This has been a glorious day. Our first real frost lay on those parts of Barton Common not, by 11 a.m., yet reached by the brilliant sun. That was when Jackie deposited me there after a trip to Redcliffe Nurseries where we had purchased four outsize window boxes.
I spent almost an hour wandering amongst the bracken, the woods, and the ponies, before braving the path through the golf course and returning via the clifftop and Shorefield Country Park. Now standing stock still, now chomping the undergrowth, the animals spend their whole day preserving energy for grazing.
The paths were rather muddy, and although I didn’t quite get lost, I did twice meet a ditch I didn’t fancy crossing. Strangely enough I approached it from two different directions.
Attracted by a cluster of backlit leaves, I noticed a small red blackberry struggling to reach ripeness.
As, on the path alongside the golf course, I approached a tree tunnel leading to the sea, the thwack of the strike on a ball a metre or so to my right, followed by a cry of ‘Oh, bloody ‘ell’, had me diving for cover. We are, of course, warned of the occasional sliced shot.
The flickering yellow flags protruding from rounded humps on the newly laid section of the course deterred the gulls from exploring it.
Along the cliff top I had numerous conversations with other walkers in which we discussed the marvellous weather, the extended growing season, and the propensity of 
the footpaths to plunge into the sea.
Some of the cow parsley stars twinkling in the clear light would make excellent Christmas decorations.
This evening we dined on crisp oven cod and chips, mushy peas, and pickled onions that had remained in the cupboard long enough to soften. This was followed by Jackie’s beautiful blackberry and apple crumble and custard. She drank Stella and I finished the Languedoc.
Tag: cow parsley
The Skip
28th November 2014
This is the fifth and final day of the black and white flower photo challenge. On the second I posted a close-up of cow parsley that is having a second flowering this year. I finished my response to the challenge with a shot of what this plant usually looks like in winter.
Apart from the soggy newspaper atop a skip in which butterflies perched on pearls in Shorefield Road, it was a sunless morning when I took my Hordle Cliff top walk in reverse.
Openreach vans are regular visitors to this area. I stopped and chatted to a gentleman 
working on a cab, as we now know the engineers call the cabinet. When, during the first of my recent calls to BT, the Indian adviser told me that the problem was in the cabinet, I would have been even more confused had he said ‘cab’.
This evening Jackie drove us to Wickham where we met Elizabeth and her friend Cathy at the Chesapeake Antiques Centre open evening. Mulled wine and mince pies were served and a beautiful singer performed. I found it difficult to negotiate the crowds in the confined spaces of the corridors between the packed rooms and display cases, so I soon repaired to the Veranda Indian restaurant where I waited for the others, and Cathy’s husband Paul to join me. There we enjoyed our usual splendid meal and Indian lagers.
On our return home I was once more unable to access the internet, and had to post this the next day.
Find The Crop
The rain was back in Downton today, but uninterrupted internet access wasn’t. Which would you like to read about first?
Ok, I’ll be gentle and start with the weather. The fog warning from the invisible Needles lighthouse sounded above the pattering of raindrops as I took my Hordle Cliff top walk just 
after midday. Cattle, having been brought inside for the winter, have left the sodden fields. Rainwater left its film on the camera lens.
A pair of barely discernible yachts were out on The Solent.
I will now attempt not to rant about BT. The facts should speak for themselves. Not counting the man who connected Infinity Broadband on 10th of this month, we have now been visited by three Openreach engineers. It was number three, this morning, who confirmed that we had been mis-sold our package, which I hadn’t asked for in the first place. After he left I spent the best part of two hours on the phone, mostly pacing up and down the sitting room listening to music. In fact this could easily have constituted my day’s walk. But it the mood I was in at the end of it all I needed to go out and get wet.
The answer is that our house is 2km from the cabinet in the street, and problems develop if you are 1km away. BT have the equipment to check this at the time of installation without having to enter the property.
I began the day’s call to the sales department in England. I was transferred to the technical help team in India, and back to a woman in England whose task it was now to start the process of getting us back to our previous contract. It was when the technical man, putting me on hold for the third time advised me to wait, sit back and relax, that I very politely stated that I had no option but to wait, yet relax was what I would not be doing.
The upshot is that we must wait ten working days for a complaint to be processed and five for us to be put back on our old broadband. That is a fortnight and a week.
After a salad lunch, served with Jackie’s usual artistry, and four failed attempts, I managed to cling to the web just long enough to post my second day’s photograph for the black and white challenge. I chose a tiny crop from a picture of an unseasonal cow parsley head that still blooms this November.
Can you find this little jewel in the full frame?
