lily – derrickjknight

Synchronised Grazing

This morning, while Jackie continued her general garden maintenance, including mowing the lawn, lulled by the gentle trill of birdsong and the tinkling trickle of water fountain, I enjoyed a dead heading session before wandering around with my camera.

Roses receiving attention included a peach climber; pink Mum in a Million at two of her stages of life; deep red centred For Your Eyes Only; lighter centred Summer Wine; golden yellow Absolutely Fabulous; pale pink Shropshire Lad and blushing Lady Emma Hamilton in their younger incarnations.

A Small White butterfly alighted on a verbena bonariensis between stems of Festive Jewel;

a comma stopped upon another;

a bee visited a salvia.

The first of these two white plants are hollyhocks grown from allegedly red seed; the second, Japanese anemones.

A pink version of the latter hides a lurking hoverfly.

Gauras, rudbeckia, and double lilies are all doing well.

The Lawn Bed and the Gazebo Path both sport splendid colour.

After lunch, we visited the Barbe Baker Museum shop in Lymington to buy some hand made birthday presents, then continued into the forest.

Ponies grazed on Hatchet Moor within sight of the eponymous pond and its waterlilies,

photographed by me,

and by Jackie,

who also captured the first of these cygnet images,

seen here with their parents.

I watched a wet dog return to the water where it attacked an inoffensive tree.

Its owner informed me that, like Becky’s Scooby, her animal would chase sticks thrown in the water, but never bring them back, so he resorted to replenishing the supply.

A pony foal wandered across the tarmac to the East Boldre end of St Leonard’s Road, and proceeded to accompany its mother in synchronised grazing.

Other members of the group did their best to block the road,

while another did her best to suck soup from the rapidly drying corner pool.

This evening we dined on roast chicken breasts; boiled new potatoes; and fresh salad, with which Jackie drank Greco di Tufo white wine and I drank Torre de Ferro Reserva Dao 2017.

Love In The Time Of Cholera

During a heavily overcast yet warm morning I took a walk around the garden with my camera.

At the front of the house I photographed just one example of our fuchsia Delta’s Sarah and pink pelargoniums; a severally-hued hydrangea alongside white marguerites with yellow buttery centres; and the first of three rich red lily plants to bloom.

Another Delta’s Sarah is found among pink sweet peas and verbena bonariensis in the Weeping Birch Bed

which can be approached via stepping stones across the Cryptomeria Bed which is named from

the tree seen behind the standing lamp to the right of top centre in this picture of the Gazebo Path.

The white rose, Winchester Cathedral, and the peachy Lady Emma Hamilton are enjoying further flushes in the Rose Garden.

The blue and white petunias in the Ali Baba planter are beginning their descent which will have them cascading like those in this container accompanied by sweet peas, hot lips, and lobelias.

Just before mid-day we drove through a busy Highcliffe intending to brunch at The Beach House café on Friars Cliff. Both the car park and the beach were so crowded that we turned back and lunched at home.

I spent the afternoon finishing reading ‘Love in the time of Cholera’ by Colombian Nobel prizewinner Gabriel Garcia Marquez. This is the entry from brittania.com written by Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria:

Gabriel García Márquez, (born March 6, 1927, Aracataca, Colombia—died April 17, 2014, Mexico City, Mexico), Colombian novelist and one of the greatest writers of the 20th century, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982, mostly for his masterpiece Cien años de soledad (1967; One Hundred Years of Solitude). He was the fourth Latin American to be so honoured, having been preceded by Chilean poets Gabriela Mistral in 1945 and Pablo Neruda in 1971 and by Guatemalan novelist Miguel Ángel Asturias in 1967. With Jorge Luis Borges, García Márquez is the best-known Latin American writer in history. In addition to his masterly approach to the novel, he was a superb crafter of short stories and an accomplished journalist. In both his shorter and longer fictions, García Márquez achieved the rare feat of being accessible to the common reader while satisfying the most demanding of sophisticated critics.

It must be 30 years since I first read this marvellous novel, and now, I hope, have done so with far greater understanding.

I do not know Spanish, but I am quite certain that Edith Grossman’s translation has contributed greatly to the fluidity of Jonathan Cape’s 1988 edition. The author is clearly a master of the long, eloquent, sentence and it must have taken great skill to convey this.

