Tag: clematises

Watching Sport And Dead-Heading

Very early this morning I watched recorded highlights of the first two days of the current Test cricket match between England and India.

One rose I tend to delay dead-heading is Félicite Perpetue, of which we have two abundant examples. Today I could find not even the slightest reason for procrastination.

Here is the splendid spreading plant in the front garden, before I set about it.

I didn’t manage to complete the task today. The corner in the second picture in this gallery was not visible behind the Modus in my before picture, but I did clear it all.

The lace cap hydrangea now has a little more room to breathe.

I have previously dead headed the pink roses sharing the opposite trellis with Clematis Mrs N. Thompson – those that I can reach.

Jackie spent much of the day on similar work, for example

pruning the Red Bottle Brush tree;

tidying the Brick Path;

cleaning and tidying the decking, including repairing the parasol.

She is particularly pleased with the half dead clematis Venosa Violacea, which she brought back to life having rescued it from Otter’s pity bench.

This afternoon I watched Wimbledon tennis fourth round matches between Jule Niemeier and Heather Watson; and between Cameron Norrie and Tommy Paul.

Then came the highlights of this, the third day’s play in the Test match; before dinner, which consisted of cheese-centred fish cakes, carrots, cauliflower, broccoli, Brussels sprouts and new boiled potatoes; with which Jackie drank Hoegaarden, Flo drank water, and I drank The Guv’nor, a very smooth and tasty Spanish red wine given to me by Shelly and Ron.

Inside And Out

This morning and the early part of the afternoon

Jackie continued her work on the Brick Path.

My morning task was returning our bedroom to normal now that Nick has finished his clean decorating. This involved shoving the bed back into position; removing many items from the en suite bathroom, having the advantage of allowing me a shower;

returning some to the bedroom and others to become temporary lumber, in the redecorated sitting room. Some of these items will furnish the room while we will have many pictures to cull.

Nick’s work leads these the eye smoothly through these two rooms.

This afternoon, accompanied by my trusty camera, I carried out more dead-heading and pulled up a few weeds. As usual this gallery provides a title to each photograph.

It was only yesterday that I was conversing with Anne of Something Over Tea about our mutual dearth of butterflies, and today we were visited by a solitary Red Admiral.

This evening we all dined on the patio on Papa John’s pizzas with which Jackie and Becky drank Zesty, Ian drank Hoegaarden, and I drank Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon 2020.

Dank

During the morning of this decidedly dank day Jackie worked on tidying the lawn and its surrounding borders, while I did something similar in the front garden, cleared up debris and fed the compost bins front and back.

Just in time for lunch a downpour sent us indoors. The Head Gardener left her tools outside, so, when I took advantage of a drier period to wander around with my camera, I gathered them up and deposited them in the greenhouse.

A hoverfly wasn’t too bothered about the raindrops on clematis Mrs N. Thompson; other clematises, nasturtiums, Black-eyed Susan, angels wings and day lilies were similarly bejewelled.

Various hanging baskets and other containers are flourishing, well stocked with petunias, lobelias, begonias, and more. Beside the vertical picture of Alan Titchmarsh, deep red Love Knot and lighter hued red carpet rose, are portraits of Ernest Morse and the climber Super Elfin. We have encouraged the honeysuckle to infiltrate the Back Drive from the garden of the adjacent care home. The purple and white Delta’s Sarah is in the patio bed.

Five more chapters read of Charles Dickens’s novel, David Copperfield, carry five more of Charles Keeping’s superb illustrations to my Folio Society edition.

‘She was sitting by the fire, suckling an infant, whose tiny hand she held against her neck’

In ‘We stand around the grave’ the artist chooses to place the burial party in the distance.

‘Away we went on our holiday excursion’

The figures in the foreground, bursting out of the frame of ‘I lounged about the streets, insufficiently and unsatisfactorily fed’ give a typical perspective to Keeping’s street scenes.

Note the artist’s trademark dog in ‘There was a very long-legged young man, with a very little empty donkey-cart, standing near the Obelisk’

This evening we dined on more of Jackie’s hot and spicy pasta arrabbiata with full, firm, and tender green beans, with which she drank Hoegaarden and I drank more of the especially smooth Rioja.

The wind is whipping up, reminding us that tomorrow afternoon we will need to batten down the hatches in the usual manner in preparation for the gale expected to strike early the next morning.

A Dreich Dundee Day

Cowering trees swayed before the breath of the Big Bad Wolf raging overhead huffing and puffing in his attempts to blow down little pigs’ houses; pattering trotters tripped across the roof; bejewelled yet disconsolate blooms bent their weeping heads; precipitate rivulets raced down the window panes, as we awoke to a pleasantly cooler bedroom breeze succeeding last night’s heavy humidity.

