daffodils – Page 13 – derrickjknight

Have You Heard?

Feeling better again today, but still pretty drowsy, I scanned a batch of 22 unsorted random black and white negatives, and tested my memory in an attempt to date and locate them. I think the images were all produced in 1983.

It was probably Jessica who made this picture of Louisa and me in our house in Gracedale Road. The ginger jar on the shelf above my shoulder was one of the spoils from our mudlarking. The large gilt-framed painting above Louisa’s head is ‘Have You Heard’, by Mary Evelina Kindon, which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1905. Sadly, I no longer had room to hang it when I returned to London, so Michael arranged for its sale at a Bonhams auction in 2009.

It was only this morning that Becky was amusing us with a description of how she would work on the pc at Commonside Trust, whilst simultaneously cradling a teenage client’s infant. The next two shots, as she plays cards whilst nursing Louisa, demonstrate how she perfected the skill.

Having peered through a magnifying glass all that time ago, Matthew was to give Jackie and me one each for Christmas a couple of years ago.

Sam is engaged in one of his favourite pastimes.

These landscapes were probably taken in Surrey on a visit to Polesden Lacey.

Polesden Lacey is an Edwardian house and estate. Located on the North Downs at Great Bookham, near Dorking, Surrey, it is owned and managed by the National Trust and is one of the Trust’s most popular properties. This photograph suggests to me that it was here that Sam lost his soldier. Jessica, Michael, Sam, Louisa, and I travelled quite regularly down the A3 from Gracedale Road to this garden.

Michael, inspired by these visits soon became a life member of the National Trust.

Here are two of Louisa concentrating on her food in Gracedale Road.

Jessica, Louisa, and Sam enjoy a game of ball at the home of Aunt Elspeth in Rugby.

Jessica’s late. loved, cousin Anthony tends his mother’s garden in the background.

The daffodils suggest this must have been around Louisa’s first birthday.

Finally, can anyone identify this grasping plant?

This evening we dined on Jackie’s superb liver casserole, mashed potato and swede, and crisp carrots, broccoli, and green beans. I drank more of the cabernet sauvignon opened four or five days ago. It was still drinkable. Ian and Jackie drank Hoegaarden, and Becky rose.

Then There Was One

I don’t always remember to take my painkillers. All they do anyway is reduce the acute pain in my knee. It doesn’t take long, however for me to realise my omission. So it was this afternoon when Jackie drove us to New Milton to catch up on some banking. On the way back we stopped off at Redcliffe Nurseries to buy a hoe and various other items. I very soon had to give up and return to the car, leaving the head gardener loose in the store. Afterwards she dropped me off at home to take my pills and continued alone to raid Otter Nurseries.

We are in for a spell of dull weather, which began today. It failed to dim the colours of the garden, especially as the red and yellow Japanese maples are now in leaf. Against a post on the far left of the broader picture the splash of orange is our first poppy. Very soon, in different sizes, and of varying hues, the plot will be peppered with them until late in the autumn. These pictures will repay maximum enlargement. Fennel, tulips, daffodils, and pansies are among the plants on display.

On 22nd February, an ailing baby bird we had thought to be a pigeon, perished after a frosty night. We then realised that a pair of young collared doves, seeming to be searching where the chick had succumbed, were probably its parents. They have seldom since been seen apart. Overnight a predator has struck, leaving the feathers of one of these birds beneath our largest bay tree. Now its mate waits its turn beneath the bird feeder alone. Nature can sometimes be so cruel.

Yesterday’s nicely matured chilli con carne and savoury rice with a side of haloumi, followed by syrup sponge pudding and custard provided our evening sustenance. Jackie drank sparkling water whilst I quaffed a little more of the chianti.

Illumination

One of the beauties of the vast array of daffodils we have in our garden, is that they come up at different times. As the early arrivals die back, their places are taken by later varieties.

Some of these bulbs were left in window boxes by our previous owners, some given to us by a couple to whom we gave a bath, and others Jackie has bought in various garden centres.

These spring plants light up the garden in bright sunshine. Jackie, however, is not satisfied with this. She needs the garden to glow in the dark. She has therefore cleaned up and added to last year’s garden lights in her efforts to, all summer long, rival Bartley’s Christmas illuminations. She has marked out all the paths with lanterns on hooks, and hung strings of fairy lights on the arches and shrubs.

We should now, even though our neighbours may boggle at the sight, be able to make our way around in the dark.

This lunchtime, we received a very welcome surprise visit from Barbara, an on-line Scrabble friend, and her granddaughter Alanta, and arranged to dine with them at Lal Quilla. We did so. Barbara collected us from and returned us to our home. We all enjoyed our meals, and Kingfisher and lemonade was imbibed.

