logs – Page 2 – derrickjknight

Relocation

This morning I added three informative Facebook link comments, one from Becky, one from Lesley O’Neill, and one from Jackie herself, to yesterday’s post.

Some of you will remember the nomadic mice from Christmas. Having joined the suffragette mousement, they have now taken up a position on the sitting room window sill.

Albeit out of focus and through an upstairs window pane, I was today able to shoot the pheasant which was wandering around the garden as if he owned it. In an attempt to take a clearer photograph, I then walked out into the garden. By this time it was nowhere to be seen, until it squawked, flapped, and lumbered off like the R101, from the next door jungle.

Before lunch we drove to Molly’s Den in search of a birthday present, and bought, at a good price, a hand-woven Afghan rug from Khiva for ourselves. The design apparently dates from the 18th century.

This afternoon I set off to walk down Downton Lane. I got no further than Roger’s footpath before retracing my steps to the back drive where I had noticed I had a job to to. Number 27 and its pines basked in the sunshine, as did the still naked oaks.

We now have yellow crocuses and a spread of periwinkles of various types. A crow took off from our mature copper beach, itself still leafless.

Most of the insect Hilton hotel rooms have now been stolen. Perhaps, given the number of wood burning fires in the area, I should not have been surprised. Especially as a couple of days ago I watched a van take the diagonal across the end of our drive into the care home on the corner, I decided to relocate the log pile to the safety of the rose garden plot.

My original structure had filled five wheelbarrow loads. In retrieving what was left I barely completed two. At least that made the task a little easier.

This evening we dined on Mr Pink’s superb takeaway fish and chips with pickled onions and mushy peas. Jackie drank Hoegaarden and I finished the rioja.

An Insect Hilton

Despite a hard overnight frost, our hardy little pigeon had, soon after dawn, made its way back to the access path where Jackie had originally found it. The still flightless bird was far calmer on our approach, and even watched quietly as I placed a suet ball near it. Although it continued to move up and down the path for a while, sadly, it died later in the morning.

There were still a number of branches that we had pruned in the autumn in the front garden. This morning I chopped them up and transported them to the burning pile which is now ready for combustion.

This gave me a different angle on Aaron’s work of yesterday. The new compost bins have been placed at a depth to enable Jackie to turn the car in front of them when using the back drive. To enable this manoeuvre two dead trunks need removing. Our under gardener (Aaron – that makes me the under-under gardener), has taken out one, and his process can be viewed from the second, not yet finished. The logs from these have been piled alongside the heap for burning. They will not, however, be burnt. Firstly, they are too beautiful; secondly, they will attract and nurture numerous insects upon which birds will feed; thirdly, they could provide a psychological barrier at the entrance to the drive, over which visitors to the house next door are prone to leave tracks. We already have a number of such chunks of slowly rotting wood scattered at suitable points in the garden.

This afternoon, with butterscotch tinted logs, I built an insect hotel to rival anything that Hilton has to offer.

The rain that had begun whilst I was heaping up the logs, as I finished, became a deluge that lasted well into the night. We thought that the best thing about the pigeon’s demise was that it would not have to endure that.

Later, I finished the second book of G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown stories, ‘The Wisdom of Father Brown’.

This evening we dined at our neighbour, ‘The Royal Oak’. We were more than happy with our reasonably priced three course meals. I enjoyed whitebait; steak pie; and bread and butter pudding. Jackie’s choice was onion rings; mushroom stroganoff; and ice cream sundae. She drank Becks and I drank Ringwood’s best bitter. The service was as attentive as usual.

Woodland Settings

As I stepped out of our front door this morning I was attracted by a veil of mist hanging over distant trees. This determined a left turn and a walk across the field of brassica, through the woods to the road near Taddiford Farm, and an about turn back to home.
From the middle of the field I looked back to the strip of houses that is Downton. Our blue painted house is visible on the far left. Also in evidence is the Downton Service Station sign. Father Christmas, perched on the garage roof of ‘Badger’s Meadow’, surveyed the traffic on Christchurch Road. On my return, I had a long talk with Mark, the owner, who had moved here some years ago from Worcester Park.
On a whim, I photographed the same woodland scene on four different camera settings. The first was automatic, then came the positive film effect, then vivid, and finally black and white.
Crossing a bridge over the stream, and seeking to create the impression of non-existent sunshine, I continued to play with my settings. So absorbed was I, that at one point I inadvertently retraced my steps earlier than I had intended. Fortunately this was soon corrected.
The more recently planted trees sported tubular shields, no doubt to protect them from nibbling by wildlife, probably of the cervine variety.

