It appears that flower initiation for the following year occurs when shoot growth is finished and leaves are mature. The seeds within developing fruit seem to inhibit flower bud initiation, and most of the inhibition takes place in the first few weeks after pollination. Sometimes poor pruning, where insufficient new growth is encouraged and too much older flower-bearing wood is retained, can cause this. Thinning the blossom, removing nine out of 10 flower clusters, without removing any foliage, can help. With big trees only some branches need to be treated. However permanently modifying cropping patterns from biennial to annual bearing might take several years of blossom thinning. Thinning fruits, however early it is done, is much less effective than thinning blossom at preventing biennial bearing."

I'm wondering if the same holds true for pear trees. For the past couple of weeks I have been cursing the sparrows nesting in the outhouse roof above the espalier pear, Doyenne du Comice. I came one morning to check on progress of my bumper blossoms and baby fruits, and found horticultural carnage. The swines had eaten the lot. Where there had been hundreds, now a scant half dozen fruits remained, hidden from the rapacious horde in nooks and crannies of the foliage. I nearly cried. I withheld their morning breadcrumbs as punishment, but now that I've checked out biennial bearing with the RHS, perhaps I've been a little hasty. Perhaps I should nip off to the pet store and buy some mealy worms as a little treat.

Derby 1-0 West Brom

http://www.dcfc.premiumtv.co.uk/page/Home/

Felcos Follow Flowers; or A Simple Guide To Pruning Clematis

It's still tipping. Everything touched by the rain looks cleaner, fresher. Drenched. What a lovely word. The lime green tips of the bay tree bring a brightness to a sheltered corner of the terrace, near the Clematis armandii "Apple Blossom." This is a lovely, scented, evergreen climber, but the old leaves do take on a leathered appearance that frankly looks dreadful next to the new season's fresh young sappy growth of the bay. And the Clematis itself grows best at the tips of the previous season's growth, so left unpruned the scented flowers are taken further out of reach each year. Also, I'm plagued with vine weevils, Otiorhynchus sulcatus, in this corner of the garden, and although the roots seem to be strongly resisting the soil-dwelling larvae, the adult vine weevils chew great chunks from the leaves. And so the weekend chop. With any luck, new fresh growth will start to appear in the coming weeks, and by next spring I should have a more compact, densely floriferous scented bower in which to take my morning tea.

Clematis come with a scary pruning regime; prune hard to the ground each year, prune only after flowering, prune early in the spring, prune to 3' above ground... Really, there are only a couple of things to remember. If your clematis flowers early in the year, in spring time, prune it immediately after it has finished flowering. This gives the plant plenty of time to make new growth (including the precious flowering buds) over the summer and autumn, ready to flower again early next spring. If your clematis flowers in the summer and autumn time, prune it early in the spring, because this type of clematis flowers on growth made in the same year it flowers. The trick is not to prune out the flowering buds. There you go! Felcos follow flowers.

Pentecost

How many are your works, Oh Lord! The earth is full of your riches.
Psalm 103

Late Spring Weeding

The predicted "cold" snap finally arrived this morning. I know this because I woke up feeling a bit chilly a little after 7. Ohh, a lie in! And no dawn chorus to distract me from zeds. Last Saturday of the month is Bakewell farmers' market; sausages, eggs, rye bread, a savoy cabbage, chickens, a coffee in the restaurant above the town's permanent farmers' market, and a tour of the knicky-knacky-noo crap that seems to fill the place. I love it. I got up and did the early morning rounds, opening doors and pulling back curtains, letting light into my sleepy household. I love the sound of brass curtain rings being pulled back across their pole; announcing the start of the day. Looking out from beloved first-born's bedroom windows the sky looked dull white and overcast, and I really couldn't be bothered with the early drive. Besides, the garden looks a fright. I gave the clematis armandii on the north-facing border a severe prune during the week, and left the evidence all over the paths to dry out and collapse a little. This makes it easier to haul over to the compost bins. I'd also gone over all the early weeds and left them in piles too. Then there were the flopping, spent, cream coloured leaves of the spring bulbs to pull up, the menace that are sweet violets self-seeded all through the terraced paving stones... mess, mess, mess.

