Welcome back, Fiona.

And about bloody time, too.

http://www.cottagesmallholder.com/eleventh-blog-anniversary-8574/

Father's Day, 21 June 2015: Hero, Family of the Year

"...So let me go
I don't wanna be your hero
I don't wanna be a big man
I just wanna fight with everyone else

Your masquerade
I don't wanna be a part of your parade
Everyone deserves a chance to
Walk with everyone else..."

On Head Gardeners and On Their Comings and Their Goings

My most favourite head gardener died at the back end of January, deepest winter with snow on the ground. Sometimes the snow was so deep the hospital grounds men shovelled it onto spaces in the car parks just to be able to get visitors at least somewhere to park. Over eleven days of comings and goings you get to understand how hospitals work for visitors.

 

The staff were utterly, utterly wonderful. If you were to describe a pitch perfect care standard, this would be it. Woefully understaffed, still at their station an hour after the end of their shift and thus unpaid, writing up notes and asking passing visitors if they needed a tea tray; in the middle of their unpaid overtime, still caring enough for the welfare of the friends of the dying. Over the days you become familiar with other patients in adjoining rooms; moving from a discreet nod and small smile to preserve their dignity and privacy; to hellos then, "I've popped in to sit with her as I knew you'd be stuck in the traffic;" to "they've managed to stabilize my renals so I'm all set for discharge and that means I can restart my chemo next week;" to finally arriving at night with a set of rellies from the airport and the adjoining room has a new face so the polite nodding begins again.

 

Throughout our comings and goings, quietly to not disturb the rhythm of the clinical care needs on this busy, busy ward, amid the bustle and bright lights, the housekeeping staff brought in tea trays. Not a couple of mugs of tea, but the whole thing; teapots and cups and saucers, always a saucer of biscuits and an instruction to just keep making ourselves a fresh pot when needed. When the ward receptionist saw you arrive with more relatives, she clearly had a word and sandwiches appeared, "because its a long way from East Midlands and you won't have stopped on the way..." You can have all the star ratings and finest surgical outcomes you like, but if you get the care of friends and relatives right, you'll probably be getting everything else right, too.

All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain... if the Tories get in on May 7th. Get out. Get your ballot papers out, and get the Tories out.  

Christmas Day 1914

Knackered, of Newbury

I have no idea why I wrote that title, possibly because I lived and worked in Newbury at the very start of my career, and because I love the alliteration. It does sound rather better than "knackered of sunny Derbyshire."

 

I've finished the garden renovations of my not-so-new favourite clients. It's nearly killed me. 18 months ago we hired some tree fellas to do some radical thinning out of an overgrown and potentially dangerous copse together with the removal and stump grinding of some repellent Mahonias and Rhodies swamping the front of the house.  The savagery of the task and the resultant log pile was quite breath-taking. We felled several yews and you just can't imagine how wonderful this most calorific of logs smelt as it burned in our fireplaces over last Christmas. Heavenly.  

 

As my charming, witty and erudite readers will appreciate, I've always loved a bit of horticultural overhauling, the bigger the better.  It just seems to give a garden room to breathe. Light floods in, birds start swarming over the disturbed soil and suddenly we have pools of planting opportunities. At a stroke the shady side of the copse disappears and becomes sun-filled and full of potential. 


 

We've spent most of the last year renovating the Victorian walled kitchen garden. We've restored the old glasshouse beds to something almost approaching their former glory; we've dug out old ponds and a deep well; we've set out new raised beds that make it easier for arthritic knees to reach the soil;  and we've got everything in ahead of schedule.  Yes really. I can't quite believe it myself.  Everything sown, potted on, planted out, dug over, cuttings taken then rooted then potted on then planted out. We even have two rows of cuttings we struck last autumn from the mixed currant bushes... we're unsure what colour they'll turn out, as we were chatting too much to take much notice of the parent bushes as we worked our way round with the Felcos.  No worries. We are opening the kitchen garden this spring for a fundraiser and will sell the baby bushes dug up straight from the ground.

