Garden – Page 19 – derrickjknight

Woman’s Mastery Over Machine

When I intimated yesterday that I might cut the grass I didn’t imagine that was all I would do, nor that the task would take me all day.
I would like to tell the tale of this man’s mastery over a machine. Unfortunately, like George Washington, on this occasion, ‘I cannot tell a lie’. At least that fledgling U.S. President had successfully cut down a cherry tree. My job had to have been easier than that.
First I had to take the Bosch Strimmer out of its box. As I feared, there was a certain amount of assembly required. I managed, to a rather insecure extent, to do this , found the extension lead, plugged the machine’s cable into it and set sail. I cut a couple of blades of grass and the nylon cutting line broke. After rereading and following the instructions I was able to extend another piece the required 9 centimetres and have another go. Same again. Except that this time there was no line visible and neither Jackie nor I was able to decipher how to undo the holder. Clearly the cutting device had difficulty coping with our macho grass nurtured on the soak away area from the septic tank. Apparently our excreta leaches through the walls of the tank into the soil at this particular point, producing a very healthy crop. There are lots of alliums in the garden. I wonder whether their rather pungent aroma serves a masking purpose.
It is not really a good idea to leave me to my own devices in such matters, but Jackie had no option because she was still trying to turn the terrible overlapping and chopped up tiling squares on the bathroom floor into a reasonably level and complete surface. Reflecting on the fact that she was grappling with a botch upstairs whilst I was doing the same with a Bosch in the garden, I gave up.
I conceded victory to the Strimmer, but I did not give up on the grass. I abandoned modern technology for a trusty, albeit rusty, pair of garden shears. It was down on my knees again. The kneeler was in service upstairs.
I had made considerable progress by lunchtime. Enough to give me confidence to continue afterwards.
My lady carried on upstairs until she had finished her job. She then came down and began to cook the dinner. Observing me snipping away outside, she thought: ‘I can’t leave him’. Thus taking pity on me she sat on the bench and put her mind to working out the problem with the machine. She realised I was using the wrong line and used more brute force than I had been confident to employ to remove the holder and replace the line.

She was soon on her feet strimming away. Naturally I got to my feet too.
Well how was I to know that when Herr Bosch says his product comes with extra strong line that that is not the one fitted in the holder, but one kept at the back of the handle?

Jackie did allow me to have a go at strimming. I finished the job whilst she raked up the grass.

She is delighted to see that we have numerous geranium palmatums in the garden. Many are clearly seedlings, and quite small, but some are huge shrub-like plants.
I t was quite beneficial that Jackie returned to cooking our dinner, for it was delicious.

She had taken chicken breasts marinaded in ginger, lemon and lime, added a Nando’s piri piri lemon marinade, topped the chicken with red and yellow peppers and baked the ensemble in olive oil for thirty minutes. This is her recipe for lemon and ginger chicken.
Mashed potato, crisp cauliflower and carrots, were accompanied by par-boiled parsnips stir fried with two sliced red onions and garlic. I call this a recipe for stir fried parsnips.
Jackie drank Hoegaarden with this, whilst I chose Marques de Montino rioja 2010. We finished our drinks on the garden bench.

Diversions

Early morning light on the garden was most enticing today.

We have eagerly awaited the emergence of the splendid red poppies from their hairy chrysalises:

The first picture in this post shows part of the brick path at the back of the house, and demonstrates its need for weeding. Following my effort with the patio two days ago, I had planned to remove the grass and other small plants from the cracks in the paving. But I changed my mind.

To the right rear of that same photograph there is a triangular patch of ground that was covered in plants, for instance a tree peony, that had been purchased or potted up ready for insertion in the soil. There are perhaps a couple of dozen. I decided to do something about sorting these out and maybe planting some of them.

I removed all the pots and lined them up on the path. The next job was to clear the weeds, including tentacles of catch-weed, a few nettles, and the odd bramble. This done I had to summon the head gardener for identification of specimens and suggestions as to planting. I complicated the process a little by deciding to plant the pieris and the azalea mentioned on 6th April in some of the space. I had had these two shrubs in pots for six years. It seemed only right that they should have a permanent home at last. But it did mean that there was less room for those left by our predecessors. And there are of course 80 potted plants awaiting collection from Shelly and Ron’s.

