May 2017 – Page 2 – derrickjknight

To The Next Level

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This morning, not only did Aaron prune a hawthorn and a maple; take out an old, not really productive, vine; and heap compost and bark mulch onto the rose garden, but he also cut the grass, thus relieving me of my first task this afternoon.

I did, however, participating with the customary division of labour, assist the Head Gardener in pruning and clearing the shady side of the Palm Bed, with the effect that

the vista from the decking, across Aaron’s well mown grass, to the Compassion rose visible through the cleft in the eucalyptus is revealed.

Long-term visitors may remember that the yellow-leaved tree, also seen from this point, looked rather dead when we first arrived here. Only the long diagonal limb on the right bore any leaves. It has, however, from a reduction of encumbrances and an increase in light, recovered well. We might even be able to improve the shape by removing the now stray branch.

After this, Jackie continued filling and watering her hanging baskets which will soon lift the garden to the next level.

Later, I drafted the next section of A Knight’s Tale, making use of these two pictures from ‘Cricket In The Street’;

from this photograph and edited text in ‘Holly’

and from this studio portrait in ‘Wagon Wheels’.

This evening we dined on spicy pizza, pork bacon, and plentiful salad. We’d already each consumed a beer on the patio beforehand.

The Head Gardener’s Hod Carrier

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Jackie continues weeding, clipping, planting, and replenishing soil. This involves a certain amount of popping out to a garden centre. Today, for example, she departed for some lime and returned with, in addition, a garden tray, a parasol, and the obligatory few plants. Here she was working away on the Dragon Bed near the house end of the Brick Path a couple of days ago.

Here is a current view of the Wisteria Arbour where, accompanying the eponymous plant, can be seen a red rose and Carnaby and Star of India clematises; with bronze fennel, cerinthes and Sweet Williams in the foreground bed.

From the corner of the patio the view across the Kitchen Bed contains the white clematis Marie Boisselot reflected by libertia; alliums, pansies, and diascias bringing notes of purple and pink; and russet triangle points made up of the recently pruned maple, the distant copper beech, and the now fully blooming

Chilean Lantern tree.

Rose Peach Abundance soars over the Oval Bed,

as does Altissimo beside the potting shed.

Mum in a million,

Crown Princess Margareta,

and Schoolgirl are all flourishing in the Rose Garden

where Festive Jewel

leads the eye through For Your Eyes Only to Gloriana, with Love Knot to the left;

and a small hoverfly investigates Summer Wine peeping from its rack on the entrance arch.

The Head Gardener is wondering whether the splendid, flouncing, heucheras are now putting the roses in the shade.

My primary function has been to explore all paths and corners of the garden seeking out heaps of weeds and clippings and either chopping them up to fill the orange bags, or dumping them on the fast developing compost piles.

These contributions can crop up anywhere, especially, it seems, when I think I have finished.

This was just the first wheelbarrow load today.

Pushing it happily along the Brick Path, I discovered the next two loads. It is fun being the Head Gardener’s Hod Carrier.

Fortunately, Jackie had produced enough of her marvellous lamb jalfrezi meal yesterday for it to be reprised this evening. As usual, this offered some enhancement. The Culinary Queen drank Hoegaarden, leaving the Kingfisher to me.

Smiling For The Cameras

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We have several sparrows’ nests in the garden. They, along with various other small birds, take their ablutions in the Waterboy’s pool, as they did this morning.

Sparrows - one on waterboy's head, another on pool edge

Sparrows - one on waterboy's head, one flying

Sometimes they await their turn for a dip on the little lad’s head, flying off after they are done.

Other perches also come in useful.

I carried out an administrative task in relation to our friend Wolf’s executorship, after which Jackie drove me to the Hordle Post Office.

We were narrowly beaten to Hordle Lane by a crane transporter. This held us up somewhat,

since it took up most of the tarmac, and anyone coming from the other side of the road had to risk driving into the ditch.

There were quite a few of these because it was school run time.

After I had eventually posted some missives, we travelled on to Brockenhurst via Mount Pleasant Lane which rather lived up to its name.

At Highland Water a heron strode purposefully along the shallow stream,

on the other side of which a group of small ponies mowed the lawns.

