Early this morning Jackie found a robin flapping about in the utility room. She opened the window for him. Was it Nugget? Later she conversed in the garden with a juvenile.
While the Head Gardener completed the strengthening the compost bin that I had begun a few days ago, I carried out some dead heading before and after lunch.
Bees continued to work over the verbena bonariensis and other plants such as calendula.
Autumn crocuses are now standing proud.
In the Rose Garden Mum in a Million has reached maturity; Flower Power is as strong as ever; and Aloha greets us again;
and the Kent carpet is a wrap.
Casting a shadow was sunbathing Geranium Rozanne,
while the same sun in the early evening backlit the last hollyhock we passed on the way to taking our drinks in the rose garden.
This evening we dined on Jackie’s succulent liver and bacon casserole; creamy mashed potatoes; crunchy cauliflower and broccoli; and tender runner beans, with which she drank Hoegaarden and I finished the Fleurie.
Sue W’s post https://nansfarm.net/2020/09/09/plant-life/ reminded me of a story from before my WP days, which I thought should be told.
Sometime in the late 1970s I travelled to King’s Lynn on the Norfolk coast in order to deliver a speech about Social Work to the nuns of a convent about ten miles away. From London this involved a lengthy train journey and cab rides. The town was etched in my memory because it had suffered from the North Sea flooding of 1953. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/gallery/2013/jan/31/devastation-east-anglia-1953-flood-in-pictures
The last passenger train was, as far as I remember, about 6.30 p.m. This was confirmed by the sole station staff member. I arrived in such good time that I went for a walk, returning to see a train departing.
I became further perturbed when I saw the single employee pedalling away. I caught up with him and asked if that had been my train. With a look of terror he informed me that there was only the night train to come and cycled off in haste.
There was a long wait ahead of me. No dining establishments were open. There was a cinema – showing ‘Stand Up Virgin Soldiers’. I bought a large cup of popcorn and settled into my seat – one of three now occupied.
The film was meant to be funny, but I wasn’t in the mood.
The night train got me home in the small hours of the morning.
Fast forward to this morning, when Jackie and I visited Milford on Sea Pharmacy for repeat prescriptions, after which we did not linger on the coast,
the car parks of which were fast filling up with older visitors watching the sun glinting on the waves against a backdrop of Hurst Castle, and those
entertaining pre-school age children at the seaside.
Leaving Milford, cyclamen continue to decorate the roadside verges.
It was donkeys, some quite young, that dominated the roads like Jordan’s Lane at Pilley, where they indulged in suckling and scratching on any available surface.
We both spent some time watering pots and Hanging baskets.
This evening we dined on roast pork, parsnips, and potatoes; crunchy carrots; tender cabbage and green beans, with tasty, meaty gravy. Jackie drank Hoegaarden and I drank Patrick Chodot Fleurie 2019.
This morning I e-mailed a drawing to a fellow blogger as an offering to illustrate one of his posts.
While I sat in the car waiting for Jackie to emerge from Tesco with a fortnight’s shopping that I would load into our vehicle and into the kitchen at home I finished reading
Lent to us by Giles, this is a truly inspirational book charting the despair following a catastrophic turn of fortune partly brought about by physical- and mental ill-health; a loving relationship and the struggling creativity that, phoenix-like, surmounted disaster and contributed to remarkable success.
Depression, anxiety, unemployment, severe physical pain, all experienced while raising a young family are all honestly described. Sub-titled ‘A Story of Despair and Redemption’, this work is about the emotional turmoil the writers have experienced; it is also a tutorial on planning and planting a stunning garden; a journey through the seasons and the effects of sunshine, light, water, and soil. The constantly repeated cyclical patterns of each year from gloom to brightness and back again could be seen as a metaphor for the couple’s journey through life.
In his dynamic media presentation of such as BBC’s ‘Gardener’s World and in his writing Monty Don has been the public face of this partnership. Sarah, however, in their collaborations, of which this work is one, produces equally eloquent descriptive prose. I must refrain from giving away any more detail but ‘The Jewel Garden’ supports the phrase ‘behind every great man there is a great woman’.
Finally, I would suggest that anyone – TanGental, for instance – planning a garden event at any particular time of the year would do well to read this book.
After lunch I finished pruning the poplar, the chopped branches of which, supplemented by a few more of Jackie’s rose clippings, filled another bag for recycling.
I managed to knock this dahlia from its stem while wheeling the barrow of poplar cuttings. Never mind. We have an accident pot indoors.
Petunias still proliferate,
as do the ubiquitous Japanese anemones.
Today’s roses are represented by a pink carpet variety; a paler pink Generous Gardener, planted to scale the lopped cypress; and Shropshire Lad, bearing the freckles formed by raindrops.
This pink gaura is the most successful we have tried in this garden; the white begonia has always delighted.
