The Garden Diaries

Thanks Fiona & Danny

2012-01-31T11:38:00.000Z

I picked up my next assignment last night, and as it's due in a fortnight I thought I'd set to and start this morning. Of course, in true avoidance style, I then started going through my emails... which I haven't looked at since just before Christmas. Thank you Fiona and Danny for your lovely New Year's card, which I can just about say arrived at the beginning of THIS month.

Slacker Diaries, or what?

How To Propagate Mistletoe: Part 2

2012-01-18T14:52:00.008Z

As we have already discussed, mistletoe is so easy to propagate we can safely leave it to the birds. Or, armed with Marigolds, we can squish the berries into youngish branches of apple trees and hawthorn hedges. And wait until next year to see if the seeds have sprouted.

Helena & Najm

2011-12-24T09:09:00.004Z

"Like me, you were late coming. The shepherds were here long before; even the cattle. They had joined the chorus of angels before you were on your way. For you the primordial discipline of the heavens was relaxed and a new defiant light blazed amid the disconcerted stars.

How laboriously you came, taking sights and calculating, where the shepherds had run barefoot! How odd you looked on the road, attended by what outlandish liveries, laden with such preposterous gifts!

You came at length to the final stage of your pilgrimage and the great star stood still above you. What did you do? You stopped to call on King Herod. Deadly exchange of compliments in which began that unended war of mobs and magistrates against the innocent!

Yet you came, and were not turned away. You too found room before the manger. Your gifts were not needed, but they were accepted and put carefully away, for they were brought with love. In that new order of charity that had just come to life, there was room for you, too. You were not lower in the eyes of the holy family than the ox or the ass.

You are my especial patrons, and patrons of all late-comers, of all who have a tedious journey to make to the truth, of all who are confused with knowledge and speculation, of all who through politeness make themselves partners in guilt, of all who stand in danger by reason of their talents.

For His sake who did not reject your curious gifts, pray always for the learned, the oblique, the delicate. Let them not be quite forgotten at the Throne of God when the simple come into their kingdom."

From Evelyn Waugh's Helena, a prayer made by the Empress to the Three Wise Men before finding the Holy Cross

Thanksgiving

2011-11-24T19:19:00.056Z

"It seemed to Myop as she skipped lightly from hen house to pigpen to smokehouse that the days had never been as beautiful as these. The air held a keenness that made her nose twitch. The harvesting of the corn and cotton, peanuts and squash, made each day a golden surprise that caused excited little tremors to run up her jaws.

          "Myop carried a short, knobby stick. She struck out at random at chickens she liked, and worked out the beat of a song on the fence around the pigpen. She felt light and good in the warm sun. She was ten, and nothing existed for her but her song, the stick clutched in her dark brown hand, and the tat-de-ta-ta-ta of accompaniment.
          "Turning her back on the rusty boards of her family's sharecropper cabin, Myop walked along the fence ti it ran into the stream made by the spring. Around the spring, where the family got drinking water, silver ferns and wild flowers grew. Along the shallow banks pigs rooted. Myop watched the tiny white bubbles disrupt the thin black scale of soil and the water that silently rose and slid away down the stream.
          "She has explored the woods behind the house many times. Often, in late autumn, her mother took her to gather nuts among the fallen leaves. Today she made her own path, bouncing this way and that way, vaguely keeping an eye out for snakes. She found, in addition to various common but pretty ferns and leaves, an armful of strange blue flowers with velvety ridges and a sweetsuds bush full of the brown, fragrant buds.
          "By twelve o'clock, her arms laden with sprigs of her findings, she was a mile or more from home. She had often been as far before, but the strangeness of the land made it not as pleasant as her usual haunts. It seemed gloomy in the little cove in which she found herself. The air was damp, the silence close and deep.

"Myop began to circle back to the house, back to the peacefulness of the morning. It was then that she stepped smack into his eyes. Her heel became lodged in the broken ridge between brow and nose, and she reached down quickly, unafraid, to free herself. It was only when she saw his naked grin that she gave a little yelp of surprise.

"He had been a tall man. From feet to neck covered a long space. His head lay beside him. When she pushed back the leaves and layers of earth and debris Myop saw that he'd had large white teeth, all of them cracked or broken, long fingers, and very big bones. All his clothes had rotted away except some threads of blue denim from his overalls. The buckles of the overalls had turned green.

"Myop gazed around the spot with interest. Very near where she'd stepped into the head was a wild pink rose. As she picked it to add to her bundle she noticed a raised mound, a ring, around the rose's root. It was the rotted remains of a noose, a bit of shredding plowline, now blending benignly into the soil. Around an overhanging limb of a great spreading oak clung another piece. Frayed, rotted, bleached, and frazzled - barely there - but spinning restlessly in the breeze. Myop laid down her flowers.

And the summer was over."

The Flowers, Alice Walker

In Love and Trouble

Hosta Bressingham Blue

2011-11-18T20:07:00.000Z

Early to mid summer. The following were taken mid to late November. Autumnal decay at its most beautiful.

Remembrance Sunday 2011

2011-11-13T06:00:00.010Z

The National Memorial Arboretum Staffordshire

How To Propagate Mistletoe

2011-11-12T21:35:00.002Z

I've gone down a size in jeans. I'm telling you this only because I've just had to go and change into my M&S 15£ black exercise trackies as sitting here catching up with my favourite blogs was edging over into the pervy side of painful. I rather like wearing a snug pair of jeans as Christmas approaches; keeps my hands off the snacky, nibbly loveliness that's starting to appear when eating out. "I just thought I'd try a few recipes before the big day, you don't mind do you?" is starting to become a regular feature of midweek suppers and weekend lunches with friends. And mostly it is a gastronomic trial run. A couple of wretches will try to pull off their usual one-up-manship nonsense, but we'll give them short shrift... will they never learn?

Some time in late winter 2009 (January or February 2009) I scrubbed the mistletoe into the branches of a couple of my least favourite apple trees. There is a tremendous lot of nonsense written about propagating mistletoe, none of which your garden birds have bothered to read and if a bird-sized brain can do this, so can we.

Essentially you must try and buy English mistletoe, but don't worry if your provider can't tell you where it was grown; in all likelihood it will be French and just as good. It's just always lovely to try and have a go propagating British natives.

Take your mistletoe berries (which will be a bit withered and dead-looking by February) and push the black seeds inside the white berries into the bark of apple trees in your garden. Hawthorns are also good host trees. Try and pick a youngish tree, as the bark tends to be a bit thinner and thus easier for the seeds to penetrate. Then just leave them alone and forget about them. With any luck, a year later you'll have a few tiny leaves just like the ones below.

These pictures were taken in January 2011. I'll take some more this weekend and add them to this post.

I loathe that Hebe. I don't know why I keep it.

Friday Five: Ireland

2011-11-04T06:00:00.000Z

"I was raised in an Irish-American home in Detroit where assimilation was the uppermost priority. The price of assimilation and respectability was amnesia. Although my great-grandparents were victims of the Great Hunger of the 1840's, even though I was named Thomas Emmet Hayden IV after the radical Irish nationalist exile Thomas Emmet, my inheritance was to be disinherited. My parents knew nothing of this past, or nothing worth passing on."
Tom Hayden

Moone Cross Co Kildare, picture credits unknown

"Could he not find in his heart the generosity to acknowledge that there is a small nation that stood alone not for one year or two, but for several hundred years against aggression; that endured spoliations, famines, massacres in endless succession; that was clubbed many times into insensibility, but that each time on returning [to] consciousness took up the fight anew; a small nation that could never be got to accept defeat and has never surrendered her soul?”

De Valera, on VE Day May 8, 1945, responding in a radio speech to criticism by Churchill of Ireland’s neutrality in WWII

"I tell you this - early this morning I signed my death warrant."
Michael Collins, after signing the treaty on December 6, 1921 with England creating the Irish Free State as a dominion within the British Commonwealth

"No person knows better than you do that the domination of England is the sole and blighting curse of this country. It is the incubus that sits on our energies, stops the pulsation of the nation’s heart and leaves to Ireland not gay vitality but horrid the convulsions of a troubled dream."

Daniel O'Connell (1775-1847), in an 1831 letter to Bishop Doyle

"Ireland, thou friend of my country in my country's most friendless days, much injured, much enduring land, accept this poor tribute from one who esteems thy worth, and mourns thy desolation."

George Washington, speaking of Ireland's support for America during the revolution

Sean O'Casey says it best: "Every action of our lives touches on some chord that will vibrate in eternity."

The Slacker Diaries Part 22

2011-11-02T20:53:00.000Z

Whilst I fully accept that this blog is a Gardening Blog, in my defence I feel I should point out that I have been doing a bit of gardening and taking photos; I just can't be bothered to upload them... Life of Riley, or what?

Backdated entries for October to follow, if Robbie Savage goes out this week. Noooo...

My Grandparents' Best Man

2011-10-16T00:05:00.009Z

Happy birthday Míċeál.

...As she stepped away from me, and she moved through the fair. And fondly I watched her move here and move there. And then she turned homeward with one star awake, like the swan in the evening moves over the lake...

Lonely Island; Rap vs The Power Ballad

2011-10-06T19:20:00.005Z

"Hi guys. I've written you a big sexy hook for your track."

It starts off innocently enough; a hook; a Yeahhh; a Come On. Then this massive power ballad takes over. Don't you just love The Lonely Island? "You complete me."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GI6CfKcMhjY

Hosta Bressingham Blue

2011-10-02T22:30:00.000Z

Rosa Constance Spry & Zantedeschia Aethiopica Crowborough

2011-10-01T22:13:00.001Z

This most beautifully scented of all David Austin's climbers, mixed in with my MiL's Easter lilies, Zantedeschia aethiopica 'Crowborough' and a repellent zebra striped invasive grass that I so dislike I refuse to remember its name. But just look at that rose; not a speck of blackspot. "Constance Spry" smells like my childhood Tiny Tears.

Part of November's Slacker Diaries Part 22 catch-up posts...

Vera Atkins Memorial Seat Dedication Saturday 24 September 2011

2011-09-23T18:21:00.020Z

I always like to be home from France by mid-August, because I need to be in sunny Derbyshire for the start of the drupe harvest. Buckets and buckets of Warwickshire Drooper plums together with six varieties of apple (ok, so I like apples) and a sack of onions from the Asian food stores in Hyson Green were transformed as if by magic into a year's worth of Delia's finest spiced plum chutney. Recipe and pictures here. My jollies in France this summer meant I missed the tayberries. I'd netted them off at the end of May, of course, but as I just threw the damned netting over the canes in a rather hurried fashion, it really wasn't surprising that I returned to a smug resident blackbird population and ZERO fruit. I didn't make the same mistake with my mulberries, and when they started ripening during September on went the netting and off kept the blackbirds.