Foresters had sawn others, some of which bore interesting fungus, lichen, or simply discolouration, and fallen leaves carpeted the paths, which were not particularly muddy.

The mist still shrouded the more distant trees.

Ian went out for his walk just before the rain set in for the day. He returned looking like a drowned rat, which was interesting, given that we had just seen a real one disappearing into Scooby’s favourite corner of the garden.

One of my stocking presents was a copy of ‘New Forest’, Georgina Babey’s contribution to the Tempus Publishing Images of England series. This is a fascinating social history of the area through the medium of captioned photographs. I devoured this at opportune moments yesterday and today. The cover illustration is a detail from one showing ‘a steam engine transporting logs in Lyndhurst High Street during the First World War. The Steam engine is called Queen of the South and was owned by M. Slater of Eling. It is standing opposite the Stag Inn’. The buildings behind the transport are still there. One is now Honeyford’s butcher’s.
Yesterday Jackie roasted two turkeys, but we didn’t even finish one. With all the other goodies provided for yesterday’s lunch there was plenty left over for us to graze at will today. A delicious mixed meat and vegetable broth in the evening completed the day’s nourishment.

Sam Had The Answer

As I sweated in the heat of the day, preparing for a bonfire later on, I thought of the warmth that some of the cuttings pile would provide in the winter.

What I was engaged in was breaking and cutting enough of the debris into bite-sized chunks and transporting them to burn in the decommissioned rusty old wheelbarrow, parked in the back drive, which was to contain the burning severed branches, brambles, and shrubs collected over the last two months. Those sylvan limbs that were thick enough to provide wood for the stove, were set aside for later sawing into logs.
First, I needed to clear a path through the undergrowth in the back drive, where the burning was to take place. This meant uprooting the usual suspects.

Early this evening I tramped backwards and forwards from the pile, down the winding brick path to the wheelbarrow, for three hours in which I barely cleared half the heap. As expected, the tyre of the barrow swelled and burst. It also caught fire, and emitted unpleasant fumes for a while. Otherwise, smoke was minimal and the dry material was consumed pretty quickly.
During our first years in Newark, perhaps 1989, when Sam would have been nine, we used an as yet undeveloped patch of land that had once been part of our garden, for our Guy Fawkes night bonfire. On this particular occasion, the sound of a fire engine came ringing in our ears, making us think someone was in trouble. As it drew nearer and the uniformed crew rushed through the garden we realised it was us in trouble. Neighbours, seeing the fire on empty terrain, had called out the brigade.
Thinking I was in charge, I explained what we were doing. I was asked what we would do if the flames got out of hand. Emerging from the thick undergrowth, up piped the young man who really was in control. ‘We’ll use this’, said Sam, holding up the nozzle of a very long hose he had, unbeknown to me, trailed from our house. The firefighters departed, satisfied. Thanks for getting me out of that one, son (this last word delivered with a Lewis Cove emphasis).
Jackie continued with her planting, weeding, watering, and path-laying; and still found time to produce roast beef; carrots, broccoli and potato mash; fried leeks with mushrooms; boiled potatoes, carrots, and cauliflower, followed by a Post House Pud based on strawberries and raspberries. She drank Hoegaarden, and I finished off some Dad’s Delight, a beer produced for Fathers’ Day.

Tales From The Window Sills

During our honeymoon in March 1968, Jackie and I were intrigued by a deserted house in Ockley. We wandered around inside and wondered if it were for sale, but decided we couldn’t afford it. It would, we thought, have been just our kind of project. Now, nearly half a century later, we find ourselves on a similar adventure. Although not previously unoccupied, our current home has probably required just as much work.

The two interchangeable pictures I put up today are both from colour slides taken in that house. As is my wont, I photographed them in situ on the wall, so the reflections and locations form parts of the images.

The two old shoes lying on the newspaper were exactly as I found them. Whose were the footwear? A previous owner? Someone who had sheltered there? We will never know. IKEA did not come to the UK until 1987, so the shelves alongside the photo on the wall of the downstairs loo were probably unknown to the mystery owner of the worn down heel. There is no window in the little room, so photographs made there always contain a light hanging from the ceiling and glowing over the subject in the corner.

