heucheras – Page 3 – derrickjknight

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Today’s sky was cloudless, the sun shone, and the temperature was hot enough for summer.

Most of our tulips are now fully opened.

The mirrors, like these beside camellias, now have blooms to reflect.

Heucheras and forget-me-nots

Heucheras and forget-me-nots are enlivening the rose garden edges.

Comma butterfly

Butterflies, including commas, freely flit about.

Now that the winter flowering cherry is thinking about shedding its blossom, others are coming into full bloom.

Naturally, we took a drive into the forest.

For most of the stretch of road between Burley and Bransgore we were treated to a generous display of shiny MAMIL backsides. It was difficult to construe the occasional cyclist’s veering across the centre of the road other than as designed to prevent any thoughts of overtaking the crocodile.

Horse and rider

By contrast, the equestrian on the horribly pock-marked Snails Lane had the good sense to tuck in her steed and wait as we approached.

Perched on the backs of long-suffering donkeys at Ibsley, a clattering of jackdaws filled their beaks with the creatures’ soft, flexible, hairs pecked out for use in nest building. As I approached the scene, the birds flew off. Uncomplaining, silent, and motionless, this forlorn creature fixed me with a baleful eye.

Donkeys shared the road with cattle at Gorley Lynch,

but at Hyde they were reluctant even to share it with motor vehicles.

We lunched at The Hyde Out Café then collected a blood test referral form from our GP. This is for a post-hip-replacement follow up. There are no problems but I have been asked for this and the completion of a questionnaire because, in the years since my operation, involving a metal on metal replacement, it has emerged that that method has led to later difficulties for some people. My knees are nothing to do with that.

Paul popped in for a visit this afternoon, and we enjoyed our customary pleasant conversation. Modern life and its geography means that this is something that doesn’t happen very often now, and it is our loss.

This evening we dined on Jackie’s splendid chicken jalfrezi and aromatic pilau rice with which I finished the Shiraz

Back To Sleep

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At very brief intervals this morning the deceptive sun suggested it may brighten our day.

We believe these little plants forcing their way between wet paving stones are chionodoxa. Just above them poppies are beginning to try their luck.

Hairy little pulmonaria seem to tolerate anything thrown at them.

My walk down the Gazebo Path coincided with the sun changing its mind.

Later the daffodil at the far end positively glowed with pleasure at another change.

Heucheras and euphorbias lead the eye to camellias on the fence shared with Mistletoe Cottage.

Earlier camellias have dropped buffeted blooms which continue to provide a pleasing display.

Thrusting crocosmia spears caught the next bright beams. When gardening becomes possible again, many dead leaves will be removed.

The Westbrook Arbour in the West Bed is now home to the chicken doorstops rediscovered in the cupboard under the stairs.

Here is the left hand side of that newly cultivated bed.

From the Weeping Birch Bed with its blue vinca and yellow hellebore can be seen dancing daffodils.

Heucheras are beginning to brighten everywhere.

I do hope the Head Gardener will forgive my having taken this shot down the Brick Path without clearing up. It has been raining for days, after all.

Moss covered rocks abound. Here one shelters a healthy sedum in the Cryptomeria Bed;

another is about to be draped by vinca which will need keeping in check.

Several hardy pansies have survived the meteorological vagaries;

one sleepy little bee had been persuaded to drag itself out of bed and into one of these where it appeared to have gone back to sleep.

This afternoon, Jackie made two beef, onion, and mushroom pies. This one is for the freezer.

The second was served this evening with potatoes, carrots and cabbage, and thick, flavoursome gravy from the juices of the tender pressure-cooked beef. I finished off the 16 Little Black Pigs

Opulence

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Once more, today was scorchingly hot. Apart from gentle tidying up, watering was the order of the day.

The hose in this garden view was trained on the Rose Garden, where

pink foxgloves, golden heucheras, and blue clematises romp among roses like the yellow Laura Ford, and deep red roseraie De L’Hay;

where pink Summer wine, and white Madame Alfred Cariere cover the blue wooden entrance arch;

where Summer’s sculpted image just manages to peep through For Your Eyes Only;

and where Jacqueline du Pré has been fortunate to find shade.

Giant poppies blaze in the first view above.

Bronze fennel, poppies, Canterbury bells

There are more alongside Canterbury bells and bronze fennel on the north side of the Back Drive,

where viper’s bugloss, given to us by Giles in order to cater for bees, burgeons before geranium palmatums;

and where the buxom rose Dearest can just about hold up her head.

Clematises and gladioli thrive in the row of deep plastic window boxes that divides the Back Drive from the garden proper.

Alongside this display stands the New Bed.

We have California poppies in the Cryptomeria Bed,

on the other side of which my favourite rhododendron is now blooming.

The last three days of sunshine have brought opulence to the garden.

This evening we dined on roast lamb, mashed swede and potato, carrots, cauliflower and runner beans, all cooked to perfection by the Culinary Queen, who finished the Bergerac blanc while I drank more of the cabernet sauvignon.