By half past nine the garden looked sweet and ordered, quite empty really, as I'd got a bit carried away by the time I reached some five year old rosemary bushes and hard pruned them to mere shadows of their former selves. Standing back I had to laugh; if they survive this, they'll survive anything.

Some toasted rye bread for brekkie and another cup of tea and I was back at it. The stocks I sowed in the early spring really should have been in by now, so they went in underneath and around the stepover apple, Sunset, and around the top terrace. The nasturtiums, Black Velvet and Maharajah Mix, went in around the greenery of the iris, bay and rosemary beds. And some wheat seeds I sowed in February went in in clumps all over the garden. This will look stunning, and as soon as they ripen into ears, likely to be towards the end of July, I'll take some pictures.

A quick walk to collect the Saturday paper, then back in time for Saturday Kitchen. And then the rain started. Truly, I must have done something wonderful in a past life to deserve all this contentment.

Swiss Chard "Bright Lights"

That's a big fat lie. "Nathalie Nypals" wasn't the first rose to bloom in my garden this year. Rosa "Old Blush China" flowered a couple of weeks earlier. And to make matters worse, it's planted beside "Nathalie". Reading this statement of my Old Blush China-blindness made me think about my garden in a new way. What do I take so much for granted that I no longer actually see it? Erm, I'm not sure. That's the point. Swiss chard "Bright Lights" can't be missed. Just look at these beauties, as they stretch towards the sky;

It's 19.49.

I have exactly 11 minutes before BBC2 covers today's events at the Chelsea Flower Show. I've had a busy day. Uh oh, now it's 19.55 and there is even less time until the BBC coverage of the Chelsea Flower Show, but merci beaucoup enfant deux called from the kitchen to announce, "Fish is done." She cooks a mean fish. And steamed broccoli with a lemony vinaigrette to make your soul pucker, never mind your mouth!

It's 19.57.

I'm quickly flicking between my favourite blogs; gastropunk n maths chicks' first*, then april's, then three cooking-based blogs from the colonies, then heather's then, hang on a minute... April recounts a tale of parenthood worth missing Chelsea for.

It's 20.04. And as the mother of two teenagers all I can say is this --> you'll remember this moment all the days of your life. Toddler taming is hell on earth. And then you experience the miseries of their first days at school and their developing love affair with their first teacher. And then they leave primary school to go up to "Big School" at 11. And you have lost them forever. Ofc you don't realise this except in reflection, because time suddenly takes on a new dimension, a new speed of light, calculated only by mothers and only in retrospect. No more invitations to "Nativities," "Easters" or fund-raisers for the new sports hall...

And suddenly you are clapping your way through Prize Day and your eldest is already away at university. And you wonder to yourself, where did seven years just go? Where did the last 18 years just go?

"Oh Lord, you are hard on mothers. We suffer in their coming and their going. But my sons were faithful, and they fought."

These fleeting days we are lent by the Creator, are really to build up our strength and abilities as parents, ready for the most challenging test of all... their leaving of us.

Oh flip. It's 20.19 and I've missed a third of Chelsea...

* Virgo's organise their favs by blog-symbol...

Ascension Sunday

April says it best;

http://saltforthespirit.blogspot.com/2007/05/risen-christ-is-everywhere-still.html

Dawn Chorus in Early Morning Derbyshire

I've been waking up in time for the dawn chorus every day this week. Something's troubling me, that's for sure. This morning I awoke just before four and slipped out of bed to make a cup of tea. Hopped back to bed and waited a couple of minutes for my tea to cool from scalding to barely drinkable, and that's when the dawn chorus started. At exactly 4.01am. It began suddenly with one bird, then others joined in, until the air seemed to be filled with their song. I lay in the half light, warm and snug as a bug, and just listened to the whole performance. It finished at 4.50am; the birds just stopped singing. But I could hear their song continuing further down the valley, then it stopped too. Time to curl up and make some zeds.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/programmes/radio/dawn_chorus/

Max Pechstein, Harbour Scene 1920

Some sailed to the sea in ships
to trade on the mighty waters.
These men have seen the Lord's deeds,
the wonders he does in the deep.
Psalm 107

A Few Hours Ago: Max Ehrmann

A few hours ago, hot and

tired, I was surrounded by the

jargon of business, myself

a part of it.

