hydrangeas – Page 2 – derrickjknight

Where’s That Smile?

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The lower temperature brought a cooler and more pleasant day on which The Head Gardener continued her creative planting, serious weeding, and cutting back. I dead-headed roses, carted debris to the compost heap, and made a few pictures.

The planting on the kitchen wall now seems complete. But you can never be sure. It might be possible to squeeze in something else.

Surely, however, the corner viewed from the patio has more than its share of hanging baskets

and a profusion of pots beneath them.

Even the kitchen window reflects its eponymous bed.

This is the stone urn standing behind the frog pond on the patio end.

We have a number of carpet roses which provide a profusion of ground cover. This one in the Rose Garden flirts with Love Knot and Alan Titchmarsh.

Some of you may prefer Hot Chocolate.

Mama Mia produces a splendid show,

and, Emma Hamilton hangs her heavy head into the arms of Absolutely Fabulous.

Super Elfin, the red rambler in the herbaceous border, virtually uprooted by the beast coming under the North Breeze fence, has benefited from our deterrents and promises to climb to dizzy heights.

Of all the spindly little plants that have received nurture from Jackie, she is justifiably proud of two colourful hydrangeas with dark-trimmed leaves.

It has taken two years to train this clematis, now mingling with rosa glauca on the arch spanning the Head Gardener’s Walk.

The New Forest is not new. It was, after all where William Rufus, son of William the Conqueror, was killed. But, like Jackie’s New Bed, now two years old, it was once. Both are ageing gracefully.

Did you, as a child, ever have a kaleidoscope toy? If so, I imagine you could have produced something like this verbena, nature’s own.

We have many antirrhinums. Here is a red one.

Jackie took the occasional rest. Sometimes she sat on the Ace Reclaim bench where she could admire her plantings such as the petunias in this hanging basket;

the blue phlox in the bed facing her;

the Phantom Path;

the sculpture entitled Florence, now perhaps bidding for the name Flora;

and the view across Margery’s bed with its proliferation of day lilies,

other examples of which are these.

Did you spot both smiles?

This evening, the friendly Mr Chan produced our meal, which Jackie collected from Hordle Chinese Take Away. I finished Jessie’s excellent Chablis.

Fading Beauty

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This was a glorious sunny day with the warmth of mid-summer. Bees and butterflies abounded in the garden. It was a good day for wandering around, but that is all we felt inclined to do. We can defer the winter preparation until it feels more like autumn.

This was either a midget bee, or a baby hoverfly flitting among the Japanese anemones.

Here are two views of the Dragon Bed showing bidens, petunia, hydrangea,

and more Japanese anemones.

For Your Eyes Only continues to bloom.

The Oval Path lies alongside the rose garden, leading to Elizabeth’s Bed. Here we have dahlias, hydrangeas, and one of the many fuchsias;

another of which hangs beneath the wisteria.

Here is the Gazebo Path from the south. The new rudbeckias are still waiting for the demise of the nicotiana.

The Weeping Birch Bed looks towards the back drive,

alongside the entrance to which is the New Bed, still full of colour. Sweet peas flower to the left of the arch.

Prompted by https://rakmilphotography.wordpress.com/ I used my 50mm lens for most of these shots.

We are in the presence of fading beauty.

For dinner this evening, Jackie produced smoked haddock, piquant cauliflower cheese, and carrots and runner beans al dente. We finished the Gros Manseng.

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.

Licking Into Shape

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This morning we bought another parasol for the South end gravelled patio.

After lunch, The Head Gardener watered and I dead-headed The Rose Garden. Here there are two examples of similar but different flowers that she has been pointing out recently.

These are For Your Eyes Only

and Summer Wine.

Other manifestations are these two hydrangeas. Apart from the subtly different hues, can you spot the difference?

When Jackie and I visited Wimborne Minster on 23rd November 2013, we could not access the Chained Library. This was, however, possible for her and her sisters when they were staying near there recently.

Helen bought me a copy of W. A. (Frank) Tandy’s small booklet, which I finished reading today.

Tandy provides a brief introduction to the practice of chaining library books, and details of those, mostly dating from the 16th to the 18th centuries, contained in Wimborne Minster. The earliest volume in the collection is “Regimen Animarum”, a manuscript written on vellum, dated 1343. The books cover other subjects than the expected ecclesiastic ones. Gardening, science, and medicine are examples. I found it fascinating to discover that Sir Thomas Browne’s “The Pseudodoxia Epidemica of 1672” ‘examines the theory that a female bear gives birth to a lump of fat which she then licks into the shape of the cub she wants; it is from this that the expression ‘licking into shape’ originates’.

This illustration comes from a mediaeval bestiary, Bodley 764, taken from Pinterest.

In mediaeval times, and the early years of printing, many books were extremely valuable. Most were bound in wooden boards making it possible to chain them in the manner thus described by Wikipedia:

‘A chained library is a library where the books are attached to their bookcase by a chain, which is sufficiently long to allow the books to be taken from their shelves and read, but not removed from the library itself. This would prevent theft of the library’s materials.^[1] The practice was usual for reference libraries (that is, the vast majority of libraries) from the Middle Ages to approximately the 18th century. However, since the chaining process was also expensive, it was not used on all books.^[2] Only the more valuable books in a collection were chained.^[2] This included reference books and large books.^[2]

It is standard for chained libraries to have the chain fitted to the corner or cover of a book. This is because if the chain were to be placed on the spine the book would suffer greater wear from the stress of moving it on and off the shelf. Because of the location of the chain attached to the book (via a ringlet) the books are housed with their spine facing away from the reader with only the pages’ fore-edges visible (that is, the ‘wrong’ way round to people accustomed to contemporary libraries). This is so that each book can be removed and opened without needing to be turned around, hence avoiding tangling its chain. To remove the book from the chain, the librarian would use a key.^[3]

Chained library in Hereford Cathedral

The earliest example in England of a library to be endowed for use outside an institution such as a school or college was the Francis Trigge Chained Library in Grantham, Lincolnshire, established in 1598. The library still exists and can justifiably claim to be the forerunner of later public library systems. Marsh’s Library in Dublin, built 1701, is another non institutional library which is still housed in its original building. Here it was not the books that were chained, but rather the readers were locked into cages to prevent rare volumes from ‘wandering’. There is also an example of a chained library in the Royal Grammar School, Guildford as well as at Hereford Cathedral. While chaining books was a popular practice throughout Europe, it was not used in all libraries. The practice of chaining library books became less popular as printing increased and books became less expensive.^[3]Wimborne Minster in Dorset, England is yet another example of a Chained Library. It is one of the first in England and the second largest.^[4]‘

As I entered this onto WordPress, I enjoyed the scent of our sweet peas standing on my window sill.

This evening we dined on Jackie’s vegetable rice salad with cheese-centred fish cakes. My lady drank Hoegaarden and I drank Kingfisher.

P.S. Cynthia Jobin’s comment below has some interesting additional information on early books.