May 2016 – Page 2 – derrickjknight

Before Gaeddren

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A wet day has its compensations. Firstly, it waters Jackie’s newest planting well. Secondly, it forces her to take a rest. And thirdly? It enables me to delve into my photographic archives and scan samples to my Apple. Today I returned to the colour negatives of the 1983 holiday in North Wales.

Here is Becky outside the farmhouse where we stayed, in the fields of which

she joined Matthew, Sam, and several obliging cows.

Here are some more photos of the disused slate mine, converted to black and white images.

Sam turns to spur me on up the track beside the house,

beneath which patchwork quilted landscapes are draped.

As has been mentioned before, this holiday was taken before our friends Ann and Don had completed the refurbishment and conversion of Gaeddren, their house in Cerrigydrudion where we were to enjoy further good times in North Wales.

On this occasion, somewhere near the village, we came across a scrap metal yard, where dead cars of varying hues rusted away among the corpses of domestic appliances.

This evening, for dinner, Jackie produced chicken marinaded in honey and mustard; sweet potato, crisp carrots and cauliflower; and a juicy melange of onions, leeks,tomatoes, and peppers; accompanied by a slice of egg paratha brought back from Lal Quilla yesterday. A egg custard tart was to follow. The Cook drank Hoegaarden and I finished the fleurie.

Rewards

Snatching half an hour of occasional sunshine before the expected gloom set in for the day, I wandered around the garden with my camera.

Two retrained pink climbing roses are in bloom along the front garden trellis.

We have masses of geraniums palmatum. Jackie took cuttings last year, and distributed some in the front, where they are thriving and will soon replace the wind-blown crab apple blossom from above.

Similar division has been effected with libertia. My method is described in the linked post. I would have been happy to write that the libertia here frolicked solely with alliums and bluebells against the red Japanese maple. Unfortunately when I put this picture up on screen it revealed the clinging velcro strings of lady’s bedstraw, a pernicious weed we have spent two years eradicating. That put a halt to my proceedings while I assisted The Head Gardener in its immediate removal.

The maple’s red foliage appears to be extended by a rhododendron on the other side of the grass.

Snapdragons are now fully out, this one fortuitously planted within sight of one of the residents of the Dragon Bed.

Walking straight on past the dragon leads to the Shady Path, so named because of its original state.

Running roughly parallel to the right of this is the Gazebo Path.

This is the view through the gazebo across the grass patch.

Continuing along the Shady Path, red climbing roses now reward Jackie’s training.

When we arrived here, some very poorly looking slender red gladioli struggled in poor soil outside the kitchen door. Our resident expert lifted the bulbs and replanted them in the boxes she arranged at the head of the back drive. They are standing proud and coming into flower.

A mature rhododendron has been rescued from the choking jungle,

and nearby, similarly hued clematis Doctor Ruppel proliferates.

The hawthorn along the back drive has responded to pruning.

This evening we dined at Lal Quilla in Lymington. My main choice was Goan King Prawn, and Jackie’s sag chicken. We shared an egg paratha, special fried rice, and onion bahji; and both drank Kingfisher.

A Portobello Ramble

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I am sure everyone would agree that a painted wooden owl should not be left out in the rain. It was because of this that The Head Gardener was delighted, when we took two more large bags of green waste to the dump, to find a wooden bin she thought was just the job for Winnie the Pooh’s friend, Wol.

Back home she nailed the container to the top of one of the dead stumps along the back drive, and, with the promise of easy morsels within, persuaded the owl to take up residence. The rose surrounding our new friend is Félicité Perpetué, which we rescued from the undergrowth last year. It will soon be in bloom.

I scanned another dozen colour slides from the Streets of London series. These were taken on one walk in May 2004.

The Market Bar stands on the corner of Lancaster Road and Portobello Road, W11. The name derives from the world famous antiques market in which it is situated. It is one of the many London Pubs that hosts a Thai restaurant. Note the ubiquitous pigeons perched to the right of the cherubic sculpture. A couple of miles away in Marylebone is the Seashell seafood restaurant. I think the artwork would suit that establishment rather better.

At the NW end of Portobello Road the food market, with some general stalls, is a daily event. When, a few years later, I took up residence in Sutherland Place, I would shop there regularly,

and enjoy many a plentiful fry-up in the delightful Eve’s Market Café.

A little more in keeping with most of the modern public conveniences in London, this one in Lonsdale Road, seeming more substantial, makes the user less afraid that the door will open while he or she is enthroned, or, worse still, not open at all until the automatic cleansing operation has done its job. Twelve years on, it is a rare London street that does not contain pedestrians engaged in mobile phone conversations.

I took this photo of Alice’s antique shop on the corner of Denbigh Close at the Bayswater end of Portobello Road, for my eponymous granddaughter, then aged four.