Just one hollyhock bloom has so far resisted adding to a column of seed pods; clematis Julia Correvon has shed her colourful petal-like leaves.
At the end of the afternoon Jackie finished trimming the lawn.
This evening we dined on plentiful scrambled egg on toast.
Jackie and her sisters enjoyed a coven meeting at The Bat & Ball on Salisbury Road, Braemore. As an unfortunate update to this history that still adorns the pub wall Jackie tells me that new owners have replaced the historic sign mentioned in this text with simply the title in a fairly plain font. I transported some of the Head Gardener’s clippings to the compost bin, cut back a bramble on the back drive, and pruned a poplar that had suffered severe wind damage.
I chopped up the tree branches with which I filled two more bags and added them to the pile.
Mum in a Million and other roses continue to bloom in the Rose Garden.
Various paths are looking a little tidier.
The Patio Bed remains cheerful;
fuchsia Delta’s Sarah in the Pond Bed, having spent the heatwave shrivelling, has revived well from the following rains;
kniphofias in the Cryptomeria Bed continue to multiply;
and potted plants line up outside the Head Gardener’s shed.
In honour of Sir Alastair Cook, former England captain and one of our greatest batsmen, Jackie photographed this cartoon displayed in the sisters’ lunch venue.
Across the road a house, featured in https://derrickjknight.com/2018/12/12/thats-what-i-call-home-delivery/ had been severely damaged by a lorry that had wound up in its walls. Jackie was able to photograph the
very sensitive repair. The green tarpaulin covers the site of a bus shelter that has not yet been replaced.
A next door neighbour has also benefited from a beautiful crown.
This evening we dined on a second sitting of Hordle Chinese Take Away’s fine fare, with which Jackie drank Hoegaarden and I drank more of the Malbec.
The moon was out of bed this morning when Jackie took her camera into the garden, yet cloud cover soon rolled in. She crouched low to offer the Cobaea Scandens cup to the lingering orb. Fennel seeds, sweet pea pods, and mahonia completed the collection of silhouettes. The Assistant Photographer finished with pastel shades of verbena bonariensis against New Zealand flax.
This afternoon I cut the grass for which the expression ‘mowed the lawn’ would be a little pretentious. It seemed somewhat ambitious to hand-clip the edges so I will live to fight them another day.
The hanging basket in the top centre of the first picture contains a bright lime-green heuchera.
For a little light relief I transported Jackie’s clippings from her weeding and taking cuttings to the compost bin and bagged up some of the woody material.
Beside her the Dragon Bed’s Polish Spirit clematis and hanging baskets petunias display vibrant colour.
Bees, like this one in geranium Roxanne, went about their business undisturbed.
This variety of rudbeckia has prove quite prolific this year, whereas several others have failed.
Recents storms virtually stripped this pink climbing rose of its leaves, yet buds keep on coming,
as do those of Flower Power, Lady Emma Hamilton,
Absolutely Fabulous,
and Crown Princess Margareta, who encourages the coexistence of different generations.
The Weeping Birch Bed, like most of the others, still contains a variety of colourful blooms.
There aren’t many without a dahlia or two.
Preferring the ebb and flow and artistry of Test matches, I am not fan of T20 cricket, but, as I watched England’s innings against Australia on TV this afternoon I began to wonder whether my apathy might be a teeny bit prejudiced.
This evening we dined on Mr Chan’s excellent Hordle Chinese Take Away fare with which Jackie drank Hoegaarden and I drank more of the Malbec.
While I photographed Jackie pruning Wedding Day, which, with her further endeavours elsewhere this morning, provided me with more clippings to chop and bag up this afternoon,
I spotted a shield bug riding a nearby hibiscus.
Later this afternoon we went in search of the surviving entries of the Hordle Scarecrow Trail.
These entries have already featured in earlier posts.
This one, in Stoneleigh Avenue, entitled ‘Key Workers and Caped Crusaders’, suffered badly in the recent storms.
In Sycamore Road, Pierre Latour celebrated a ‘Tour de France’ victory.
Dominic Cummings’s weak eyesight excuse for flouting lockdown restrictions was displayed in Sky End Lane.
Hordle Pharmacy in Ashley Lane, normally a regular entrant, did not register this year, although these two beauties feature in the shop window.
We were unable to view two others: one was destroyed in the storms, another is a hairdresser’s submission placed outside the shop when it is open – not on Saturday afternoons.
Those who persevered with this year’s fraught event are to be congratulated.
After the Hordle tour we continued into the forest, pausing at Coombe Lane where I photographed masked horses and inquisitive cattle atop a tumbling landscape where bonfire smoke resembled a spraying waterfall.
This evening we dined once more on Jackie’s splendidly succulent beef pie; very tasty gravy; boiled new potatoes; tender cabbage and crunchy carrots and cauliflower with which she drank Beck’s and I drank Gestos 2018, a sublimely smooth Malbec.