And then August filled up with weddings; two each week until last week. Beautiful churches, handsome grooms, delightful brides; chinking flutes and everywhere women guests in fabulous hats and too much gossip. Pane, amore e chi chi chi. This week I went to my first funeral of the year. On and on the year turns. Tomorrow I'm off to the National Arboretum in Staffordshire.

http://www.thenma.org.uk/index.aspx

At 12.30pm the Allied Special Forces Association will dedicate the Vera Atkins memorial seat remembering the women of the Special Operations Executive who lost their lives during WWII. They really did give their tomorrows for my today, and my love affair with France.

"Vera May Atkins was the Intelligence Officer- French Section of the SOE, formed on 22 July 1940 to conduct warfare by means other than direct military engagement. SOE's mission was to encourage and facilitate espionage and sabotage behind enemy lines and to serve as the core of the Auxiliary Units, a British resistance movement.

"As an exile from Romania Vera came to Britain before the start of the Second World War. She joined S.O.E and was soon managing most of the men and women agents who were being sent into France to carry out clandestine work behind enemy lines. This memorial seat is a tribute to her courage and that of her women agents who lost their lives. Her dedication and resolve to go into Europe and find out what had happened to them after the war ended was not well recognised, except by the families of those lost. The tree at the centre of the memorial seat was grown from a seed found in a Fir cone picked up in 2005 from inside the electric fence that bordered Natzweiler Concentration Camp, which is near the village of Moussey, in the Vosges mountains of eastern France.

"The Natzweiller Tree is also a special tribute to S.O.E. agents Andree Borrel, Vera Leigh, Diana Rowden and also to Sonia Olschanezky, who was a locally recruited member of Robin, a sub-circuit of the Prosper resistance network.

"After capture earlier in the year the four women were taken to Natzweiler Concentration Camp on the 6th July 1944 and executed by lethal injection and their bodies burnt in the camp crematorium that very evening. Three had landed in enemy territory to work as clandestine radio operators, couriers and resistance fighters to assist the French Resistance Forces. Eight other woman S.O.E. agents had also been captured and 4 executed at Dachau and 4 at Ravensbruck, including Lilian Rolfe, Denise Bloch, Cecily Lefort and Violette Szabo.

New York

2011-09-11T09:47:00.009Z

Sitting on the New Jersey shoreline, drinking coffee from the early opening Starbucks, and watching the sun come up over Manhattan. We left the same day to fly to Vegas en route to the Grand Canyon. 2008.

Gladiolus Plum Tart

2011-09-04T11:38:00.000Z

Summer Picnics With Elizabeth David

2011-08-19T16:50:00.002Z

"Not long before the war I was staying with friends in Marseille. One Saturday night a picnic was arranged for the next day with some American acquaintances; it was agreed the two parties should proceed in their own cars to a little bay outside Marseille, and that we should each bring our own provisions. On Sunday morning I and my friends indulged in a delicious hour of shopping in the wonderful market of the rue de Rome, buying olives, anchovies, salame sausages, patés, yards of bread, smoked fish, fruit and cheese. With a provision of cheap red wine we bundled the food int the car and set off, stopping now and again for a drink; so that we arrived at our rendezvous well disposed to appreciate the sun, the sea and the scent of wild herbs and Mediterranean pines."

Elizabeth David

Of Pageants and Picnics

Plage du Guesclin

2011-08-13T09:10:00.002Z

If you want to build a ship, don't herd people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900-1944)

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_du_Guesclin

On Early Morning Weeding And William Blake

2011-08-12T08:37:00.001Z

One of the most unexpected consequences of finishing the steps in the kitchen garden is my daily weeding expeditions, usually early in the morning, invariably with a cup of tea in hand. I finally have "access all areas" and just love to begin my day with a trot around the beds and borders, weeding as I go.

I have a few nettles under the hedge, some docks and tons of that blasted Cardamine hirsuta or hairy bittercress. It's such a small, innocuous looking plant; a tiny rosette of leaves topped with simple, pretty white flowers. Oh do not be fooled gentle gardener, by this pretty little plant. It may be a short-lived annual, from seed to seed takes about a month, but it overwinters successfully, just waiting for you to start turning over the soil in spring. It spreads rapidly by the sudden and explosive release of seed heads, usually when you've got the plant between your hand ready to lift. Now you have thousands of seeds scattered... and within days the damned things are sprouting and the whole sorry life cycle begins again. Surely Blake wasn't thinking only of his rose when he wrote;

"O Rose thou art sick.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy."

Some people actually eat hairy bittercress. Beggars belief.

http://www.gardenersworld.com/how-to/problem-solving/weeds-hairy-bitter-cress/

And Was Jerusalem Builded Here?

2011-08-10T10:38:00.001Z

Picture tweeted by PC Stanley West Midlands Police.

Look how young they are. 12 hour shifts, many of them unpaid Police Specials, all of them facing the next day at work for their daytime employers, many of them graduates with Student Loans, whilst their regular colleagues face redundancy and slashed budgets and insufficient equipment. And no, Dave, there aren't enough riot shields to go round.

SNAFU-in-Chief Dave does holidays whilst England burns.

Photo from Sunday Mirror

If I Just Lay Here, Would You Lie With Me And Just Forget The World?

2011-08-07T19:55:00.000Z

Back home is sunny Derbyshire. Although it's raining right now, a little after sunset, and by the look of things, my garden needs it. Cooling, low-lying clouds envelop the valleys and shrink my world to more immediate concerns. The roses have come with their second flush, the lilies are all about to pop and a couple of perfectly beautiful baby-cheek pink lilies are already giving up their delicious scent to the warm garden air. The pinks are pretty much done, my most favourite rose Tess of the D'Urbervilles is climbing sweetly through the Akebia Quinata and the Merlot vine, nudging the espalier pears towards the sun and autumn sweetness. The climbing Borlotti beans are already showing, the sweet peas struggling against my natural inability to grow them successfully, and everywhere my kitchen garden looks parched just waiting, waiting for the reviving drenching of midsummer rainfall. Rainfall at this time of year always always makes me think of that most perfect, perfect scene from Lady Chatterley. And of you.

And still the rain falls, splishying splashing onto the window ledges through open windows as I give my house the airing its needed for so many months. I'm home, and listening to these tracks first heard this summer on Radio Caroline.

On The Graduation Of The Harry Potter Generation

2011-07-16T18:42:00.004Z

It wasn't 300£ for the five books... it was nearly 300£ for ONE book. I now have a greater appreciation of my daughter's growing manipulative skills where her mother's Shock And Awe tactics are likely to be deployed.

She graduated magnificently. My little angel looked utterly, utterly fabulous; long, long legs; long, long hair; discrete but smart clothes underneath her Ede & Ravenscroft. And I wasn't the only parent marvelling at their daughter's voice squealing with delight, "OMG it's like being at Hogwarts!"

"...At the college we were met by a wall of academic women: young ones and old ones and in-between ones, all gowned, some in their scarlet, and the gossip and chatter and disputation and anecdotes, and the smell and sight and sound of clever, focused, happy women which is the nearest we'll get to heaven on earth."

Michael Bywater

The Independent on Sunday

28 March 1999;

On The Edge Of Glory With Lady Gardener

2011-07-05T19:07:00.005Z

I've spent the day with an HB pencil, my trusty calculator and pages of columns of figures. Some people actually do this sort of thing, from choice, for a living. Actually, I quite like it, especially the part of the totting up where I cross-referenced a fat bonus with a due date. And right now I'm singing along with Lady Gaga. You can too, and because you really oughtn't to be exposed to her VEVO version, I've enclosed the following fan/lyrics version...

I'm on the edge, The edge (6x)

Also this; Mercy Boo informs me that no-one says "Oh My God" or texts OMG any more. It's OMLG. Outrageous.

... Salut Maman, êtes-vous occupé?

2011-07-03T22:41:00.008Z

MBED: Salut maman, êtes-vous occupé?

Maman: Non ma chérie, je suis juste se prélassant dans le jardin. Qu'est-ce que tu fais là?

MBED: Je viens de recevoir une lettre de la bibliothèque uni me disant que si je ne paie pas mes amendes de bibliothèque par 30 Juin je ne peux pas diplômés.

Maman: Payer les amendes. Combien sont-ils?

MBED: Eh bien, ils ont été £1.60 quand ils m'ont envoyé la première lettre sur le sixième de Juin.

Maman: Que sont-ils maintenant?

MBED: £12.

Maman: Payer les amendes.

MBED: Ils ont dit aussi que j'ai 5 livres encore sortir et j'ai parlé à des bibliothécaires, ce matin, et ils ont dit si je n'ai pas les ramener d'ici jeudi je vais avoir à les acheter.

Maman: Achetez-les (en pensant combien peut être 5 livres?)

MBED: Cela coûterait près de £300. Aussi je pense que je les ai emballé avec mes trucs que vous avez pris plus au début de Juin.

Maman: Faire note mentale pour vérifier les coûts du vol contre le coût de précieux livres des bibliothèques universitaires ...

MBED: Aussi je viens de lire le prospectus des diplômes, et il dit que si je ne commandez pas ma robe pour le 20 Juin je ne peux pas diplômés.

(A ce point, je pense qu'il vaut la peine d'expliquer à mes lecteurs charmant, spirituel et urbain que j'ai développées au fil des ans un masque ressemblant, le visage insensible pour toutes les fois professionnellement et personnellement quand les mauvaises nouvelles doit être donné ou pris. Je appelle mon visage Réponse de Botox. Ce n'était pas un de ces moments.)

Maman: QUOI! (Ronde 1 à maman ... choc et effroi)

MBED: Je sais, je ne sais pas quoi faire. (Ronde 2 à Mercy Boo ... jeter l'auto sur son épée)
Maman: Laissez-le avec moi.

(Because my French farming neighbours wanted to hear this in the vernacular... oh ha, ha, ha!)

Picture The Scene: Imagine The Language

2011-07-03T16:49:00.002Z

Picture the scene; your favourite Lady Gardener is lolling about in the garden at our house in France feeling relaxed and happy and terribly smug. I've been in France since the beginning of June, and it's now Tuesday 28 June and the sun is shining; the birds are chirping and our farming neighbours are careering around sifting new potatoes from their sandy fields. I've been to Cora for a little shop for the next few days and had lunch in the restaurant there, and am now back home, with an espresso and a Cóte D'Or mignonnette, when the phone rings. It's Merci Beaucoup Enfant Deux, phoning from England.

MBED: Hi mum, are you busy?

Mum: No darling, I'm just lolling about in the garden. What are you up to?

MBED: I've just had a letter from the uni library telling me that if I don't pay my library fines by 30 June I can't graduate.

Mum: Pay the fines. How much are they?

MBED: Well, they were £1.60 when they sent me the first letter on the sixth of June.