Simon Close lies off the Notting Hill Gate end of Portobello. This shop marks the end of the market. Further on are rows of delightful cottages.

On into Bayswater, this gentleman took a rest in Palace Gardens Terrace, W8.

Garden Mews, W2 is just one of the many enticingly elegant enclaves to be found in many parts of the capital. They tend, of necessity, to guard their privacy.

This woman, leaving Queensway so purposefully is probably making her way into Kensington Gardens, referred to in the Terrace above. Once we had gentlemen walking around the city carting sandwich boards. Now we see single boards on the end of a pole clutched by a stationary guardian, unless he has found a usual place to prop his ward. Whiteley’s is a world famous store at the far end of Queensway.

I well remember Stanley Green, seen here, in 1977 (commons.wikimedia.org), who tramped up and down Oxford Street for years, toting his own idiosyncratic message.

Many squares of grand terraced housing surround enclosed gardens, like this one alongside Porchester Road.

Much to the bemusement of the woman taking a cigarette break beside Celbridge Mews, the car in the foreground of this picture seems intent on forcing its way into the line of traffic coming off Lord Hills Bridge at the Westway End of Porchester Road. Beneath the bridge runs the underground railway leading to Royal Oak station, unseen, to the right of the distant pedestrians.

This evening we enjoyed Mr Pink’s fish and chips served with pickled onions and gherkins. Jackie drank Hoegaarden, and I drank more of the fleurie.

Tears And Laughter

Today was mostly dull and wet, although fleeting sunlight did appear occasionally, for instance to brighten limp, tearful, irises on our back drive,

or to reveal this insect I assumed to be a hoverfly drying off in a hedge in the Lyndhurst car park. The yellow/orange may help entomologists to be certain of the identity.

Through the rain, we had made an abortive visit to buy a birthday present to supplement jewellery bought at Christmas, when the shop had been making a big display of the range we sought. They don’t do them any more. We returned home and were cheered up by a welcome visit from Shelly and Ron who, since they were about to go away, brought early birthday presents for Jackie.

In the meantime I scanned another batch of colour slides from the summer of 1980.

In July Jessica still needed to prop Sam’s head up, either with her hand,

or by the more usual across the shoulder method.

A number of portraits were made on 2nd August.

Here is Becky, probably gazing upon her new brother.

Jessica certainly was.

I’m not sure what had grabbed Michael’s attention;

or, indeed, Sam’s –

whatever that was, it was worth a laugh.

This evening’s chicken was marinaded in honey and mustard, and delightful it was too; served with mashed potato, carrots, runner beans and ratatouille. Lemon tart and cream was to follow. Jackie drank Hoegaarden, and I drank more of the Fleurie.

Undine

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I failed an intelligence test this morning.

Well, in fairness no-one told me that the weedkiller sachets contained further such items. You see, it was my task to zap the weeds in the cracks between the concrete sections of the front drive, and its accompanying gravel path.

So. I merrily tore of the top of the outer covering and tipped the contents into 5 litres of water. I would have immediately added four more inner sachets. But I noticed a transparent packet bearing floating minuscule sections of what looked like vermicelli, and strove to extract this. Ah. It was soluble. So I got the poison all over my fingers and had to wash it off. Of course, the mini-pasta also dissolved, as it was meant to do.

Well, now I know.

Our first iris foetidissima bloomed today. Its days are numbered because The Head Gardener is less partial to them than I am. It must be something in the name.

This afternoon I finished reading:

This volume has adorned my bookshelves for 34 years, but, although I have often perused the pictures, I only began to read it a few days ago.

The Encyclopaedia Britannica has this to say about the author:

‘Friedrich Heinrich Karl de la Motte, Baron Fouqué, (born February 12, 1777, Brandenburg—died January 23, 1843, Berlin) German novelist and playwright remembered chiefly as the author of the popular fairy tale Undine (1811).

Fouqué was a descendant of French aristocrats, an eager reader of English and Scandinavian literature and Greek and Norse myths, and a military officer. He became a serious writer after he met scholar and critic August Wilhelm Schlegel. In his writings Fouqué expressed heroic ideals of chivalry designed to arouse a sense of German tradition and national character in his contemporaries during the Napoleonic era.

A prolific writer, Fouqué gathered much of his material from Scandinavian sagas and myths. His dramatic trilogy, Der Held des Nordens (1808–10; “Hero of the North”), is the first modern dramatic treatment of the Nibelung story and a precedent for the later dramas of Friedrich Hebbel and the operas of Richard Wagner.’

It is a measure of the prowess of the artist, the foremost English book illustrator of the early twentieth century, Arthur Rackham,

that it is his name that appears on the front cover,

although the writer features on the spine.