 

Truly, I lead the life of Riley...

 

 

 

On Separation And Loss... All Change!!

I've always had a bit of an issue with Separation and Loss.  Although I am ruthless about work-based separations and loss, (I never look back; once I'm out of there, I'm out of there) and house moves, (onwards and upwards, and anyway, I always take half my old garden with me to the next; I dragged my mulberry in a pot through three house moves, until I felt I had the right garden to plant it properly/forever...), I find some friendships very difficult to move on from.*

 

This requires no comment from me, stunned as I am. 

This required a comment from me, stunned as I was.

This beggars belief.

 

I've been reading Helen Yemm for years, and have loved everything she writes, except of course her liking for cats, which we all know really are the d****'s familiar.  I may yet fill the balloons with H2SO4...  As for Phantom and Angela, I think theirs is pretty much the first blog I stumbled into, and am utterly delighted that they are back blogging again after decades of neglect.  And the other thing is a real bollocks.  As I said, I've always had a bit of an issue with Separation and Loss.

* I know.  Never end a sentence with a preposition, jackass!

First Sunday of Advent 2012

It's not that I've been slackering about for the better part of this year; quite the contrary.  I've spent most of this year with clients, my new favourite clients in particular. 

 

 

Here we are at the end of the year / start of the new year and we've restored huge tracts of their walled kitchen garden.  In the next month or so I want to make a start on a new orchard.

 

 This isn't their house - theirs is Victorian, this is Tudor; Blakesley Hall, a timber-framed house built in 1590 by Richard Smalbroke, a member of one of Birmingham’s leading merchant families.  I dropped in earlier this autumn on the way to or from Birmingham airport with the Irish rellies.  I rather like the juxtaposition of perfectly preserved and restored Tudor buildings, underneath the flight path of a major international airport...  Castle Bromwich Hall Gardens is as bad! 



 

One of the lovely young graduates working at Blakesley Hall has an Etsy shop, selling lovely, lovely, gorgeous things, and when she gets the mice-shaped Christmas tree hangings on there, I'm snapping the lot up.  Click on into her shop TheLittleLandOfMe and check for yourself!

An English Country Churchyard In Mid-May

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.

Oi Phantom

Wants a hog roast.

Friday Five: Announcements For The Public Good

Finish early and belt up the M1 and arrive home in time for a late lunch. Then straight over to sunny Nottinghamshire to make some primary care appointments, then some secondary care appointments, then home. And three lines of washing dried including all merci beaucoup's drawers, jeans and Keds. Today feels like the first day of summer. And it's still only April! I've a full day of heavy action gardening tomorrow. Well, not really gardening, hard landscaping really. I'm planning to shift 7 cubic tonnes of the most revolting plum slate chippings - but the client loves it and I love my client, what can I do? Strangle her? No! Dance about to these groovy toons hairbrush mic in hand;

Everytime I think I've had enough and start heading for the door, there's a very strange vibration piercing me right to the core, it says turn around you fool, you know you love him more and more...

I had to escape the city was sticky and cruel; maybe I should have called you first but I was dying to get to you. I was dreaming a-while I drove the long straight road ahead, aha, yeah...

I loved the words you wrote to me but that was bloody yesterday. I can't survive on what you send, every time you need a friend...

Cos we belong together now, yeah, forever united here somehow, yeah. You got a piece of me, and honestly, my life (my life) would suck (would suck) without you...

Pay my respects to Grace and Virtue, send my condolences to Good, give my regards to Soul and Romance, they always did the best they could. And so long to Devotion, he taught me everything I know...

Planting The Choicest Spring Bulbs

I'm cream crackered. (April, this means I'm tired to the point of exhaustion. It's a Cockney rhyming slang sort of phrase that's passed into the vernacular of a certain generation of British people.) Colonials...

I was up early this morning and into the garden a little after a rather murky dawn. I'd planned to tiddle about with the vine, but got waylaid into clearing gutters and drains. We've had appalling rainfall here across the UK. In Cumbria people have been flooded out and a police officer lost his life on a collapsing bridge. Poor old Gordon Brown; that'll teach him to stab Tony Blair in the back for the leadership.