Had there been any sun today, it would have been setting by the time I was able to work on this post. We are dining on Jackie’s chicken jalfrezi (recipe) tonight, but I may not be able to access The Net then, so I am sending it off now.
The Nursery Field
This morning I walked along Christchurch Road to New Milton to meet friend Alison at the railway station. Jackie collected us from there, took us to Old Post House, and returned our guest later.
This road winds and undulates but is still busy enough to sound like a formula one racing circuit on telly. Much skipping to and fro across the road was required to ensure that I kept, as far as possible, facing the oncoming traffic. Because I always had to make sure I was seen by the drivers, on bends like the one I am approaching in the photograph I had to cross the road and present my rear to those driving on the left. I was quite relieved to reach Caird Avenue and the footpath into the town.
The verge on the edge of this wide tarmacked path was being trimmed.
Turning into Station Road I enjoyed the dusting of buttercups, daisies, and clover on the grass lining this thoroughfare. I expect they will be next for the chop.
Alongside Christchurch Road itself, a narrow cut has been applied to the otherwise pathless grasses. Cow parsley, bluebells, dandelion clocks, daisies, violets, and the occasional wild aquilegias have escaped the whirling blades.
The early lambs are fattening up nicely, making one feel slightly uncomfortable about mint sauce.
The nursery field still has a smattering of new occupants.
Wandering round our own garden early this evening, I was reminded of how much attention it needs. We cannot wait to get started on it, but it has to take second place to the inside of the house at the moment.
Jackie did tireless work cleaning, scraping off careless paint, polishing, and fixing loose fittings upstairs, so it seemed only right to take her out for a meal this evening.
We chose The Jarna Bangladeshi restaurant in Old Milton. Its unprepossessing modern exterior in no way prepares the visitor for the cavernous interior modelled, according to Sam, the proprietor, on a cross between a Mogul palace and The Orient Express. Sam is proud of his heritage, as demonstrated by his dating the traditional cooking methods. Forget the flock wallpaper, The Jarna’s seating, walls, and even ceilings are clad in velvet. Naive paintings depicting scenes of Bangladesh are bordered by tied back curtain fabric and sculpted velvet. There are two sets of chandeliers and a number of discrete cubicles.
What is particularly marked about this place is how spotlessly clean everything is. With such soft, plush, fabrics this would seem to be impossible. Sam explained that four or five of them set to once a week with Vanish. It shows.
The food was excellent. My choice was Shath koraa, being this establishment’s version of the Hatkora I have eaten at Ringwood’s Curry Garden. Jackie enjoyed chicken dopiaza. We both drank Cobra.
Next time I will most definitely take my camera. There will be a next time.
Finishing Touches
We have a long, but not tall, Chinese oak cabinet which has gone up and down stairs in our new home like a yo-yo. The library had seemed its most likely final resting place. The almost completed project no longer offered space for it. So back upstairs we carted it. When I bought the chests of drawers from Fergusson’s, one was intended to stand beneath this piece of furniture. We had second thoughts. Now we have thought again.
I then emptied the last four boxes of books; Jackie got out the vacuum cleaner; and we set about transporting the games table into the library. Had we not covered the garage door this would have been quite a simple matter. But we had. So it wasn’t.
The table was surplus to requirements in the sitting room. We carried it into the hall, intending to take it through the kitchen into the library. We couldn’t get it into the kitchen. So we took the casters off. We got it into the kitchen cupboard known as the glory hole. We couldn’t get it out into the kitchen itself. So we shifted it back into the hall and had a think.
I then had the bright, albeit somewhat tardy, idea of taking it out through the front door, round the side of the house, and in through the back door which now leads straight into the library. This worked like a dream. When I suggested to Jackie that we may not have needed to remove the casters, she suggested that I should not ‘even go there’.
The legs of the piece had taken a bit of scuffing in its various moves, so Jackie applied wood stain to the wounds and polish to both limbs and surface. A piece of string held the slightly loosened leg in place whilst the glue dried.
The carpet that Michael had given us had just one grease mark on it. To complete the creation of the room my lady got down and scrubbed this with an application of Vanish. She fixed a clock to the side of one of the bookcases.
Still visible in one corner of the library are a handful of Safestore boxes containing a selection of volumes for a charity stall our friend Heather is running in August.
A wander round the garden followed. The bungalow next door has been unoccupied for many years and such fence as there ever was between this and our property has been swamped by shrubs, one of which is a photinia. We think it is not ours, but never mind it blooms in our garden.
There are also a couple of yellow flowering shrubs we could not identify until Jackie’s research revealed them to be corokia cotoneasters which originate in New Zealand.
The copper beech is now in full leaf.
