Friday Five: Things to Buy This Weekend

 

1. Couple of large-ish Long Toms for my olive trees, currently wintering out in the glasshouse;

 

2.  Half a dozen large-ish terracotta pots for my tree saplings, currently wintering out on the terrace steps;

 

3.  Bags of charcoal and plenty of firelighters; if we're to have a warm weekend with Cs into the mid-teens, let's get cooking;

 

4.  Even more packets of seeds, specifically mini cucumbers so I can recreate my Jerusalem breakfasts...

 

5.  Another box of purple latex gloves; one must at least attempt to be stylish when sowing one's seeds.

 

Rose Balling: Rosa Eglantyne

 

What causes rose balling?  Rose balling is an annoyance that dominates in a damp, cool summer exactly like the one we endured in sunny Derbyshire in 2012.  Flower buds develop normally but fail to open fully.  Wet weather saturates the outer petals and when the sun finally puts in an appearance and scorches the flower dry, the outer petals are fused together preventing full opening.  These fused petals dry to a crisp, brown appearance.   

Rose balling can be a problem if you've planted roses in a partially shaded site, and you've got a penchant (as I) for roses with a multitude of thin petals.  Rosa Eglantyne and Geoff Hamilton are particularly vulnerable in my garden, whilst my peonies and camellias appear to be thus far unaffected.  Clearly the site is the predominant problem. 

 

Standard advice seems to be pruning to open up a lovely goblet shaped bush thus enabling good air circulation and rapid drying of the flower buds after rainfall; watering in the evenings only (laughable advice last summer); removing balled buds promptly before grey mould sets in and infects both host and nearby plants with a whole new set of problems; and rather drastically, removing or cutting back overhanging shrubs and trees.

 

Reading this advice last year on the RHS website finally prompted me to tackle my knackered old Warwickshire Drooper plum tree, stalwart of hundreds of jars of my world famous spiced plum chutney (thank you Delia.)  More of that in a forthcoming post.

On Stalking Helen Yemm

I know, I can't believe I've written that post title, either... 

 All photos Daily Telegraph

Something else I can't believe is that Helen Yemm IS FINALLY BLOGGING AGAIN.  Well, not really blogging, just turning in her annual copy... Click on this ----> OMG!to read her latest article about her most recent book, Gardening in Pyjamas. This book will appeal to those gardeners, myself and all my charming, witty and erudite readers ofc, who like Helen, are, 

"Keen enough, daft enough, to get out there in all weather first thing in the morning (usually inappropriately dressed, hence the title) but didn’t quite know what to get on with and how to go about it – and why."  Buy it here...

 

Although I have to tell you, Helen, I know exactly what to get on with, armed with my secateurs and assorted WMD... indiscriminate pruning! 

 

Here's a lovely shot above of Helen pruning an offensive cat out of its lair.

Here's a lovely shot of Helen crushing the evidence.

Here's a lovey shot of Helen about to spread the crushed evidence around the roses and top fruit.

 And this is just a random shot of Helen being fabulous. 

 

You know, it strikes me that if Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller had had a certain someone in his squad, he'd have found those WMD...

 

 

Slacker Diaries: Part 22

I love this picture.  It's Paula Hamilton falling through a window at a fashion shoot.  Because sometimes life is just like this.  Even when you're down, you can still make a few people larf. 

Photo: Daily Telegraph, photographer unknown

On Planting Lettuces / Why Do Lettuces Bolt?

"In March I sowed strips of Cos lettuces together with a packet of mixed lettuces I like to describe as frilly knicker lettuces.  You get the idea.  They really ought to have been planted out a couple of weeks ago, but my obscenely busy schedule made this impossible.  Each morning I'd stare out at the kitchen garden, cup of tea in hand and say to myself "I really must get those lettuces in..."

Matters reached crisis..."

And there I left it, having reached across my desk to answer the phone and then become embroiled in busyness.  And now, some five months on from this draft I'm composing a post about bolting lettuces.  Bolting refers to the sudden onset of your lettuces stretching up from their main stem, as if to catch up with the Borlottis you planted nearby, rather than remaining a nicely bunched, tightly curled head of leaves a few inches from the ground.  Bolting can be triggered by either a few days of cold weather, stress or by changes in the day length as the growing season progresses. 