Last night I finished reading ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ by Colombian Nobel prizewinner Gabriel Garcia Marquez. First published in Argentina in 1967 this book was in the forefront of magical realism, and, as such, made the author anxious about its reception. Although there were some detractors the work has remained popular for more than the following half century.
Magic there is in abundance in the flowing, descriptive, language, the characterisation and the fantastic tales therein. The reality comes in the breadth of the inventive development of the 20th century. As usual I will not even attempt to tell the story, but can, without revealing too much, say that by tracing the imaginative history of a nation-founding dynasty, the writer symbolises the making of South America and of the world.
My 1991 edition, part of Jonathan Cape’s collected set, contains a family tree which goes some way to unravelling who’s who in this saga of longevity of a family whose members often share similar names.
Gregory Rabassa has produced the translation from the Spanish, which I can only assume is true to the original.
Late this morning Jackie drove me to Milford on Sea for Peter to cut my hair at Sears Barbers.
This afternoon I bagged up another heap of the Head Gardener’s rose clippings, then tied up some stems of red
Super Elfin and pink Penny Lane accompanying clematis Dr Ruppel on the Gothic arch.
Later we drove into the overcast forest which seemed overpopulated with lethargic ponies and cattle. I chose to focus on just two of the equines who occupied the usual central spot on Forest Road.
Tails twitching, they rapidly departed the safety of the oak tree, and adopted the customary head to tail stance enabling each to whisk away at flies irritating their partner’s muzzle. No way were they going to budge for any vehicles which could only pass the stubborn barrier by lurching off the eroded edge of tarmac at risk to their undercarriage.
This evening we dined on Jackie’s succulent ‘sunflower’ beef pie; swede mash; boiled new potatoes; crunchy carrots and cauliflower; with meaty gravy. The Culinary Queen drank Beck’s and I finished the Malbec.
On this further dully overcast and windy morning we virtually finished the front garden pruning.
I photographed a few hanging baskets in the rest of this area, involving bacopas, lobelias, diascia, begonias, petunias, pelargoniums, and gladiolus. These have all regenerated well after the recent heavy winds.
Here are the bags of woody clippings which we will need to take to the recycling centre. Unfortunately we now have to register our vehicle and make an appointment to dump this material.
On my way through the garden I photographed more views which are each identified in the gallery. The second-flush kniphofia in the last picture is proliferating.
The first apples Jackie picked polished up nicely.
This afternoon we visited Mudeford harbour where, now the area has been left to the locals, I was able to wander across the green and photograph a sailboarder whizzing among moored boats;
gulls, including a preener;
and a low-flying murmuration of starlings for whom the race was on for dropped morsels of food.
As is her wont, Jackie photographed the photographer against the backdrop of his subject.
This evening we dined on lamb chops in mint and rosemary gravy; boiled new potatoes; crunchy carrots and broccoli; and swede and carrot mash, with which Jackie drank Beck’s and I drank more of the Malbec.
As a measure of yesterday’s sunlight, Jackie photographed some solar lights at 11 p.m. last night.
This morning she continued her determined decimation of the front garden shrubbery. After lunch we both chopped and bagged up the debris. Unfortunately, refreshing as they were, the fat raindrops that dribbled through the afternoon cloud cover were insufficient to drive us inside until we had virtually finished our work for the day.
This evening we dined on Jackie’s spicy pasta arrabbiata, char fried peppers and onions, and runner beans youthful enough to be devoid of stringy sinews, with which she drank Beck’s and I drank Mendoza Malbec 2018.
Assuring me that the rose would be glorious in a couple of years, she proudly showed me how far she had got, ensuring that my tomatoes featured in the photograph to cheer me up.
By the time we visited Everton Post Office and continued for a forest drive the temperature had become quite hot.
I have already featured Robert Gill’s scarecrow in http://derrickjknight.com/2020/08/20/more-water-for-the-animals/ The notice attached to this home in Everton Road advises that this witty and well-made offering is one of six entrants, the list of which is available on line. We drove round for a while looking for the other four, but didn’t find any. The annual trail is clearly a Covid casualty.
Cyclamen, like these on Barrows Lane, are now lining the verges. Ours, incidentally, are already over.
Longslade View, where I stopped for these photographs, is just outside Brockenhurst. It is such a shame that it should be necessary to display notices throughout the forest forbidding overnight parking, barbecues, and fires.
Outside Pilley Community Shop constantly twitching tails demonstrated what torment these clustered, patient, animals were undergoing as flies encircled their heads, backs, nether regions, and eyes. No sound did they make as they absorbed the airborne assault.
This evening we dined on Mr Pink’s excellent fish and chips, Garner’s choice pickled onions and Tesco’s tangy gherkins with which Jackie drank Hoegaarden and I drank more of the Rioja.
