barley – derrickjknight

Poisonous To Them

On a much cooler and overcast morning Jackie drove me into the forest.

The water tubs at the start of Sowley Lane had been refilled, and we saw another on St Leonard’s Road.

Barley fields on either side of Tanner’s Lane are producing fine crops, perhaps a little early.

Against the backdrop of the Isle of Wight the Solent gently rippled with choppy waves slipping over the grating shingle beach.

Plants clinging to the ancient stone walls of St Leonard’s Granary, and the sweep of sward outside the grange were beginning to die back, although the no doubt well irrigated lavender borders remained bright.

The pool alongside the Grange where we often see groups of ponies drinking was becoming very dry. The close-up of the marsh ragwort was produced by Jackie.

The ponies and foals gathered together further along St Leonard’s Road know instinctively to avoid the familiar yellow plants which are poisonous to them.

This afternoon the clouds were swept away from the garden as the sun brought back the heat. Later Flo watered and dead-headed; Jackie planted, watered, and dead-headed; I just dead-headed – quite a lot.

This evening we dined on succulent roast chicken; crisp Yorkshire pudding; boiled new potatoes; crunchy carrots; firm cauliflower and broccoli; tender green beans; and tasty gravy, with which Jackie drank Hoegaarden, Flo drank mixed fruit cordial, and I finished the Cabernet Sauvignon.

The Borrowers’ House

On https://derrickjknight.com/2019/06/16/mutual-grooming/ I featured a photograph taken at Oxton in May 1999 which I had e-mailed to Louisa.

Today, while listening to the men’s Cricket World Cup match between England and Australia, I scanned the rest of a batch of prints I had retained from that trip to Oxton taken with Michael and his family on one of their holidays at Lindum House.

Our walk took us along a path through fields of barley.

Emily sped ahead.

An undulating sheep field led to

more open landscape

above which Emily and Oliver took a rest.

We travelled on to Halam where Emily was delighted to find The Borrowers’ House.

This evening Jackie and I dined on succulent pork chops roasted with onions and sage; new potatoes sautéed with leeks and peppers; and crisp broccoli with which the Culinary Queen drank Blue Moon and I drank more of the Squinizano.

The Wind That Shakes The Barley

Jackie is gradually sifting the old compost which still contains rubbish and woody material, to produce, with the addition of bonemeal, rich compost for the rose garden. We applied some today.

The scented ground cover rose, Magic Carpet, attracting numerous bees, is spreading nicely;

Kent has begun its second flush,

and the climber, Golden Showers, has produced its first bloom.

On this dry, blustery morning, I walked to the paddock in Hordle Lane and back. The horses, intent on grazing, kept their distance.

One wore a rug;

one, a fly mask;

and the third was unprotected.

I fought my way through to the obscured footpath, which petered out along the edge of a barley field. As I watched the waving grain, I thought of Ken Loach’s wonderful 2006 film, ‘The Wind That Shakes The Barley’.

There are few films, these days, that stay in my memory, but this one certainly does. I recommend anyone to watch it, so I will not reveal the plot, but this is how Wikipedia introduces its feature:

‘The Wind That Shakes the Barley is a 2006 Irish war drama film directed by Ken Loach, set during the Irish War of Independence (1919–1922) and the Irish Civil War (1922–1923). Written by long-time Loach collaborator Paul Laverty, this drama tells the fictional story of two County Cork brothers, Damien O’Donovan (Cillian Murphy) and Teddy O’Donovan (Pádraic Delaney), who join the Irish Republican Army to fight for Irish independence from the United Kingdom. It takes its title from the Robert Dwyer Joyce song “The Wind That Shakes the Barley” a song set during the 1798 rebellion in Ireland and featured early in the film. The film is heavily influenced by Walter Macken‘s 1964 novel The Scorching Wind. Widely praised, the film won the Palme d’Or at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival. Loach’s biggest box office success to date, the film did well around the world and set a record in Ireland as the highest-grossing Irish-made independent film ever, until surpassed by The Guard.^‘

This afternoon we planted four more roses, and plonked a couple more. I will feature them as they bloom.

This evening’s dinner consisted of Jackie’s scrumptious chilli con carne (recipe), egg fried rice (recipe), and green beans, followed by rice pudding. Her accompaniment was Hoegaarden, mine Alexis Lichine Bordeaux supérieur 2013.

The Rose Garden Bench

Two tall roses in the Oval Bed have responded so well to nurturing that they needed more stakes. This morning, after embedding stout wooden poles and tying up the plants, we moved back into the rose garden the bench I had built last year using the cast iron sides we had found in the makeshift fence alongside our neighbour, North Breeze.

I then walked down to Roger’s fields, and across to the woodland at the far end, then along the footpath beside the trees. The day benefited from a strong breeze.

Seeding cow parsley applauded wispy clouds scudding across a bright blue sky;

submissive grasses bent in the hedgerows;

and golden barley billowed across the fields.

Beyond the first section of the footpath through Roger’s land lies a further stretch which has, until recently, been too overgrown for me to tackle in sandals. The kind farmer has now opened this out so ramblers can easily reach the woods and look back up the hill.

A Red Admiral butterfly flickered among the barley as a poppy in a cornfield;

and a tattered Dark Green Fritillary reflected shiny ferns.

What I think were damselflies, stately, never still, blunted my focus.