The book is filled with wisdom, insight, and humour, penned in flowing, natural language. Its theme is a lifetime of loves described in emotional and physical detail with all the accompanying passion, anxiety, intrigue, anguish, guilt, jealousies – you name the feelings – they are there.

What, wondered this reader in the midst of the 2020 pandemic, has cholera to do with the story, which is well told? After all the disease barely merits a mention until the penny drops; I will refrain from telling you when.

This evening we dined on oven fish and chips, peas, gherkins, and pickled onions, with which Jackie drank Hoegaarden and I finished the Fleurie.

Better Than Expected

Today’s winds have dropped to 20 m.p.h.

When opening the gate for Aaron this morning I checked on the storm damage.

There really wasn’t much more than I had noticed yesterday. The downpipe to the water butt on the corner of the kitchen wall had become unstuck; a few extra pots had fallen; the sweet peas had been further loosened; quite a few smaller branches had been ripped off the beech and birch trees; some of the ornamental poplar branches were broken; just one rose stem had been torn; many plants have lost stems; and there was a certain amount of wind burn on one side of the winter flowering cherry and elsewhere, such as various fuchsias.

Aaron began the work of tidying up.

He gathered and bagged up many of the fallen branches and leaves;

trimmed the ornamental poplar, removing the broken branches;

and righted the fallen containers ready for Jackie to replace at her leisure. He observed that the morning had gone very quickly. He likes to be busy.

Bob of Lovewillbringustogether’s Weblog has recently suggested a regular feature of “Where’s Nugget” inviting readers to find our little robin. That, of course, depended on his surviving the storm and returning unscathed. I am happy to report that I heard his gentle chirp as he followed Aaron around.

He nipped up onto a chair for a chat, then flitted off into the Rose Garden.

I admit that the first “Where’s Nugget” puzzle is a little difficult.

The red scented sweet peas may have been blown awry, but there are plenty of clinging seed pods which benefited from an early shower,

and its desiccated leaves provide perfect camouflage for our Meadow Brown butterflies.

These dahlias

and the agapanthuses may have bowed to the elements, but, like the rest of the garden, they have fared far better than expected.

Bees, flies, and crickets have come out to play and to work again,

The Rose Garden has remained virtually unscathed,

and one lily kept its head in the front.

Other flowers, like these cosmoses, dahlias, and rudbeckia are wondering what all the fuss was about.

This evening we dined on Jackie’s succulent beef and mushroom pie in short crust pastry; new potatoes; roasted sweet potato and parsnip; and crunchy carrots, cauliflower, and cabbage; with piquant cauliflower cheese, with which she finished the Austrian white wine and I drank Doom Bar.

Energy-Sapping Humidity

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Today was hotter, and considerably more humid than yesterday. I flopped this morning, but didn’t sleep. Perhaps that fact that I slept all yesterday evening had something to do with this. My brief trip into the garden at mid-afternoon was energy-sapping.

Correctly surmising that I might need a rest en route to my planned perch at the Westbrook Arbour, Jackie positioned Mum’s stool beside the Nottingham Castle Bench. I took a few pictures from there, then moved on. Melting, after about twenty minutes I fled back indoors.

I took a cooling break before uploading the pictures. This was extended by a very welcome visit from Shelly and Ron, for which I was most grateful.

My choice of Supermarket prepared meals this evening was fish pie to which Jacke added crisp carrots. leeks, and mange-touts, which added fresh flavour.

The Stable Door

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The much needed rain fell overnight and persisted as drizzle this morning. This afternoon we could continue in the garden. My contribution was weeding and making photographs. Jackie did the more creative tidying and planting.

Raindrops were left on poppies, heucheras, foxgloves, blue clematis, spider’s web complete with trapped insect, geraniums, rose For Your Eyes Only, rhododendrons, and libertia.

Clematis Marie Boisselot, and lilies benefited from their wash.

Jackie, leaning on the stable door, was amused at my wandering around with the camera. I have often mentioned the stable door, so , just in case anyone is wondering, I feel bound to mention that we do not keep horses. There is no point when we can trot off in search of some any time we like. What we call the stable door is

this. And yes, we do know that, like much of the house, it needs some attention.

This evening we dined on fish, chips, pickled onions, and gherkins. Jackie drank Peroni and I drank more of the cabernet sauvignon.