Mum: What are they now?

MBED: £12.

Mum: Pay the fines.

MBED: They also said I have 5 books still out and I've spoken to the librarians this morning and they said if I don't bring them back by Thursday I'll have to buy them.

Mum: Buy them (thinking how much can 5 books be?)

MBED: That would cost nearly £300. Also I think I packed them with my stuff you took over at the beginning of June.

Mum: Making mental note to check cost of flight against cost of precious university library books...

MBED: Also I've just been reading the graduation prospectus, and it says if I don't order my gown by the 20th June I can't graduate.

(At this point, I feel it is worthwhile explaining to my charming, witty and urbane readers that I have over the years developed a mask-like, unresponsive face for those times professionally and personally when bad news has to be given or taken. I call it my Botox Response Face. This wasn't one of those times.)

Mum: WHAT! (Round 1 to mum... shock and awe)

MBED: I know, I don't know what to do. (Round 2 to Mercy Boo... throwing self on her sword)

Mum: Leave it with me.

Google up the uni library then ring and pay fines with my flexible friend. Get the closing times for rest of week. Google up the airline and Thank You Jesus there's a seat Thursday afternoon, and with a hire car I'll make it to the library before it closes. Google up the graduation prospectus and follow the link to Ede & Ravenscroft.

Do you know why Ede and Ravenscroft, London's oldest tailor and robe maker has been in business since 1689? Because it has an excellent business model that requires universities to enforce strict deadlines with their graduating students so it has the vast bulk of graduation orders already in the bag when the inevitable surge of parental orders appears post-deadline, and its website doesn't crash. Genius.

On Pumpkins And The End Of An Obsession

2011-05-31T22:07:00.004Z

My obsession with buying wooden kitchen chairs has come to an end. At precisely 8.30am on Bank Holiday Monday, I realised that I just couldn't be bothered hoking and poking around in all those little straight bits and pieces and the arching backs with a little paintbrush. It's taken me roughly 25 minutes per coat, per chair; three different paintbrushes for the three colours (I can't be bothered to wash and dry brushes between colours); a six hour wait between coats with three paintbrushes wrapped in clingfilm (I can't be bothered to wash and dry brushes between coats); and a visit from an odd neighbour (let's call him Santa's Little Munchkin) who insisted on chatting to me whilst I finished off the second coats. That I had my back to him for most of his visit was rudeness itself on my part, for which I was punished when I finally stood up and turned around to see him absent-mindedly scraping dog poo off the underside of his shoe over my Moroccan mint bed.

I'm planning to invite him round for mint tea.

Or kill him.

I don't think that's a figure of speech; it's an actual threat to kill.

And I have nearly 200 pumpkin and squash plants to shift by next week.

Why Stalking Can Pay Off

2011-05-29T22:33:00.000Z

Only joking. Although like most Virgos (that includes you Fiona,) there's a fine line between being terribly interested in a subject and being obsessed with it, and from there it's a short hop, skip and a jump to stalking Helen Yemm and cluttering up your house ready for a visit from Kim and Aggie. My current interest (bordering on the obsessive) is buying wooden kitchen chairs. It began ordinarily enough with a swan-backed elm Ercol chair, which I have in my kitchen near the radiator. Then I clapped eyes on another Ercol chair outside a charity shop on my way to Sainsbury's. Then I found another and then got a set of four for a fiver.

I'm planning to paint them dove grey, pale cream and other lovely washed-out colours and use them as garden chairs, since I'm now at an age when fabric-backed director's chairs just don't give sufficient back support for an afternoon spent feasting and chatting around my garden table. Billy Connolly does a great sketch about becoming an age when you can't get in and out of a chair without growling and groaning with your back... I used to laugh at that sketch; now I understand it.

Helen Yemm is opening her garden in Wadhurst, East Sussex, on Sunday 5 June as part of the Wadhurst Open Gardens 2011 weekend. Check out Helen's blog for details and tickets etc. I'm seriously thinking of going, if I get some assurances that Helen hasn't called the police department; got some marksmen...

Making The Greatest Advert... Ever

2011-05-23T21:16:00.003Z

The kicker is the final, triumphant sweep of those little hands as the doll levitates. Genius. Pure genius.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tM3s37fZZts&feature=relmfu

The Greatest Advert... Ever

2011-05-22T21:44:00.006Z

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R55e-uHQna0

An English Country Churchyard In Mid-May

2011-05-18T22:45:00.001Z

Off to meet girlfriends for coffee and a trot around the Vulgate Bible exhibition at Southwell Minster, Nottinghamshire. Horse Chestnut.

Flagstone path and daisies.

Stained glass at Southwell.

Home Again & The Difference Between Summer & Winter Squash

2011-05-17T09:16:00.001Z

I'm knackered. I've worked like a slave this spring mostly ego-stroking and hand-holding (things I find terrifically difficult), and shuttling back and forth between airports (which I love). Last night I threw my laundry on to wash, opened a bottle of Gavi and sat out in my garden and just looked at the greenery. I further stoked my sense of well being by taking something out of the freezer and by the time it pinged I knew I'd be fine.

My garden has survived its sporadic attention / neglect quite well. The carrot seedlings are all through, the radishes too. All my delishy climbing beans and French beans are all through and looking very lush and eager to climb. The tomatoes are small and look a little on the "struggling" side, but we're still in May so there's time enough for a growth spurt. All the apple, pear and plum blossoms have developed into lovely little fruitlets. The Merlot vine has gone bananas after its prolonged freezing under the winter snows, and my lovely tayberry and blackberry canes are rampaging over their wires and up into the hedges and trees.

The pumpkins and squashes are a bit hit and miss, probably due to the less than ideal, erratic attention I've given them since early May, and the age of some of the seeds. Never mind; over 48 Butternuts have germinated, and at least 7 Turk's Turbans are already stretching upwards. I've even managed to grow three Harlequin seedlings from seeds I scraped out and saved from the parent squash I bought in April 2006 at Sainsburys. All it took to break a 5-year dormancy was a good soaking after planting and then a fortnight's neglect in the heated glasshouse. I've had similar success with my summer squash and courgettes. Here's the laundry list;
Black Beauty
Grisette de Provence
Patty Pan
Yellow Scallop
Golden Zucchini
Di Nozzi

What's the difference between a summer and a winter squash? It pretty much boils down to keeping qualities. Summer squashes have generally thin, edible skins and soft flesh and seeds (think of all those watery courgettes); winter squash have generally harder skins, firm flesh and hard seeds (think of the real threat of amputation each time you attempt to halve a butternut.)

Quod Erat Demonstrandum

2011-05-04T21:00:00.004Z

What makes women so perfect is that we are always right. And because I'm a woman, I'm always right (except when I'm kidding myself, of course.) In August last year, Hilary Clinton announced the Middle East peace talks... Yeah right, another round of US inspired peace talks going nowhere, as many people thought.

At that time, as YOU well remember, I correctly stated that Hilary may be leading, but Senator George Mitchell would be in the wings, working his magic. For all Irish and Ulster people, Sen. George Mitchell holds a dear and special place in our hearts. He brought us hope, and helped us bring forth our future. I advised you throw your weight behind the Peace Process. You went off in a strop... nothing new there then.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/palestinianauthority/8492932/Hamas-and-Fatah-defy-Israel-with-power-sharing-deal.html

But I was right. Of course. Another step forward, another step towards peace. I think all Irish and Ulster men and women agree that without David Ervine, there would have been no Good Friday Agreement, because he led loyalists to the table. Great courage, great commitment, great far-sighted vision.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2007/jan/08/obituaries.northernireland

"I believe there’s no such thing as a conflict that can’t be ended. They’re created and sustained by human beings. They can be ended by human beings. No matter how ancient the conflict, no matter how hateful, no matter how hurtful, peace can prevail." Sen. George Mitchell.

The Arab Spring continues to blossom, fingers crossed.

There Is No Bread Without Freedom

2011-05-01T10:00:00.005Z

June 1979 Pope John Paul II arrived in Warsaw, Poland in the first year of his papacy. He celebrated Mass in Victory Square before 300,000 people, ending with a Pentecostal plea:

''I cry from all the depths of this millennium: Let your Spirit descend. Let your Spirit descend, and renew the face of the earth, the face of this land.''

In August 1980 a strike in the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk gave birth to the Solidarity trade union. It was a movement for workers' rights, but it had taken on a Catholic iconography. The barricades were decorated with pictures of John Paul II, wooden crosses, and images of the Black Madonna. The Pope and his message of human dignity had emboldened millions of Poles to express a yearning for freedom

"The 10th of September 1989, when the Hungarian borders opened for Germans arriving from the GDR as well, was a historic milestone for both our states and peoples. On that day, it was Hungary who took the first brick out of the Berlin Wall."

Helmut Kohl

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/homilies/2011/documents/hf_ben-xvi_hom_20110501_beatificazione-gpii_en.html

And on 4 January 2011 the Arab Spring began...

Tulipa Angelique & A Sleepy Bee

2011-05-01T09:32:00.001Z

After yesterday's festivities and high jinks the hordes slept in until midday. Unbelievably, I slept until after 11am, an almost unheard of event, and one worth recording with my camera. I'm not entirely sure how I've achieved the following pictures, but I think I may be on the verge of taking close-ups sans blur... now that really is a miracle.

"Double late tulips are sometimes called paeony-flowered varieties. Their blooms are fully double and crammed with petals so that the overall outline is one of a wide cup rather than a typically tight tulip shape. 'Angelique' is outstanding the blooms are a soft blush pink that deepens with age, with a rich apple blossom ink developing at the edges, and green markings on the outside. Like all double tulips, it needs some shelter to prevent wind and rain dashing the heavy blooms. Planting close together with hidden support in the centre of the group is a great help. The Royal Horticultural Society has given it its Award of Garden Merit (AGM)."

Wedding Bells & Marriage Vows

2011-04-29T11:00:00.006Z

"I urge you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, your spiritual worship.

Do not conform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect.

"Let love be sincere; hate what is evil, hold on to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; anticipate one another in showing honour.

Do not grow slack in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord.

Rejoice in hope, endure in affliction, persevere in prayer.

Contribute to the needs of the holy ones, exercise hospitality.

Bless those who persecute you, bless and do not curse them.

Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.

Have the same regard for one another; do not be haughty but associate with the lowly; do not be wise in your own estimation.

Do not repay anyone evil for evil; be concerned for what is noble in the sight of all.

If possible, on your part, live at peace with all."

St Paul's Letter to the Romans: 12 1-2, 9-18

Image from Cox & Cox

Easter Sunday & Pablo Neruda's The Captain's Verses

2011-04-24T08:29:00.002Z

I temporarily abandoned my duvet this week in favour of vintage monogrammed cotton sheets picked up for next to nothing at my favourite junk shop. The sheets are almost as heavy as my duvet, but are such a delight to sleep under these recent warm nights. Imagine waking up this morning wrapped in white sheets with the dawn chorus carolling around my consciousness. Heavenly.

