nasturtiums – Page 4 – derrickjknight

Giant Jenga

Last night at sundown I took an amble down to Roger’s field and back. On Downton Lane the light glinted behind the secret garden gate. On a glorious morning, Jackie drove me down to the cashpoint in Milford on Sea, and left me at The Beach House so I could take my usual walk home. The bright blue Solent, tuned into a yachting marina, reflected the skies above; the sun shone; still streaks of salmon clouds had risen to the surface above the horizon; a white-haired jogger plodded, solitary walkers strode energetically, while those with dogs paused periodically for a sniff along the clean gravelled footpath; butterflies fluttered; crows and gulls flew overhead; a small shrew scuttled out of the undergrowth; and thrift and other wild flowers glistened in the sunlight on the clifftop. A passing woman greeted me with ‘it’s a lovely morning’. ‘It is, said I, and I’ve left my camera battery at home’. ‘Oh, no’, she replied, reflecting my own feeling when I discovered I had left the energy supplier on charge overnight. Families leaving Shorefield teemed down to West Road. Younger joggers were out in force. Two small boys, in their eagerness to reach the sea, ran down the slope, the larger lad leaving the smaller panting in his wake. The breasts of another, sadly overweight, wobbled beneath his mesh-fronted T-shirt as he painfully waddled along. In the Country Park itself, basking holidaymakers breakfasted or read on their chalet balconies. A barking dog protected its temporary residence. On Downton Lane, speeding cyclists played chicken with cars, many open-topped, preventing them from travelling at their own preferred speed. In a recent post, Geoff , thebikinggardener #can i eat nasturtiums wrote of his ambivalent relationship with these plants. As we watered the front garden we were presented, in the form of hairy black and yellow chomping caterpillars, with ample evidence of what he was saying. The older section of our brick path, set almost 100 years ago, has, with the passage of time, soil movement and the incursion of tree roots, become uneven, and dangerous for visitors ending the support of walking sticks; although the bricks themselves remain sound. During the morning Aaron and Lee have made excellent progress in the task of lifting and levelling them. The original, fiddly, pattern has been lost, but that is a small price to pay. Before setting off to Shelley and Ron’s home in Walkford for a barbecue lunch we drove to Everton Nurseries to buy an aluminium bench for the south west corner of the rose garden, and put it in place on bricks we have yet properly to embed. The barbecue was also attended by Helen and Bill, Neil, Donna, and Anthony. We had a splendid afternoon of convivial conversation, superb sausages, lamb and chicken satay kebabs, salads, followed later by fruit salad, strawberries, lemon cake, and cheesecake according to choice. Red and white wine, coke, cider, and beer were all on offer. A surprisingly long section of the mid-afternoon was occupied by a game of Giant Jenga. It didn’t seem possible to me that this precarious pastime could last any longer than a few minutes. A tower of long wooden blocks is built to begin with. Each player must remove one block without upsetting the structure, and place it on the top. Gradually the lower levels are depleted, but the height remains the same, until the increasingly tottering tower finally collapses. The person who made the last successful placement is the winner.

After a few early extractions, Bill is seen here making another.

Quite early on Neil appeared to go to sleep on the job,

but recovered to make a flamboyant removal later on, when wobbling was under way.

Ron, with a flourish, applied his structural engineering skills to the task,

while Shelley undertook careful all-round investigation

and slid one out from the bottom, starting another top layer.

Helen couldn’t believe her luck.

As the tower began to sway, I didn’t really fancy my chances,

even after the withdrawal the tower was likely to topple.

Bill’s penultimate attempt warranted considerable contemplation,

as did Anthony’s final one.

I always followed Bill, and each time increasingly prayed that he would upset the structure.

Finally my luck was in. This was just as well, because Bill almost managed to withdraw the last block that would have been at all possible.

For the second evening running, we had no need of dinner.