Jackie braved an early supermarket shop in this weather, which did not desist throughout the day, so

apart from those photographs produced during a brief period while I was unloading the shopping and soaking my shower-proof coat anyway,

the rest of these rain-spattered images were gained through panes of glass. As usual, individual titles may be gleaned by clicking on any image to access either of the galleries.

Elizabeth joined us for tonight’s dinner which consisted of Jackie’s succulent cottage pie; crunchy carrots and cauliflower; tender cabbage, and meaty gravy, with which the Culinary Queen drank Hoegaarden and my sister and I drank Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon 2020.

June Delights

On a day that returned us to warmth and full sunshine, Jackie spent much of it

examining her floral babies and stretching to care for them, while I mostly wandered in and out of the garden with my camera.

We have a number of clematises;

numerous roses;

freshly blooming rhododendrons;

and more welcome alliums.

The Kitchen Path runs alongside the Pond Bed towards the arch bearing a blue solanum.

The Gazebo and Brick Paths are colourfully bordered.

Jackie’s new planting in the Shady Path Bench Bed is burgeoning nicely.

The Byzantium gladioli are standing in several beds, including this one in the Rose Garden; the pink cabana Jumbo emerges from a blue pot; the red Japanese maple still dominates the Pond Bed.

Geranium palmatums, cosmos, dandelions, convolvulus, companula, pansies, and poppies are other thriving blooms.

Florence at Fiveways stands in front of our newest bench; the Nottingham Castle replica is the oldest.

Weigela and two different erigerons overlook the concrete patio.

This evening we dined on more of the marinaded chicken with boiled new potatoes, and tender runner and green beans, with which Jackie drank Hoegaarden and I finished the Shiraz.

Resisting The Elements

Knowing that we were to expect another leaden afternoon of rain Jackie spent a couple of hours in the garden setting gale damage to rights. I joined her and transported some refuse to the compost while chronicling the event. This was before we visited Mum in Woodpeckers.

Our mother, sporting another of her best outfits was on good form. She got the joke when, after the carer came to warn us that we had another four minutes, I said that would be enough for her to run a mile. This puzzled the carer, so I added “like Roger Bannister”. She was still puzzled but laughed anyway. Of course, the first four minute miler was Derek Ibbotson, but I wasn’t sure Mum would know that.

After lunch I set about drafting the garden report.

Although I focussed on some of damage, like this pot and its contents blown of its brick plinth,

there were plenty of undamaged plants like these two varieties of dahlia.

Although a few gladioli had succumbed, others had stood firm.

Lilies, including the ginger variety in the second of these images, have survived.

The Brick Path won’t even need sweeping.

I picked up a fallen owl and replaced it on its perch beside another toppled pot.

The owl above was perched at one end of the Pond Bed, the rest of which was undamaged.

The Rose Garden didn’t fare quite so well.

Here Jackie indicates the damage to the top of one of the twin planters, which also lost its pot of petunias. The other stand was not damaged but its blooms were battered a bit.

The sweet peas were dragged down and the blooms shredded; some rose stems were bent over, so Jackie decided to give them their autumn hair-cut. Mamma Mia in the second picture here is quite intact.

Here is one of the trugloads I emptied.

The gauras and some clematis clung to life;

although one obelisk slipped a bit. Many pelargoniums remained reasonably intact.

Some views like these of the lawn bed, from the Dragon Bed towards Mistletoe Cottage;

and down the Gazebo Path are unimpaired.

This pot slipped off its plinth in the front garden, but its pelargoniums,

like other plants, such as Japanese anemones were unbroken.

Once again our garden has largely resisted the elements.

I have struggled with an intermittent internet connection throughout the drafting of this post, and we are on our way to our first lockdown-easing meal at Lal Quilla. If I find we have no internet when we return I may descend into a rant, so the restaurant meal will feature tomorrow.

Her Pride And Joy

Late yesterday evening Jackie raced round the garden with her camera, gleefully photographing

her pride and joy. Petunias, pelargoniums, phlox, fuchsias, clematises, alliums, agapanthuses, dahlias, verbenas, campanulas, erigeron, lilies, Japanese anemones, diascias, begonias, eucalyptus, roses, and no doubt many I’ve missed. As usual, clicking on any image will produce the gallery, each member of which is separately labelled and can be viewed full size by clicking on the box beneath it, and further bigified with subsequent clicks.

As if that weren’t enough, the Assistant Photographer dashed out later to capture

the full moon, and again this morning to add

crocosmias Emily McKenzie and Solfatare,

and finally Lycesteria.

I had my work cut out today to select from 56 images, load them into the iMac, edit and crop them, then transfer them to WordPress retyping each title. I left my own camera alone, and for the first time ever rejected the offer of a forest drive, otherwise I would have been at the computer until midnight.

This evening we dined on Forest Tandoori takeaway fare with which Jackie drank Hoegaarden and I drank more of the Malbec.

Shifting Light

This morning my gardening occupations combined dead heading and making photographs.

These roses Summer Wine and Altissimo, both coming again, were too high for me to reach with hand secateurs, and I couldn’t be bothered to fetch the steps.