The hordes began arriving for Easter yesterday afternoon, and soon we were laughing and yahooing over cups of tea and endless, endless cakes and treats. No chocolate though, as most of us gave it up for Lent, together with "chocolate-cheese-chips", the usual alcohol, walking the bloody dogs (we screamed with laughter at this one) and "not saying the rosary every night;" to which we all nodded and thought we should have done this too... One had even given up saying the F-word, and as the F-word is merely another adjective for someone born and raised in the North, this was indeed a magnificent achievement worthy of a very large glass of Bush after lunch today.

Flowers are banned from churches during Lent and make a spectacular appearance after the Easter Vigil on Saturday night. It is one of the loveliest parts of Mass on Easter Sunday. I try to operate a similar ban at home, so as soon as it was light this morning I was up and out into the kitchen garden, cup of tea in hand, looking for spring flowers for my Easter feast table. Photos to follow.

And always at Easter my thoughts turn eastwards to my homeland.

To war zones.

To you.

"...and that there where I am,

under rain or

underfire,

my love, I am waiting for you,

I wait for you in the harshest desert

and by the flowering lemon tree,

in every land where life exists,

where spring is born,

my love, I wait for you.

If they say to you: "That man

does not love you," remember

that my feet are alone in this night, and they

search for the sweet, tiny feet I adore...

...and your soul which I awoke

so that it should keep on singing

until the end of life..."

Palm Sunday & Tulipa Golden Apeldoorn

2011-04-17T09:12:00.036Z

I've come to realise over the years that time spent idling in my garden is not time wasted. When I stand at the french windows in the kitchen, staring out into my garden, invariably with a cup of tea in hand, I am mindlessly absorbing horticultural details of great importance. Early last winter I planted a drift of Golden Apeldoorn tulips into a frost-prone shady part of my kitchen garden. I'd previously had a spreading patch of Solomon's Seal there, but had the sense at last to shift it under the hedge where it's now starting into flower. That left me with an empty space and a large packet of yellow tulips to throw in somewhere...

These tulips began pushing their way through the soil with their early spring companions, but it was not until they began to flower that the sheer genius of their positioning became clear. I'd planted them in the spot that catches the first rays of sunshine mid-morning. This little patch of buttery yellow deliciousness lights up each day, heralding another sunny day in the garden.

"Each morning he wakes me to hear,

To listen like a disciple."

Isaiah 50:4-7

Shady Areas Under The Hedge (With Corrections)

2011-04-15T11:52:00.002Z

~~Hosta "Whirlwind"~~ As yet unidentified hosta beginning to unfurl in a shady bed underneath the Clematis "Armandii" Apple SomethingOrOther, together with some Oxlips. I know this hosta isn't Whirlwind because I've just noticed the real thing unfurling in a large pot in another part of the garden, and the leaf colour and markings are wholly different. Picture to follow.

Some common Solomon's Seal (Polygonatum multiflorum) tucked under the deciduous hedge with I think, some emerging English blue bells and a few blind tulips. Hedgey and lovely.

Prunus Warwickshire Drooper In Spring Sunshine

2011-04-14T11:39:00.000Z

Though on the sign is it written

"Do not pluck these blossoms"

It is useless against the wind

Which cannot read

Japanese poem, author to be attributed

Delft Blue Hyacinths & Cowslips

2011-04-13T11:34:00.000Z

On Being Dapper Happy

2011-04-12T19:34:00.003Z

"My father dapper happy in a new dark suit

So glad she said yes."

Isn't that just wonderful? Dapper happy. This may become my phrase of 2011. Its author, Anne Higgins, may be found here http://annesbirdpoems.blogspot.com/

After a bit of a lie-in on Saturday morning, I spent much of the weekend in the garden in the spanky warm sunshine. I finally finished edging the path under the laundry flight path. As part of this process I lifted the height of the pavers by about 6" and now enjoy an elevated view of both my laundry and the garden. With sharp and crisp edges comes the desire to plant along the gravel boards with some flippy floppy edging. That's a technical horticultural term, and I'm thinking something technically edible (even I draw the line at eating anything upon which I've trodden) with a powerful scent. Thyme, I suppose, but I much prefer basil. Whilst I imagine a flippy floppy edging of basil, here are some pictures.

On A Lazy Start To The Weekend

2011-04-09T09:00:00.001Z

Yesterday turned out to be the warmest day of the year thus far, and that meant barbe time. Fat, charred rib-eyes, still bleeding after five minutes resting under butter papers (I know, I know.) Then some Triple-D inspired home-made burgers. Finally some sardines thrown on the barbe as the sun began to set across the western edges of the garden. And too many bottles of Prosecco and chinking flutes. We sat around the garden and talked and talked and laughed. Happy days.

And this morning I awoke with the dawn chorus and opened the windows to let in the chilling morning air. Then hopped back to bed to sleep until eight.

From Cox and Cox

On Crime Scenes & The End Of Term Part 2

2011-04-06T20:29:00.000Z

Less than 24hrs after Mercy Boo arrived home, look who turned up...

On Crime Scenes And The End Of Term

2011-04-05T14:06:00.000Z

Merci Beaucoup Enfant Deux arrives home this afternoon for the Easter hols. Her room is tidy, calming, restful and pretty empty. Exactly 10 minutes after she arrives through the front door, it will look like the ransacked remains of a burgled bedroom. I don't know how she does it. I often wonder if she has spring-loaded her suitcases, and set them with timers to explode right on cue.

On Sowing Seeds And Dreaming Of The Year Ahead

2011-04-03T18:10:00.001Z

March belted past in a blur of airports, motorways, security checks, meetings, tense negotiations, hard work and mental exhaustion. Physically I'm in the best shape I've been for months and my liver's positively blushing with good health and sobriety. Lent and a big contract does that. Early yesterday morning I threw all my laundry on to wash then stepped out into my garden just before six to give it all a thorough inspection.

Spring has sprung in my absence and all the Delft Blue hyacinths are through although I had to wait until the afternoon for them to warm up and release their scent. The cowslips and oxlips are flooding across the borders like a perfectly happy sunshiny smiling tsunami. The drupes are all blossomed up and the Muscari and early Narcissi are through. All the ~~Spring Green~~ Purissima and Golden Apeldoorn tulips are through; the Red Apeldoorns are almost ready to open too. The Iris are starting into strong growth and the Paeonia Karl Rosenfield is about a foot high already. Even the garlic, still waiting patiently to be planted, is off to a flying start. Spring has most definitely sprung.

And this afternoon, I was back in my garden with the sun at my back sowing seeds for the year ahead. Here's the laundry list;

Giant Californian Asters, or Reine Maguerite as I bought them at Cora last autumn

Rose Trémiére Fiesta Time, ibid.

Rose Trémiére, violette, ibid.

Shedloads of climbing Borlotti Lingua di Fuoco, from Franchi

Climbing French beans Santa Anna, ibid.

Basil,

Mais multicolore, or Indian corn, bought last autumn from SuperU

Far too many tomatoes including;

Roma - Italian variety, lovely little plum and huge cropper
Costoluto Fiorentino - huge misshapen beefsteak with great flavour and eye appeal

Marmande - another whopper beefsteak great for field growing

I've buckets more to seeds to sow, including all my odd bids of dried tomato seeds, far too many climbing beans, all the summer and autumn squashes and let's not forget the herbs and salads. I love coming home.

Finally At Home In My Own Bed With The Garden

2011-04-02T19:50:00.003Z

I worked ferociously hard at school and just adored each Year's English texts; always one Shakespeare, one other British poet, one modern British novel and two pre-20th century novels. Year after year I read my way through the best of British literature, mostly on public transport to and from school. I was less enamoured by Latin, Greek and French literature, but we can't all be clever dicks, now can we? At the start of each English Lit lesson Mrs L--- would hand out our homework with a clipped commentary for the benefit of the listening class. My persistent use of adverbs gave my first Rochester essay, she said, a "magazine" style. The sarcasm came freely.

I am reminded of this every month when The Garden drops through my letterbox with another article by Roy Lancaster. Some months I manage to read as much as half his article before I throw it down in annoyance.

I'm sorry Mrs L--- for the torture I inflicted upon you.

http://www.rhs.org.uk/Plants/RHS-Publications/Journals/The-Garden

Acting Sergeant Dipprasad Pun

2011-03-25T17:53:00.021Z

http://bfbs.com/news/people/kaija-larke?page=0%2C0%2C0%2C0%2C0%2C12

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/mobile/uk-12854492

"A Gurkha soldier who single-handedly fought off up to 30 Taliban militants in Afghanistan, even using his gun's tripod when he ran out of bullets, is today awarded Britain's second highest medal for bravery.

Acting Sergeant Dipprasad Pun used up all of his ammunition and resorted to using his machine gun tripod to repel an attack in Afghanistan in September. The 31-year-old Gurkha, of Ashford, Kent, said he was a "lucky guy" and very proud to get the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross, BBC reported. A total of 136 UK servicemen and women are being honoured, four posthumously.

Pun was on sentry duty at a checkpoint near Babaji, in Afghanistan's Helmand province, on September 17 last year when he spotted insurgents trying to plant a bomb beside the front gate. Moments later, militants opened fire on the compound from all sides. For more than a quarter of an hour, alone on the roof, Gurkha Pun fought off an onslaught from rocket-propelled grenades and AK-47s.

In total, he fired more than 400 rounds, launched 17 grenades and detonated a mine. At one point, when an insurgent tried to climb up to his position, his rifle failed and he resorted to throwing his machine gun tripod to knock him down. Pun, who is originally from the Nepalese village of Bima, believed at the time that there were up to 30 attackers. The citation on his medal - which is only one level below the Victoria Cross - states that he saved the lives of three comrades who were inside the checkpoint at the time."

So how bad a day do you think you've had?

The last word belongs with the Himalayan Times;

“Pun could never know how many enemies were attempting to overcome his position, but he sought them out from all angles despite the danger, consistently moving towards them to reach the best position of attack. Pun’s father and grandfather were also in the British Army."

The Talented Mr Ripley

2011-03-19T22:07:00.003Z

For nearly three weeks I have been reading the tortuous biography of Patricia Highsmith, author of the above. At one stage I'd been reading for over a week and she was still 27. I don't read biographies, and I certainly don't read autobiographies, but I'd always had rather a thing for The Talented Mr Ripley which I read between shifts in the 1980's and which caused me to wake up with nightmares a couple of times each year since thinking I had murdered someone. Patricia Highsmith; expert at psychologically damaging her readers. Thanks Pat.