One reason I never pursued book illustration as a career was that I knew I had no hope of ever matching this master.

There are 15 colour plates in my Heinemann edition. I forced myself to make a limited selection, and chose these two examples of the many moods Rackham is capable of evoking. He is noted for his trees.

Each chapter is topped and tailed by an exquisite little vignette, pertinent to the story.

Let us not forget the translator, W. L. Courtney, who has produced a beautifully poetic rendering of the original romantic fable of 1811. I do not know how far from the original he has strayed, but suitably quaint archaic language speaks of the bygone days of knights, honour, chivalry, water sprites, and magic. The poetic prose is especially descriptive. It was fun to read, even without Mr. Rackham’s input.

This evening we dined on chicken marinaded overnight in lemon and piri-piri sauce, carrots, runner beans, ratatouille, and mashed potato and swede, followed by lemon tart and cream. The Cook drank Hoegaarden and I drank la Croix des Celestins Fleurie 2014.

In The May Garden

My gardening task today was cutting the grass.

It is as well that I did carried that out before photographing this symphony in red provided by tellimas, rhododendron, pieris, mimuluses and petunias.

Another rhododendron that I photographed last week in a still closed and soggy state is now fully open and looking well refreshed;

as are the red and white tulips at the front of the house.

New arrivals are clematises

Niobe

and Marie Boisselot;

yet more Crane’s bill geraniums;

Pheasant’s eye, perhaps the last of the narcissi;

naturalised aquilegias;

and different alliums.

As has been noted before, the Hordle Chinese Take Away set meal for two can always be extended into the next day. So it was with yesterday’s, the seconds of which we enjoyed this evening, with profiteroles to follow. Jackie drank Hoegaarden, and I drank more of the Bordeaux.

A Vow

Yesterday was a glorious one for a wedding. The sun shone throughout, and it was cool enough in the shade. This was the occasion of the wedding of Mr and Mrs Andrew and Danielle Milwain, and most delightful it was.

When Jackie and I lived in Minstead I had often, en route to Lyndhurst and back, walked past the Strictly Private sign to a rough road leading to the New Forest Outdoor Centre. Yesterday, we were entitled to make our way along the track. I decided to walk, but

by the time I had reached a splendid rhododendron, realised it was probably quite a long way, especially as other cars were clearly going much further on. One of these was Frances’s, being driven by her son-in-law Paul, who hooted, grinned, and gave me a two-fingered salute. This seemed somewhat less than respectful of the young man.

Soon after this, I was relieved to see Jackie’s Modus hove into view. She had correctly assessed that I probably needed to be driven myself.

The venue was quite idyllic. The main building was of wooden construction suitable for the purposes of outdoor activities and was licensed for weddings. The lawn was inviting, and those who were planning to stay overnight had begun to pitch their tents or take occupation of their named huts.

Those gathering for the event

included Louisa with Jessica and Imogen, seen here conversing with their great grandmother.

Eventually it was time for us to take our seats inside and wait, with Andy, the handsome groom, for Rob, his soon-to-be father-in-law, to lead Danni, the beautiful bride, into the Registrar’s temporary domain.

Perhaps the highlight of the ceremony was the abduction of the rings. All had gone swimmingly until my nephew Adam was called upon to present the two gold bands. At precisely that moment, his son, Jasper did a runner. He made it out of the front door before Thea, the little boy’s mother caught up with him. It was then she realised that she held the box containing the rings which she had been just about to hand to her husband. Universal hilarity ensued, the rings were recovered, and the unfazed Registrar continued conducting the proceedings.

I had been given the honour of performing a reading. This was my choice:

A VOW by WENDY COPE

It earned me a kiss from the bride.

After the ceremony we all milled about, snacking on garlic bread and enjoying drinks from the bar, until a splendid salad and cold meats lunch with red and white wine was served in the refectory.

Hundreds of photographs were taken by the guests, and probably 1000+ by the official photographer, who kept set pieces to the absolute minimum.

Here he is shooting Danni with her brother Adam and her parents Elizabeth and Rob.

At lunch in the marquee, the father of the bride gave a tender and entertaining speech, which was followed by one from the groom who omitted no-one in his eloquent thanks, and another from Danni’s friend Laura who claimed to be getting in on the act in the same way as Danni had done at hers.

This morning Aaron presented me with an apt footnote to the great day. I accompanied him to Mole Country Supplies where we purchased materials for a fence he is building for us. This involved two trips with his van. He knew about the wedding and I described the venue. He told me he had spent two days picking stones out of the lawn a year or so ago. I trust anyone reading this who spent last night in a tent will appreciate our friend’s efforts.