Some of the items I was working on today were trees, and therefore did not belong in the flower beds. Jackie suggested a position for the tree peony in part of a shrubbery that didn’t seem to have too much of importance in it. This area, and its invisible gravel access path, was in fact filled with brambles, sticky Jack, and other weeds entwined among some lovely shrubs and a huge rose bush that Jackie tied to a myrtle tree to keep it from gouging my scalp. So, here was another clearance task that diverted me from the planting. The path will also need raking when I’ve finished.

Again, there were trips down the garden to the compost heap. On my way there, I tended to step into other areas of growth and emerge with armfuls of the multiply nicknamed gallium aparine mentioned a few days ago. This becomes more and more urgent as the weeds’ little white flowers multiply.

Gardening, in these circumstances, is full of diversions. Maybe I’ll get the planting done tomorrow. On the other hand, I might cut the grass. After all, we did buy a strimmer for the purpose.

Regular readers will have followed the progress of the cleaning up of our new home. Now the worst of this is over, Jackie, the practical member of our team, has been applying herself more to the task of righting some of the appalling DIY efforts. She is still working on the master suite bathroom. Some rather amazing colours have been used on the walls over the years. Recently a white wash of sorts has been sloshed over these.

It is not enough simply to clean and polish fixtures and fittings. Spatters of blue, turquoise, orange and red paint have to be scraped off. Even cover-up magnolia has left its spots. To this end, Jackie, having polished it, found it almost impossible to remove a toilet tissue holder from the wall in order to scrape off offending material. Until she tried the almost unthinkable.

‘He couldn’t have’, she thought.

But he had. This photograph of the fixture was taken the right way up.

Not realising the aberration, Jackie had been, as expected, pushing the container up to release it from the wall. How was she to know that this one should be pushed downwards? She thinks it was only frequently painted-over masking tape that kept the object clinging to its perch.

We dined this evening on delightful chilli con carne (recipe), peas and rice, and garlic bread.

Agnes and Gert

Roughly at dog snot level throughout the ground floor of our house was a dado frieze painted by nose with pigment it is best not to enquire about.

There was a concentration on door jambs. Jackie and Elizabeth between them did excellent work cleaning this off. This morning Jackie found one she had missed and gave it her best attention later on.
One of the piles of rubbish for eventual removal, photographed previously, lay on an imaginatively textured set of patio paving fronting the French windows to the sitting room. This rather ruined the view, so today I decided to move the detritus to join that on the larger heap at the side of the house.

Next, I weeded the cracks between the stones, returned the overspills of earth to the surrounding flower beds, and gave everything a good sweep. I also tidied up the numerous tubs and window boxes our predecessors had filled with delightful spring bulbs to welcome us. Each time I carried weeds to the compost heap, I pulled up lots of sticky Willies on the way. One set of these tentacles was entwined around stinging nettles, the welcome of which continues to throb as I type. Between showers this took most of the day, apart from a shopping trip to B & Q, to Stewart’s Garden Centre, and finally to The Ferndene Farm Shop.
Close observers of what our daughter Becky calls the hobo on the bench in yesterday’s photograph, will have noticed that the grass needs cutting. We went to B & Q for a strimmer and a few other things, one of which was a garden kneeler.

They didn’t have the latter piece of equipment there so we bought one in Stewart’s.
Those same close observers may have noticed the dirty knees of my trousers, indicating a certain amount of genuflection. Should they be under sixty they will probably have no idea of the difficulty that this movement can present. I know I certainly didn’t when I was.
I remember my Dad saying to me: ‘You know you are getting old when you have to use your hands to get out of a chair’. The same is true of rising from a penitent pose. As can be seen from the photograph above, this kneeler provides supports for that very movement.
This bring me to AGNES (Age Gain Now Empathy System) and GERT (the GERontolic Test suit). These are the usually tortuously contrived acronyms, but never mind, what they represent are age simulation suits. Originally introduced in the motor car industry they are now used for training in the caring and health professions to give younger people, who are after all those working with the aged, an idea of the restrictions that come with advancing years.