My best friend adores biographies and she especially adores autobiographies. She's read everything by everyone who has ever appeared between the covers of Hello! magazine. She can describe the childhood traumas and marriage details of every vacuous trollop who hired a ghost writer and committed to print their blathering, self-obsessed meanderings. She loves it. The last time we were on holiday together she brought Jordan with her. What can I say. Part of me thinks she's got holiday reading taped; you only live once, after all...

Andrew Wilson's book is tortuous because it is so beautifully researched. It's rather like trying to eat an enormously rich chocolate cake or reading the poetry of WB Yeats. Eventually you have to throw the thing down and admit defeat.

If I don't finish this book tonight, I'll have to drag it to the airport again tomorrow, and as CCTV images are probably stored for decades, the people checking the images will classify me as a problematic reader.

"Here's that slow reader again," they'll say. "Still reading the same book."

"Do you think she's a bit thick?"

"Probably. Why else would she take so long to finish it?"

On The End of a Long Week

2011-03-11T19:47:00.000Z

"Is there anything you'd like, mum?"

"Anything over 40 per cent my darling..."

Iris Katharine Hodgkin

2011-03-08T16:42:00.002Z

Val Bourne describes these beauties thus: "As subtle as a hand-painted paperweight. This early dwarf iris needs close inspection if you are to enjoy the silver-blue petals streaked, veined and spotted in sea-green and yellow."

My acquisitive little heart longed for this iris for so many years, but I didn't have the steps until now. Katharine Hodgkin needs sharp drainage and a jolly good baking over the summer months, so from the drawing board stage of this garden I've planned to have a crock pot of these set into the eastern edge of the top steps where they'd catch most sun all year. I'd prepped this little staging post so well, even going to the trouble of positioning an empty pot of the correct size into the "temporary garden steps" to check the angle of the sun at monthly (and weekly from March onwards) intervals to ensure the correct height vs. sunlight/shade. Top steps would also enable me to get a really good, close look at these Iris too. Yep, got it all worked out and perfectly positioned.

What I hadn't considered was the draining effect of the hoggin on this delicately coloured Iris. I need a darker backdrop to properly show the beauty of these petals; hoggin just won't do. Elsewhere in the kitchen garden I threw in some vibrant purple Iris from a B&Q multi-pack that looked stunning last month against the deeply manured and enriched soil, and which would look even better against my hoggin-topped steps. Katharine needs an autumn move into the beds, I'm afraid, to give the backdrop these Iris really deserve.

The Slacker Diaries Part 3

2011-02-15T16:01:00.000Z

I have been engaged in some interesting gardening this winter, mostly photography. That I haven't bothered to upload evidence here, is really due to my natural tendency towards idleness when it comes to my camera. This morning, I thought I'd better upload everything in case I dropped it again into the pond... backdated photos to follow.

Spring Bulbs In Washed Food Tins From Cora

2011-02-09T18:50:00.003Z

Spring bulbs in washed food tins from Cora? I bet you thought this sounded crazy back in October, but look at the results this the weekend. Just lovely, a splash of memories from my French kitchen in the middle of an English winter.

Crocus Cream Beauty On A Sunny Windowsill

2011-01-25T16:29:00.002Z

Crocus Cream Beauty, planted into builder's sand at the beginning of October last year. I found these coronation mugs in my favourite junk shop, and bought several for about 50p each. I just knew they were the perfect size and colour for this fragrant crocus.

Bakewell Royal British Legion Garden Of Remembrance

2011-01-23T17:02:00.019Z

And just in case my charming, witty and urbane readers think that Bakewell is a bit dreary, this! The owners are certainly covering all the bases.

Frost Damaged Terracotta Pots

2011-01-21T16:16:00.001Z

I've had a pair of these beauties for years, filled with standard roses (which I loathe). Last autumn mid-prune, I finally became so incensed with the rampant blackspot I reached down and hacked the stem in half. Then reached over to it's twin and decapitated that one, too. The sense of relief was wonderful; at last the bloody things were gone. I burned the roses, emptied out both pots and gave them a good scrubbing with bleached water, then left them standing empty over the winter. I think this year the prolonged snow and freezing temperatures overwhelmed them, and my beloved "bee hive" pots are ruined. Maybe it was only the contents holding them together.

January Gardening, At Last

2011-01-09T22:04:00.002Z

It all began yesterday, with a trip to the butcher's to buy a sack of potatoes. I'd planned to buy some of his award-winning sausages too, but only had a tenner on me and knew I wouldn't be able to limit my sausages to £2.50's worth so didn't bother. I rather like his flirty manner conducted in that bluff Derbyshire fashion; no smiling, just a lot of unnecessary eye contact. I noticed this the first time I came to his shop bringing my Henckel kitchen knives for sharpening. He unwrapped the tea towels then looked up at me with that unblinking stare and said by way of introduction, "These are the worst knives you can buy."

On Saturday morning he was advising all his female customers to put the laundry off 'til tomorrow (see why he's my butcher?) because it was forecast to be ten degrees and a bit blowy. I mentally rearranged my weekend there and then. This morning I was up and out into the garden just after breakfast. The wind had picked up overnight and cleared all the fog and mizzle that's been hanging around in our part of sunny Derbyshire. For the first time in what seems like weeks I can see across the fields and valleys to the neighbouring villages, and my garden just shone under direct sunlight. Shadows at last in the kitchen garden.

In early November the sudden onset of prolonged freezing weather caused all my fruit trees and hedges to shed leaves pretty much overnight. With the snow finally melted, all the paths in the kitchen garden and the lawns elsewhere need to be raked over and cleared. This took a couple of hours and I remembered to use a couple of gravel boards on the lawns to keep compression to a minimum. I'd love to burn the leaves in the first bonfire of the new year but they were too wet and went under the hedges instead.

The soil has finally defrosted and I can get a fork into the beds and borders. Just as well really, as I'd bought more Pheasant's Eye Narcissus in the pre-Christmas sales and today feels like the first opportunity to bury the booty. They usually flower in May, so I'm banking on four months growth to make up for their late planting. I stopped mid-morning for a chat with my farming neighbours, then cracked on. There's a madness that can take over when you've been kept out of your garden by bad weather. What starts with raking leaves and planting bulbs can develop pretty quickly into weeding, hacking and trowelling. You know those bits of litter that blow into your garden, bits of crisp bags or chocolate wrappers, odd supermarket receipts? I found all sorts of bits and pieces together with old plastic plant labels and even a yogurt pot. Where the hell did that come from? Never mind; my garden looks brighter, tidier and I feel knackered.

I'm currently saving for a set of Giesser butcher's knives...

On Why Some Friends Are To Be Avoided

2011-01-06T18:50:00.026Z

You know who you are. And since we all sat around your table at the weekend, eating cheese and drinking Marsala and discussing the appalling floods in Queensland, all I can think about is clearing off to Australia to work there for the next 5 years. Mercy Boo graduates this summer, and my direct parenting will come to a close.

Now I don't do "sunbathing" and the genetic inheritance that is my skin tone demands factor 50 or off season jollies, which could be a problem, but why go to the beach when I could spend my non-working hours at Bill's? Fusion food here I come. Possibly.

http://www.spiders.com.au/

Rosa Eglantyne Against Snow

2011-01-06T18:20:00.010Z

The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was
Spawning snow and pink roses against it

Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:
World is suddener than we fancy it.

World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
The drunkenness of things being various.

And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world
Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes -
On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of one's hands -
There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.

Louis MacNeice, Snow

Choisya Ternata Aztec Pearl

2011-01-06T17:18:00.002Z

On Reading Into The Year Ahead

2011-01-02T21:46:00.000Z

I don't make New Year's resolutions. Complete waste of time. I'm a Virgo; I make lists instead. After parking up the parental taxi on Friday night I hopped into bed with a pile of books and luxuriated in the prospect of reading my way through the year ahead. I've a precious selection of fiction, but most of the books in my house are reference and textbooks including a good selection of horticultural pornography.

The best horti-porn combines few colour pictures with endless, sparklingly fabulous text. Anything by Monty Don ought to be sold from the top shelf at Waterstone's. Helen Yemm is so specialized her agent daren't peddle her via bookshop signings; her fans are considered too dangerous for open gatherings. We include amongst our numbers parents of undergraduates, after all.

Listen to this example from Anna Pavord's Plant Partners;

"No garden can have too many tulips. It is one of the few infallible rules in gardening... Tulips are natural companions for wallflowers, and although wallflowers are often badly used, they are never hackneyed. Their rich tawny colours consort well with both tulips and daffodils and the smell, when a warmish shaft of sun tickles their scent glands, is a glorious antidote to the sloth brought on by winter hibernation. A late spring garden should be swooning with more scents than a seraglio and one sniff of a wallflower can open up a whole Pandora's box of emotions: rows, reconciliations, a particular meal, a birthday party. A garden without smells would be a hamstrung thing."

I classify all my cookbooks as reference books too. I've got most of Elizabeth David; Jane Grigson; Sophie Grigson's Vegetables; lots of Jamie; ALL of Delia; some Rick Stein; a few bits of Claudia Roden and Jill Norman (of course); Margaret Costa's Four Seasons; Hugh Feathery-Walking-Stick's Meat; a bit of Bill Granger; a couple of Tessa Kiros (from which I have never cooked just looked at in a daze); and some early Nigel Slater. I used to love reading and cooking from his early stuff, then bought his Kitchen Diaries. I read with pleasure every entry until I came to "Boxing Day" and his mealy mouthed description of ridding himself of yet another jar of someone's pickled harvest. Oh really? The irony of this statement is clearly lost on its author, and I have disliked him ever since. Managed to catch Toast over the holidays? We watched it screaming with laughter at the hackneyed dialogue and thoroughly repellent characterisation of women. His attempts at gardening in his latest TV series are almost as funny.

Some authors are real authors, whose writing casts a spell upon their readers as deliciously perfect as the sight of Jeremy Clarkson in a burka. They cast their spell upon first reading, then decades later you fall in love all over again. At some point this autumn/early winter, I read a review of Nevil Shute, and Requiem for a Wren came to mind. I read it on my sister's recommendation when I was 14. As she passed it to me I remember her saying how she wanted so much to suspend everything she knew of the tale as she read it, and that the ending came as a shock.

And on Friday night I settled down to read Requiem for a Wren all over again. I spent most of this afternoon stretched out on the sofa in a warm and quiet house reading and reading and reading. And the ending still came as a shock. After closing the book I lay still, thinking and mourning for some time. Here I am, reading into the year ahead.