Being a little concerned about what the trampling of Eric the pheasant was doing to the plants under the bird feeders in the back garden, Jackie has transferred two of them to the front. Eric has not yet discovered them, and consequently appears to have terminated his visits. This afternoon she must have relented somewhat because she bought him a potential mate which she placed where he normally walks.

On our return home this evening, as night had fallen, I realised that Eric’s potential companion is in fact another garden illumination.

Durmast House Gardens

Those of you who have followed the movement of Jackie’s mice will be interested to learn that one has now left the windowsill and mounted our Easter decoration, no doubt hoping to feed on the eggs of varying sizes suspended from a painted twig Jackie has placed in Becky’s vase.

When their gardens are opened by members of the National Gardens Scheme, owners have to take a chance on the weather that will greet their published date. The gardens of Durmast House had the misfortune to be open on this wet, blustery day. Attendance had to have been most disappointing. Jackie drove us there.

It was easier to photograph scenes with no members of the public present than those containing a few stalwarts.

The photograph of the bench was inspired by the work of WordPress blogger iosatel who would have produced an image in black and white.

The first couple I saw admired

an impressive magnolia.

Others investigated the well stocked rockery.

I was a bit slow so Jackie waited for me for a while, seated on the rose garden bench. As it was a bit early for roses, those of the prim variety nestled underneath.

Nearby skimmia berries glistened,

and a single fritillary made an early appearance.

Just one of the wide selection of hellebores was not present in our own garden.

Whilst I chatted to one of the brave windswept women who managed the plants for sale stall she expressed wonder that her offerings, especially the arum lilies had remained still enough to be photographed. This required a bit of panning.

When the owners, Mr and Mrs Philip Daubeney purchased Durmast House in 1991 the gardens were completely derelict and overgrown. The gardens had been designed by Gertrude Jekyll in 1907. Having acquired the plans from the University of California, Berkeley, the ongoing process of restoration was begun. Each year a new project is undertaken, using those plans, which involves considerable research as plant names have changed, some are only available from abroad, and others are not available at all. Careful substitution has then to be made.

This garden will again be open to the public in June. We will be back.

Jackie produced a wonderful liver casserole, mashed swede and potato, and crisp carrots and cabbage, followed by apricot and prune crumble and custard. I finished the Saint-Emilio and my lady abstained.

Chesterton

We began this morning by Jackie driving me to the Post Office at Milford on Sea to post and Easter present with a card I had made yesterday featuring lambs who first appeared in the second ovine picture illustrating ‘The Nursery Field’.

Soon after we returned home Giles popped in for a visit. Knowing that I was reading G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown stories, he brought me two published articles that he knew would interest me; one by himself, and the other by Jorge Luis Borges, the Argentine short-story writer who is one of his favourites.

Giles Darvill’s own article was published in The Chesterton Review of November 1996, the cover of which bears rather a good pencil drawing of the subject. Entitled ‘With the Chestertons in Poland’, this deals with a trip the English writer took in 1927. It is based on letters and the log of Giles’s aunt, Dorothy Collins who was Chesterton’s secretary, still working for him at her death sixty two years later.

I couldn’t do much to enhance this photograph featuring the list of people above it, including Aunt Dorothy labelled 3 on the far right.

Borges’s piece is a general observation making comparisons with such writers as Edgar Allan Poe and Franz Kafka.

I read and enjoyed both essays.

This afternoon I took a painful walk around the garden and a few yards into Downton Lane. My difficulty was no doubt brought about by, despite the Dosset box, forgetting to take my breakfast medication.

I am happy to be able to say that many of the daffodils that Jackie planted on the back drive in the autumn have survived the attention of the small creatures mentioned in ‘Preparing For The Party’.

For Christmas, Becky and Ian gave us two garden clocks. One has been placed on the back wall of the house, and the other on the orange shed door at the far end of our plot, seen here through the peeling eucalyptus.

On Downton Lane a black spotted red ladybird was making its way towards bright yellow dandelions.

This evening we dined on rack of pork ribs in barbecue sauce, Jackie’s special fried rice and green beans followed by baklavas. Jackie drank Hoegaarden; I finished the Teroldego Rotaliano and began Blason des Papes Chateauneuf-du-Pape 2011.

Back In Time For Bargain Hunt

We now have quite a variety of daffodils in the garden. Here are some new ones:

Once they start turning an attractive ochre colour, the camellias develop an additional beauty.

Numerous different pansies, some newly planted, some having prospered through the winter, enjoyed a warm, sunny day.

Hyacinths are really indoor plants, but it is always worth placing the bulbs in the garden once they have finished flowering, on the off-chance that they might survive. Some Jackie inserted last year have bloomed.