Clearing drains and gutters is an unusually satisfying gardening activity. I like the heavy duty-ness of it all; the prising off of drain and gully covers, the scraping out of accumulated muck and leaf litter, the flushing through with wholly unnecessary amounts of pressure-hosed water.

I staggered inside for breakfast at about half eleven. Last night's curry zapped in the microwave for 4 minutes (if only they did this in hospitals there'd be no MRSA) and two cups of tea. Then the re-run of Nigella's warehouse Christmas preparations which just made me think about Harry Hill's TV Burp's, "Creme de lychee / creme de what?" scene.

OMG get back into the garden! On 31 August I went shopping for my Spring bulbs at my favourite garden centre in the whole world. It's in Derbyshire, ofc, and has the best coffee shop where they make fresh hot scones to order. I've disclosed my unnatural addiction to Spring bulbs before. I had packets and packets of bulbs to plant. Here's the laundry list;

And here's the work in progress snap;

Friday Five: Why I love The World Wide Web

If I hadn't surfed on into April's blog a million years ago, I'd never have found her brilliant "Friday Five" slot. I need to holiday less and blog more. Here is my entry to an April classic call for blog comments...

I have lived:
1. The life of Riley
2. On three continents
3. By the skin of my teeth
4. In exile
5. Beside the sea
6. A life that’s full, and travelled each and every highway
7. In Belfast during the shoot to kill policy
8. In a house full with sunshine
9. Endless hours stuck in motorway traffic jams
10. To tell the tale


I have witnessed:
11. A car on fire on the hard shoulder
12. Persian Muslim women speaking sign language
13. Birth certificates
14. A NYC police woman control 8 lanes of traffic

15. A woman leap off a plane on the apron in a panic in high summer after 9.11. The aircon was broken, so we couldn’t take off and they opened up the doors. This was the cause of the delay, not the effect of her leap

16. Documents
17. A dead teenager at the side of the road, his motorbike beside him
18. Dawn in the Middle East
19. The closing ceremony of the Sydney Olympics
20. A perfect martini made for me in the Oak Room Bar at the Plaza Hotel


I have heard:
21. New York taxi horns at 3am… why?
22. The voices of firemen cutting me from a car
23. The bubbling of a cake as it comes out of the oven
24. Planet Rock at full volume
25. I do
26. The dawn chorus
27. The call to prayer
28. The Angelus in Rome
29. That your eyeballs pop out if you don’t close your eyes when you sneeze
30. If you unscrew your belly button your bum drops off


I have lost:
31. Faith
32. Hope
33. One new earring
34. My temper
35. My university 4x100m relay record to faster women
36. The ability to stay up all night
37. Patience with hypocrites
38. All sense of proportion when buying underwear
39. My taste for chardonnay
40. 41.


I have found:
41. French aluminium coins circa WW2 on a beach near St Malo
42. Lasting friendships online
43. That Nigella’s recipes don’t always work
44. That Delia’s always do
45. Lack of sleep makes me murderous
46. An entire though hollow lobster carcass on a beach
47. That Veronica Wallis’ (RUA) nudes make me cry
48. My best friend at our first meeting, which lasted five hours
49. There’s no such thing as a free lunch
50. The love of my life


I love:
51. Kevin Costner
52. Wearing heels
53. Coco Mademoiselle
54. Lots of detail
55. Certainty
56. Pablo Neruda’s love sonnets
57. Going to the cinema in the afternoon
58. A well-stocked pantry
59. Opening presents on Christmas morning
60. Sainsbury’s tea


I can:
61. Propagate by grafting
62. Follow intricate cross stitch patterns
63. Shuck oysters
64. Do handstands on the beach
65. Stamp about in work boots all day and still look sexy and professional
66. Laugh like a drain
67. Nurture teenagers brilliantly
68. Avoid urgent matters
69. Choose great wine and books by the label / cover alone
70. Discuss Derby County’s premiership campaign


