This Precious Stone Set In The Silver Sea

This royal throne of kings, this sceptre'd isle,

This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,

This other Eden, demi-paradise,

This fortress built by Nature for herself

Against infection and the hand of war,

This happy breed of men, this little world,This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall

Or as a moat defensive to a house,

Against the envy of less happier lands,—

This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.King Richard II Act ii. Sc. 1.

Victorian Treasures In A Clinker Path

The following from late July early August this year:

I started at 5am because the rain was forecast to arrive at 11am, and I hoped to get the back of it broken by then. And right on schedule, it started raining, but softly, so I carried on until lunchtime. The gravel had been laid straight onto a bed of builder's sand, the perfect medium for couch grass and dock weeds, so they all had to be dug out. Garden paths need sturdy foundations as they can remain in place for generations if laid out as part of a well thought out design. Simply chucking in a 6" bed of builders sand and topping off with an inch or two of the more expensive gravel only provides a luxurious bed for deep rooted weeds. So out it all came. I mixed the sand and gravel into heaps and barrowed it across to a quiet area of the garden to await another project over the winter.

Then I began to skim off the layers of hard, impacted soil underneath the path until about four inches down I started to hit evidence of the original Victorian path. Bits of clay pipes, broken crockery, usually blue and white patterned, shards of broken green glass bottles, bottles likely to have contained medicine or poison, given the ridges along the bottle sides, clay and glass marble-shaped spheres used as the stopper in bottles of Victorian ginger beer, even a couple of tea pot lids. All these treasures are the classic domestic detritus of earlier dwellings on a landscape, and point to the origins of my house and garden. At the time they were thrown into waste pits and perhaps later dug out to join clinker when the garden path was originally laid.

Clinker is the general name given to waste from industrial processes particularly those that involve smelting metals or burning fossil fuels. In this area of Derbyshire that's likely to be coal. Clinker often forms a loose, black deposit that can consist of coke, coal, charcoal or grit, together with other waste materials, and was often reused to make hard paths. It is laid & rolled, and forms a hard path with a rough surface. If my clinker path has been in situ for maybe a century or more, it is the perfect structure to reinstate and use again.

Friday Five: How I Know I Lead The Life Of Riley

1. Beloved Firstborn was robbed in the street this morning - nasty level of violence included being stamped on the head and removed to hospital via ambulance, where the consultant (thank God it occurred during office hours, when consultants actually bother to turn out to work...) confirmed no fractured skull, no perforated eardrum, no dental damage, no broken nose, and no blood clots just waiting to kill 12 hours later.

2. Merci Beaucoup Enfant Deux dropped the house phone down the lavatory this afternoon. That this happened exactly one week after she dropped her mobile down the lavatory whilst out with the girls, is slightly remarkable. What is utterly remarkable, is hearing her clattering about in the bathroom this evening and asking her if she had a phone in there with her... and she had the audacity to laugh and reply, "Is that an offer, mum?"

3. That I have WD40 in the garage, although it won't revive the house phone any more than it revived a mobile last week. What is she doing with phones in the bathroom?

4. I'm sitting at my pc with a glass of French bubbly (is there really any other sort?) and a slice of Christmas cake made for me by my dearest client.

5. NCIS is about to start on Channel 5. Sigh....

Christmas Day

Christmas Eve NORAD Santa's Coming

http://www.noradsanta.org/en/home.htm

So Very Far From Home

Frailty, Thy Name Is Woman

And this has remained, seared into my memory during my formative years. Until December 2, 2007 when, accompanied by Merci Beaucoup Enfant Deux, I heard Michael Bublé sing at Nottingham Arena. Oh my goodness. Sorry Kevin. Click onto radioblogclub.com, type in Michael Buble Save the Last Dance, and be transported to American jazz heaven.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VY60CkP1qAc

Hark The Herald Angels Sing

"...Glory to the newborn King.

Peace on earth, and mercy mild,

God and sinners reconciled."

Bet you couldn't read that without singing the verses. Peace descended upon my horticultural heart this weekend. I finished all my commissions for this year; all designs are designed; all borders renovated; all tasks completed. My drawing board in the west-facing study upstairs stands empty and my collection of rainbow-coloured drawing pens, my templates and my beloved HB pencils are tidied back into their boxes and won't be allowed to emerge until early next year. In the tool shed my spades are washed, oiled and hung up in their racks. My gardening gear laundered and stored in the hot press. Only those blasted hyacinths need potting up. December stretches ahead of me in one long, luxurious, self-indulgent, glorious reading session. New plants for drought resistant conditions; hostas bred for deeper shade; some glass house newbies; water gardening to include salad crops that is definitely not hydroponics; on and on my reading list stretches... a gardener's paradise. "...Born that man no more may die,

Born to raise the sons of earth,

Born to give them second birth.