Bigifying will probably be necessary to appreciate these bees on bidens, on Japanese anemones, and coming to land on crocosmia. Just click on any image to access the gallery and enlarge further with clicks on the ‘view full size’ box underneath and again if required. The bees swarming the Japanese anemones must be welcoming the plants’ early blooming.

Crocosmia blend well with other plants such as these bell-like alliums and the Japanese maple with its fingers singed by recent violent winds.

From beside this latter crocosmia I was able, through the maple, to view the petunias and pelargoniums featured alongside the kitchen wall.

We haven’t identified all the clematises in the garden. The first of this triptych above, for example, is a Lidl unnamed purchase; we do know that it is Niobe who shares the arch with the fuchsia, Chequerboard; the Head Gardener was determined to track down ‘clematis viticella purpurea plena elegans’, which took her some time, because when we arrived seven years ago this then weakly specimen was ailing in the rubble jungle that we eventually turned into the Rose Garden – it was fostered out in another bed until we returned it to its native soil, and has taken three years to reach the top of its supporting beam.

One of these yellow evening primrose blooms has survived the night well; this phantom hydrangea is also a survivor – it is the plant after which the eponymous path is named – first planted on one side of the Phantom Path it was really rather poorly for its first two years, until Aaron moved it into Margery’s Bed where it has enjoyed more light. We hope it will soon be in the shape in which we bought it.

Hemerocallis still thrive and we also have stargazer lilies in the main garden.

Four hours later, in mid afternoon I set out once more with my camera, giving me shifted lighting conditions.

A bee did its best to weigh down a verbena bonariensis.

Niobe could now sunbathe, and the clematis at the barrier between the garden and the back drive enjoyed light and shade;

the freckled lilies kept out of the direct sunlight;

sweet peas and hollyhocks could take it stronger.

My lens found the white flowers the best beneficiaries: sweet scented petunias, powerfully aromatic phlox, a clutch of dahlias, different Japanese anemones and the phantom hydrangea sheltered in shade this morning.

This evening we dined on prawn fish cakes, peas, and fresh crispy bread and butter with which Jackie drank Hoegaarden and I drank more of the Carles from a second bottle.

A Clutch Of Clematis

Today was once more hot, humid, and overcast.

This morning I printed a copy of my recent photograph of Aaron for his parents. His A.P. Maintenance tasks included the repair of

the door of the Orange Shed which had managed to beat the shed itself to collapsing;

and to level the uneven, sagging, brick footpath which had kept tripping me up in the

Rose Garden, from the south west corner of which can be viewed

this hydrangea and fuchsia Magellanica.

Chequerboard is another fuchsia hanging beside clematis Niobe which scales the Gothic Arch;

clematis Madame Julia Correvon forms a serpentine diagonal with her neighbour sidalcea;

another clematis tops the arch spanning the Phantom Path in this view from the Cryptomeria Bed to the greenhouse;

today’s final scene contains two more clematis climbing the kitchen wall, among petunias, pelargoniums, fuchsia Delta’s Sara, Erigeron and more.

After lunch I spent some time clearing up clippings from Jackie’s morning maintenance and carrying trug-loads to the compost bins. Reading occupied the rest of my afternoon.

This evening we dined on succulent roast lamb; crisp roast potatoes including ipomoea batatas; crunchy carrots, cauliflower, and broccoli; with meaty gravy. Jackie drank Hoegaarden and I drank more of the Rioja.

Ella And The Ladybirds

Strong winds howled throughout the night, and did not abate until midday – then only temporarily. A warm sun put in intermittent appearances.

Among Aaron’s tasks was weeding the Back Drive.

“Where’s Aaron?” (10). Bigification might help with this one.

Here are the results of my garden photoshoot. “Where’s Jackie?” (4) is the picture containing the greenhouse. As usual individual photographs are titled in the galleries. Each image may be viewed full size by clicking the box beneath it, after which further enlargement is possible.

During a break I joined the real gardeners who were discussing developments.

Danni, Andy, and Ella paid us a welcome visit this afternoon.

Our great-niece, when noticing that she was being photographed in the act of demonstrating her prowess with a knife and fork, swiftly adopted her scrunched up poser’s smile. Soon afterwards, well nappy-bolstered, she sat comfortably on a bed of gravel and played passing the ornamental crystal with her Dad. When she decided it was time to step down she clung to Andy for balance. Having sought out the ladybird she had discovered on her last visit, she retrieved both it and its companion and, one in each hand, carried them around. She is seen here kissing one before climbing onto a bench, without releasing either, and conversing with them – possibly inviting them for a ride on the buggy improvised from a garden hose.

This evening we dined on oven fish and chips, purchased before we knew Mrs Pink’s was open again, spicy prawns, pickled onions and gherkins, with which Jackie drank Hoegaarden and I drank more of the Colle Marrone.