A Cracking Match

This morning’s task was to dig a pit I had chickened out of last night. This was for the lace-cap hydrangea alongside the orange shed. Beneath about two inches of poor soil lay an impacted heap of rubble. With pick-axe, fork, and spade, I managed to get through what we hope is enough of it for the plant to find its way. Jackie filled the hole with good multi-purpose compost, and gave it a good watering.

It takes the two of us a couple of hours to irrigate the trillion hanging baskets, window boxes, tubs, chimney pots, and various other plantings that the Head Gardener has stuffed with flowers. This, today had to form the bread in a sandwich, the filling of which was an absolutely cracking Wimbledon ladies final. Despite dropping the opening game in which she served three double faults, Serena Williams recovered her champion’s composure to win in straight sets, over Garbine Muguruza, who was no push-over. Both women thrilled the crowd, and even I was choked up, with tears in my eyes, at the gleeful dance of the unbeatable American, and the reception given, at the presentation ceremony by the crowd, and by Serena herself, to the runner-up. I cannot call Garbine the loser.

She will be back. But this was the serene Miss Williams’s day, which she was generous enough to share.

It was difficult to get my photos in focus, pointing at the TV, from the sofa, in a somewhat emotional condition.

The lost label rose we bought some days ago, has now produced a flower. We think it may be a David Austin Aloha. When it opens out a bit more, we will have a better idea.

The varieties of nasturtium in the front garden have been multiplied,

as have the day lilies in the main one.

I thought we may have had a visit from an apparently almost extinct butterfly. This, however, is not the Large Tortoiseshell, but the

Comma, attracted by verbena bonarensis.

I am grateful to Norma and Laurie Palmer for correcting me.

The red Bottle Brush bushes are now in flower.

The one above has this view from the pergola path.

Yellow/green nicotiana has now joined its white neighbour on the patio.

We are aiming for a very scented rose garden, but, just at the moment, our new plants cannot compete with our neighbours’ buddleia draped over our fence.

Reminiscent of our pink camellias, which turn pleasing shades of ochre, the sepals of the clematis Carnaby have now matured into the texture of parchment.

This evening we dined on cheese-centred haddock fish cakes; sauteed potatoes, onions, mushrooms, and peppers; and crisp cauliflower and carrots. Jackie drank Hoegaarden, and I drank more of the cabernet sauvignon.

The Shed In Situ

This morning, whilst Jackie went shopping, I wandered around the garden waiting for delivery of the garden shed. Now that the pink roses on the front trellis have died back, their places have been taken by clematis Mrs N Thompson, honeysuckle, calibrachoa in a hanging basket, and two varieties of trailing nasturtium.

A marbled white butterfly, swayed on a wind-blown verbena bonarensis

The Ballerina now dances freely at the cleared entrance to the rose garden.

Ground cover, like that provided by this unnamed succulent, is important,

but it is hanging baskets that lift a garden.

Here is a view from the brick path.

This trailing antirrhinum sits nicely above the patch of grass,

and these petunias lead us to The Head Gardener’s Walk,

as others, enlivening the dead Snake Bark Maple, overlook the Heligan Path and beyond.

Sometimes, as with this symphony in orange and red, serendipity intervenes. The orange sunburst beneath the cut plastic container is a clever little device with a thread that fits two litre supermarket water bottles, thus keeping a supply flowing for two days.

As can be seen from this later shot of The Head Gardener’s Walk petunias, Jackie’s shed was delivered and erected this afternoon.

Two splendid Wimbledon tennis matches were televised this afternoon. I watched them both. Serena Williams took just over an hour beat her sister Venus in straight sets. This was closer than the score looks. Andy Murray then had to battle it out for three hours and more, with Ivo Karlovic, to win a four set match. Murray is by no means a small man, but, slugging it out with the six foot eleven Croatian must be the tennis equivalent of a boxing contest with the giant Italian, Primo Carnera, of the 1930s.

This evening we dined on Jackie’s superb sausage casserole (recipe); creamy mashed potato; and crisp carrots, cabbage, and cauliflower. In celebration of her new shed, Jackie drank one of the small bottles of P. Desroches & Cie Brut Champagne Alison had given us. I drank Teroldego Rotaliano superiore riserva,2011.

