concrete slabs – derrickjknight

The New Bed Is No Longer New

On 31st July 2014 Jackie began transporting concrete slabs I had dug out of the projected rose garden

to form a retaining wall for the one compost heap.

By 9th March 2015 we had decided to move the compost and convert the heap, which had been left by our predecessors, into The New Bed.

What you see in this picture is the result of sifting out all kinds of non-biogradable rubbish.

This was the scene the following day. Note the dead tree just behind the bed.

The above images are all included in our before and after albums, to which I added more prints today.

By 23rd June 2017 poppies and clematises were thriving, as were

these lilies, the bulbs of which were eventually eaten by a vole

that also saw off the Bishop pf Llandaff dahlias pictured on September 13th, 2018. The white solanum festoons the original dead tree which is also scaled by

the clematises photographed on June 19th this year.

By September 4th Aaron had replaced the flimsy metal arch with a stout wooden one, to which we have attached a small trowel bearing the legend “Aaron’s Garden” – a present from Becky.

Like The New Forest, The New Bed is no longer new.

This afternoon I finished reading

I would concur with these comments on the back jacket.

My second birthday was one month and one day away when the Allies began their landing in Normandy on 6th June 1944. It has taken James Holland’s book to make me aware that the brutal, bloody, battle for France was to continue until I was more than 25 months old, largely because the German, mostly ill-equipped and untrained, often boys, were ordered by Hitler to defend their positions to the end. The occupiers’ command chain had broken down, and they knew they were being ordered to do the impossible against the vastly superior Allies with their incredibly efficient infrastructure. Details of the carnage and destruction make for awesome reading. There are many notes, maps, charts, timelines, and photographs supporting the stunning detail.

This evening we dined on Mr Chan’s excellent Hordle Chinese Take Away fare with which Jackie drank Hoegaarden and I finished the Saint-Chiniian.

Before And After: From Compost Heap to New Bed

This morning we both tidied up after yesterday’s work on the Cryptomeria Bed. Jackie also did some planting, and completed her access stepping stones in the front garden with stones dug up yesterday.

My iMac was upgraded yesterday to the latest operating system, rejoicing in the name of El Capitain. One of the improvements was said to be to Photos. Since all my pre-May this year pictures were automatically put into that on the last upgrade, yet I have stubbornly persisted in using iPhoto, I thought perhaps it was time for me to get my head round it. This especially because, rather than search for them in Photos, I took yesterday’s 2014 photos directly from WordPress. This meant that clicking on those images did not increase their size. I trust that this problem will not apply to today’s efforts.

Passing the New Bed on the way to the compost heap with barrow loads of cuttings and leaves, I noticed a minute shield bug sharing a Bishop of Llandaff dahlia with a bumble bee. By the time I fetched my camera both the bee and a Small White butterfly had moved on, leaving the field to the little creature.

A close-up gave me an insight into what had inspired Disney’s Illustrators of Jiminy Cricket.

The New Bed did not exist when we came to Downton. Its development forms the next section of the Garden Album.

On 31st July 2014, Jackie began transporting concrete slabs I had dug out of the projected rose garden, to form a retaining wall for the one compost heap.

She continued this the next day. (‘Not Two Peoples’ 1.8.14)

By 9th March 2015, we had decided to move the compost and convert the heap, which had been left by our predecessors, into The New Bed. The earth you see in this picture is the result of hours of sifting out all kinds of non-biodegradable rubbish. In the right background lies the back of the log pile

seen to greater effect in this photograph taken the next day,

and that of The Heligan Path two days later. (An Opened Garden12.3.15)

Today The New Bed basks in the autumn sunshine.

A tiny bed lies to the left of the small gravel path leading to the dead tree. The stepping stones in the background offer access to more plants. All this once held the logs.

This evening we dined on cheese-centred fish cakes, Jackie’ s piquant cauliflower cheese (recipe), and her melange of onions, peppers, and tomatoes. We both drank Kumala pinotage rose 2015.