Just before mid-day Jackie drove us to Lymington Hospital for her post-scan consultation. She does need surgery to repair knee damage, and her name has consequently been put on a waiting list for an operation at the Nuffield Hospital in Chandlers Ford. Once again we were impressed with the friendly efficiency of the Lymington service. Where else could you drive six miles each way for a hospital appointment for 12.15, for which we admittedly arrived a few minutes early, and return home having missed only ten minutes of T.V.’s ‘Bargain Hunt’ which started at 12.30?

We have so many hellebores shyly hanging their heads in the garden that Jackie decided to encourage the blooms to show their faces, and thus allow us to enjoy their variety without having to crouch down to look them in the eye. She cut a selection and placed them in a bowl of water. This ceramic was made by Jill Tattersall, a Newark friend.

The Happy Wok in Ashley was Jackie’s choice of Chinese takeaway dinner this evening. The portions are plentiful enough to feed us for a further day or two. She imbibed T’Sing Tao beer, whilst I consumed more of the claret..

An Opened Garden

Yesterday Jackie carried out some further heavy pruning and clearance in the shrubbery at the front of the house. This meant that before I could continue with the path, I needed to cart several barrow loads of branches and dead plants to the far end of the garden. Well, she is the head gardener, and I did have the dubious bonus of returning each trip with a quantity of stone for the edging recycled from the soon-to-be rose garden.

After this, admittedly rather painfully, given that the knee didn’t really appreciate what it had been expected to do, I wandered around the garden listening to the music of the birds. The tits enjoyed the feeder, and the pheasant, until sent off squawking by my presence, strutted around, returning to be photographed later through the kitchen window. You may need to zoom on the second image here in order to spot this visitor..

Comfrey, leucojum, and elephants’ ears are now vying for space with all the other spring flowers.

I felt very satisfied that the garden we had spent all last summer opening up is really coming into its own.

The bench on the shady path, so called because at first it admitted no sunlight, was suitably inviting.

Plants, like these pansies and daffodils, in the chimney pots are blooming.

This particular pot is situated at five ways, which takes its name from the number of paths that radiate from it. The prunus in the foreground has recovered from severe pruning. We don’t know what the magnificent evergreen is.

The Heligan path, named after The Lost Gardens of Heligan, because we didn’t know it was there, runs alongside the weeping beech. The log pile continues to grow, and the IKEA wardrobe sections keep triffids from next door at bay.

The bed we cleared on the other side of the tree is burgeoning.

The bed head behind the chair in this picture was screwed to the tree, and can be seen from the side in the Heligan path shot.

We have cut down much of the euphorbia which covered the garden but left some, such as that which shrouds this camellia, to bloom later..

The camellia flowers themselves, as they fall, adorn the paths and the soil where they lie.

Almost all the cyclamens have survived the gentle winter.

Later this afternoon I had a bonfire.

I am happy to report that we still had plenty of Jackie’s delicious chicken jalfrezi and fresh savoury rice for our dinner this evening. They were accompanied by paratas and Hoegaarden for Jackie, and the last of the claret for me.

Beyond Rancid

The blackbird was bashing at the office window again this morning. Jackie has a theory that it is the mating season and our friend sees his own reflection and attacks it.

It will be some time before we can tackle the joys of the garden. At the moment we satisfy ourselves with watching what is emerging, such as cowslips and honesty.
Today I took my share of deep cleaning. We don’t use the family bathroom, but the smell as we pass it has been getting to us. I believe the heyday of wooden seats was in the 1980s. The one in this room has probably been receiving its incrustation since that time. Plasticine, whatever its original colours, always ends up brown. I like to think that the various materials adhering to the wood and the fixtures did once have a range of hues. Otherwise it is best not to contemplate what I spent the morning chipping away at. I eventually applied a hacksaw to the fixture. Kneeling with your head closer than you would like to the source of the aromas, and sliding the blade under the plates around the bolts in order to perform this task is probably best avoided. I didn’t really have that option. I then gave the porcelain a thorough scraping and polishing.
Flushed with success as I added the toilet seat to the skip pile, I decided to clean the bath.

This was a more straightforward task, although the sleepy spider I aroused, unused to being disturbed, found the unaccustomed smooth surface of the side of its home rather slippery.
Finally, we could not leave the washbasin unattended. Water left in there refused to budge at all. Jackie eventually baled it out and tackled it, to no avail, with a flexible plastic coated net-curtain rail. We then shifted the cupboard from around it and prised the pedestal from under the basin, whereupon I unscrewed the U-bend. This was blocked solid. And I do mean solid. It was as if someone had poured gravel mixed with liquid glue into it and allowed it to coagulate. I chipped and scraped away first with a straightened wire coat hanger, and finally with a steak knife. By the time I had finished, the gleaming U-bend put its surroundings to shame. So I had to give them a thorough going-over too. The cold tap produces no water, but that is a minor detail.
In the cupboard I found the missing plug from the bath, and gleefully slipped it into place. I then turned the circular plug adjuster. It was ineffective. I knew from The Gite From Hell experience that without the adjuster the bath could not be emptied, so I helped it out with the steak knife.
Then we had lunch. Jackie was impressed with the health and efficiency of the Neff hob as she used it for the first time to heat up an excellent mulligatawny soup from Tesco.