So-called ageing suits are made of materials that restrict movement of the knees, elbows, back and neck, and use gloves to reduce the sense of touch, goggles to simulate blurry vision, and ear muffs to reduce hearing.
One aspect of the arthritis which causes most of the problems of flexibility, that the suits cannot reproduce, is the associated pain, but maybe experiencing the restricted movement and apparent deterioration of other faculties will enable the need for pain relief to be better understood.
We dined this evening on Jackie’s superb chilli con carne (recipe) with wild rice, followed by Post House Pud which consists, like The Firs Mess, of merangues filled with whatever fruit, cream, ice cream and suchlike is available. I finished the Marques de Carano.

The Castle Bench

Yesterday I began preparation for reassembling the garden bench based on those in Nottingham Castle grounds.
The first task today was the purchase of nuts for the bolts that would attach the wooden slats to the cast iron sides. These could have been obtained at a nearer establishment, but Knights in Lymington is fast becoming Jackie’s favourite emporium. In any case she needed some curtain rings and whatever else might take her fancy. We did buy a few more things, and, in fairness, it was me who chose socket spanners so I could get at the underside of the bench with a little more ease.

When we drive out of our front entrance we pass our potentilla which is in full bloom at the moment.

Before lunch, I carried the various components of the seat to the chosen spot in the garden. This sounds a rather routine task. In fact each one of the cast iron sides is quite an awkward proposition. It is six years since I last manhandled them and I now find them much more daunting.The previous owners kindly left us a home made wheelbarrow, the container of which is a large blue plastic basket. I thought it might save my body if I used that to transport one of the pieces of iron. I just about managed to raise it to the required level to dump it on the barrow. It cracked the container.
There was nothing for it but to carry each piece the few required yards. It helped to yell and groan a bit. Jackie helped me try all the slats, before we were driven in by heavy rain. But not before we realised that they wouldn’t all fit.
After lunch we had another go, with no more success, and, since we were getting very wet, gave up. Jackie continued her cleaning and scraping tasks.
Eventually the rain eased up and I decided not to let the problem defeat me, even if it meant cutting some lengths to size. I managed securely to fit eight out of twelve slats. By this time, I had run out of bolts, because some of the originals were missing and two others were bent when the construction collapsed at one point. These are thick bolts that have stayed attached for a good twenty years.
This time we drove to Milford Supplies for the bolts, because that is sensibly nearer. I then finished the task. This involved sawing ends off, drilling new holes, and hoping for the best.

We now have a garden bench.

The rhododendron behind me is now in full bloom, and we have a rich variety of aquilegias.

Our dinner this evening was Jackie’s choice chilli con carne (recipe) followed by chocolate cake and ice cream. Jackie drank Hoegaarden. I drank marques de Carano reserva 2007.

Identification Required

Last night Jackie came up with an excellent idea for recycling some of the IKEA wardrobe sections in the creation of the garage library/laundry room. This was going to need the use of a saw, and we only possessed the hacking kind.

A further trip to B & Q in Christchurch was therefore required, especially as we needed some more of their curtains and dowelling for the rails.

We bought all these and stopped off at Fergusson’s inHighcliffe to collect a mirror that came with one of the chests of drawers we had bought. While she was at it, Jackie added the hand-painted screen seen on the left of the photograph, to our purchases.
There were long mounting brackets attached to the mirror. I had travelled from B & Q in comparative comfort, with two eight foot dowelling poles over my left shoulder. The journey from the House Clearance shop was a little more complicated. The dowelling was now being kept company by one of the mounting brackets, whilst I held the screen close to my right cheek.
We also wanted to go to New Milton to visit the bank and buy some mounting card and Glu Dots for the photographs I featured yesterday, but thought it sensible to go home and unload first. Glu Dots are a Blu Tack product which hold the pictures in place and are removable when required. We found them in New Forest Stationers which is very well stocked with all art and writing materials.

Now, the IKEA sections have spent a week in the rain on the skip pile. They are also spiked with various bolts, screws, and fastenings. I therefore took a screwdriver to them, and undid what I could before we trundled the requisite number back into the garage whence they had come from.
We have a number of containers packed with domestic items surplus to our requirements that may be useful for younger home makers. Before we could get the IKEA kit back in the garage we had to make room for it. This involved carting those other boxes to the shed at the bottom of the garden.
After this exercise Jackie put up two more pairs of curtains in the kitchen, and I flopped for a while before wandering around the garden realising exactly how little we know about its plants, many of which are clearly unusual specimens. Of those we think we have identified, we would welcome readers’ confirmation. Of those we can’t, all offers will be gratefully received.

