Leycesteria – derrickjknight

Precipitation Photoshoot

Beneath a constantly percolating cloud colander parky temperatures prevailed throughout the day.

I stayed at the computer while the Assistant Photographer produced the

precipitation photoshoot. Click on any image to access the gallery where each picture bears it own title.

This evening we dined on Jackie’s spicy mango and lime piri-piri chicken served with chilli-potent savoury rice topped with omelette, followed by apricot jam tart and custard, with which she drank Hoegaarden and I finished the Fleurie.

A Conundrum 2

CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE. THOSE IN GROUPS CAN BE VIEWED FULL SIZE IN GALLERIES.

We took it easy today. Prompted by today’s post from thebikinggardener I wandered around the garden to see how our Hellebores are doing.

Some way behind Geoff’s, ours are coming through.

Many primulas have so far survived the winter.

The shattered bits of cherub Jackie found in the undergrowth a couple of years ago have gained a fine coating of moss.

The remnants of honesty, hollowing ovals on stems, blends well with the weeping birch bark.

The parent viburnum Bontantense and its two children are blooming well. One joins with a leycesteria in beginning to mask Aaron’s new fencing.

Alongside the winter flowering cherry

and beneath the crab apples, a blackbird dropped down for a change of diet.

This pieris takes my mind off the fact that the grass needs cutting.

A few youthful pink cheeks survive amid those ageing, wrinkly, and skeletal ones of this hydrangea.

Finally, the conundrum. Who has dragged a clutch of eggshells from the compost heap across the New Bed? Well, we did spot a rat, hands and nose pressed to the pane, peering, like Tiny Tim, through our window when we ate our Christmas dinner.

Just before 4.30 p.m., we dashed out to Barton on Sea to watch the sun sink into Christchurch Bay. I did not stage the photograph of the woman kicking it back up into the sky.

A while later we dined at Lal Quilla. My choice was lamb shatkora massala; Jackie’s prawn sallee. We shared an egg paratha, mushroom rice, and sag bahji; and both drank Kingfisher.

Making It Through The Winter

CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE. THOSE IN GROUPS ACCESS GALLERIES THAT CAN BE VIEWED FULL SIZE.

Once the heavy overnight frost fringing these heuchera leaves had thawed, the garden was warmed by the sun

which was low enough to light lily leaves and grasses,

while pearly jewels dripped from naked and semi-clad twigs,

and lingering rose leaves.

Autumn-hued hydrangeas hang on to life.

The first clusters of precocious onion-smelly alliums have pierced the soil,

and a pendulous leycesteria has already produced its kindergarten mobiles.

Shadows slanted across the Shady and

the Brick Paths.

Three winter flowering pink Viburnum Bodnantense Dawn,shrubs are doing what is expected of them.

One camellia has begun to flower and has even provided evidence that some flies are capable of making it through the winter.

This evening we dined on Jackie’s brilliant beef in red wine, boiled new potatoes, and piquant cauliflower cheese. I finished the merlot.

Agnes Miller Parker

Jackie drove me to and from New Milton for me to lunch with Norman at Tas, in The Cut, EC1.

In the rather neglected station garden a Leycesteria is blooming rather early. Note the dumped supermarket trolley visible beyond the stems.

From Waterloo Station I approached The Cut, as congested as ever, via Lower Marsh

with its cosmopolitan food stalls preparing for the lunchtime custom.

I wasn’t the only photographer focussing on food.

Norman and I had our usual enjoyable discussion over the Anatolian cuisine. We both chose the Tas Special lamb meal, which was very tender and tasty. Before that we had each chosen soups. Mine was fish with coriander and ginger. For dessert we each enjoyed baklava, and shared a bottle of the house red. We finished with coffee before I made my way back to Waterloo for my return home. Further sustenance was not required this evening.

Two days ago, I featured the dust jacket of Eiluned Lewis’s ‘Honey Pots and Brandy Bottles’. This was to display the work of Agnes Miller Parker. I had bought this 1954 publication some forty years ago, essentially for the illustrations. Perhaps, I thought, it was time I got around to reading it. I finished it on the train today.

The book is a collection of essays and poems gathered to represent the four seasons of the year. Published by Country Life the writing is pleasant, if, for this reader, unexciting.

What lifts the publication well beyond the ordinary are the wood engravings of a woman I regard as one of the best illustrators of her day.

The clarity, perspective, and depth of field evident in these masterpieces would be impressive if they were simply pen and ink drawings. When one considers the technical skill required to bring light and life to images worked into blocks of wood, admiration can only be enhanced.