Friday Five: I Gotta Feeling ooOOoo

2010-12-31T19:37:00.006Z

Early evening and the parental taxi service is once more driving over the mountains through deepening mist to deliver Beloved Firstborn, Merci Beaucoup Enfant Deux and the sweethearts to ChesVegas for the New Year's Eve celebrations. We strictly enforce the drink-drive ban to the extent that I ritually performed the "show me your car keys/give me your car keys," before we piled into my car and set off. It's almost three years since I've done the school run over the mountains, but some things never change. Huge amounts of laughter and chitchat from the party goers; then someone slipped in a cd and out boomed the old favourites. Lady Gaga, the Killers, School's Out, YMCA, and then this one by the Black Eyed Peas. I'm almost ashamed to say I joined in, word perfect and arm waving throughout, steering with my knees with well practiced ease. Car-Dancing about to some groovy tunes with a car full with happy, joyous grads and undergrads; some things never change.

"I gotta feeling that tonight's gonna be a good night
That tonight's gonna be a good night
That tonight's gonna be a good good night

Tonight's the night, Let's live it up, I got my money, Let's spend it up
Go out and smash it, Like oh my god, Jump off that sofa,
Let's get get OFF

I know that we'll have a ball, If we get down
And go out, And just lose it all
I feel stressed out, I wanna let it go
Lets go way out spaced out, And losing all control

Fill up my cup, Mazel tov,
Look at her dancing, Just take it OFF
Let's paint the town, We'll shut it down
Let's burn the roof, And then we'll do it again

Let's do it, let's do it, Let's do it,
Let's do it, and do it, and do it,
Let's live it up
And do it, and do it, and do it, do it, do it,
Let's do it, Let's do it, Let's do it

Cause I gotta feeling (ooOOoo) that tonight's gonna be a good night
That tonight's gonna be a good night
That tonight's gonna be a good good night

Tonight's the night (hey) Let's live it up (let's live it up)
I got my money (I'm paid) Let's spend it up (let's spend it up)
Go out and smash it (smash it) Like oh my god (like oh my god)
Jump off that sofa, Let's get get OFF

Fill up my cup (drank) Mazel tov (L'chaim)
Look at her dancing (move it move it)
Just take it OFF, Let's paint the town (paint the town)
We'll shut it down (shut it down) Let's burn the roof
And then we'll do it again

Let's do it, let's do it, Let's do it,
Let's do it, and do it, and do it,
Let's live it up
And do it, and do it, and do it, do it, do it,
Let's do it, Let's do it, Let's do it, do it, do it, do it

Here we come, Here we go, We gotta rock (rock,rock,rock,rock)
Easy come, Easy go, Now we on top (top,top,top,top)
Feel the shot, Body rock, Rock it don't stop (stop,stop,stop,stop)
Round and round, Up and down, Around the clock (clock,clock,clock,clock)

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday
Friday, Saturday, Saturday to Sunday
Get get get get get with us, You know what we say say
Party every day, Pa-pa-pa party every day

And I'm feelin (ooOOoo) That tonight's gonna be a good night
That tonight's gonna be a good night
That tonight's gonna be a good good night"

BBC The Nativity: He Came For Such As You

2010-12-24T19:10:00.004Z

You have probably already watched this, and had your whole view of the Nativity altered. The inns weren't full because of the census; they were refusing to give her shelter because she was pregnant.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00x15ny

No-one would come to her, no-one would help her. But the prostitute heard his pleas and came to her side and didn't leave until He was safely delivered. The shepherd put down his weapon and kissed the feet of his Messiah. The Magi put their heads to the floor in worship.

"Each of us is the Inn Keeper who decides if there is room for Jesus."

On Why Helen Yemm Ought To Co-present Gardener's World With Monty Don

2010-12-21T18:38:00.002Z

It's true; Helen Yemm really does know everything about gardening. There are two magazines I buy each December; the Christmas edition of the Radio Times and the BBC's Gardener's World magazine (for the calendar). I also know that a goodly portion of my witty, charming and urbane readers do exactly the same. In the magazine is the most interesting article about feeding garden birds through the current appallingly cold winter we're enjoying across the UK. The nub of it is to stop feeding garden birds whole sunflower seeds and start putting out sunflower hearts / kernels instead. Birds cannot afford to waste energy chewing off the useless outer sunflower husks to get at the oil-rich kernels inside. Makes perfect sense.

http://www.gardenersworld.com/

Dragging myself off my flu-infested sickbed, I drove over to my favourite garden centre and bought two 5kg bags of sunflower kernels. I dutifully drizzled a 5m line of kernels across the top terrace outside the french windows, and stood back to watch the show. Nothing happened. And nothing happened until a couple of days later, when I came down for brekkie, pulled back the curtains in the kitchen and revealed a scene like something out of The Birds. The feasting feathered community has now settled down to a regular two dozen blackbirds, four thrushes, dozens of resident sparrows, 5 robins (which shows how harsh this winter is), assorted yellow tits and a few exotic waifs and strays slumming it from the exotic bird feeders across at my farming neighbours.

I occasionally chuck out some chopped up raisins, bits of finely diced jacket potatoes, and leftover brown rice (ensuring none of last night's curry sauce is attached), but it's the kernels that reassure the ground feeders. Sometimes the 5m line is eaten completely within the hour, and most days I make three runs for my delightful, much cared about garden birds. I know when the kernels need replenishing because the blackbirds huddle around the terrace, on the branches of the fruit trees and along the hedges like a series of menacing full stops; "Feed us or we'll peck your eyes out."

http://www.caudwellsmill.co.uk/caudwells-shop.html

Helen Yemm describes her brother's Scottish recipe for a cheaper version of bird food - porridge oats drizzled in sunflower oil. I know, it makes the most perfect sense, so read the whole article here. Back off my sickbed, traipsing over to Cauldwell's Mill for jumbo oats then back to the kitchen to mix up a storm. It's true, the birds enjoy the porridge oats and Helen Yemm needs to co-present Gardener's World when it returns in the spring.

A German Sang Of Peace From No Man's Land

2010-12-17T00:43:00.004Z

"1915 on Christmas Day, on the Western Front the guns all died away, and lying in the mud on bags of sand, we heard a German sing from no man's land.
"He had a tenor voice so pure and true, the words were strange but every note we knew, soaring o'er the living dead and damned, a German sang of peace from no mans' land."

Remember this?

Something perfect to think about and to be thankful for as across the UK as our schools break up for Christmas, our undergrads return home from universities and please God, NATO, Commonwealth and our forces' peacekeepers work to make our world that little bit safer.

Bread And Circuses

2010-12-10T09:10:00.000Z

"Students will have to pay £9,000 a year tuition fees? Let them eat cake!"

Friday Five: Boogie Nights N Nightclubs

2010-11-26T21:47:00.014Z

I love footie. I love Derby County. Actually I grew up in a family where the men all supported Aston Villa, but after leaving home for uni and another country, then more country-hopping until finally moving back to England and the English schools system (the best on the planet), I settled into sunny Derbyshire because the school I had in my cross hairs for mes enfants was (and is) the best in the East Midlands... actually one of the top schools in the UK. And with sunny Derbyshire comes Derby County.

I remember watching Dean Sturridge, Marco Gabbiadini and always, always Igor, belt their way to the top. I was there when Robbie Van Der Laan took flight and headed the ball into the back of the net for promotion. I was there when Igor et al held Manure to the sword via the spiderlike legs of Paolo Wanchope.

Oh man, I got to see Eric with his turned-up collar play footie almost as arrogantly as Derby. I saw Barca play a friendly at Pride Park, with the utterly divine Figo, that night we were all there; spending a fortune on baby-sitters and taxis, and smuggling stiff G&Ts into the ground inside half-litre plastic bottles of Buxton spring water, then cabbing it over to Nottingham to spend the night dancing and laughing and celebrating. Happy days.

And what am I doing tonight? Listening to Carol Klein's Gardener's World Special as I drift about the www. catching up with "old friends" via their blogs. Don't you just love the world wide web and the necessary growing up? But I still love Derby County more.

Happy Birthday

2010-11-24T06:00:00.006Z

Although any parent who takes their children shopping, (even to Tiffany's on Fifth Avenue) without their mittens needs a good slapping.

Winter Arrives In Sunny Derbyshire

2010-11-23T13:16:00.001Z

It's due to turn bitterly cold tomorrow with snow forecast by the end of the week. I couldn't be happier. For the first time in what seems like decades, I feel as if I've caught up with myself this year in the garden. The paths are done; the steps too. All the borders in the kitchen garden (which figures almost exclusively in this blog) and in the rest of my gardens are deeply manured, full with this season's spring bulbs. Last week I finished pruning back this season's growth, taking off all the monstrous Buddleia growth down to stumps; cleared a few stray bits of mock orange for no other reason than I liked its scent on my gloves; tidied up all the long rose growth and fairly hacked into that horrible evergreen bush that sits like an enormous malevolent toad in my hostas bed. I only keep it there because it was brought into the garden by birds; it grows right under a spot where the blackbirds like to perch. I loathe evergreens, but I particularly loathe this one because it is a constant reminder of a question in my RHS exams that made me go completely blank. "Describe 5 broad leaved evergreens suitable for use as domestic hedging."

I bet Helen Yemm is laughing her head off.

Holidays Are Coming, Holidays Are Coming

2010-11-16T20:08:00.003Z

m.b.e.d. Turn on the telly now!
mum: I know, I'm watching it now!

And within nanoseconds, Beloved Firstborn also rang; "It's on the telly! Oh man, we have to start our Christmas shopping now."

Remembrance Sunday 2010: Anahorish 1944

2010-11-14T06:00:00.000Z

“We were killing pigs when the Americans arrived.

A Tuesday morning, sunlight and gutter-blood

Outside the slaughterhouse. From the main road

They would have heard the squealing,

Then heard it stop and had a view of us

In our gloves and aprons coming down the hill.

Two lines of them, guns on their shoulders, marching.

Armoured cars and tanks and open jeeps.

Sunburnt hands and arms. Unknown, unnamed,

Hosting for Normandy.

Not that we knew then

Where they were headed, standing there like

youngsters

As they tossed us gum and tubes of coloured sweets.”

Seamus Heaney

Sword Beach at dawn 2010

Autumn Leaves And Toadstools

2010-11-01T16:01:00.005Z

Harry Redknapp Threatens Media Silence

2010-10-30T18:16:00.002Z

Yeah right. The words "Hell" and "Freeze over" come to mind... But it was a hand ball.

Unbelievable But True Nonetheless

2010-10-09T14:46:00.011Z

British people love to tell each other that the warm summery weather we are currently experiencing is an Indian Summer. It isn't really; it's often like this in early autumn, but we do so love our colonial past, and like to wheel it out for a flaunting whenever the opportunity arises, especially when we are eating curry.

The reason I'm telling you this is to ease my charming, witty and urbane readers into the following startling disclosure; I've finished potting up all the spring bulbs. Yes. I popped the hyacinths into pretty bowls and blue and white, lidless Victorian tureens in September. The fragrant crokes went into washed food tins from Cora and the scented Narcissi went into smallish terracotta pots from B&Q this morning. I've planted everything into gritty sand, and topped off the bigger bulbs with a fine scattering of white gravel chippings. No more compost-ridden window ledges for me.

