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...

 

 

 

Friday Five: Rod Stewart

What can I say? Rod is back BIGGER and BETTER than he's ever been.  I missed the Maggie May generation (thank goodness) and really came to know Rod via Atlantic Crossing and those big big romantic ballads.

1. Beautiful Morning
"Beautiful morning, on this beautiful morning, on this beautiful, beautiful morning here with you..."

2. She Makes Me Happy
"...She showed me loving is a wonderful thing; She makes me happy; want to sing, sing, sing!"  His joy in his relationship with Penny Lancaster just shines right through this song.  Just wonderful...

3. Its Over 
Beautiful arrangement. Lyrics choke you up. Gifted songwriter. Rod at his best. This whole album is his most autobiographical.

4. Forever Young
Perfect.

5. And pretty much everything else he's done, but at a push probably this, not least for the way his voice breaks as he sings, "I can tell by your eyes that you've probably been crying forever..."

6. And Some Guys Have All The Luck, because I just love the way one song segues into another and his blond saxophonist... classic.

"A Life Lived in Perpetual Peril Can be Exhilarating..."

I'm freezing, and have taken to wearing a cashmere sweater and tomato red jeggings from Marks just to get through the day.  I did however, decide to leave my pashmina in the  car at Sainsbury's, as I thought that was just overdoing it when everyone else was in shorts and tee-shirts.  It always takes me a couple of days to acclimatise when I return from (and go to) the Middle East.

 

Hot, hot sun and bright blue skies. Sunnies and Factor 50. Flip-flops and bottled water in the car.

 

Olive trees full with fruit and the stony, weed-free understory.

 

Simply wonderful.

The Slacker Diaries Part 22

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...

Vera Atkins Memorial Seat Dedication Saturday 24 September 2011

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.