Getting Heated

Knowing I was once more going to have to grapple with BT this morning, I cheered my spirits by wandering round the garden and focussing on the cleared shrubbery alongside the dead-end path.

Japanese anemones, leycesteria, and a pink rose have come into view. The leycesteria had been choked by a hazelnut tree the nut of which a squirrel had probably buried in the wrong place and forgotten.

Because of the proliferation of sports in the myrtle I had been forced to be quite merciless in the pruning. It is therefore gratifying to see the shrub in bloom, and new shoots burgeoning. Jackie has planted a hardy fuchsia and a heuchera here, with a labelled vinca for eventual ground cover; and, a little further along, has covered the unsightly septic tank lid with various pots perched on a section of an IKEA wardrobe.
For the first two hours of the afternoon, my BT battle continued. The best report I can give is that, having satisfied the robot, I did not have to wait to speak to an adviser. I don’t think he is all that familiar with either Apple or Blackberry. However, the poor man did his best. When I had tried to access e-mails on the iMac I was shown a circular symbol with a wavy line inside it. This, I have learned, means e-mails cannot be accessed. I clicked on it and read that they were unobtainable because of the server being off-line. ‘Connection Doctor’ was one of the options I could select. I did, and was linked to a Yahoo site which wasn’t much use in providing a cure. That is why I had phoned BT. The auxiliary nurse to whom I was linked tried a number of avenues, but I don’t think he recognised the symbol I was describing. Eventually he guided me through opening a second account, which did, temporarily it transpired, receive e-mails.
He was even less successful with Blackberry, and I told him I would try to resolve that one myself. I had a bit of a rest, then felt brave enough to tackle the Blackberry. It was, after all, Blackberry whose message provided me on 11th of my first inkling that there was anything wrong. Instructions were given as to how to verify the account. The option of using the device was exactly the same as the BT adviser had tried. The other option was the on-line version. I tried that, but was told I was giving the wrong password. I tried the ‘forgotten password’ option, which meant they would send it to me by e-mail…………………… I think you know what comes next.
A call to O2 furnished me with the password, but I still couldn’t do anything with it. Never mind, I thought, Apple doesn’t really need anything with it, if it is suitably cooked. It was then that I found that the Apple had gone off the boil. I now had three accounts showing; two with the wavy lines, and one indicating that I had a new message. But when I clicked on that no message came up.
It was now time to telephone Apple Care. Paul, when he heard what was on my screen, and even more when he saw it, described it as a mess. Apple have an interesting way of helping whilst viewing your screen. Instead of taking your screen over, as do BT, they have a red arrow with which they indicate what they want you to click on.
‘What have they done?’ was what he needed to discover. But first he had to erase it all and start again. He then got me up and running, hopefully, this time, permanently.
The process employed by Apple’s Paul, puts me in mind of the tale of the unprepossessing pins, recounted by Bill Eales many years ago. As I recall, the unfortunate owner of these legs, on entering a classroom, was asked where he got them, and told to ‘rub ’em out and do ’em again’. Maybe it was apocryphal.

Whilst I was becoming gradually more heated in the cool of the sitting room, Jackie was attempting to keep cool in the heat of the bottom of the garden, the sun reflecting off the concrete, where she continued her transformation of that area.
We dined this evening at Daniels (sic) Fish and Chip restaurant in Highcliffe. The food was very fresh and crispy and the service excellent. We both had cod. Jackie supplemented hers with onion rings. My choice was calumari. She drank diet Pepsi and I drank tea.
One of the e-mails I did receive when we returned home was from BT, promising a month’s free broadband.

Does Anyone Recognise This?

The two young heroines of The Three Peaks Challenge, each posted on Facebook today that they were unable to move. I think they have earned a fortnight’s pampering.

A surprise visit from Matthew this morning gave me a good excuse to potter about and wander round the garden whilst Jackie undertook some more serious weeding. She still, of course, gave our son the attention he deserved.

As its yellow companion across the gazebo path begins to fade, the red bottle brush plant is now coming into bloom.

We have a number of ornamental grasses in the garden, perhaps the most unusual one sporting purple seeds. Alongside this in the raised bed has emerged an interesting yellow flower that we cannot identify. It is now hard-pressed by the huge cuttings pile which will have to be disposed of soon.
As will have become apparent, many of our treasures are still revealing themselves, some still being hidden by other growth.