The Perfect Camouflage

This morning our plants enjoyed some welcome rain; I identified, scanned, and retouched twenty black and white negatives from my unsorted collection; and Jackie shopped for and prepared our evening meal. When, on 24th October last year I visited the site of Rodin’s Burghers of Calais, I mentioned some missing prints I had made in the 1970s. In fact I was confusing them with some black and white ones from 1982. This were among the negatives I worked on today, and I reproduce one here. Anyone familiar with the work will recognise that the position in which I needed to stretch myself for this shot would probably be beyond me now.
This set of negatives can be safely dated at early summer 1982, by the same method of deduction as the colour ones featured on 20th July. A trip to Cannizaro Park alongside Wimbledon Common with the Shnaps family provides one theme. I think it must have been in the park that the unknown girl was about to turn her cartwheel.
Jessica, Becky, Maurice and Beverley, with their boys, brought up the rear as Sam delightedly raced into his brother Matthew’s arms.
There were also a number of pleasing portraits of my other offspring, Becky and Michael.
The Zebby board books were a great favourite. Never having seen them before or since, I think I bought them in one of London’s many remainder bookshops. Michael here reads to Sam, whose excited expression suggests this book was ‘Where’s Zebby?’. Sam must have spotted him before he emerges from behind the upright railings that offered him the perfect camouflage. Board books are heavy duty and can withstand a considerable amount of attempted mutilation from young fingers and teeth.
On a bright and blustery afternoon, having missed the post at Shorefield, and wishing to ensure that Alice received her birthday gift on time, I walked on along the cliff top to the Needles Eye cafe and up Sea Road to the Milford on Sea Post Office. I missed that one too. Never mind, my granddaughter will forgive me.
I returned to the path overlooking the sea via Park Lane, and thence home. Motorboats sped along the solent, and hardy holidaymakers sat watching the waves or walked along the shingle.
I know you will all be keen to learn what Jackie cooked during the day and served up this evening. Now I can reveal that it was her trademark juicy lamb jalfrezi (recipe), and it was delicious. It was accompanied by vegetable samosas, mini poratas, and boiled rice; and followed by mixed fruit crumble and custard. The proprietors of the Shaan in Newark would approve of our choice of dessert. Jackie drank Kingfisher and I drank Cobra.

Privilege Customer

No matter how thorough you try to be in pulling up and eradicating brambles, there are always some that catch your eye as you wander around. For this reason I went on a bramble hunt today. Some, by now, are announcing their presence with blossom and budding fruit; others are so long and straggly they make you wonder how you missed them. So skilled in the art of camouflage are these thorny ramblers that I was constantly amazed at how much space was opened in the shrubberies simply by removing them. No doubt if I repeat the process in a day or two, I will be equally surprised.
Jackie continued weeding, watering and planting.
Among the recent discoveries more welcome than the unwanted growth have been echinops, agapanthus, and honeysuckle whose pink blends quite well with the blue arch around which it clambers.
Not knowing what colour to expect, we have been eagerly awaiting the blooming of the hibiscus in the front garden. We were not disappointed by its interesting pink hues.
For a late lunch today we visited the Needles Eye Cafe in Milford on Sea. Jackie enjoyed a cheese omelette, chips, salad, and diet coke; whilst I, once I had jogged the waiter’s memory, relished a maxed-up breakfast with tea. This large fry-up comes with toast and marmalade. For the second time, my toast was forgotten. I assured the staff member that I did not take it personally as I was not paranoid.
We had not been to this beach in hot holiday weather before, so it was something of a shock to walk to the path at the top of the shingle and be confronted by a picture postcard scene. ‘Oh, yes. We live here’, we said.
After our meal Jackie drove us on to Stewart’s Garden Centre at Christchurch and back. Just before my last trip to France, I had signed up for a Stewart’s Privilege Customer card. One of the benefits of this is that you may buy two samples of specific plants at half price. The choice changes monthly. The July selection is agapanthus. After dropping me off at the airport on 8th July, Jackie hot wheeled it off to Stewart’s to choose her agapanthuses. She found two marvellous full-budded specimens. Taking out the coupon from the monthly magazine, she proffered her pennies. She was asked for the Privilege card. Ah. It was in my wallet in Sigoules.
The card is now safely in Jackie’s purse, so off we had gone to choose some more of the perennial blue plants. Unfortunately there were only a few, decidedly past their best for this year, left. Never mind, we could still have two of them – and we found two that will do very nicely next year – and, in compensation for their condition, a clematis also at half price. we chose Inspiration ‘Zoin’.
This evening I wandered down to the postbox. A lily has escaped into the hedgerow in Downton Lane.

