goldcrest – derrickjknight

The Chicks Have Arrived

This morning I scanned the pages from ‘Tower Blocks’ written by Marian Lines and illustrated by Charles Keeping. Half were published later this afternoon as https://derrickjknight.com/2022/07/09/seventies-city-celebrations/

Before lunch Shelly visited with presents of what looks an excellent Penfolds Shiraz Cabernet and a box of Lily O’Brien’s delicious chocolate liqueurs.

After lunch I watched the Wimbledon Ladies’ Singles final between Elena Rybakina and Ons Jabeur. I then carried out dead-heading and weeding while Jackie watered numerous containers, facilitated by Flo’s having filled all the cans before she left on Tuesday. The Head Gardener then refilled them ready for the next session which will certainly be required tomorrow during our current very hot weather.

While touring the garden Jackie noticed and photographed

the myrtle blossom on the bush which has grown into a tree;

sunlight across the path to the Westbrook Arbour;

and the arrival of the still blind goldcrest chicks.

This evening we dined on chicken breasts in Nando’s Chilli and Garlic sauce on a bed of Jackie’s savoury rice with which she drank Hoegaarden and I finished the guv’nor.

Working On The Rose Garden

Today, the hottest day of the year, was fine and sunny.

While Jackie swept, weeded, pruned, and watered the Rose Garden. (This picture is not an official “Where’s Nugget?”, but on reading the blog and doubly enlarging it The Head Gardener identified our familiar robin clearly silhouetted above the central bloom of clematis Warsaw Nike in the right foreground.)

I pruned roses and photographed various scenes there and elsewhere.

The Mum in a Million rose chaperoned by gladioli and foxgloves to the left of the third picture above is now in her prime.

In the first scene Jackie attends the gazebo which hosts Crown Princess Margareta and Zephirine Drouhin each exuding strong sweet scents.

This pink climber scales an obelisk

beside Margaret Merrill.

Ballerina dances elegantly

and another nameless climber, a deeper pink, soars above the arbour.

The views from the Cryptomeria Bed and the Concrete Patio lead on to the Rose Garden. The above picture contains one of the

plethora of poppies we now enjoy.

These stand against a red rhododendron.

As these bushes are nearing the end of their flowering, a different colour combination comes into its own.

This can be seen above the bench beside the Heligan Path

Back in the Rose Garden our little goldcrest continued its reflected courtship. He wasn’t fazed by us, but Jackie has now covered the mirror to reduce tantalisation.

Nugget kept us intermittent company. “Where’s Nugget?” (79).

Another view from the Cryptomeria Bed takes us towards the house, passing an unseen

arch sporting this purple clematis.

This stunning non-hardy pelargonium has survived the entire winter in a pot beside the kitchen window.

More small alliums live in the Pond Bed opposite.

The Chilean lantern tree is now quite loaded.

From the patio we have a view along the Dead End Path.

This view looks south from the Gazebo Path.

Looking in the same direction along the Brick Path we see that Wedding Day is burgeoning on the Agriframes Arch.

The roses along the Back Drive borders will also soon cover the stumps.

Irises Reticulata are cropping up everywhere.

A few days ago we visited South Sway Lane

to check on Gimlet, our carrot-loving equine friend. His field was empty, as it remained today when we came back to collect more horse manure from the house opposite. It was all gone, although it had been there on our previous trip.

Undaunted, Jackie continued to Ferndene Farm shop where there was no queue and she was able to buy several items. Still on Sway Lane,

I disembarked to photograph some backlit grey horses. The immediately trotted over to their gate so I had to be satisfied with this shot, which biggifies quite well.

This evening we repeated yesterday’s meal, except that the potatoes were old and sprouting a few roots. Our alcoholic accompaniments were the same.

Seeking Acquaintance

Dr Louise DeSalvo (1942-2018) was, according to Katherine Q. Seelye’s obituary of November 11th 2018 in The New York Times ( nytimes.com ) ‘a Virginia Woolf scholar and memoirist’. She was Professor of English at Hunter College, New Jersey.

This afternoon I finished reading her book “Virginia Woolf: The Impact of Childhood Sexual Abuse on her Life and Work”, published by The Women’s Press in 1989. I have not read enough of Woolf’s writings to do justice to Dr DeSalvo’s interpretations, but it is clear that this author’s research is thorough and her writing well crafted. There are numerous quotations from novels, non-fiction, diaries, and letters referenced in notes at the back of this volume.

I do not dispute the facts of Ms Woolf’s childhood abuse, but I did feel that much of DeSalvo’s speculation which cannot be subjected to the examination of the deceased subject had to be based on the Doctor’s views on psychoanalysis and on her understanding of Victorian upper class practices and beliefs. In my view she has come to the conclusion that the particular Stephen dysfunctional household is typical of its class.

She has been strongly influenced by the work of Alice Miller, a Polish-Swiss psychologist who has produced much good work on parental child abuse.

It is perhaps likely that her undoubtedly emotionally deprived and abused childhood caused Virginia Woolf’s depressions and eventual suicide; and there are plenty of examples in her writings that Louise DeSalvo finds to support such an inference; but this cannot now be proved.

I have not read the memoirs of Dr DeSalvo, but the following section from the above-mentioned obituary may have a bearing on her own writing about Woolf:

‘In “Vertigo,” she tells of initially writing in her diary almost nothing of the crises swirling around her — her sister’s suicide (in 1984), her mother’s shock treatments for depression, her father’s anger at her for not being emotionally available during these traumatic events, and her own fainting spells, which she detailed in the book.’

Virginia Woolf’s creative genius transcends her traumatic life. Thanks to DeSalvo I am inspired to return to her work with new eyes.

While I was drafting this Jackie worked in the garden, taking a while to watch

a minuscule goldcrest seeking acquaintance with its reflection.

This evening I prepared a meal consisting of Jackie’s splendid pork paprika from the freezer with boiled new potatoes and tender runner beans with which the Culinary Queen drank Hoegaarden and the sous chef drank Valle Central Carmeniere Reserva Privada 2019.

In Search Of Daylight

Eric, as Jackie has now termed our visiting pheasant, scarpered as soon as I entered the garden this morning, but the less timid robin commandeered the bird feeder, and crows circled the chimney pot. Soon they will be vying for territorial ownership of it.

Through the jungle that is the garden of North Breeze next door, another camellia, looking a bit dog-eared, has thrust upwards in search of daylight,

and our viburnum, now we have opened up the garden, and cut back this plant, has no need to climb so high before blooming.

The stump Aaron has trimmed on the back drive presents glorious golden abstracts.

This afternoon I finished reading the fourth of G.K. Chesterton’s ‘Father Brown’ stories, ‘The Secret of Father Brown’.

Later, when the skies had dulled over, and rain begun to fall, from inside the sitting room, Jackie spotted a goldcrest in the shrubbery. From a good metre our side of the window I pointed my Canon SX700 HS, set on auto, at the bird, which had by then dropped onto paving beneath. I pressed the shutter an instant before it flew off. There was no second chance. The uncropped image above is the whole scene. Beneath it is the cropped version. I publish both, not to display my dubious photography, but in praise of the camera.

Keen to begin watching ‘Agatha Christie’s Marple’ in time to give me a reasonable chance of staying awake, Jackie decided to dictate the description of our evening meal. ‘We had the same as yesterday and Jackie drank water’, she said. Who am I to argue?