I loathe:
71. Jellied eels
72. Washing poo from baby’s backs when they went up a size in nappies
73. The N word
74. James Woods. Sorry James
75. Missing Gardener’s World
76. People who eat with their mouths open
77. People spitting
78. Being nice to drunks
79. Cleaning the oven
80. Poorly drafted documents


I hope:
81. My gravestone says, “… here lies the beloved wife of Kevin Costner”
82. My passport arrives in time for my holiday
83. To see shooting stars this year
84. I don’t get caught speeding on the M1
85. To awake in Isla Negra, Chile
86. I don’t get my fingers burnt a second time
87. To be as knowledgeable as my head gardener
88. To have an outrageously sparkly ring from Tiffany’s
89. To become Miss Marple (Joan Hickson) on my 70th birthday
90. Therefore I am


I am trying:
91. To find time to get back on a horse
92. To eat more fruit
93. To eat less Marmite on toast
94. To believe, in the chasm of silence
95. To worry less
96. The patience of a saint
97. To read Dante’s Inferno
98. To be good enough to enter paradise
99. To be
100. To stop writing lists

I Believe In One God, The Father The Almighty

Where Are You, Gastropunk n Maths Chick?

I have a stack of photos of our family holiday to the US of A, to upload here. I want to share my utter delight and joy with my witty and urbane readers. We encountered some really weird and wonderful people, we saw some incredible sights and ate the sort of food you only believe exists in a world that doesn't include Jamie Oliver, Delia, Jane Grigson (ok, I know this is a shortcut that means I don't have to mention Elizabeth David or the Pilsbury Dough Boy's buttermilk biscuits), Monty Don and my horticultural guru, Helen Yemm. We saw desert planting that made me want to relocate immediately to the Holy Land and the desert. We beat the casino at Vegas. We watched the sun rise over the Grand Canyon.

I want to tell you about this morning's farmers' market at Bakewell, that tomorrow morning Merci Beaucoup Enfant Deux leaves home for uni and that tomorrow night I will have an empty nest for the first time in over two decades.

But I feel it is more important to post this vital question? Where are you, Gastropunk n Maths Chick?

...and back from america

Oi, Phantom? Remember this? -->

http://thephantomstapleremover.blogspot.com/2008/02/kew-and.html

And where is your post with pictures of your fridge?

Amalee
(just walked in the front door ((OK, I walked in the front door last night then went to bed and slept for 13 hours, then got up and showered then drove to Marks and bought three suits for work complete with shirts, shoes and drawers (I am Virgo, people...)))

Corey's Dad

Now here's a sad old thing --> Corey's Dad died yesterday.

I surfed on into Corey's blog shortly after I first discovered blogs. I like her photography (better than Pioneer Woman's). I've hungered for the meals she describes. I like that cerise cardi she wore to French Husband's do. I especially like her helpful chats about buying French antiques... (in sunny Derbyshire we call "antiques," "tat!")

But more than this, I like her candid revelations. So American. So for Corey, French Husband, Chelsea and Sacha, this is for you; (in English "ships" are assigned the female gender (how very French), but for today, they assume the male gender, for George);

A ship sails and I stand watching till he fades on the horizon

And someone at my side says "He is gone."
Gone where? Gone from my sight, that is all. He is just as large now as
when I last saw him. His diminished size and total loss from my sight is in
me, not in him.
And just at the moment when someone at my side says his is gone

there are others who are watching him coming over their horizon

and other voices take up a glad shout "There he comes!"
That is what dying is.

An horizon and just the limit of our sight.
Lift us up, Oh Lord, that we may see further

Bishop Brent

(because, if I'm good enough and I die and return to paradise, I'd love to sing like this)

On Leading The Life Of Riley This Week

I've just lived one of the most delightful weeks. It began on Saturday afternoon last week, 13th October, with a lazy lunch in the garden of pumpkin, chilli and ginger soup. It was really too cold to sit for long, but we managed it anyway, wrapped up in sweaters and scarves for although the autumnal sun was bright and low in the blue, cloudless sky, it was chilly enough. That night we skipped off to the Buxton Opera House for an evening with Ray Mears. I love Ray Mears, and if ever I find myself on a desert island I shall take my eight records and Ray as my luxury object.