There are many decorative trees, almost none of which we know. For example, this one in the front garden:

or this in the back:

The aquilegias and dianthus we are confident of,

but this flower, on long tall stems, has us beaten:

as do both the pink and white ones here:

The very prolific white plants we think are scillas. Could the pink flowers be tierellas or heucherellas?

Perched on a table near a water butt is a potted cactus.

This evening we dined on Jackie’s delicious lamb jalfrezi (recipe) with savoury rice. I drank sparkling water.

P.S. 31st July 2014

Jackie has now identified the white flower that had us beaten. It is libertia, like so many of our plants, a native of New Zealand.

Bombay Night

We now have poppies cropping up all over the garden.

There are at least two weigelas, one of which adorns a dead stump.

Honesty abounds, and is a favourite with cabbage white butterflies.

The day was spent in relaxed company with Becky, Ian, and Flo. They returned home early in the evening, and Jackie and I drove to Barton on Sea and along the coast, after which we went on to Bombay Night in New Milton.

Bombay Night has fast become our local Indian restaurant of choice. My favourite here, which I ate this evening with special fried rice, is the Nowabi jalfrezi. I have not met this elsewhere. It offers a mix of tender lamb, chicken, and king prawn with a blend of flavours, including those provided by fresh red and green chillies. Jackie chose chicken sag with mushroom rice. She was impressed by the fact that, even on Easter Monday, the spinach was fresh. Indian food is always so colourful and aromatic. That of this establishment is no exception. The popadoms, incidentally, are flavoursome and crisp, and presented with interesting chutneys. We drank Kingfisher.

Downton

We are running out of storage space, so Jackie and I visited David Fergusson’s House Clearance shop in Highcliffe, where we bought three chests of drawers which will be delivered next week. There we met the fascinating proprietor who has an impressive knowledge of art. He is still waiting for that miraculous find, but clearly appreciates and values some of the items he collects. They do not all find their way into his shop. His home must be a treasure trove.
It is not now quite so scary a prospect to accommodate the belongings we then collected from Shelly and Ron’s afterwards. At their home we also met Anthony, their son, Jane their daughter, and her boyfriend Chris. Ron is recovering from his operation on his broken heel. We had an enjoyable chat with welcome mugs of coffee.

Our garden becomes more resplendent as the month proceeds.

Another Camellia is in bloom, as is a tree peony offering shelter to a bee. The elegant weeping birch flickers with dangling new leaves.

After lunch I walked down Downton Lane, taking the footpath off to the right. From the stubbled field alongside, I could see the original hamlet of Downton stretched out along Christchurch Road. Enlarging the picture offers a glimpse of our pale blue washed house centre right.

To the left The Solent sparkled in the distance, and the cloudy smoke from a bonfire blended well with the bulky form of the Isle of Wight.

A solitary rook vied with the seagulls for pickings from a recently ploughed field.

I took the left turn alongside the bluebell wood which also contained wood anemones among many other wild flowers.

After crossing the stream I optimistically diverged from the marked path, turned left through an opening in the barbed wire fence and circumperambulated

a steep grassy field with clumps of gorse at its summit, looking down on

a splendid bluebell bank beside the road.

It soon became apparent that there was no other egress, so I retraced my steps and returned home.
This evening Jackie fed Flo and me (and herself) on Pizza and penne bolognese sprinkled with parmesan cheese. Strawberry jelly and Kelly’s Cornish clotted cream ice cream. I finished the Isla Negra and Jackie drank a little more of her Hoegaarden.
As I post this, I am listening to the ticking of two clocks. One, keeping perfect time, is a battery operated modern one bought by Jackie in one of Morden’s ‘cheapie places’. The other, a splendid reproduction station waiting room clock was given to Jessica and me by Michael when he was seventeen. It still needs a little adjustment to its new environment as it loses a few minutes a day. This is the clock that survived being stolen with the rosewood wine table that stands beneath it.