Lettuces are particularly sensitive to the amount of daylight received, and given the appalling spring, summer and autumn we've had here in sunny Derbyshire, I'm overly delighted to have grown any usable lettuce at all.  There really isn't much you can do, except to pick your leaves as you need them, and enjoy the beauty of your bolting salad greenery.

 

On Lenten Fasting

As a family and a community we always observe Lenten fasting.  This takes different forms; sometimes we give up something; other times we do something extra, something worthwhile and beneficial to both the soul and the community.  This year, Beloved Firstborn decided to give up swearing after I advised him calmly that if I heard him say the eff-word once more I would leave his half of the estate to CAFOD.  He thought about this and decided to drop a quid into the Missions red box every time he edged CAFOD into pole position.  At lunch today we all sat around discussing our Lenten progress.

Mum: So how are you getting on?

Beloved Firstborn:  Not good; a week and a half in and I was up to £59...

Purple Sprouting Broccoli

I stopped for lunch at midday; broke off some leaves and broc heads and threw them all into a hot wok with sliced ginger, too much garlic and enough fresh chilli to make me cough.  Finished off in the wok with a splash of teriyaki sauce and Bob's Your Uncle.  A fast and fabulous lunch when you can't bear to be away from the garden on the first warm sunshiny day of the year.  

Really, this ought to be on the top shelf... hortiporn at its best.

Time to Sow Carrots

I recently picked up some new clients, and already am completely in love with them. I make them want to be better gardeners and they make me want to be a better person.  It is a perfectly balanced relationship, except of course, that I'm gaining far more from the deal.  Together we are awakening their walled kitchen garden; and lawns (yes I know, lawns!); their glasshouse and their shrubbery.  I arrive in the morning and they make me toast on their Aga.  I think that's what clinched it; a walled garden and Aga toast.  They make it with that criss-cross grill thing, and when I scrape over the Lurpak it melts into the little squares.

Suitably breakfasted, we repair to their walled garden, where this week we sowed carrots into the raised brick beds.  We both like carrots, so pretty much emptied four packets into the deep black soil.  Pictures to follow.

Say it with me people; I really do lead the Life of Riley.

Trailing Geraniums in the Rain

I bought these geraniums early last summer for 25p each, wilting and half dead under the neglectful care of a major DIY chainstore.  No worries, for as my charming, witty and erudite readers know geraniums or more properly Pelargoniums, are South African natives and can thus withstand a bit of drought and heat.  

Pelargonium is a genus of some 200 species.  Commonly called geraniums, the true Geranium is a separate genus of related plants often called cranesbills.  Cranesbills are thorough repellent plants that make my life a misery with their appearance each spring where I thought I'd finally managed to dig them to destruction the previous autumn.  Not so much perennial as ever-bloody-lasting; once one arrives in your garden, it seeds itself wantonly until every part of your garden is infiltrated.

Most of the plants you'll see sold as garden geraniums are in fact pelargoniums, as opposed to true geraniums or cranesbills.  No matter, just look at these beauties, and the rejuvenating qualities of great compost, plenty of moisture and an adoring lady gardener. 

Pelargonium "Lavender"

Pelargonium "Red Star"

Pelargonium "Violet"

Now is the time to sow your Pelargonium seeds, usually 6 seeds in packet for 2.99£.  You can of course, wait to pick up the plug plants, also 2.99£ for 6, but sowing your own seeds is so much fun.  Ten days ago I sowed Mr Fothergill's Moulin Rouge, the classic signal red geraniums you'll see everywhere in France. Once the risk of frosts has passed, in sunny Derbyshire that usually means mid-May, I'll have them outside in large terracotta pots on the terraces, lining the steps in the kitchen garden and flanking the drive and the outhouses.  In late February my thoughts turn towards our house in France, and France, and St Malo, and I'm happy.

Sunset

The trick to a barbeque in early spring, is to plan ahead and get the thing lit mid-afternoon, piling the coals high.  Then when the sun starts to drop rapidly and the cold drops upon you harder than you thought possible after such a lovely day, you will have your steak and veg already sizzling.  Of course, I didn't plan this far ahead, but it was still lovely grilling in the dark.  Cold, but still lovely.  Not so much cold, actually, as bloody freezing.