It's been a delight, standing at the long garden table potting up my bulbs under the autumn sunshine, cup of tea to hand. Even more delightful after I took the loppers to the blasted bay tree that overhangs the table on the top terrace. I've lifted the crown by perhaps 4' and in doing so have increased the direct sunlight falling onto the perennials in this part of the border. This will enable me to plant another rose (from David Austin) and drop a miniature lavender into the border's front, and increase the amount of spring bulbs here, too.

The bay branches are going into the outhouses to store and dry out a bit. Then I'll strip off the leaves and thread them onto garden twine together with dried and scented oranges, pine cones and other wintry treats. I'm planning to drape this along the banisters at the top of the stairs, and down into the hall around the handrails. Should look and smell delicious. Alternatively, I could chuck the bay branches onto the bonfire, where they'd ignite like a mad thing.

Over The Mountains As Sunny Derbyshire Turns Towards Autumn

2010-10-03T16:28:00.001Z

Lilium Stargazer

2010-10-03T16:05:00.002Z

Remember this? Here they are.

Seamus Heaney: Miracle

2010-10-01T19:13:00.002Z

Not the one who takes up his bed and walks
But the ones who have known him all along
And carry him in -

Their shoulders numb, the ache and stoop deeplocked
In their backs, the stretcher handles
Slippery with sweat. And no let up

Until he's strapped on tight, made tiltable
and raised to the tiled roof, then lowered for healing.
Be mindful of them as they stand and wait

For the burn of the paid out ropes to cool,
Their slight lightheadedness and incredulity
To pass, those who had known him all along.

"Obviously Heaney's lowered someone close into the ground; that's how he knows the rope burns." He's lowered someone close into the ground, that's how he recognises what I'd missed in the slim volume shared over a decaff latte in Waterstone's Birmingham, this morning. There must be Remembrance, and there must be recognition of those who survived, too.

Friday Five: Annie Lennox

2010-10-01T17:02:00.006Z

Guess who learned how to upload from her sparkly new camera? Yeppers. The very same. So here are some great tunes from Annie Lennox - listen with me as I sift through and catalogue months of photos.

1. Why? I may be mad I may be blind, I may be viciously unkind, but I can still read what you 're thinking... why can't you see this boat is sinking.

2. When Tomorrow Comes. Underneath your dreamlit eyes shades of sleep have driven you away, the moon is pale outside and you are far from here... untroubled by the chaos of our lives, another day, another night.

3. I Saved the World Today. Hey, hey, I saved the world today (everybody's happy now) and everybody's happy now the bad things gone away... please let it, let it...

4. Thorn in my Side. Yeah!

5. Shining Light. You've always been a thorn in their side but to me you're a shining light, you arrive and the night is alive, yeah you are shining light, you light up my life.

Remembrance

2010-10-01T16:38:00.000Z

There's this blog I follow. Actually there are several blogs I follow, but I particularly like this one as I lived and worked for a short while nearby, early in my career, and I like to read this blog as I know the geography. Today is Roz's mum's anniversary. And she's right about the Carmelites.

Delia Smith's Spiced Plum or Damson Chutney

2010-09-30T16:59:00.003Z

Halve and stone 3lb Warwickshire Drooper plums, damsons, or a mixture of your orchard drupes. Core and finely chop 1lb cooking apples, peel and finely chop 3 large onions, and drop into your preserving pan.

Crush 3 fat cloves of garlic, 2 heaped teaspoons ground ginger, 1lb raisins, 1lb soft brown sugar, 1lb demerara and add to the preserving pan together with 2 pints malt vinegar.

Next add 2 tablespoons salt, 2 small cinnamon sticks (I don't use sticks, as I can't be bothered to fish them out at the end, so just replace with 2 heaped teaspoons ground cinnamon), 1oz whole allspice berries and a dessertspoon of whole cloves. Delia advises wrapping the whole spices into a little square of muslin, but you too can just crush the whole spices in your mortar and pestle and throw into the pan.

Bring everything to the boil, lower heat to a simmer and cook gently for about 2-3 hours until all the vinegar has disappeared, the chutney has thickened and your house smells wonderful. Pour into sterilised jars in the usual way, then leave on your work surface for a few days, admiring your labour. Don't even try to eat until at least Christmas / three months - better the following year.

Thanks Delia.

Fermenting Windfalls

2010-09-29T22:16:00.012Z

We've been blattered by gusting winds and heavy blustery rainfall this week, as the characteristically tight isobars move their way eastwards across the UK. Just as well I've channelled my usual grief over Mercy Boo's return to uni, into laundering all the bedding then storing the summer weight gear into cupboards and replacing it with winter weight gorgeousness. I love my winter fabrics. Fabulously soft woollen throws and tartan blankets some with the colours of purple heathers and winter landscapes, reappear over sofas and armchairs, over the end of the beds and draped two or three at a time over the brass bedsteads.

I'd really like to complete this image for my charming, witty and urbane readers by adding I changed the curtains from summer weight silks to thicker, heavier fabrics, but quite frankly the thermal blackout curtains hang on the back of my silk curtains all year round.

House warm (and tidy), I've been up early and out into the world, returning late in the afternoon as the sun starts to set. This evening I got home early, just before six, in time for a phone call from Beloved Firstborn. "Isn't this the most beautiful sunset? Have you got orange clouds too?" I stepped out into the kitchen garden and chatted about his day, and noticed the Acer palmatum had quietly turned from green to crimson. Still chatting, I dragged the Acer in its pot towards the centre of the garden where I would see it each afternoon, then went on a tour of the beds.

The Warwickshire Drooper lost many of its plums during this week to the high winds, and as I stopped to examine it I noticed the slight, then intoxicating smell of slowly rotting and fermenting drupes. Thank goodness I've already made a couple of years worth of Delia Smith's spiced plum / spiced damson chutney. Recipe to follow.

Oi Phantom

2010-09-23T06:00:00.000Z

Wants a hog roast.

Jobs In The Garden This Weekend: Potting Up Spring Bulbs

2010-09-14T21:00:00.004Z

It started off fairly innocuously. These things usually do. "I'll just nip to B&Qs and get a bag of gravel and get the hyacinths in." I refuse to pot them up in compost anymore, as I'm sick of hoovering around the window ledges each spring. And of course, last year at my farming neighbour's New Year's party everyone admired the artful glass cubes of spring bulbs planted in green glass chippings. I wasn't the only one who wondered if she'd raided the local cemetery, either. I dropped the bag of small white gravel onto one of the garden benches, because there wasn't enough space in the outhouse.

I usually move into the outhouse at this time of year; hanging and plucking pheasants from the rafters, rummaging around the freezers for soft and top fruit for weekend crumbles, and potting up bowls of spring bulbs because I like to stack and store my compost in the dry. Also its usually raining most days and I hate to stop gardening just because it's raining.

The outhouses have accumulated no end of rammel over this summer, and I'm not really sure why. A little fellow further along the road discovered Beloved Firstborn's childhood store of plastic weapons earlier this year whilst his mum and I bent over the freezers looking for fish heads. Emerging triumphantly some minutes later, we turned around to find said little fellow sitting captivated in the middle of the floor surrounded by vintage Star Wars crap; spud guns; catapults; AK47s; assorted handguns including Smith and Wessons; multiple pump action shotguns, and at least one "Uzi 9mm." You can try as hard as you like to give your little boy wooden swords and bows and arrows from the Early Learning Centre. At some point he will return fully loaded from a shopping trip to Toys R Us with a sniggering maternal uncle.

The mess gradually bred and this afternoon I called "enough!" I changed into my gardening gear and focused my cross hairs. I started out shifting the toolbox, wind-up hosepipes, strimmers, lawnmower and hedge trimmers, extension cables, stacker boxes, slates and tiles and a couple of bags of Blue Circle, and into the space created assembled then shifted three packs of IKEA rammel-storing shelving units. Onto said shelves I sorted then stacked all the French beers, wines and spirits; all the dishwasher tabs; the car gear; the garden gear; the Christmas outdoor fairy lights; all my Bosch hand tools; Beloved Firstborn's arsenal; assorted hurley sticks and hockey sticks, ice hockey blades and sticks, dinghys, paddles, roller blades and fishing nets; multi-cell planting cells and seed trays and more plastic plant labels than you could possibly imagine.

I found glue guns, boxes of buttons and odd bits of string; no end of green garden wire and several knackered secateurs. Why don't I just throw old gardening kit straight in the bin? Who in their right mind really believes they'll ever sew up the shredded fingers of gardening gloves?

By this stage, of course, the decluttering madness was upon me. You know those bendy plastic flexi-tubs? I filled two with bits of wood and old fence posts that over the years I'd had the sense not to throw onto my bonfires in case they exploded and sent white hot nails flying all over the garden. "Don't worry neighbours! It's only tonight's son et lumiére; "Belfast, 1972!"

As I drove into the "municiple recyling facility" (that's the tip, to you and I), I caught the horrified stares of the workers, and I hadn't even told them they'd have to help me empty the car as I'd run out of brufen this morning and my back was too sore to move.

I'm sitting here in the most wonderful position, because it's too painful to sit any other way, and those bloody hyacinths still aren't potted up.

RAF Tea

2010-09-10T06:00:00.003Z

Calming in times of national peril. Fortifying when courage is required.

Go to Sainsbury's and buy this tea now. From the Rare Tea Company.

Autumn's On Its Way

2010-09-04T05:45:00.004Z

I left the windows open overnight, and woke early to that familiar chill in the morning air; autumn's on its way. I hopped out of bed and opened the curtains to be greeted with the most heart-stoppingly beautiful scene. Early morning mist had settled across the valleys completely obscuring the fields and hedgerows. Only the taller trees, oaks, larches and horse chestnuts Belisha-beaconed their presence above the white blanket of beauty.

The sky is that endless clear blue you find on early mornings; only the vapour trails from aircraft still hanging about and high, high cirrus clouds.

And the chill; I wish I could describe for you the chill this morning. Now the fruits will start to ripen, apples will start to fall and the chutney season's about to start. I love autumn, and welcome the start of this day standing at my kitchen door, cup of tea in hand, thinking of you.

Friday Five: The Red Arrows

2010-09-03T19:18:00.008Z

I think there might actually be more than five.

http://www.raf.mod.uk/reds/behindthescenes/displaypilots.cfm Yes, there are nine pilots. Thank you, Google. All morning they've been flying over our part of sunny Derbyshire, preparing for tomorrow's Battle of Britain Air Show at The Imperial War Museum Duxford.