The Head Gardener’s Hod Carrier

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Jackie continues weeding, clipping, planting, and replenishing soil. This involves a certain amount of popping out to a garden centre. Today, for example, she departed for some lime and returned with, in addition, a garden tray, a parasol, and the obligatory few plants. Here she was working away on the Dragon Bed near the house end of the Brick Path a couple of days ago.

Here is a current view of the Wisteria Arbour where, accompanying the eponymous plant, can be seen a red rose and Carnaby and Star of India clematises; with bronze fennel, cerinthes and Sweet Williams in the foreground bed.

From the corner of the patio the view across the Kitchen Bed contains the white clematis Marie Boisselot reflected by libertia; alliums, pansies, and diascias bringing notes of purple and pink; and russet triangle points made up of the recently pruned maple, the distant copper beech, and the now fully blooming

Chilean Lantern tree.

Rose Peach Abundance soars over the Oval Bed,

as does Altissimo beside the potting shed.

Mum in a million,

Crown Princess Margareta,

and Schoolgirl are all flourishing in the Rose Garden

where Festive Jewel

leads the eye through For Your Eyes Only to Gloriana, with Love Knot to the left;

and a small hoverfly investigates Summer Wine peeping from its rack on the entrance arch.

The Head Gardener is wondering whether the splendid, flouncing, heucheras are now putting the roses in the shade.

My primary function has been to explore all paths and corners of the garden seeking out heaps of weeds and clippings and either chopping them up to fill the orange bags, or dumping them on the fast developing compost piles.

These contributions can crop up anywhere, especially, it seems, when I think I have finished.

This was just the first wheelbarrow load today.

Pushing it happily along the Brick Path, I discovered the next two loads. It is fun being the Head Gardener’s Hod Carrier.

Fortunately, Jackie had produced enough of her marvellous lamb jalfrezi meal yesterday for it to be reprised this evening. As usual, this offered some enhancement. The Culinary Queen drank Hoegaarden, leaving the Kingfisher to me.

Back Drive Progress

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We spent the morning of another dull, overcast, day continuing the general tidying of the garden.

Many new aquilegias are fully or partially blooming.

Over the last few days Jackie has been fine-tuning my weeding of the back drive. In addition to digging up a few more invading brambles, most of my work this morning was transferring the Head Gardener’s piles of weeds to the compost heap. We just need to apply an herbicidal spray to the gravel and the job will be done.

More irises;

geraniums like these Johnson’s Blue from Gloucestershire’s Hidcote Gardens;

and hostas, heucheras, alliums and bluebells are some of the plants that line these borders. We thin out the profuse alliums every year.

This afternoon we voted at the local County Council elections where we were informed that the turnout was looking like 20-30%, which was about average. I ask you.

This took place at Milford on Sea church hall. Jackie then drove us to the clifftop where

we thought the pink thrift, despite the gloom of the day, was looking quite colourful against the grey water reflecting the slate sky.

A small pigeon had come to contemplate the calm sea,

and a few walkers wandered along the beach below.

The caged structure to our left of the pigeon is intended to keep the public away from the crumbling cliff edge.

This evening we dined at Lal Quilla in Lymington. The welcome, the service, and the food, were as good as ever. My choice was lamb dansak with special fried rice; Jackie’s was prawn and mushroom biriani; we shared a plain naan, and both drank Kingfisher.

An Owl Hunt

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This morning I made a little more progress on weeding the back drive.

The new lilies have begun to flower.

Matthew arrived with Poppy just before lunch. Our granddaughter was quickly into all the familiar toys, playing with her Dad and Grannie,

but a little more sceptical about Grandpas face extension.

She certainly recognises pictures of herself, but whether or not she links them with the camera is a moot point.

Norman’s parrot had to be released from his perch suspended from the ceiling.

This afternoon Becky took her niece on an owl hunt in the garden. This involved lots of pointing and exclamations from Poppy and expressions of amazement from Becky.

Poppy was particularly enamoured of the blue-bespectacled bird alongside the Heligan Path.

This evening we all dined at Lal Quilla, where the food and service was as excellent as ever, and Poppy was a delight, My main choice was lamb Ceylon, with which I enjoyed a share of special fried rice, onion bhaji, and paratha. The ladies drank diet Coke, the gentlemen, Kingfisher, and Poppy. water.

Mat and Poppy returned home to Upper Dicker and the rest of us came back to Downton.

The Big Beast Barrier

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Today, Jackie did a massive shop and I shifted a little more compost.

Fluttering about the garden is what I think is, despite its yellow colouring, an Orange tip butterfly which stubbornly refuses to stop and pose. Instead this one held a mask of Honesty.

This dwarf azalea is one that I brought from Sutherland Place when I left there in 2009. It had been part of the contents of a filled pot given to me when I stopped working with Parents for Children a couple of years earlier.

Most of our bluebells ring Spanish tunes. Here a clump separates a pair of heucheras.

These forget-me-nots have taken over one of the paths leading from the Rose Garden. We cannot bear to pull them up until they have flowered, so I guess we will continue to go the long way round to the orange shed.