"Over the last decade the name Ray Mears has become recognised throughout the world as being an authority on the subject of Bushcraft and Survival. Ray founded Woodlore, School of Wilderness Bushcraft, in 1983 and has been teaching for the past 25 years. Bushcraft is an encyclopaedia; bushcraft liberates and empowers. It re-acquaints man with nature and his roots and provides an escape from the shackles of modern life."

He entered stage right, preceded by smoke. Honestly, this man's an arsonist, and has carved out a successful career setting fire to everything he can lay his hands on. I bet Ray Mears could set a fire using two bits of asbestos. His stage show was really interesting, and if he ever considered getting members of the audience up on stage to try and set light to each other, his show could go global...

Liberated and empowered to escape the shackles of modern life, I nipped off to Bakewell on Monday morning. I parked up along the main road, just down from the agricultural centre, and walked through the children's playground to the river and then on to the weekly street market for vegetables and a few olives. They had black plastic boxes of small mixed peppers in autumnal reds, yellows and oranges, looking so crisp and perky I bought two. That set me thinking of harvest festivals and Hallowe'en. Walking back along the park, I noticed this beautiful scene; the wind had got up and sheets of leaves were drifting and falling right around me.

And all this week the clear night skies and cold mornings led to heavy mists rolling down the hills and filling the valleys with morning fog. Some of the tallest oak trees growing along the hedgerows were the only part of the valleys visible at breakfast time. The ground frosts over this week thankfully began the destruction of the annuals, which should clear some space for mass spring bulb planting in the next couple of weeks. I still haven't potted up the prepared hyacinths for the house, which as last year, won't now flower in time for Christmas. But I have made the most sublime recipe from Sophie Grigson's Vegetables book.

Htipiti, or Greek red pepper and feta dip, contains a small and seemingly ordinary list of ingredients which transform themselves, as Sophie promises, into a dish of sublime delight. I shall take a photo of the page in this cookbook and include it here to encourage you all to rush out to Waterstones and buy it.

Sophie instructs us to halve, seed, grill until charred then skin about 5oz red peppers; and throw them into a food processor with a seeded and chopped red chilli, 6oz feta (I used the standard supermarket 200g / 7oz packet), a clove of garlic and a drizzle of olive oil sufficient to make a creamy mass on processing. Pour into your favourite serving dish and force feed to your new best friend who historically claims to dislike both chillies and peppers. She scoffed the lot. This dip is so beautiful to look at, especially if served in a white dish. I made it with the mixed peppers from Bakewell, so got a golden sunrise colour, with the flecks of chilli and a shake of paprika adding a "red sky at night..." note.

So there you have it. A wonderful week full with Ray Mears, markets, vegetables; frosty mornings and late evenings; lolling about on the sofas watching Bridge to Terabithia with Merci Beaucoup Enfant Deux; Sophie Grigson and a Saturday night double bill of NCIS. Life really doesn't get too much better than this.

An Early Morning Towards Summer's End

The birds woke me before six this morning. After the early morning ritual of making tea, I stood at the french windows in my jimmies, and watched the day start. After a few minutes I stepped out into the chilly air, and began my morning rounds. The lawns at the other parts of the gardens were heavily flecked with dew, my flipflops no protection for my feet or the bottom of my jimmies, which soon became wet. Best of all, the nasturtiums were covered with tiny dew droplets, just at that stage before the droplets start to run together and form tiny rivulets across the leaves. The leaves on the roses were all edged with droplets too. Summer's coming to an end, and this morning I got the first whiff of autumn on the air. Wonderful. I love the summer and the heat of the sun on my body, but autumn's still my favourite season.

And the crockery from yesterday's tea party with girlfriends. Colourful and lovely and light and wonderful.

Sonnet LIII

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

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

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

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

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

Congratulations