Well, I assume it was the Red Arrows flying overhead all morning, as I only managed to move out of the hedge bottom fast enough and run up the length of the kitchen garden to catch the fifth one going over and rattling the chimney pots. I love living under an RAF flight path - makes me feel very safe seeing HM's finest on a regular basis.

Not only have I finished the steps, I've also shifted 33 bags of well rotted stable manure into the garden, and I was shovelling the last few bags under the hedge at about 13:04 when the red jet went over. Earlier in August I cut back all the dried stalks of the cowslips and having snapped the seed heads off threw them into a Sainsbury's ziploc bag and stashed it into the side of the garden bench. It got rained on on several occasions and I had to drain the bag several times over the intervening weeks. Thousands of tiny black seeds gathered in the bottom of the plastic bag, with hundreds of dried seed heads topping off the (by now) sludge in the bag. This afternoon I picked handfuls of seed heads and scattered them all over the gardens and borders. When I got to the sludge at the bottom of the bag, Hallelujah! Loads of the tiny seeds had sprouted! Under the hedge they went, to take their chances in amongst all that lovely stable manure.

And even more surprising, Phantom's back blogging. Not only that, he's actually got his fridge pictures up at last. Very tidy fridge. Interesting things in his fridge, and if you study the pictures hard enough, I believe you can just about glimpse the vat of gin, hidden at the back. Way to go, Phantom! An Absolutely Fabulous fridge.

Garden Steps

2010-08-31T18:00:00.001Z

The steps are finished.
I know.
I can't quite believe it, either.

And Frogs Keep Slugs Under Control

2010-08-27T14:51:00.001Z

This wildly over-exposed photo just about shows the colony of three frogs tucked up behind the sleepers in the long raised bed. I know the slug in there with the frogs could be the "pantry" bit, but I don't think so. Both frogs and slugs know its too damned cold for August, and have gone into winter hibernation prep mode.

Pinaceae Abies balsamea "Hudsonia"

2010-08-25T00:15:00.001Z

Pictured at RHS Harlow Carr back in February.

Still Missing France

2010-08-24T19:21:00.002Z

From a lovely book I found at RHS Harlow Carr earlier this year. This is pretty much a perfect gravel terrace. I can almost hear the chink of flutes.

Lilium Stargazer

2010-08-24T13:58:00.003Z

I've got the most fabulous new camera. It's taken me months to work out how to zoom. Eventually I gave it to Merci Beaucoup Enfant Deux with the instructions to, "Read, learn and inwardly digest" the instructions, then show me what to do. I'd had several mobiles before someone explained to me that they didn't come out of the box pre-programmed. "What, you mean you programme it with all my numbers before you give it to me?" was my startled discovery.

I am now taking the most delicious photos, but Merci Boo refuses to show me how to upload the digital programme from disc to pc. Ungrateful wretch. I've been zooming in on white lilies. My house is full with them, every vase used, every table covered, and at all points throughout the day the lilies look so lovely. Morning sunshine in the east facing rooms, afternoon sunshine in the dining room, and evening sunshine in the west facing study upstairs. The dining room looks especially lovely in the late afternoon, with the silver picture frames and trays glinting. Lilies smell beautiful, too, a real summer fragrance.

I stopped planting lilies into the garden three or four years ago when vine weevils really took hold in one part of the garden and destroyed all my bulbs. I had a beautiful river of Lilium "Stargazer" across one of the borders near to the drive, and each evening I'd arrive home to their heady fragrance. I'm hoping the drenching of nematodes did the trick, as I'm planning to replant this part of the garden later this autumn, for who can resist the charms of a field of lilies?

Time Lapse Blooming Stargazer Lilies.

Summer Shells

2010-08-22T18:55:00.000Z

Wish I Was There, Too

2010-08-21T19:00:00.001Z

Taught

2010-08-11T21:23:00.005Z

Early in my career I had an admin worker whose command of English belied her 40+ years as a British-born citizen. She hadn't even been out of the country to holiday in Spain. On one occasion she gave me some letters to sign that were so caked in Tippex and littered with non-indented right-hand margins I sent one back to her with 6/10 could do better written across the bottom. She went bananas. Ungrateful bloody wretch.

Sherlock Holmes: Grammar Nazi

She's Back Blogging

2010-08-05T19:01:00.008Z

Thank you God.

Because quite frankly one can become rather fed up with Sarah Raven fronting the Gardening section, when RHS-trained gardeners all know that it's Helen for whom we purchase the Telegraph. Now Helen, release another post in which you describe all the venues at which you are intending to peddle your books, because I can then sneak into the queues looking almost normal, and buy multiple copies. But don't let your agent get you on Saturday Kitchen, as I'm back at work on Saturday mornings now, and I can't be bothered to work out how to record.

This summer is going to be great.

And I've just discovered the greatness that is Lady Gaga. I was in the fast lane multi-tasking; that is, overtaking, reaching into the glove box for my friend Carl, and dropping merci beaucoup up to Manchester for a night out in China Town with the girls, when she slid a disc into the player and out burst Bad Romance at ear-splitting decibels. Utterly, utterly fabulous. I love the tribal tones, and if Derby County adopt it as their home game entry song, we are surely going for promotion!

Ra Ra-Ah-Ah-Ah / Roma Roma-Ma / Gaga Oh-La-La / Want Your Bad Romance.

On Solar Tsunamis And Stones In The Road

2010-08-03T22:20:00.003Z

"We're back and we've gotta guest," is one of my favourite scenes from Bye Bye Love, a lovely little film from the 90s. I bought the soundtrack before the film was released on DVD, or maybe it was video then. Either way, Mary Chapin Carpenter sang the most beautiful song Stones in the Road. I like the way she describes the real and necessary slog of most of our daily lives. I like when she sings how,

"We drink our coffee on the run

we climb that ladder rung by rung

we pencil in we cancel out

we crave the corner suite...

another day another deal

before we get back home"

Not that I've drunk any coffee on the run recently. So far this summer I've spent my time unwinding and living my gardening-free life tiddling about close to the shoreline, taking photos, collecting bits of driftwood and stuffing shells into the pockets of my shorts. Scallops and razor shells especially. I've watched lunatics take off from the beach and launch themselves above the waves on little more than a tablecloth-sized kite. I've chatted with the mackerel fishers in the late evening sunshine, and I've chased runaway dogs back to their owners, all of us laughing as their dogs try to rid the beach of seagulls. I've also spent a lot of time walking and thinking and plotting.

We're back home now in sunny Derbyshire, just in time for tonight's "solar tsunami" caused by what NASA describes as a beautiful prominence eruption on Sunday and picked up by its new Solar Dynamics Observatory satellite. The eruption was so powerful that it sent the solar tsunami racing 93m miles across space towards us. The wave of supercharged gas is predicted to reach the Earth's magnetic shield tonight, potentially sparking a geomagnetic storm. The Northern Lights or the Aurora Borealis could potentially be seen at low latitudes including Derbyshire. Click on this link to the SDO's images;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbRMl78x6Ds

Friday Five: Sound Track To Our Friday Night Barbe

2010-07-23T20:00:00.000Z

One of the greatest joys of a life full with young grads and undergrads, together with a house in France and a car big enough to cart shed loads of guitars, amps and drums backwards and forwards across the English Channel via blessed saint Brittany Ferries, is this -->

Said grads/undergrads idling about all week, sleeping late and only rising to stagger into the garden via the fridge (thank you, Cora) to collapse into deck chairs and onto rugs with barely sufficient energy to spray on the factor 50 before mum carries out a loaded tray. Jugs, glasses, ice cubes and Vico chips. Happy, happy days. Happy, happy Amalee.

But Friday night is barbe night. "Now darlings, I know you're all exhausted, but I'd really like to hear you play." This is mum's speak for, "I'd like to see some evidence of the offensive amounts of cash that over the years I've poured into the pockets of your music teachers. And your sweethearts had better rosen up the bow too..." They didn't disappoint.

Guns N' Roses Sweet Child of Mine with mercy boo wearing her trademark top hat in adulation of Slash. Well that certainly woke up the neighbours...

AC/DC Whole Lotta Rosie

Eric. Layla. The long version. Only ever heard on Planet Rock.

Mock Turtles Can You Dig It

Top Gun anthem Steve Stevens (played for Billy Idol - need I say any more?)

Greenday Holiday. Ok that's six, so stop counting, Rain Man.

Radio Caroline - 90.8 FM Rennes

2010-07-16T21:01:00.000Z

If I'm sitting behind the wheel of my car, and it's Monday to Friday between the hours of 6.30am and 7pm, I have the radio on and Traffic Announcements activated. Some mornings, dependant on where I'm working that day, I'll pick up every local radio TA from Yorks to Oxford. Cracking! I love the way TAs dominate my driving day. I love hearing about old friends like the Catthorpe Interchange; delays from Hemel down to Watford; and as bloody usual, southbound delays at Nottingham. Sally Traffic is ofc, the Queen of Traffic Announcements. She often talks about Operation Stack. Find it here.

The Highways Agency is currently working with other EU transport authorities to research drivers' understanding of current and potential future pictograms. Using pictograms rather than text-based messages will mean overseas drivers should have a better understanding of VSM messages. The survey can be found here. But hurry, once 1,000 responses have been logged per language, the survey closes. Give it a go. It's really interesting!

I'm starting to feel a little homesick. Except that no TAs are tuned in here, and all I listen to in the car is http://www.radiocaroline.eu/. It's where I first heard Katie Perry's California Gurls and Troy Olsen's Summer Thing. Catch up on YouTube. Summer happiness in sunny France.

Aquatic Gardening

2010-07-14T22:37:00.007Z

I can pin point the moment I went right off water gardens, pools, large ponds and lakes. I was sitting on the terrace of a friend's villa in Spain as the Med burned all around us, reading a book by Chris Stewart. In it he describes the process of building a reed bed filtration unit for his Spanish home's grey water. He goes on to describe how on completion, his wife and daughter would swim in this perfectly clear pool, as frogs and fish brushed against their arms and legs. Even now this makes me feel slightly queasy and goose bumpy.

Moving fresh water, rivers and the sea hold little fear for me, and seaside rock pools make the most perfect water gardens.

On Summer Rainfall

2010-07-13T19:37:00.001Z

Running into St Malo for an ice cream, I parked up near the Channel Isles ferry port and headed straight for the vendors along the Passage de la Petite Hermine. I used to drum it into the children to always try a different flavour, until Beloved Firstborn pointed out that his mum always ordered a coffee ice cream, so why couldn't he always have chocolate? There's no arguing with a child's logic: it's best to admit defeat and give in.

The benches flanking the little square were all taken, so I cut up past the cathedral and made my way up to the walls. This pirate city has been a part of my life for decades, and even as rain starts to fall its still a beautiful place to come for an ice cream.

Announcements For The Public Good

2010-07-10T22:32:00.000Z

No, April, I'm not going to add you because you'll only give me syphilis.