Now, near the middle of the

night, I am sitting by

an open window.

Everything is still and the soft

night air is cool.

The sky seems very near, and

the stars lie over the heavens

stretching on and on.

The moon is passing in and out

of the clouds, making a

shadow-chequered day of the

night, and breaking the sky

with shafts of gold.

All silent, the universe is doing

its work - beautiful,

mysterious, religious!

What was all the jargon about,

a few hours ago?

It's Still Raining

Rosa "Nathalie Nypals," a semi-double, rose-pink dwarf polyanthas, and some small oil jars on the steps between terraces. The first rose to bloom in my garden this year.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWwyjmSbJPs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynYOHw23o6M

Spring Rains

It's rained each day since Tuesday. Clouds roll in over the hills, bringing the sky down to the valley floor and a muffling silence to my day. Some days it starts raining after breakfast, sometimes after lunch, enabling some work to be done in the garden before I retreat to the kitchen. Then I stand at the French windows, cup of tea in hand, watching the rain work its magic. Sometimes I stand and watch the rain until my tea goes cold. Splashing into puddles on the terraces; falling off the roof tiles of the outbuildings into gutters and water butts; dropping onto the garden benches and splishing into tiny pools on the tables.The garden responds to this prolonged drenching by swelling into vibrant greenness. The pond gently fills and overflows, slopping over onto the iris and cowslips. The Hostas emerge and unfurl their leaves, offering a canopy to the violets beneath and shelter to the nocturnal snails.Muddy boots were a rare sight this winter; now I'm making up for lost time. The seed sowing is complete, the hardening off almost done, and most of the brassicas already planted out and netted off in long green tunnels. Leeks, shallots and garlic too are all in the ground. The beans are all planted out against their A-frame of pea sticks, each 18" plant ringed in a "top-and-tailed" 2-litre plastic drinks bottle collar to protect against the rabbits. All that remains in the glass house are the squashes and the sweet corn, still a couple of inches high and waiting for the milder, frost-free days to come at the end of the month, and the more delicate annuals and temperamental perennial seedlings. I can afford to relax a little, my sowing and planting on schedule.

But it's the sound of rain falling that brings joy and contentment and peace to my heart. During daylight hours the rains cocoon me, enable me to seek temporary shelter under trees and hedges, at the kitchen steps. Standing under the shade of the parasol yesterday afternoon I sowed another two dozen sweetcorn seeds, the bag of compost and racks of pots laid out across the garden table.

And at night, the sound of rain against the bedroom windows brings a sense of safety as I curl under the duvet and fall to sleep.

"Set me as a seal upon thy heart, as a seal upon thy arm: for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire, which have a most vehement flame. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it: if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned."

From the Song of Songs, which is Solomon's.

Cauldwell's Mill for Jumbo Oats on The Return School Run

And this morning, on the way home, I called into Cauldwell's Mill to pick up a bag of jumbo oats, to make my morning porridge. Rain had been threatening for a day or two, and arrived just as I walked across to the mill. The raindrops can be seen on the lens in the pictures above. Spring rains and the land greens; young lambs, hawthorn blossom and the promise of hot porridge with a splash of milk and a drizzle of honey. Derbyshire truly is God's own county, our land of milk and honey.

School Run 3: May

School Run 2: April

School Run 1: March

On Planning To Start My Christmas Shopping on 27 November 2007

Horizon: The Six Billion Dollar Experiment.

BBC2 9pm Tuesday 1 May 2007

"On 26 November 2007, scientists in the labyrinthine tunnels beneath the French/Swiss border will switch on their Large Hadron Collider and recreate "the Big Bang;" their theory being that "if we can grasp how the universe was made, we can grasp anything or everything." In the worst case scenario, this experiment could trigger a black hole powerful enough to devour the entire planet. Thankfully the 5,000 scientists involved believe the chances of this happening are virtually zero."

http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/cms/?pid=1000368