A Rash Camellia

While Jackie worked on cold frames this morning, I swept and raked up more leaves.
In England it is now compulsory to provide an inventory of those items to be included in the sale of a house. This prevents sellers from surprising purchasers by removing such as light bulbs, door handles, and other removable fittings before occupation; and makes clear what can be expected to be included. One item written into our contract was: ‘Greenhouse, unassembled’. We thought we might find visible, neatly stacked glass sections heaped up somewhere in the garden. We didn’t. But as we gradually cleared the undergrowth in the back drive we unearthed, partly buried and broken, polycarbonate panels littered about. Maybe that was the greenhouse.
Our head gardener has nurtured many plants in pots and window boxes that can survive cold weather but would perish in frost. She has therefore set about building her protective frames from these sections, from shelving removed from the garage, from large window boxes, and from the bath found at the end of the kitchen garden.
As I used big hands to pick up the leaves, I speculated about whether they would have been helpful in retrieving the 5p piece I dropped yesterday. Probably not. It was more likely that I would have found it as difficult as had the young man on the escalator in July last year.
The nasturtiums in the photograph above should, by now, have been blackened by frost. Just by my left shoulder can be be seen a camellia which has had the rashness to bloom in December, at a time when the cold frames are being deployed to protect smaller plants. It has been suggested that we should cover these wonderful shrubs with some kind of sheeting in order to offer them similar protection. Perhaps that is worth exploring.
In order to represent this flower, I further explored my camera settings. The first facility offers vivid colours, the second to get the best out of portraits, and the third to enable me to adjust the colours myself. This flower is of a delicately striated pink. Which version is preferable?
Within a five or six mile radius of our home there is a surfeit of Chinese takeaways but none where we can sit down to it. It fell upon one in Pennington to provide us with our dinner this evening. Different from the other two we use, it was equally as good. Jackie, who went to collect it, did not register the name. Given that I would wish to convey it to my readers across the world, some might consider this rather remiss. She is, however, so perfect in every other respect, that I think I’ll keep her on a little longer. I finished the Cotes du Rhone and Jackie drank the last of the Pedro Jimenez.

The Gauntlet

When I read Baroness Orczy’s timeless novel, ‘The Scarlet Pimpernel’, I had a vague idea that this was a flower, but didn’t know what it looked like. We have a lovely little orange weed, rather like a forget-me-not in size, that crops up all over the garden. I haven’t been digging it up, because I find it so attractive. I was rather pleased, then, when, this morning, the head gardener informed me that this was scarlet pimpernel.
Different coloured poppies continue to bloom, if only for a day.
We also have nasturtiums, to which snails seem rather partial.
Different hued antirrhinums manage to hold their own with strident pelargoniums.
In the last of today’s plant photographs we have pilosella aurantiaca, otherwise known as orange hawkweed, a plant that in some parts of America and Australia is considered as an invasive species.

Today I completed the clearance of the right hand side of the front driveway that Jackie had begun yesterday.

I uprooted the last of the brambles and pruned most of the shrubs very severely, revealing more flowers, such as the day lilies. Jackie, who embellished the wall with a window box, assures me the heavily pruned growth will burgeon again next year. I certainly didn’t rival her treatment of the mahonia.
Painstakingly, I conveyed to a convolvulus that was making its way up an ornamental cherry tree that its presence was no longer required. Maybe I should have waited for a flower. It may have been a morning glory. I tied up the white rose that had taken to the ground in its bid to escape the other thorny rambler, which has torn holes in the fingers of my gardening gloves and left its mark on those inside.

A new pair, or at least the right hand gauntlet may be in order.

An attractive clematis now quivers in the breeze above the roses on the archway through to the front garden.
Fortunately, our guests of yesterday evening left enough of Jackie’s delicious beef casserole for us to finish it today. Strawberries and ice cream were to follow. I drank some Yellow Tail shiraz 2013, also courtesy of last night.

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.