Hordle Chinese Take Away provided our dinner this evening. It was as good as usual. We both drank Kingfisher, which doesn’t vary much either.

Before The Wedding

Before setting off to Lyndhurst for Danni and Andy’s wedding, we took a short tour round the garden.

Cynthia Jobin‘s question on yesterday’s post had alerted us to the similarities between cow parsley and hemlock. After extensive research The Head Gardener was able to pronounce that we did not have poison and could indeed make soup with our crop.

We have now discovered that the boy in the four seasons statuary represents summer.

Two clematis Montanas are now giving the dead Snake Bark maple a new lease of life.

We attended the aforementioned wedding, had lots of lovely food and a certain amount of beer and wine. I will report on it tomorrow.

Kingston Connections

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Given to me by Barrie earlier in the year, Neil Grant’s book ‘Village London Past & Present’, which I just finished reading, was a perfect adjunct to David Lawrence’s ‘Bright Open Spaces’.

The author’s style is both informative and entertaining, and the book is lavishly illustrated with photographs from the past and what was, to Mr Grant when published, the present. Much is made of the pace of change at a time when the Millennium Dome and the London Eye were both buildings of the future. Indeed, when studying photographs labelled ‘today’ in 1991, I found myself asking questions. Even my own ‘Streets of London’ series begun in 2004 is now history.

100 years ago, the metropolis was indeed a series of villages, and residences of, say Wimbledon or Dulwich cling to that term today. It is hard to believe that the un-idyllic Camberwell once harboured an eponymous beauty in the form of a butterfly.

Having lived and worked in various of London’s villages for most of my life, I am familiar with most of the book’s coverage. I have chosen just one area of the capital to illustrate this post and outline my connections.

Let me begin with 1966, the year when, as an Assistant Child Care Officer, I entered Social Work. My post ‘An Attachment To The Gates’ tells of what I did to the gates of Kingston’s Guildhall. For a good laugh, it is to be highly recommended.

An important town in the Middle Ages, Kingston has probably the oldest continuing market in the country. It was in August 1972 that Jackie and her friend Linda set up a stall i n this market, displaying their own hand-crafted goods. I encouraged my work colleagues to admire the contents.

Sometime later in the 1970s, Matthew was seriously into fishing. It is perhaps possible that it was somewhere near this bank of the Thames, seen in about 1890, that I accompanied him on such an outing. I was somewhat relieved that we didn’t catch anything.

Kingston was also where we carried out most of our mudlarking.

Today’s heavy rain had desisted by mid-afternoon revealing

a humble white allium paying obeisance to a weigela;

bejewelled Jacqueline du Pre;

sparkling Absolutely Fabulous;

fungus breaking out on the dead tree root;

the dianthus Sweet William;

and clematis Doctor Ruppel.

Anyone having read last year’s posts may be aware of a slight difference of opinion between The Head Gardener and her serf about the wisdom of welcoming cow parsley into our garden. This year Jackie has reinforcements. Apparently these plants are now in fashion. Naturally I now offer not even token resistance.

This evening we dined on Jackie’s choice chicken jafrezi, mushroom rice, and parathas. She drank Hoegaarden, and I drank Llidl’s Bordeaux superieur 2011.

Before The Thunderstorm

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For the best part of the day there were two consistencies in the weather: it was very warm and it was dry. This meant the overnight rain soon evaporated. The sun, however, vied for dominance with the clouds.

Stopping on the way to buy a necessary sack barrow from Milford Supplies, we drove to Molly’s Den in search of two more stone urns for the rose garden. We were successful and installed them into position.

We also bought a red-painted wrought iron planter.

Early on, in the front garden,

tulips’ in-built umbrellas protected their stamens.

Bees preferred the pollen from the clematis Montana. If you can’t spot this insect filling its thigh sacs, you may choose to enlarge the image,

or opt for this one instead.

Pearly drops slipped from aquilegias.

The viburnum plicatum had benefited from the warmth and the rain.

Two years ago, outside the utility room door, stood the stump of a wisteria that had clearly been heavily pruned, we imagine to make way for the plumbing for the en-suite bathroom above. It has responded to nurturing the first year, and training the next, to produce a fine drapery which should increase even more next year.

Another stump, this time on the grass patch, has recovered to produce a pieris that now shows signs of feeling crowded by the Castle Bench.

Offspring of the erigeron, outside the French windows to the sitting room, have been adopted by various other parts of the garden.

Just before the thunderstorm hit at 4.30, after Jackie had planted up the urns, I joined her for cold drinks and a rest in the rose garden.

This evening we dined on Jackie’s prize chicken jalfrezi, now nicely maturing; meat samosas, egg fried rice, onion bhajis, and parathas. I drank more of the Cotes du Rhone, while The Cook abstained.