One of their number had remained on our side and attached itself to a small family.

The father collected up the picnic and took it to a safer place,

while the boys watched with some consternation the pony snuffling the bicycle.

With teeth

and hoof, the animal sought to relieve its itching,

reporting progress to the mother and her younger son

as the father crouched down with his camera.

While other photographers thronged to the scene the model began smiling for the cameras.

This evening we dined on Jackie’s superb lamb jalfrezi, her rice with peas, and her sag ponir, with which we both drank Kingfisher.

Refreshment

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Jackie carried out much knowledgeable weeding and planting this morning, whilst I cleared up the discards and conveyed them to the compost pile.

The early sun lit libertias standing in the Weeping Birch Bed,

and enlivened the burgeoning Rose Garden.

Various clematises,

including this wonderfully scented Montana festooned over the front wall;

the weigela winding down the south fence;

ubiquitous aquilegias;

the pink rambler on the front garden trellis;

Libertia, geraniums Ingwersen's Variety, campanulas

borders everywhere, like this corner sporting campanulas, libertia, and geraniums Ingwersen’s Variety,

and the long Back Drive hosting splendid golden irises, relished their welcome refreshment.

A fly alighted on one of the front tub’s primroses.

This afternoon I added a little more to my biography of an era including me. I now have a working title: ‘A Knight’s Tale’. I took more text, and

this photograph from ‘A Sneaky Weekend’

I then made some prints from recent posts for Louisa.

After this I joined Jackie in the weeding, concentrating my efforts on uprooting the more obvious infiltrators, namely the smelly white alliums, clinging ladies’ bedstraw, and golden buttercups occupying the wrong beds.

This evening, there being no table available at the Crown in Everton, we dined at the Smugglers’ Inn at Milford on Sea. Having starters was a mistake. The platefuls were excellent. Mine contained battered whitebait, plentiful fresh salad, and thick wedges of equally fresh bread. Jackie received a huge plateful of bread and olives. Each serving was a meal in itself. An even bigger mistake was, in my case, ordering succulent sirloin steak, still more fresh salad, a mountain of perfect chips, onion rings, and fried onions, mushrooms and tomatoes. Jackie was treated to a huge bowl of cannelloni. more salad, and an equal number of chips to mine. Neither of us could finish our food, and we did not require a look at the dessert menu. The food was, I hasten to add, all extremely good, and the service impeccable. We both reminisced that, in our prime, we would have managed all this. Jackie drank Amstel, and I drank Doom Bar..

A Coot And A Folly

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Another day of incessant rain led me to drafting the next section of my biography. I took some of the text from my posts ‘Holly’ and ‘Dunkirk’.

Since I am writing about the several eras of one man’s life, I have begun with what life was like in 1942. Since my blog has been about my own memories, and I don’t have any for the year of my birth, I have applied my knowledge of history and a little research. The draft itself will not appear in my posts. After all, the idea is that people don’t read it before it is finished.

Later, I scanned another batch of colour negatives, from June and July 1990.

That June, our aptly named young neighbour, James Bird, came across a family of coots that had suffered a road accident. Just one scrawny little chick survived. James knew we had a small pond, so he brought the baby bird to Jessica to care for. She did a good enough job for the creature to disappear after a few weeks. This made her rather sad. The Newark Advertiser printed an article, vainly seeking the return of the pet.

The following month we attended the grand opening of Edmund Staunton’s temple. This structure built by the gentleman farmer on his land at Staunton Manor maintains a long tradition of architectural structures, known as follies. Another I have featured on occasion is ‘Peterson’s Folly’, known as Sway Tower. Wikipedia has this to say about the genre:

‘In architecture, a folly is a building constructed primarily for decoration, but suggesting through its appearance some other purpose, or of such extravagant appearance that it transcends the range of garden ornaments usually associated with the class of buildings to which it belongs.

18th century English gardens and French landscape gardening often featured mock Roman temples, symbolising classical virtues. Other 18th century garden follies represented Chinese temples, Egyptian pyramids, ruined abbeys, or Tatar tents, to represent different continents or historical eras. Sometimes they represented rustic villages, mills, and cottages to symbolise rural virtues.^[1]Many follies, particularly during times of famine, such as the Irish potato famine, were built as a form of poor relief, to provide employment for peasants and unemployed artisans.