White was the dominant colour of the hedgerows in Downton Lane as I took an early evening walk into a fierce headwind coming off the Solent.
Cow parsley, stitchwort and may blossom have replaced the yellow daffodils and dandelions.
Rooks struggled against the wind to keep their bearings as they winged to and fro to their now clamouring chicks.
It was an evening for kite surfing such as my friend John Smith would relish.
As I arrived at the coastline a lone surfer was about to be joined by others walking down the steps from Hordle Cliff top. They were still setting up by the time I left the beach on which the rollers were again piling up the shingle. An intrepid yachts person was seen in the distance, and the Isle of Wight and The Needles made a landmark backdrop to the scene.
The surfer didn’t manage to keep out of the water.
Hordle Chinese Takeaway provided a spread for our evening meal. The Co-op’s cheesecake was to follow. Jackie drank Hoegarden and I finished the chianti.
Furzey Gardens
Early this morning I walked down to the village shop, returning via the church footpath and The Splash. 
The snowdrops, crocuses, and daffodils have made way in the churchyard for cow parsley.
On my return I had a chat with Gladys and Dave in the garden. John, otherwise known as Sisyphus (see 19th March post), was just arriving for his day’s gardening. Nodding in the direction of Jackie who was sitting outside our kitchen door, Dave said she was about to be upset because John would start the day’s lawn mowing. ‘Oh no’, said I, ‘she loves it. We are going to Furzey Gardens this afternoon. She cannot go out in the morning he visits because she gives him coffee at eleven o’clock’. Gladys responded that she provides his one o’clock cup of tea. ‘He also brings his own flask’, added Dave. I was still laughing when I returned to our flat and told Jackie this. She quipped that he was like Six Dinner Sid. Sid is a cat, the hero of a story told by Inga Moore (2004). He visits six homes in turn, all of which provide him with a dinner.
It is just as well there are no cats, either resident or visiting, in our building, because we are really getting to know our nuthatch family. Dad has been visiting the feeding station for some time now; having a scoff and a few words with Jackie; then, sated, flying off with some food in his beak. Now he just feeds himself. Mum has presumably been sitting on a nest somewhere nearby, but definitely not in the tree to which Dad has been flying as a decoy. The eggs must have hatched and the juveniles grown up a bit, for she has now emerged and taken her place on the finial of the pole, surveying her offspring’s fearless adventures.
The younger bird has not learned to be afraid, and consequently skips around beneath our feet. He nipped up the steps as Jackie stood watching amazed, and, skirting her trainers, explored the stonework, no doubt seeking insects.
In order for John to prune the hedges around Jackie’s hanging baskets and bird feeders, she has had to move them inside for the day. The fliers zooming in for nosh were somewhat confused by this. They swooped, they saw, they scarpered. ‘Where’, you could see them thinking, ‘has it gone? I know I left it here’.
The trip to Furzey Gardens was the culmination of three consecutive days of horticultural feasting. Aviemore provided breathtaking beauty in a compact, packed, area; MacPenny’s offered maturity in a large space; Furzey is endlessly stunning in acres of rolling woodland. 
Berry had told me this was the time to come because of the rhododendrons. We have magnificent species in our garden, but nothing could have prepared me for this dazzling array set off at its best on a gloriously sunny day.
Created in 1922 the house and garden remained in the Dalrymple family until the 1960s when it was bought by the charity that now runs it in partnership with the Minstead Training project.
Numerous paths take the visitor on a magical tour of shrubberies filled with the most unusual bushes, trees, and plants, collected from all over the world. 
There are thatched buildings dotted about, many of which have liitle doors set for fairies. A child’s note accompanied by a wilting bunch of wild flowers lay on a spar of wood. A play area contains climbing structures, swings, and even a disused rowing boat that looks as if it had been stranded when the waters of the winter subsided.
A number of plants such as the enormous gunnera or the abundant, healthy, candelabra primulas, provide evidence of the boggy nature of some of the forest soil.
There is a substantial pond. 
A wisteria Elizabeth would be proud of, festoons a rustic pergola and seat. 
The alpacas featured on the 30th March can be seen in the distance in a meadow of wild flowers accessible only to staff and students. 
There is still much to be done to restore parts of this amazing treasure to its former glory, and inroads are definitely being made. 
I am not sure how much of the uncultivated area is to remain wild, but I hope a reasonable amount. The original house is now a place of retreat.
At Chelsea in 2012, the Minstead Training Project carried off gold for the Show Garden. It is in the process of being brought back to its roots in Furzey Gardens.
This evening we dined on belly of pork roasted long and slow by Jackie. I drank half a bottle of the Blason des Papes Chateauneuf du Pape 2011, a really excellent wine she bought me for Christmas.