The kitchen is beginning to look quite homely now, especially with the addition of Luci and Wolf’s flower card and Shelly’s daffodils.
It has to be said that the bathroom featured above was beyond rancid, although that word word probably be adequate for the cobbled cupboard in the hall that Jackie cleaned this afternoon, whilst I weeded out papers that should have been scrapped years ago. This was all with the aim of getting some order into the office.
We had intended to dine this evening at Zaika in Milford on Sea, and drove there to do so. This was not possible because we had hit the town’s food week, for which each restaurant was required to do something different. Zaika was fully booked for their serve-yourself at the trough banquet. We therefore went on to New Milton to try Bombay Night which proved to be an excellent choice. The food was superb and the service friendly and efficient. We drank Kingfisher, and went home satisfied.

The Final Stage

1st April 2014
Ian stayed over again last night in order to help us today. Some of what had not been fitted into the van spent the night in our prospective son-ion-law’s car. The rest stayed in the Castle Malwood Lodge garage for collection this morning when we let the cleaners in.
I was up first and, with mist moisture dripping onto me from the splendidly ornamental garden trees, began emptying Ian’s car.

Our new garden has a wonderful range of plants. Although they were somewhat veiled by the said mist, I photographed a sample, including daffodils, blue and white scillas, euphorbia, camellias, and grape hyacinths. It will be exciting, as the year unfolds, discovering what we have through the changing seasons.
The three of us then drove to Minstead where we loaded the two cars with the final contents of our rented garage, and drove back to Downton, after which we all travelled to the Needles Eye cafe and enjoyed all-day breakfasts, Ian and mine being the maxed-up version that signifies two of everything.
Ian followed us back to Minstead where we bade our farewells to an indispensable support and helper.
The two young women who were CME, the cleaning company’s operatives spent six hours doing a marvellous job on the end of tenancy clean, so Jackie and I had quite a wait in the sunshine before we could lock up.
The final stage of the departure from Minstead was the return of the keys to Penyards in Winchester. We did this at 7.30 p.m. and drove back to Milford on Sea and the Zaika restaurant’s Tuesday Banquet Night. This was clearly, rightly, very popular.
Staggering back to our new home, all we had to remember was whether to turn left or right at the top of the stairs to our bedroom.
Our broadband home hub will not be activated until 4th. In the meantime we have been told we can use BT WiFi. There is, however, no reception for this in Downton. A WiFi search is for another day.

Mum’s Ring

After a little more packing this morning we drove over to Shelly and Ron’s in Walkford to unload some of it for storage in their home before we move.
Just around the corner from Jackie’s sister and brother-in-law, the ashes of her much-loved mother lie buried in Woodland Burial Ground.
The Walkford site is one of many ever more popular resting places for the remains of loved ones. Here people’s bodies are interred; or their ashes are either buried or scattered. Careful records are kept for posterity.
The regulations are such that nothing more than the small identification plates are put in place at the time of burial, and no flowers other than those expected to be found naturally in woodlands are to be planted to mark the spot. Bodies are buried in open spaces, and indigenous trees are planted by the plates. The ash burials are in already established copses. Mourners may set woodland flowers around those areas. Cultivated roses will be removed, although cultivated daffodils seem to be acceptable.
The idea is that the whole plantation eventually reverts to natural woodland.
The remains of Veronica Mancell Rivett lie beneath rich soil in the Pine Copse. Although bird droppings may be considered to keep the explanatory notice ‘as nature intended’, Jackie cleaned them off her mother’s marker. As she tenderly stroked the daffodils she had, along with the primroses soon to bloom, herself planted, her mother’s ring was displayed. This opal ring, which Jackie always wears, was first worn on our wedding day in 1968.
There was a funeral going on when we arrived, so we had to park at the far end of the designated area. This alerted me to the presence of a lake of which I had been previously unaware, where muscovy drake enjoyed the company of a number of mallards.
It is now three full working days since Penyards Winchester office manager undertook to investigate the recorded phone conversations I had had with his staff, and get back to me. I have heard no more from him. This morning I posted at first class rate a letter to him repeating the details of the saga, stating that we regarded our tenancy as ending on 1st April, and that I had cancelled the standing order for rent payment with effect from 31st. March. By the same post I wrote to my bank instructing the cancellation.
This evening I e-mailed a copy of the Penyards letter to the addressee.
We dined on superb sausage casserole (recipe), mashed potato, carrots and green beans. And jolly good it was too. I drank Valle del Rapel Chilean Merlot 2012.