After lunch came the hard part of positioning the bench. This involved digging a shallow pit, lining it with a membrane, filling it with sand, embedding rows of bricks to form a platform, and finally adding stepping-bricks for access. Only then could the seat be sited.

This is the current view due south from the bench.

St John’s wort embellishes the bed by the entry arch;

and a potted clematis Florida Sieboldii ( Passion Flower) fronts the kitchen window.

This evening, Jackie enjoyed her Hoegaarden as a cooling aperitif to our dinner of succulent chicken marinaded in lemon and lime sauce served with her famous egg fried rice, carrots, green beans and corn on the cob. I finished the merlot with the meal.

Exhuming Queen Victoria

On a bright, sunny, morning I rambled around the garden, down the lane, along Roger’s footpath and back.

From our patio can be seen a rhododendron, geranium palmatums, petunias, foxgloves, and fennel.

The centre of the Phantom Path gives a view towards that shown above. We can also see that the clematis Star of India and an unnamed white rose frolic together on the Gothic Arch.

This red rose, aptly named Altissimo, climbs between Elizabeth’s bed and the rose garden.

a sentinel to the Back Path.

The morning sun burns out detail on the right hand side of Downton Lane, glinting on the back of a shade-seeking orange ladybird, just filtering through shrubbery on the left.

This gate must have once led into a garden beyond it.

Roger is growing barley this year.

Across the left hand field a large vessel sedately traversed the horizon as yachts skimmed along a deep blue Christchurch Bay.

To my right clouds slid silently over Downton.

All I could hear were the strings of countless insects’ wings.

The pong of fermenting slurry filled my nostrils.

Back home, a far more appetising aroma greeted me. Jackie was preparing a sausage casserole for Sam’s visit tomorrow. I suppose I can defer my gratification until then.

This afternoon we planted other flowers, such as heucheras and penstemons into the rose garden, offering some variation.

The rose Deep Secret has now revealed all.

During my childhood, we used to brighten our copper pennies by rubbing them on the bricks of the school wall. Old bricks, not modern paving ones that don’t crumble into dust on the application of friction. So, when Jackie unearthed a tiny coin encrusted with thick verdigris, I was off in search of an old brick. They are not hard to find in the garden of Old Post House. I cleaned enough to know what a treasure we had found, but, since we were now afraid of scrubbing off any more detail, Jackie finished the job with Hob Brite, a rather gentler abrasive.

We had exhumed a small coin, bearing, on the obverse, the somewhat pockmarked head of Queen Victoria; on the reverse, Britannia, the date 1893, and its denomination. So soon after the previous post, we had found a farthing. Serendipity or what? How long had that lain in the soil? Who had dropped it? We will never know.

The previous posting featured a wren, which did not appear on the reverse until the pattern coin of Edward VIII (so called because it had not yet been approved by the time of his abdication in 1936). The little bird first replaced Britannia in 1937, during the reign of the father of Queen Elizabeth II, King George VI, who succeeded his older brother.

For tonight’s dinner, barbecue sauce flavoured the spare ribs; Jackie’s rice and green beans came with it. She drank Hoegaarden and I slurped Dao. This last verb was Jackie’s suggestion, when she pointed out that I had quaffed more than once recently. Not exactly couth, but there you have it.

P.S. Further research suggests that our coin is in fact bronze.

Tending Livestock And Crops

Writing three-quarters of a millennium ago, Geoffrey Chaucer, our earliest great poet, in his classic ‘Canterbury Tales’ displayed a talent for capturing characterisation with simple descriptions of clothing and habits. Whether or not she was inspired by this writer, the modern P.D. James has this facility in abundance, as demonstrated by ‘A Certain Justice’ which I finished reading this morning. Her descriptions of place are equally poetic and add enormously to our understanding of the natures of her subjects. Within this elegant writing she weaves an intriguing and credible murder mystery.

In a not wholly successful attempt to dislodge yesterday’s stubborn mud, I grated my shoes along the gravel footpaths leading out of Sigoules as I set off on this much brighter but still chilly morning to walk the La Briaude loop. Apart from the rather raucus distant cawing of rooks, the birdsong was glorious, and the day fresh.

Unlike the New Forest ponies, who refuse to be distracted from their grazing, the more inquisitive Dordogne cattle would often lift their heads and stare.

Tempted by a stony uphill track, I took a diversion, and was rewarded by a sight of burgeoning barley. Through trees, this led to a road on which I turned left. Miraculously enough, this led me to La Briaude. I had discovered a wider loop that I will use in future.

Walking on towards Sigoules, I heard a tender male voice. Peering through the trees I saw the gentleman was addressing sweet nothings to his obviously well groomed donkey. We exchanged greetings. The man and I, not the ass. Further on, another man was tending his garden. Beyond a crop of bright yellow tulips, stretched rows of vegetables, at the end of which he tilled the stony soil.

The sometimes low and relaxed, sometimes more shrill and desperate cries of the as yet unmated woodpigeons drowned the cheerful chirruping of smaller birds as I set about sorting the sitting room.

Jackie will be pleased to learn that today’s Code Bar soup was yesterday’s veg one amplified by noodles. There followed shredded pot-au-feu beef with a tangy tomato based sauce including little tomatoes and accompanied by half a hard-boiled egg on lettuce. Not necessarily my favourite food, the main course of lasagne could have me converted. Profiteroles completed the Italian theme. Fred paid me the compliment of asking me the English word (strawberries) for the French fraises. A group of English diners were having them, but I had them yesterday.