jay – derrickjknight

Garden And Forest

Today was largely overcast, yet very warm. This morning, entertained by trilling birdsong, I carried out a dead heading session; the scents of a multitude of plants pervaded the garden even more as the warmth increased when I stepped out after lunch to walk around it.

I photographed a day lily, numerous roses, two clematis, poppies, a yellow bottle brush plant and a white solanum, all of which bear titles in the gallery.

Later, Jackie drove us to the north of the forest.

Almost the first signs of life we saw were ponies lingering leisurely along the road at North Gorley

and cattle giving drivers an opportunity to rest on the road to Hyde.

We admired the view from Abbotswell Road, on a

verge of which a squirrel hid with its mouth full. I’m not sure who nibbled the tree in the foreground.

Driving down Blissford Hill is always a bit nerve wracking because it is necessary to get up speed to the dappled area beneath the trees in order to climb up the very steep slope, hoping not to encounter another vehicle coming down.

We hope to arrive at the wider top where dog walkers are enjoying the levelling out of the surface.

Donkeys are usually in evidence outside the school at Hyde. Today they were accompanied by a number of foals. The last two photographs in this gallery are Jackie’s.

On our way home a helpful Jay pointed the way to Ringwood.

This evening we dined on Jackie’s very tasty liver and bacon casserole; mashed swede and potatoes sweet and white; and carrots, cauliflower and Brussels sprouts flavoursome and al dente, with which I drank Chilean reserva privada Malbec 2022.

A Game Of Peep-Bo

As I put out the bin bags at dawn this morning, the smoking fire further East down Christchurch Road revealed itself to be a blazing sun emerging to presage the splendid day we were to enjoy.

A little later, a crouching figure was seen to dart across to my desk and scamper back again. This was Flo, having risen surprisingly early to commandeer my camera for the next hour or so.

She must have got the bug yesterday for she was to produce some even more successful pictures of our garden birds.

Here is a selection of her work:

A thrush on the rooftop projected its shadow into the ether. How this shot was achieved will be revealed tomorrow, for the benefit of those who haven’t worked it out.

She captured house sparrows, both female

and male.

The collared dove had found a new perch.

Flo interrupted a jay’s breakfast, but it carried on regardless.

A female greenfinch continued with hers

while her consort launched himself from the feeder.

A blackbird ignored the spider’s web beneath it.

Starlings are notoriously greedy beasts. Alone they must wait their turn at the trough.

An inquisitive robin removed its head from the feeder, straightened up, and engaged in a game of peep-bo.

Finally a jackdaw snaffled two peanuts

and, of course, flew off at the sight of the camera.

When the Canon SX700 HS was returned to me I took a hobble down the garden and a few yards into Downton Lane.

Our honesty is now in flower,

as is the epimedium

and the skimmia at the entrance to the back drive.

The lane itself has a profusion of

primroses,

celandines,

cowslips,

daisies,

and grape hyacinths.

This evening we dined on Jackie’s superb chicken jalfrezi (recipe), boiled egg curry, egg fried rice (recipe), and paratas. Jackie, Ian, and I drank Kingfisher; Becky drank rose; and Flo, J2O.

Rosemary Verey

Yesterday Louisa posted on Facebook some delightful pictures of family fun in the snow. I imagine the magnificent one I have selected for its sense of movement was taken by Errol with his mobile phone. The nearest we got to the white precipitation was the gulls flying over the nature reserve on my way back from Milford on Sea, where Becky had driven me in order for me to catch the post. They didn’t settle.