Jackie’s new Big Beast Barrier has withstood the nocturnal marauder for at least one night. My original round peg has been staked in position and placed alongside one of the concrete blocks I dug out of this plot three years ago. The poles in the foreground are part of an obelisk which held up a clematis that appears to have died, having, according to Jackie, been subjected to the intruder’s urine. She is hoping to preserve the cyclamen from a similar fate.

Father Christmas left a bottle of Spice ‘n’ Easy fresh red chilli sauce in Jackie’s stocking. She found it a little too hot. She thought that sloshing a fair amount of it into tonight’s chilli con carne with savoury rice, might be a good way of eventually dispensing with it. I loved it. The Culinary Queen managed it. I drank Trivento Malbec reserva 2016. This could possibly have helped Jackie cool her meal, but she didn’t fancy it.

A Little Short Of Perfection

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After three days of cloud and rain, this one was hot and humid. Too much so for making a start on restoring our plants to their best condition.

The sun did, however, cast friendly light upon such as these heucheras and leaves of barren crocosmias.

Those crocosmias my not have bloomed this year, but many have.

During last week’s storms the container of our aptly named Tumbler tomatoes was blown down, smashing another underneath. It has recovered reasonably well.

The hydrangeas have probably fared best in the wet weather.

Roses such as Mamma Mia

and Special Anniversary have become rather spotty.

The New Guinea impatiens plants have thrived,

as have various cosmoses, like those adorning Florence.

Canna lilies stand proud in the Palm Bed.

Various delicate penstemons, like this one with a lodger, also remain upright,

while the stems of this unusual antique pink foxglove has stooped a little.

The clematis Marie Boisselot still climbs her obelisk.

The begonias and geraniums are doing well, but we have a lot of dead heading to catch up on.

As will be seen the garden is currently a little short of perfection.

This evening we dined on pork and apple sausages with strips of pork belly, fried mushrooms and onions, crisp cabbage and carrots, and mashed potatoes. I drank Meszaros Pal Kekfrankos 2013, while Jackie chose fruit jiuce.

Doing The Hokey Cokey

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We continued with the garden clearing after the storm today. It was so hot that it was a case of ‘In, Out, In, Out’ from the cooler indoors to the stifling outside as we continued with the tasks begun yesterday. Hopefully, we are back to normal now.

Here is a view of the Dragon Bed and Shady Path;

one of the Gazebo;

and another of the Brick Path. (the tall plant on the left is fennel)

With minor editing on my part, Wikipedia tells us that ‘The hokey cokey (United Kingdom), hokey tokey (New Zealand) , or hokey pokey (United States, Canada, Ireland, Australia, the Caribbean, Mexico) is a participation dance with a distinctive accompanying tune and lyric structure. Originating as a British folk dance, with variants attested as early as 1826, the song and accompanying dance peaked in popularity as a music hall song and novelty dance in the mid-1940s in Britain and Ireland. The song was a chart hit twice in the 1980s – first by The Snowmen which peaked at UK #18 in 1981, and then Black Lace who reached #31 in 1985.’ It remains today a popular feature of cross-generational knees-ups.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzQ9K7-J_PM&w=420&h=315]

The Snowmen, otherwise known as Ian Drury and the Blockheads, had a surprise hit with their Christmas single in 1981. They, and a bunch of assorted children, entertaining an elderly neighbour at her window, danced their hokey cokey in a blizzard. We, lacking an audience, performed ours in a heatwave.

Mr Chatty Man Chan, of Hordle Chinese Take Away, provided our dinner this evening. I drank Doom Bar beer and Jackie drank fruit juice.

Taking On The Hedge

Jackie, having kept me supplied with plenty of food, drove off this morning for her annual three day holiday with her two sisters.

The griselinia hedge between us and the corner bungalow has begun to push Jackie’s spring planting across the back drive in search of light. After today’s earlier rain, I decided to give the trees a good clipping. This also meant tackling stubborn brambles and ivy infiltrating from the neighbouring garden. The brambles got their own back with thorns, the ivy with stubbornness, and the griselinia with drips.

Every so often we need to remind ourselves what each area looked like two years ago.

This was the back drive then. Jackie is at the far end.

This is as it is today. To the left lies fencing that Aaron and Robin are working on. To the right the griselinia clippings have spilled over the orange bags. A dump trip or two will be required on the Driver’s return.

The New Bed which lies on the former compost heap at the corner of this drive contains, among other plants, two clematises, aquilegias, geranium palmatums, erigeron, poppies, and dahlias on their way up. The fuchsia is in fact behind it.

In the rose garden, Aloha, which was rather poorly until The Head Gardener set about feeding and nurturing it, is now doing well.

As the sun emerged later in the day, they bees came out in force.

They flitted about among the yellow heucheras, taking the nectar on the wing.

Bottle Brush plant

On the also yellow Bottle Brush plant, they did have time to stop and burrow.

A second clematis has now bloomed on the gazebo.

I dined on Jackie’s luscious sausage casserole and mashed potato, followed by her delicious rice pudding. Doom Bar was my beverage.