The Hat

A comment from Becky on yesterday’s post prompted me to delve back into my photographic archives, and scan three more ancient colour slides.
In June 1971, we went on a family holiday with Ellie and Roger Glencross to their cottage, The Haven, in Iwade in Kent. Here they are, on the beach, with Matthew in the foreground:
The following August, Jackie, Michael, Matthew and Becky – seen posing outside The Haven – and I, spent a week there on our own. Michael displays his ever-paternal response to his brother and sister. The children had yet to learn that it is infra dig to wear socks with sandals, and this was the era of hot pants. It was in this low-ceilinged cottage that I learned to tape newspapers to the beams so that I would see them and bend my head to avoid bashing it. This ploy didn’t always work.
Jackie, who crocheted the hat that Becky is wearing in this picture on the beach, tells me it is not a mob cap, such as the one appearing on yesterday’s market stall, but a successor. In any case, almost everything in that display was sold. Becky did, however, wear the prototype mob cap. After she had been pushed around Raynes Park sporting it in her pram for several months, a maternity shop, called One and a Half, in Wimbledon Village began selling mob caps. Jackie is convinced they followed her lead.
So excited was I by the above exercise, that I stayed in my dressing gown until I’d completed it. Well, that’s my excuse, anyway. I wasn’t looking forward to tackling the concrete slabs I had abandoned two days ago. I did, however, take up the task again this morning. This involved wielding the grubber axe in order to penetrate the iron-hard soil on one side of each buried block, and gravel and hard-core on the other. The next step was, when the obstruction looked possibly loose enough, to give it a good kick; to discover that it still wouldn’t budge; and to repeat the process until it did. Prising it up was done with whatever garden tool was nearest to hand, until there was enough space to get my fingers underneath it and heave it up.
I had thought there were just three slabs in the row, until I came to the corner and found there were more, extending along the long side of the bed. Anyone wondering why I didn’t know these were there, should understand that they are mostly covered by two or three inches of weed-infested earth. After four of the extra ones, I stopped for the day. After all, it was still hot enough to keep the bees buzzing.
This afternoon I walked down to the Spar shop to replenish our stock of sparkling water. This gardening lark is thirsty work. The rooks, chasing each other across the skies, are back in residence.
Roger Cobb was ploughing his maize field.
Bev and John are our only neighbours likely to be affected by a bonfire. I always ring them before lighting one. This was the call I had tried to make two days ago that had alerted me to the problem with my mobile phone. I attempted to telephone them again this evening before burning more branches. I had the same problem. And I couldn’t find the reset button. So I rang O2 at Christchurch. The man who answered the phone knew only of one reset which would wipe all my information. He suggested I took the battery out and put it in again. I did that and it worked. Except that I got a voice telling me my stored numbers were not recognised. I waited a bit and tried again, successfully getting through to Bev. This time Jackie helped with the combustion and we made quite good progress before dinner which consisted of her delicious chicken curry and savoury rice. We finished the Cuvee St Jaine.