Beneath them, a pink-velvet-breasted jay flitted from tree to tree, and another of the unidentified shrubs I had first photographed on 2nd was in full bloom on New Valley Road. No-one has yet named it. Becky likened the berries to Ninja Turtles. Perhaps that thought will jog someone’s memory.
Clifford Charles’s bench at the entrance to the Nature Reserve has received its own Christmas decoration; and halfway down the clifftop near Paddy’s Gap, named after the evergreen shrub Hedera colchica, or Paddy’s Pride, that once clung to the crumbling cliff; a bouquet has been laid in memory of Babs Geany.
A kaleidoscopic sunburst greeted me as I emerged onto the clifftop, which, together with the shingle beneath, was as populated as Paddington Station at rush hour.
Walkers with their eager, tongue-flapping dogs; and excited children grappling with windbreaks, on clifftop or shingle beneath, basked in splendid light.
The boys and girls seen with their red banner in the picture below trailed along the windswept shore until their leader, a little blonde child, like an injured royal standard bearer, fell over. Her companions turned tail and left her clutching the cloth in an effort to retain it. A passing woman helped her to her feet, and still clutching it, she signalled that battle could recommence.
I have mentioned before, the boxes of books on sale for Save the Children stacked outside Hillbrow. The weather is still clement enough for this noble effort to continue. I bought a fine copy of Rosemary Verey’s ‘The Scented Garden’. Twenty or thirty years ago I was privileged to visit this world famous gardener at her home, Barnsley House, near Cirencester in Gloucestershire. Her daughter Davina was a school friend of Jessica’s. This young woman, as she was then, owned an antique printing press with which she produced fascinating greetings cards reproducing illustrations from her mother’s historic herbals. I don’t believe she ever used a particular 16th century woodcut featured in her mother’s 1981 publication, which appears to reveal that ‘builder’s bum’ is not solely a modern phenomenon.
This evening we dined on tender roast lamb, crisp roast potatoes and parsnips, perfect pigs in blankets (sausages wrapped in bacon), green brussels sprouts, and orange carrots and swede mash, followed by Harrod’s Christmas pudding by courtesy of Norman. I finished the Parra Alta malbec, Flo drank J2O, and the others imbibed Provincia di Pavia pinot grigio blush 2013.

Disorientation

It was just as cold this morning, signalling the end of British Summertime, but without the sunshine. I walked to the municipal dump, the first stretch, as far as the initial roundabout, being a repeat of yesterday’s journey. At the roundabout I went straight on up Botley Road, eventually arriving at Shamblehurst Road. Jackie, who was to meet me there with the already loaded car, passed me a minute or two before I reached the dump. So, we thought that was pretty good timing.

As I entered Telegraph Woods I couldn’t miss a child’s glove hanging from the barbed wire fence by the entry gate in Telegraph Road. I reflected that some unfortunate, possibly sobbing, had travelled home with tingling fingers. If this were an infant in a buggy that would be a much more painful experience than that suffered by one striding along in warming exercise.

After Ruby’s owner had been unsuccessful in stopping his dog from tearing down the slope and bashing her head on my shin, the walk through the wood was silent and solitary. The distant monotonous drone of the M27 provided a trance-inducing backing to the crackling of my footsteps, and rustling of leaves disturbed by the scurrying of magpies and the scampering of squirrels; these last laying up winter stores such as the contents of the chestnut shells strewn about the paths and undergrowth.

Traversing the M27 by way of the bridge on Botley Road was almost surrealistic. Steady streams of traffic whoosh whooshed past my right shoulder, while others with regular whoomphs rushed at me from my left. The volleys from the left would disappear beneath my feet, yet my brain was not registering the height distance separating the motorway from the road I was walking on. As I looked straight ahead, it was my peripheral vision picking up these moving stimuli, registering vehicles as if on my level which were in fact many feet beneath me, giving me momentary disorientation. The experience was akin to having your brain blasted by exciting film extracts shooting across a multiplex cinema screen from all directions in a trailer which gives you a series of fast-moving images and deafening sound in an excessive sensory overload. And it was windy.

After unloading the first batch of bags of garden refuse, we drove back to The Firs, pruned a cotinus, loaded up the rest of the autumn debris, returned to the dump, and unloaded it. Having lunched in the kitchen we repaired to the garden room for coffee and our regular entertainment provided by the wildlife overwintering in this country. Then we witnessed the solution to one of the garden’s many conundrums. Last weekend Elizabeth bought about a dozen bags of horse compost which we stacked up beside what is left of the bracken variety. When we arrived yesterday it was apparent that something had been tearing holes in these strong plastic bags. We could only imagine foxes had been the perpetrators, but what on earth could they find of interest in horse manure? Today, as we watched, a jay flew down, trotted up to the bags and began stabbing away at them and their contents.

This evening we finished off Jackie’s chicken curry and shared three quarters of a bottle of McGuigan’s bin 156 Chardonnay 1911, before returning to Morden.