In English, the term began as “a popular name for any costly structure considered to have shown folly in the builder”, the OED‘s definition,^[2] and were often named after the individual who commissioned or designed the project. The connotations of silliness or madness in this definition is in accord with the general meaning of the French word “folie”; however, another older meaning of this word is “delight” or “favourite abode”^[3] This sense included conventional, practical, buildings that were thought unduly large or expensive, such as Beckford’s Folly, an extremely expensive early Gothic Revival country house that collapsed under the weight of its tower in 1825, 12 years after completion. As a general term, “folly” is usually applied to a small building that appears to have no practical purpose, or the purpose of which appears less important than its striking and unusual design, but the term is ultimately subjective, so a precise definition is not possible.’

Helen and Bill visited for a pleasant couple of hours conversation, and departed with two trays of potted cuttings Jackie has prepared for their church sale.

We dined this evening on fish pie, cauliflower, and green beans, with which we both drank Wairau Cove Sauvignon Blanc 2016.

Sorting The Wheat From The Reed

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This very dull morning Jackie and I took turns on weeding the garden.

This afternoon we visited New Milton for banking, paying car tax, and taking a jacket and waistcoat to the cleaners.

We then drove on to East End for a progress report on the thatching project. There the ridging is being cut into shape.

Dave, the very skilled and friendly craftsman with whom I have conversed on several occasions has 27 years experience in his trade. Today he explained why the recent rain has in fact aided the work at this stage. This is because the straw needs to be malleable when creating the ridging. A different straw is also used for this creativity. Wheat straw is more flexible than the reed straw with which the rest of the work is undertaken. We also spoke about the fact that layers of thatch on the same roof can span 500 years or more. Dave was fascinating when speaking with such enthusiasm of the different straw and flowers that can be discovered through the time bands in a roof. It struck me rather like the pleasure of a geologist excavating layers of rock.

My experience doesn’t quite cover 500 years, but it will soon have reached 75. Three of my favourite bloggers have suggested that it would be a good idea to convert my experience of an era into a book. Once I got over my panic, I thought that perhaps I could do this by extracting from and expanding upon my five years of daily posts.

This evening I made a start. I edited some of the text from my post ‘A Sneaky Weekend’,

and included these two parental portraits from ‘My Branch Of The Family Tree’.

Whether or not this is ever completed remains to be seen.

This evening we dined on roast lamb, boiled and roast potatoes, and broccoli, carrots, Brussels sprouts, and runner beans, in glorious gravy.

It Ain’t Half Cold, Mum

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Today, as it rained incessantly, was one for delving into the photographic archives. I returned to the colour negatives of the August 1992 holiday at Towcett, where

Black and white Friesian cattle picked their way across their field.

On a trip to Borrowdale, first Sam,

Then Louisa jumped into an icy tarn.

Sam helping Louisa out of wet T shirt 8.92

Louisa’s brother helped her out of her damp T-shirt.

James timed Louisa’s run on a track, then took a turn himself.

At Wattendlath, the mermaid’s expression demonstrates that the water was just as cold.

After the swim a cheeky chaffinch chirped its way to the crumbs from our refreshments.

Elizabeth came to lunch and dinner today. The latter consisted of roast lamb; roast potatoes, some sweet; crunchy carrots and cauliflower; and runner beans; followed by rice pudding. Elizabeth and I finished the Malbec, and Jackie drank Hoegaarden.

In The May Garden (2)

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Among his other tasks this morning, Aaron finished weeding the original section of the Brick Path,

and sprayed herbicide along the gravel of the Back Drive where an old gold iris has bloomed.

Many plants, like this pansy-like mimulus, have happily self-seeded from last year,

others like two mulleins threatening to dwarf the roses among which they have taken root, may themselves be quite content, but their neighbours are not so.

We may have left it too late to move these two giants to the rear of the Back Drive border.

Rose Gloriana is far more prolific in this, its third year in the Rose Garden,

the faded blue entrance arch to which bears creamy Madame Alfred Carriere.