No Mod Cons

This morning Jackie drove us to Ringwood to collect two pairs of my shoes from the repairers, and to do some banking. On our return we visited the Marine restaurant in Milford on Sea to investigate the menu to glean whether we might wish to dine there this evening. The ground floor cafe was open but not the restaurant which would naturally open this evening. A very helpful young man with a smart haircut reminiscent, as I told him, of about sixty years ago, – I’m sure every male visiting Old Compton Street’s 2i’s coffee bar sported one – attempted to give me the information I required. Very soon we realised he had handed me the Sunday lunch menu, and it is Monday. He went up to the restaurant to find a fuller one. He came down empty handed, and had a further hunt downstairs. In the end I was referred to the internet. On looking it up later, we decided it wasn’t quite what we were seeking.
As she drove down Downton Lane, Jackie was required to stop and park so that I could listen to a reading of an extract from ‘The Gruffalo’s Child’ by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler. Well, it’s not every day that your five year old grandson (Malachi) telephones you from his new house in Australia to wish you a happy birthday, and proceeds to demonstrate the reading prowess for which he has recently received an award.. You wouldn’t want to be driven out of reach of a mobile signal. Well, not during the first fifteen minutes or so anyway.
Shelly dropped in this afternoon with a birthday present and had the obligatory tour of the garden. Today’s new lily was another deep mauve/red one.
Given that today is my seventy second birthday it seemed appropriate to revisit Elizabeth’s ‘through the ages’ series. Number 51 was taken by Jessica, in probably around 1976. I only visited the cottage in the foothills of Snowdon a couple of times, which, I believe, is one more than our friend Maurice Schnapps.
Seen with me in the picture are, from left to right, Michael’s friend Pete, Michael, Matthew, and Becky. It rather looks as if the children were somewhat reluctant to pose.
The establishment outside which I believe we were photographed, was a favourite holiday abode of Jessica’s. She and the children were made of sterner stuff than Maurice and I. We preferred a little luxury when away from home. The cottage had been bought by an uncle of Jessica’s as a stopover point when taking bands of boys from Rugby school to climb Mount Snowdon. As such it was definitely character-building. My regular readers will understand that the climb wasn’t my cup of tea either. Speaking of cups of tea, I cannot remember exactly how one would have been produced in that abode, but I am sure it would have involved a trek outside and a little ingenuity. There was, you see, no running water, and, of course, no electricity. Water was produced from a pipe on the hillside. H2O did penetrate from somewhere, because the place was exceedingly damp.
Do I hear you asking what happened to poo? Ah, well. You had to dig a hole at the beginning of your stay, fill it with bucket loads as the week progressed, and cover it up afterwards. Simple enough, you may think. Ah, but. The cottage was semi-detached. To reach your chosen site for refuse, you had to walk past a pair of rather savage looking and sounding dogs tethered on fairly long leads. Perhaps it was the smell of what you carried that encouraged them to strain to reach you. When past them, and applying your spade, you rather hoped you would pick a spot that hadn’t been used before. It was best not to carry out this operation in the dark. For those unfamiliar with today’s title, it is a shortened form of ‘No Modern Conveniences’, usually slightly differently expressed, in advertisements for holiday cottages, as ‘All Mod Cons’.
I do apologise to those who loved that place. I’m just a soft townie.
Jessica and Imogen, Malachi’s rather less couth cousins from Nottingham, chose to telephone me and give me a rendering of ‘Happy Birthday’ just as Jackie and I were sitting down to the usual excellent meal at The Jarna. Their version hinges on the couplet: ‘Happy birthday to you, Put your head down the loo’, followed by uncontrollable giggling.

The Crab Pot

Many attractive trees and shrubs, like this beautiful green-barked maple, are simply in the wrong place and require sadly severe treatment. This one was denying access to the potting shed and encroaching upon the path, forcing other plants to do the same. We trust it will recover from this morning’s extensive amputations.

Elizabeth drove Mum over from West End for lunch and to view our new home, with which she was very taken. Before lunch, we had a tour of the garden. Our mother, in her ninety second year was determined and delighted to see everything. Concentrating hard on her two sticks, she walked with me every step of the sometimes uneven paths, whilst Jackie and Elizabeth wandered rather more quickly at will.