On Winter Gardening & Bone Idleness

One of my greatest failings is Bone Idleness.  That and a refusal to hire any woman who at interview blathers on about her addiction to chocolate and buying shoes.  I always collect my interviewees from reception; that way I can work the conversation round to these two deal breakers.  Never fails.  I've yet to recruit a female balloon head. 

I've loads of photos of my perfect, beautiful, wonderful kitchen garden, and stacks more of all the lovely places I've visited over the winter, including some corkers from Canterbury, (incidentally my New Favourite Place).  I just can't be bothered to catalogue, upload and add cheery dialogue to some much needed posts.  Some of my photos are simply breathtaking, especially those taken in the rain during November.  Since discovering both the zoom and the macro/super macro button on my camera, there's been no stopping me.  Now if I can only summon up the energy to download and work through my Photoshop disc, I'll be well away. 

I was over at Chatsworth  last year, and have some stunners from the kitchen garden there.  They call it a kitchen garden, but really its Horticultural Envy writ large.  What do you think?

Oh squeaky green brassicas, my heart belongs to you.

Finally At Home In My Own Bed With The Garden

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

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

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

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

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

Iris Katharine Hodgkin

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.

Easter Saturday And Bowls Of Paperwhite Narcissi

"The walls of the hallway were panelled in natural wood, and polished floors were scattered with worn and faded Persian rugs. The wide staircase, thickly carpeted, rose in three straight flights to the upper landing, and sunlight streamed down through the wide stair window, curtained in folds of heavy yellow silk brocade. In the middle of the hall was a round pedestal table, on which stood a lustre tureen crammed with a moon-burst of white narcissi. As well, a worn leather Visitor's Book, a dog lead or two, somebody's gloves, a stack of mail. Opposite the staircase was the fireplace, the mantle much carved and ornamented. In its hearth lay a bed of dead ashes, but Judith guessed a dry log or two and a puff with the bellows would soon bring the fire back to flaming life."

Coming Home

Rosamunde Pilcher

Shaped By War: Don McCullin Exhibition

My love affair with Don McCullin continues.

The Imperial War Museum North, in Manchester, is currently exhibiting photographs and the most wonderful bits and pieces including his cameras and Vietnam helmet, to mark Don McCullin's 50-years as one of the world's most acclaimed photographers. He pretty much shaped war reporting by his photos, encouraged and enabled by Harold Evans and the Sunday Times Insight team.

http://north.iwm.org.uk/server/show/conEvent.3171

Battle Of Fromelles 19 July 1916

In 2008 a number of burial pits dating from the First World War were identified at Fromelles in northern France. In May 2009 archaeologists began to excavate the pits and by early September had removed the remains of 250 British and Australian soldiers, buried behind German lines after the Battle of Fromelles in July 1916.

On 17 March 2010 the British and Australian governments announced that 75 of the soldiers recovered from Pheasant Wood have been identified.

Click on the link above to find the details, including photographs, of the young men recovered from Fromelles, including the Wilson brothers who died together and are now buried alongside each other in marked graves.

RHS Harvested Seed

My free seeds have arrived. That they are free isn't really the draw; it's that they are harvested from the various RHS gardens. Legally. Like all gardeners I like to help the RHS gardeners by nipping off a fat to bursting seed head whenever the plant takes my fancy and is ready to pop. This is helpful as it saves all that weeding and transplanting, and because I don't use Felcos (and God knows we've all seen the grey wolves doing this...) I like to pretend I'm not nicking the seeds. I am, of course, so the annual arrival of my free seeds from the RHS is always an excitement.

The real joy of the manila envelope dropping through my front door is that each waxed paper package contains my own bit of the RHS gardens, especially my favourite, Harlow Carr. I like to meet up with fellow gardeners and indulge in swapsies, especially the stranger seeds that you wouldn't bother ordering because you aren't entirely sure you like spiky plants, or can't be bothered to wait for the seeds to germinate into trees, or simply that you feel you lack the time and expertise to devote to something that needs multiple seasons to overcome dormancy and make an appearance through the 6mm layer of coarse grit. I'll let you know how I get on this year.