As can be seen through its kitchen window, the garden of that old house was as beset by brambles as is ours now. Had someone enjoyed a meal on the dusty plate? Was it the owner of the shoes? We didn’t look inside the box, but were there any rotten eggs inside it? Had the contents filled the plate? How had they been cooked? Who now knows?

I framed today’s picture to show a reflection of our own windowsill which, until recently, had also featured brambles, and, quite fortuitously, my shot included the far end of the ledge containing Jackie’s maternal grandparents’ wedding photograph behind a family heirloom. Mr and Mrs O’Connell, the dapper Edwardian groom and his beautiful wife, stand behind a glass dome containing the bride’s bouquet and tiara which Jackie now treasures.
After working on these images, I walked along Hordle Lane and left into Stopples Lane to deliver a cheque to Abre Electrical.

Dog roses now adorn the hedgerows.
Adjacent to Apple Court Garden I noticed a horse box being filled with logs, and heard the sound of a chainsaw. I wandered into the garden and spoke to the logger. He was clearing trees for his neighbour. The quid pro quo was that he disposed of the brushwood and kept the logs for his own wood-burning stove. He showed me a pile of ashes that was all that was left of the branches of four trees from yesterday. He also said that any wood could be burnt in the stove.

This is pretty much what I had been thinking of doing with our cuttings pile.

Whilst I was out, Jackie made an excellent start on clearing the right hand corner of our front drive. Apart from freeing the shrubs from each other and from brambles, this now enables her to have a clearer view when driving onto Christchurch Road.
My lady spent the afternoon completing her preparation of a superb evening meal for us and for her sisters Helen and Shelly and brother in law Bill. We enjoyed a pleasant evening together over Jackie’s blissful beef casserole (recipe) meal followed by tangy apple and gooseberry crumble and custard. Various wines and sparkling water were imbibed and a toast drunk in Cava in celebration of the recent arrival of Helen and Bill’s grandson William (to be known, like his grandfather, as Billy).

A Somewhat Abortive Trip

Soon after dawn the strong sun we were to enjoy in a clear blue sky for the rest of today drew up enough moisture from the soggy forest virtually to obscure it from our dining room windows.
Later I walked down to the village shop for stamps, diverting to give Alan, whose work of yesterday is now complete, his prints.

At Seamans Corner I met the postman I wrote about on 2nd February. we had a chat, and this time I photographed him.
I returned via All Saints church, the footpath, The Splash, and Furzey Gardens. The churchyard is now resplendent with daffodils and crocuses. A heap of ash and several neat piles of logs is all that is left of the fallen yew.
For the first couple of hours this afternoon, I dealt with administration, such as arranging for removals, cleaning, checkout, inventory, and other stuff too boring to mention.
For a break this afternoon, we drove to Exbury Gardens to walk the Camellia Walk. It was closed. The barmaid at The Royal Oak on Beaulieu Hilltop where we eventually settled for a drink told us they would open in two days time. We also missed the buzzard. This bird of prey was scavenging at the roadside when we passed. We disturbed it and it flew off to a tree. Jackie parked and I got out of the car, camera in hand. It flew off. I settled for a shot of the primroses on the forest verge.

The above mentioned hostelry lies, according to the young woman who served us, ‘in the middle of nowhere’ on the edge of a heath with the steaming towers of Fawley power station in the background. Ponies feeding at decent intervals on the still boggy terrain caught the rays of the lowering sun.
There was a notice in the foyer of the pub asking patrons to consider the neighbours and leave quietly. Since the power station seemed to be the nearest neighbour we thought someone was probably having a laugh.
We decided that this would be the evening when we would try the ultimate test of our new neighbourhood, which is the Indian restaurant, in this case the Zaika in Milford on Sea. On the drive from Beaulieu we watched the sun go down and make way for the moon. At first a strong glow in a still blue sky, as the orb sank down beneath the horizon, it streaked the blue with bright yellow and pastel pink shades reflected in the Beaulieu River, lakes, and the many pools scattered on the heath.

Whilst not really a match for Ringwood’s Curry Garden, the Zaika was good enough. The service was particularly merit-worthy, being friendly and unobtrusive, and the food was reasonably good. We both drank Kingfisher.
Driving back to Minstead we were beset by a sea mist reducing visibility to that we had woken up to.