The chimney pot planting is now well established, with such as scented petunias looking splendid. A Lysimachia, Jackie has also introduced, is in full bloom.

Heucheras are grown for the beauty and variety of their leaves. Described by our resident horticulturist as ‘the gardener’s dream’, they are hardy plants which can tolerate shade and grow in any type of soil. Needless to say we now have a great many adding colour to most beds. Their clusters of small flowers, blending with their foliage, cling to long slender stems.

The snake bark maple is now beginning to wear its autumn colours which stand out well against the weeping birch leaves. We hope that this early display is not a sign of something sinister, and simply perhaps that it is a native of North America.

Another delicately hued yellow lily is attractive not only to us but also to hoverflies;

a deep magenta penstemon is rewarding us for freeing it from choking brambles;

and honeysuckle has now taken over decorative duties from the roses around the entrance to the front garden.

It is three years since our mother, who lives in a bungalow, has tackled any stairs at all, let alone our rather steep ones. She did, however, with me climbing ahead, and Elizabeth behind, manage to ascend to our first floor and suitably admire the rest of the abode. This was after we had enjoyed another of Jackie’s lavish salad lunches.

Back in the late 1980s, when she was much fitter, Mum regularly drove up to Newark for an annual two week holiday. One year she admired some artefacts in an architectural salvage establishment in the town, saying she would quite like to buy one. I had no recollection of this until she reminded me today, but I had bought it for her and taken it down to Horndean where she was living at the time.

She has developed a practice of, when appropriate, returning presents long since forgotten by the giver. Today, she and Elizabeth both brought me gifts for my birthday tomorrow. Mum’s came with a card which apologised for returning ‘this’ in a tatty state, but perhaps I might like to make a project of it. It was that very same iron and rope crab pot I had given her about 25 years ago. Apparently it has lost its rope handle. But who cares?

After our visitors had departed it was a while before we felt like eating, when fish fingers provided a more than adequate snack.

Escape From Alcatraz

Today’s Lily, yet another different variety, has two layers of petals.
After Jackie, making use of a couple of plates from the rail of the too large IKEA wardrobes,

had repaired the bed head screwed to the weeping birch, we spent a long day completing the work on the clematis montana fence in the kitchen garden.

Fortunately, when clearing the bed head bed of brambles, I had managed to preserve what turned out to be crocosmia lucifer, now blooming above the erstwhile wooden ornamental feature.
Had I not been familiar with what the DIY efforts of our predecessor had perpetrated inside the house, I may have had trouble believing what, once we had cleared away enough foliage, he had attached to our neighbour’s fence. But there was no mistaking his technique for putting in awkward nails.

A stout post had been driven into the ground from our side, and a beam attached to it at one end of the fence. He must have possessed only one sustaining post because the other end of the long strut was nailed directly into the top of the fence. The diagonally driven nail wasn’t really doing much by now, and was fixed in exactly the same manner as a rough-hewn piece of deal placed across the jamb of one of the kitchen doors which had been blocked up by our vendors’ fridge.
What I described yesterday as wire netting was more like the grille at a prison window. Even Clint Eastwood, as Frank Morris, in the 1979 film ‘Escape from Alcatraz’, would have had trouble getting through that. Heavy duty staples had bound it both to the upright wooden post and to the horizontal beam. A smaller variety, driven into the planks of the fence, Jackie had been able to tap out with a hammer and screwdriver. The large, thick, ones would not budge. The grille itself was going to have to be cut.

Some kind of black plastic material had been wound around the clematis and bramble jumble at the top of this structure. I can only imagine its purpose was to prevent the brambles that had rooted on the other side of the fence from returning home.
Milford Supplies once more had the benefit of our custom, as Jackie drove off to buy a suitable implement, whilst I continued to move brushwood to the site of the bonfire and chop it up. She returned with mini bolt cutters which looked just the job. No such luck. They barely dented the metal.

I had to hack off with a saw each piece held by a staple. Eventually we pulled the whole frame towards us, left it standing, and had some lunch. Afterwards I broke up the frame and hacked off all the bits of grille.

Long after I was done for the day, Superwoman continued to open up the entrance to this part of the garden even more. In doing so she discovered that underneath the earth and rubble are signs of a brick pavement.
After that, she fed us on chicken jalfrezi (recipe) and onion, peas and sweetcorn rice, with which we drank Cobra beer. This was followed by Post House Pud, with summer fruits as the base.