ballerina rose – derrickjknight

Compatriots

I wasn’t able to dead head all the roses today, although I carried out quite a long session with secateurs before my knees suggested that a rest might be in order. After taking one, it seemed likely that spent buds would not spoil any photographs, so I wandered around with the camera.

Here are four Rose Garden views with individual shots of Aloha, Absolutely Fabulous framed by a foxglove crescent, Gloriana, For Your Eyes Only, Rosa Gallica; and Ballerina dancing attendance.

Roses elsewhere include Wedding Day just coming into bloom on the Gothic arch; the peach rose in the Oval Bed; and Compassion beside the Dead End Path.

Bees continue to swarm around the yellow bottle brush plant and the valerian.

Purple lamium and blue petunias share one of Jackie’s pots; cosmoses feature in others. Our day lilies are proliferating; fuchsias Delta’s Sarah has proved to be hardy enough to survive our winter.

The kitchen wall display has benefited from all the recent rain.

The Palm Bed is named for the cordeline Australis which can be seen beyond its compatriot eucalyptus.

These three views are of the Phantom Path; the Shady Path; and the junction between the Brick and Gazebo Paths, the latter of which is shown from both directions.

This evening we dined on Jackie’s classic cottage pie, firm carrots, and tender runner beans with which she drank Hoegaarden and I drank Navarra Garnacha Roble 2017.

The Shed In Situ

This morning, whilst Jackie went shopping, I wandered around the garden waiting for delivery of the garden shed. Now that the pink roses on the front trellis have died back, their places have been taken by clematis Mrs N Thompson, honeysuckle, calibrachoa in a hanging basket, and two varieties of trailing nasturtium.

A marbled white butterfly, swayed on a wind-blown verbena bonarensis

The Ballerina now dances freely at the cleared entrance to the rose garden.

Ground cover, like that provided by this unnamed succulent, is important,

but it is hanging baskets that lift a garden.

Here is a view from the brick path.

This trailing antirrhinum sits nicely above the patch of grass,

and these petunias lead us to The Head Gardener’s Walk,

as others, enlivening the dead Snake Bark Maple, overlook the Heligan Path and beyond.

Sometimes, as with this symphony in orange and red, serendipity intervenes. The orange sunburst beneath the cut plastic container is a clever little device with a thread that fits two litre supermarket water bottles, thus keeping a supply flowing for two days.

As can be seen from this later shot of The Head Gardener’s Walk petunias, Jackie’s shed was delivered and erected this afternoon.

Two splendid Wimbledon tennis matches were televised this afternoon. I watched them both. Serena Williams took just over an hour beat her sister Venus in straight sets. This was closer than the score looks. Andy Murray then had to battle it out for three hours and more, with Ivo Karlovic, to win a four set match. Murray is by no means a small man, but, slugging it out with the six foot eleven Croatian must be the tennis equivalent of a boxing contest with the giant Italian, Primo Carnera, of the 1930s.

This evening we dined on Jackie’s superb sausage casserole (recipe); creamy mashed potato; and crisp carrots, cabbage, and cauliflower. In celebration of her new shed, Jackie drank one of the small bottles of P. Desroches & Cie Brut Champagne Alison had given us. I drank Teroldego Rotaliano superiore riserva,2011.

Bamboo, Brambles, And Ballerina

For the time being at least, the crow has conceded defeat and alternates with the wood pigeons in patrolling the area beneath the bird feeder and picking up scraps, of which there are plenty, because the smaller birds aren’t all that tidy.

The finial of the new arch has opened into a rich apricot coloured rose with a hole in one petal. Given the treatment it has had, one little blemish is less than could have been expected.

I set about the bamboo immediately this morning. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised that the roots tunnelled under the gravel to the other side of the path, and were rather rampant in the oval bed. I wanted to save the parent clump which is quite attractive, and really just needs managing. I reduced it somewhat. Having to clamber over the other plants in order to remove the bamboo, there were bound to be some accidents.

The head of one of the Pink Abundance roses was dislodged from its stem, so warranted its own accident saucer.
It hadn’t been my intention to do much weeding of the bed, still less to those further back or to the right of the path. By the time, however, I had taken out the the bamboo, and the bramble that was choking the life out of anything in the other beds, I had done quite a bit. The brambles at this end of the garden seem to emanate from that behind ours.

I broke the back of the task of renovating this path, but downed tools before breaking mine. Hopefully I will finish the job tomorrow.

Beyond the right hand rock boundary of this walkway one can just glimpse a raised stone walled bed which had been completely hidden by the brambles.
Jackie continued to blaze a trail into the kitchen garden.

The ballerina rose seen dancing around the red bird box, was invisible last week.

Bay trees seem to have self-seeded and grown quite big all over the garden. We each encountered a couple that had to go. They have a cunning system of taking root between those of a more mature tree, so all we could actually do was cut them down. It seems a great shame to remove such a plant, but there really are too many in the wrong places.
Whilst we dined this evening on Jackie’s sausage casserole (recipe) with new potatoes, broccoli and cauliflower, we watched, through the kitchen window, a pair of woodpeckers enjoying their meal on our bird feeder. Jackie drank Emilia lambrusco 2012. My wine was Baturrica tarragona gran reserva 2007. It seems that we, too, were being observed from outside by a little potted fir tree.

A Halt To Proceedings

Today I worked on the far end of the invasive vegetation. Turning left from the new arch and working in the opposite direction from the house was the most difficult stretch yet. It looks as if my predecessor gave up the task of keeping next door’s produce at bay. There remain root clusters and stumps of holly, elder, and, of course, lonicera, to dig out from our side.

All these plants were giving thick brambles a lift over to our side. I was having to toss the bits I cut off higher and higher into the air to send them back home. Jackie tells me that snail throwers have to eject the creatures sixteen feet over their fences to stop them returning. I don’t think my tangled masses travelled that far, so maybe they’ll be back. But I’ll be ready for them.

A blackbird’s nest containing two eggs occasioned a halt to proceedings, just as I could see the light at the end of the tunnel, although it doesn’t look like it from the photograph of the path. There are many derelict avian properties in this choking mass, but this one was high enough to provide light and oxygen. Even though they were on enemy territory I thought I should not frighten their mother into abandoning her babies. Well, that’s my excuse, anyway. I don’t know how long it takes for the eggs to hatch, nor the length of time chicks must be fed before leaving home, but most of the clearance is done, and it is not as if there is nothing else to do in the garden.
I satisfied myself with more tree pruning.
Jackie has continued to make excellent progress on her pathway, making creative use of various iron artefacts along the way.

We are particularly pleased with the wheels.
As usual for each of us, she took a diversion or two. The kitchen garden is very overgrown at the moment, so much so that it was difficult to walk under its entrance arch. In clearing this ingress she

discovered a beautiful ballerina rose. We made another trip to Walkford this afternoon to collect more plants from Shelly and Ron’s.
After this we pottered about, pruning here, weeding and digging up brambles there. In the process Jackie brought another beautiful rose into the light.

This one, despite its colouring, bears an accurately illustrated label from Home Base naming it Pink Abundance. The previous owners’ habit of leaving the labels on plants has proved useful when they haven’t disintegrated.
Ashleigh fish and chips provided our takeaway dinner. Jackie went to fetch them and I laid the table. We ate them, with pickled onions, from the perfectly serviceable cardboard containers supplied. I drank a glass of the Languedoc.