Altissimo stands sentinel at the corner of The Rose Garden and Elizabeth’s Bed,

where this sturdy fuchsia suspends its delicate pink flowers.

Cheerful erigeron cascades from the wall of the New Bed that contains

this pink-striped clematis,

as healthy as this, one of Jackie’s rescued spindly little twigs, mounting the front fence.

This evening we dined on pork medallions in barbecue sauce, with crunchy carrots, broccoli, and new potatoes. I drank Parra Alta Malbec 2016. Jackie had already imbibed her Hoegaarden on the patio beforehand.

Five If You Hit A Donkey

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As I struggled with ensuring I was digging up allium bulbs around the patio without damaging surrounding plants, I reflected on the tiny thyme twigs that, three years ago, I rescued from the butler sinks lost among the undergrowth covering the Dead End Path.

They are doing very well in their stony, sunny, new home, and don’t at all mind the dry weather we are experiencing.

This afternoon we went for a drive in the forest.

At Burley a cricket match was in progress.

The scoreboard, stationed in front of the pavilion and changing rooms, demonstrated what was obvious to spectators, namely that the bowling side was in receipt of a drubbing. There are eleven players per side in this game. Ten wickets may fall before the innings ends. Sometimes the captain may declare the innings closed before that happens. The top line of figures on the board shows the total, in this case 175. The next is the number of wickets fallen – 4. Then follows the score made by the last batsman out – 33. This was a good score for only four wickets down. The young man wearing pads in the picture was the next man to bat. He was having a long wait.

There is always a drinks interval during each innings at cricket. It was only fitting, therefore, that we should stop for one at The Foresters’ Arms at Frogham, before taking a leisurely route home.

Alongside Roger Penny Way the parents of a pony family cropped the grass while their offspring sprawled beside them.

Further on, another mother led her foal across the road in front of us.

Man in mobility scooter, woman with terriers, cattle, calf 2

Man in mobility scooter, woman with terriers, cattle, calf

In the lane around the back of Cadham we encountered a fascinating grouping consisting of a gentleman in a mobility scooter, a woman, a terrier, and cattle with a calf. Naturally we waited for them to sort themselves out. The man, woman, and dog took themselves to the side of the road;

one of the cows cleaned its hoof; and the calf stayed firmly planted.

The woman kindly shooed it off.

Outside Lyndhurst a less successful attempt was made to persuade another animal to move along.

This time a cricket match was set on a rather undulating piece of ground against a backdrop blessed with a rather splendid thatched pavilion.

A pair of donkeys in the outfield ignored the flanneled sportsmen, and gradually made their way towards the pitch.

After a while one of the players clapped vigorously. This caused one to shift a few yards. It is possible that the cricketer was mindful of the rule about striking an obstruction with the ball. If a ball is hit to the boundary of the field without bouncing, six runs (as the points are called) are awarded. If the ball does hit the ground before crossing the line, the score is advanced by four runs. Whether or not the ball bounces first, a strike which hits an obstruction on the field of play is awarded 5 runs. Consequently hitting a donkey is worth 5.

This evening we dined on Jackie’s superb chilli con carne with vegetable rice and runner beans. I finished the cabernet sauvignon and Jackie drank Peroni.

The Stable Door

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The much needed rain fell overnight and persisted as drizzle this morning. This afternoon we could continue in the garden. My contribution was weeding and making photographs. Jackie did the more creative tidying and planting.

Raindrops were left on poppies, heucheras, foxgloves, blue clematis, spider’s web complete with trapped insect, geraniums, rose For Your Eyes Only, rhododendrons, and libertia.

Clematis Marie Boisselot, and lilies benefited from their wash.

Jackie, leaning on the stable door, was amused at my wandering around with the camera. I have often mentioned the stable door, so , just in case anyone is wondering, I feel bound to mention that we do not keep horses. There is no point when we can trot off in search of some any time we like. What we call the stable door is

this. And yes, we do know that, like much of the house, it needs some attention.

This evening we dined on fish, chips, pickled onions, and gherkins. Jackie drank Peroni and I drank more of the cabernet sauvignon.