This leycesteria, for example, struggles to be noticed from the depths of a hazelnut tree, no doubt brought into being some time ago by a careless squirrel who had dropped his nuts.
We are never quite certain about pulling up what we think is a weed. A particular rose, certainly in the wrong place, has therefore been allowed to live as it sends out long, budless, stems which we thought must be sports.

The leaves now bear beautiful, red, frond-like growths we take to be some kind of gall. Does anyone recognise this?
After Matthew returned home this afternoon, we drove to Redcliffe Garden Centre in Bashley, to buy some more gravel. Naturally a few plants had also to be purchased while we were there.
I laid the gravel on the very first footpath we renovated.

We call this one the dead end path because it stops at the blue painted sinks before the patio wall.
This evening we dined at The Royal Oak, not many yards away. I enjoyed a rib-eye steak; Jackie’s choice was butterfly chicken wrapped in bacon with barbecue sauce. I then had a large portion of apple crumble whilst she chose an excellent and huge slice of cheesecake with ice cream. I drank Doom Bar while she imbibed Becks. The quality of the food has gone up a notch.
P.S. Jackie has established that the growth on the rose leaves is a wasp gall, more commonly attached, and ultimately fatal, to wild roses. Wasps lay their eggs on the plant, causing it to do all sorts of weird things. We will definitely have to remove it.
P.P.S. From Jackie: Wasp gall on the rose leaf and a Bartonia nuda pursh is the yellow plant. X

Ratatouille

Just before this dull, humid, noon, whilst Jackie was out shopping for our trip to The Firs, I took a brief stroll through Morden Park. Apart from two friendly couples, one gay and one heterosexual, walking their terriers, I had only magpies and rooks for company. The birds, scratting about among the stubble, didn’t much fancy mine.

An absent couple seemed to have discarded their wardrobe in a hurry. Hopefully they had something to change into.

So enamoured of the window boxes adorning the railings at the front of No. 7 Garth Road was Jackie, that she had to drive the long way round to the A3 to show me the display. The nasturtiums were grown from seed.

On the A31, Jackie skillfully avoided squashing a vole scampering across the road in front of us.

Arriving at The Firs in the early evening, we were able to enjoy the effects of the lowering sun on the garden before it sank slowly behind the elderly corrugated iron Free Church building next door. The images above are of abutilon, lobelia cardinals, and prunus pisardii. Whilst Jackie and I were sitting with Elizabeth in the garden, contemplating our next projects, we were joined by her friend Lynne. We spotted our little friend, the robin, whose absence had been alarmingly noted last week. All is well. The work done on the new bed has exposed the compost heaps of the Tardis, the home of Geoff and Jackie at the bottom of the garden. We saw a rat emerging from the heap and scuttling away. Apparently the heap does harbour rats. This led to a discussion about these rodents. We were generally agreed that wild ones were not the same as the tame variety. Tame rats make incredibly good pets, the only problem being that they don’t live very long, so ownership of one is bound to end in tears. Matthew and Sam, each in their turn, have owned pet rats. Mat built a whole network of cages which housed up to 70 at one time. His own particular favourite was kept in an unlocked cage. At six o’clock every morning his little friend would trot up and sit outside Mat’s bedroom waiting for him to get up. It was he who introduced his brother Sam to these pets. Some time in the late 1980s, Jessica was featured in an ITV programme, part of a series about people working at night. This was in fact the first one, the subject being Social Work. In one scene Sam is seen seated on the sitting room floor with his white rat crawling up his clothes and nestling in the crook of his shoulder. Jessica is on the phone to a client. Rats, therefore, can be friendly and loyal pets. This is not necessarily the case. When we lived in Soho’s Chinatown the story was rather different. In London you are said to be never more that a few metres from a rat. In this area, where the sun never sets on restaurants, it was more likely centimetres. We had very thick window frames and one very stout window box. We wondered what could be gnawing its way through this seasoned timber. Our friend Carole Littlechild, one night provided the answer. Asleep on the floor in the sitting room she had been disturbed by the patter of tiny footsteps. Across her face. It was indeed a rat.

Remy, a wild rat who became a great friend of the main human character is the star of the Pixar computer-animated comedy film of 2007, ‘Ratatouille’. This is a wonderful story, beautifully filmed. If I say any more it will spoil the experience of those of you who accept my recommendation and see the production, even if it means buying the DVD.

After a month struggling with a virus, Elizabeth was able to join us at Eastern Nights in Thornhill. Thornhill is not the most salubrious Southampton suburb, but it is home to the best Bangladeshi restaurant we have found in the area. And our research has been extensive.