Hark! The herald angels sing,

"Glory to the newborn King."

Winter Gardening

November slid by, cold and wet and windy until all the leaves came off the trees and lay in golden swathes, calling to me to come with my rake. I know I ought to rake them up and store them in wire baskets until they rot down for perfect compost, but really, I can't be bothered. And if we are honest with ourselves, no-one wants half-filled black bin liners leaking slowly rotting cellulose hanging around their garden for a couple of years, either. So throughout autumn I rake the moss from the lawns, gather the leaves, then stuff the lot under the hedge in the kitchen garden. I like to think of this process as creating warm bedding for the hedgehogs' hibernation in this relatively quiet part of the garden.

What I'm actually doing is intervening in the Carbon Cycle. The element Carbon is a basic constituent of all living organisms. Its atoms combine easily with other atoms to form a huge variety of molecules. Some of these, Carbon Dioxide CO2 and carbohydrates C6H12O6 have names which are clearly Carbon based, whilst others, fats and proteins for example, are not so obvious. All cells, whether animal, plant or bacteria, contain Carbon in the form of fats, proteins and carbohydrates. Plant cell walls are made of cellulose, a form of carbohydrate.

Carbon cycles through ecosystems, moving repeatedly from one organism to another, and between organisms and the environment. The Carbon cycle is a key factor in maintaining the balance of an ecosystem, and works thus:

Plants photosynthesise, taking Carbon in the form of Carbon Dioxide from the atmosphere and locking it into the carbohydrate glucose: Carbon Dioxide + Water = Glucose + Oxygen, or 6CO2 + 6H2O (+Light) = C6H12O6 + 6O2 Chlorophyll is the green pigment that enables plants capture light energy.

Animals get their Carbon from eating either plants (carbohydrates) or other animals (proteins and fats). They respire, releasing Carbon Dioxide to the environment. Plants also respire, taking Oxygen from the atmosphere or the by-products of photosynthesis: C6H12O6 + 6O2 > 6CO2 + 6H2O (+ released energy)

Waste Carbon-based material is excreted by animals, and is digested by decomposers, mainly microbes and fungi. The decomposers also respire, releasing Carbon Dioxide.

When animals die, their remains may be either eaten as carrion by scavengers / roadkill by you-know-who, or digested by decomposers. Both scavengers and decomposers respire, giving off more Carbon Dioxide. Here's a diagram:

Plant leaves therefore have two primary functions; to act as solar panels for the plant, enabling the sunlight falling onto the leaves convert into carbohydrates by the process of photosynthesis; and to enable gas exchange via the lenticels. Of course, Jan doesn't know this because she didn't bother reading this far, did you Jan? Naughty blogger.

The growth cycle of deciduous trees and shrubs is linked to day length. Most have a relatively short period of annual growth. New stems begin to grow from overwintering buds when the days lengthen and temperatures are warm enough to support growth. For most trees, growth is usually completed by late June in the Northern Hemisphere. The following year's leaf buds are set at this time and will not open until they experience the chill and short days of winter followed by the warmth and increasing daylight of spring. Once the leaves are fully expanded and the buds are set, the work of manufacturing and storing carbohydrates to support the following season's growth accelerates. These carbohydrates are stored in the branches, roots, and buds throughout the growing season to support next year's growth. In late summer or early autumn, the days begin to get shorter, and nights lengthen. Like most plants, deciduous trees and shrubs are rather sensitive to length of the dark period each day. When nights reach a threshold value and are long enough, the cells near the juncture of the leaf and the stem divide rapidly, but they do not expand. This abscission layer is a corky layer of cells that slowly begins to block transport of materials such as carbohydrates from the leaf to the branch. It also blocks the flow of minerals from the roots into the leaves. During the growing season, chlorophyll is replaced constantly in the leaves. Chlorophyll breaks down with exposure to light in the same way that colored paper fades in sunlight; the leaves must manufacture new chlorophyll to replace chlorophyll that is lost in this way. In autumn, when the connection between the leaf and the rest of the plant begins to be blocked off, the production of chlorophyll slows and then stops. When this happens, the leaf falls. It retains little nutrient value, is almost wholly cellulose, and thus takes at least two years to rot down. It makes a good soil conditioner, and mulch, and that's about it. So under the hedge go the fallen leaves.

http://www.usna.usda.gov/PhotoGallery/FallFoliage/FallFoliage02.html#Betula