The Water Spire

This morning I walked along Hordle Lane, turning left into Stopples Lane. I had hoped to walk across the fields and woods to Peter’s Farm, but could not find my way through. In the spring, I must have traversed a gap in the hedge which is now overgrown. Today, I followed the fenced off wood until I reached the houses, then retraced my steps.
Just before the paddock I heard, then saw, a spire of water, casting a rainbow, shooting straight up into the tree above. Upon investigation, during which I was liberally sprinkled, I noticed that a valve had, perhaps deliberately, become disconnected. I knocked at the door of Yeatton Cottage and alerted a resident who undertook to contact the water board. This young woman told me that the large horses did not belong to her and her husband, although the field and a Shetland pony did. One of the horses, sheltering under an oak, was well camouflaged.
I twice met a jogger, and gave her a running tip, for which she was grateful.
The verges on both sides of Hordle Lane are littered with debris from food to go. Why, I often wonder, do people come to such a beautiful spot and chuck their rubbish out of their car windows?
Impatiens grew in the wood. Perhaps someone had dumped their garden refuse into this area, with a much more pleasing result. A natural insect hotel created by the section of a dead tree was open for guests.
Soon after this I began the last push in preparing the rose garden. This involved the two of us transplanting a straggly rosemary bush and a cluster of crocosmia. Digging over the soil is likely to take some considerable time. The small area I worked on today, especially that which had been covered by paving for so many years, had the consistency of iron, and contained copious amounts of couch grass and its sinuous trailing roots. I unearthed another slab of concrete and a few more bricks. Just as I was thinking that I would probably find more before the job was done, I discovered another row of the concrete embedded on its side. Having been unable to shift even the first slab, in the absence of my Jack Russell substitute, and as Jackie was calling me in to share a six-egg omelette, stuffed with onions and mushrooms, for a late lunch, I decided to call it a day. She said there was no rush to complete this task which could be done ‘at [my] leisure – if that’s the right word to use’.
This afternoon we were visited by Sam, The Lady Plumber, who came to look at the work needed on our guest bathroom before Louisa, Errol, Jessica, and Imogen come for the weekend. Sam(antha) was friendly, quick, and efficient. Maybe she could have fixed this morning’s valve. She will do our work on Thursday.
This evening I lit and tended a bonfire. Many more will be required before the produce of four months of sawing, pruning and clipping has been burnt.
Jackie’s luscious chicken curry and savoury rice was what we enjoyed for dinner. It was followed by lemon and lime merangue pie and evap in her case, and lemon drizzle cake and custard in mine. I finished the chianti, and she drank some Hoegaarden.

The Bhagavad Gita

8.9.14
I found my main gardening task today really tough. Having thought I had taken up all the concrete slabs from the former kitchen garden, I discovered another path of them. They were bounded by bricks. All these have now enhanced the paving pile, leaving me wringing wet. The latest heavy blocks are those that look darkest in the photograph.
After this, I dragged myself to the Shorefield post box and back, then settled down in a chair to read. Interrupted only by a robotic telephone call trying to sell us a new boiler, I finished that Indian classic ‘The Baghavad Gita’. Described by Jackie’s former work colleague as a ‘book on the Soul, Karma, and Reincarnation’ this dramatic piece takes the form of a dialogue between Krishna and the warrior Arjuna, with Sanjaya taking the role of the classical Chorus. Originally written in ancient Sanskrit it is an interlude in the much longer epic, Mahabharata.
Now, I had a choice. I could attempt Jackie’s tome, containing the original text and copious commentary by His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, or I could confine myself to my Folio Society edition with a brief introduction by Amit Chaudhuri. I settled for the latter.
Relying on the doctrine of reincarnation, the god attempts to convince the warrior that it is his duty to kill friends and relatives facing him on the battlefield because their spirits will not die and they will have rebirths. The book is, of course, about much more than this, being a guide to the achievement of inner peace. Much of it does make sense to me, but the killing theory seems to be rather too easy a justification. It beats me how that can bring about inner peace.
The scholarly edition is illustrated by sumptuous realist paintings and photographs, whilst the other is liberally strewn with more imaginative suggestions from the hand of Anna Bhushan. The double spread I have chosen from the first book relates to the doubt of Arjuna and to the reincarnation philosophy. Zooming will make the text clearer.
Whilst I was thus recuperating, Jackie continued her autumn pruning and clearing. Later on, I helped by transporting unwanted foliage to the compost heap and the combustible piles.
Jackie’s delicious chicken curry and savoury rice amply sufficed for our dinner, with which I drank Louis de Camponac cabernet sauvignon 2012. Jackie had already consumed her Hoegaarden when we relaxed in our garden as the sun went down.
Later, I began reading ‘The War of the end of the World’ by Mario Vargas Llosa.