Hidden Treasures

Apparently septic tanks need pumping out twice a year. For anyone fortunate enough to be ignorant of these sewage dispensing systems they are installed for houses which are not linked to water mains drainage. Without these you would have to dig your own hole as in primitive camping. Laraine, next door, had advised us to open up the lid of ours to inspect the level. We did. It was frighteningly high. A phone call will be required in the morning.
After this Jackie went back to her curtains and I set about planting.
The biggest problem of location is for the maidenhair or ginkgo tree. Although it is currently contained in a pot it can grow to 40 metres, which is quite high.

The only possible place for this is in the corner of our back drive. When inspecting the site I found a daunting number of brambles, nettles, old bits of wood and iron, and a good wooden compost bin completely obscured by the aforementioned plants. ‘Nah’, I thought, ‘I’ll do that another day.
As it was, in clearing spaces for the other items I did manage to put to bed, I probably cleared as much bramble, ivy, catch weed, and detritus as I would have done in the drive. But I did manage to re-home a peony, a fern, two hellebores, a weigela, three different succulents, and a rose.

I began with the rose. I thought. In fact I had to remove an enormous, no doubt ornamental thistle in order to replace it with this plant. Because every single new home for whatever species needed a similar clearance and more, the rose was actually the last planting I made at the end of the day. You could hardly see the little rose in the bed, but the maple that had been swamped by the spiky plant looked mightily relieved to have its space back.
I did have a break for lunch and sat in a chair by the window playing on-line Lexulous. A faint, intermittent, buzzing attracted my attention.

This proved to be a fly attempting to do back somersaults. I had noticed the sound earlier in the morning, but not identified its source. The creature had therefore spent some hours at this manoeuvre.
I took advice from the head gardener on positioning of specimens and placed them in their pots at the requisite sites. Unfortunately, I forgot two, which I will need to take care of tomorrow. Also unfortunately, this meant she came into the shrubbery under a large evergreen tree that I was clearing of brambles, and spotted a second shattered branch that had to come off. I then proceeded to teeter on top of a stepladder she held firmly, whilst I amputated the stricken arboreal limb.
The clearing of that particular area revealed some hidden treasures, such as a different camellia now in bloom,

and another splendid blue clematis that we think is ‘Beauty of Worcester’. Further along on that side of the garden lies a decking

platform close to which a magnificent red rose is now in bloom.
This evening Jackie provided a marvellous vegetable rice (recipe) to accompany her chilli con carne (recipe). She drank Hoegaarden and I finished the rioja.

I have no idea why the header picture is this one which rightly belongs on https://derrickjknight.com/2016/02/01/black-and-white-discoveries/

except that it was a hidden treasure. Although it is still on the Black and White Discoveries post I have left it here because of the comments below.

The Final Stage

1st April 2014
Ian stayed over again last night in order to help us today. Some of what had not been fitted into the van spent the night in our prospective son-ion-law’s car. The rest stayed in the Castle Malwood Lodge garage for collection this morning when we let the cleaners in.
I was up first and, with mist moisture dripping onto me from the splendidly ornamental garden trees, began emptying Ian’s car.

Our new garden has a wonderful range of plants. Although they were somewhat veiled by the said mist, I photographed a sample, including daffodils, blue and white scillas, euphorbia, camellias, and grape hyacinths. It will be exciting, as the year unfolds, discovering what we have through the changing seasons.
The three of us then drove to Minstead where we loaded the two cars with the final contents of our rented garage, and drove back to Downton, after which we all travelled to the Needles Eye cafe and enjoyed all-day breakfasts, Ian and mine being the maxed-up version that signifies two of everything.
Ian followed us back to Minstead where we bade our farewells to an indispensable support and helper.
The two young women who were CME, the cleaning company’s operatives spent six hours doing a marvellous job on the end of tenancy clean, so Jackie and I had quite a wait in the sunshine before we could lock up.
The final stage of the departure from Minstead was the return of the keys to Penyards in Winchester. We did this at 7.30 p.m. and drove back to Milford on Sea and the Zaika restaurant’s Tuesday Banquet Night. This was clearly, rightly, very popular.
Staggering back to our new home, all we had to remember was whether to turn left or right at the top of the stairs to our bedroom.
Our broadband home hub will not be activated until 4th. In the meantime we have been told we can use BT WiFi. There is, however, no reception for this in Downton. A WiFi search is for another day.