Tag: Owl House Garden

A Good Clean Up

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A couple of Christmases ago Becky gave me a little wallet of visiting cards for this blog. She knew I have a penchant for talking to people on my wanderings, and that, particularly if I had photographed them, they sometimes asked for the WordPress details. On these occasions I would fish around in my pockets, find, like David Jason’s Jack Frost, an old receipt or shopping list, write the details on the back, and hand it over. Becky gave me a more professional air. A few days ago, I handed my last card to Peter, who had stopped to ask directions which Jackie provided with the aid of an Ordnance Survey map.

blog-cards

Our daughter has sent me a pdf by e-mail, providing a sheet of ten cards. All that was required of me was to print the image and guillotine the cards. Becky made her selection from pictures on a variety of posts. Unbeknown to me, she has been noting prospective new ones for a further set when she gets a round tuit.

Among the debris on my desk was a little envelope containing two stray colour slides believed to have been lost until I found them a while ago. Today I decided to identify and scan them.

Derrick and Sam 5.81

The first one was easy. It was Sam and me in May 1981 on a visit to The Owl House garden. I haven’t been able to establish its location, but my recollection is somewhere near Tunbridge Wells. Perhaps my memory is playing tricks. (Overnight, I remembered. The garden is at Lamberhurst in Kent. It was there that I took the photograph I adapted for the drawing for the cover of the Family Service Unit annual report for 1980/1981)

Mum R and Becky 8.70

The ribbon in her hair identifies the baby in Jackie’s mother’s tender arms as Becky, sometime in August 1970, when she was about a week old. Mum Rivett was standing at the bottom of her garden of Westbrook, Shrewsbury Road, Beckenham. This is just half the image that required considerable retouching because the muck all over it meant a good clean up was in order. I have made our daughter a print.

This evening we dined on Jackie’s piquant cauliflower cheese; tangy smoked haddock; creamy mashed potato, carrots and swede; and crisp broccoli. I drank Cepa Lebrel reserva rioja 2012.

Spot The Dummies

Before tackling shelf-filling again I took a wander round the garden. I here present two plants for my readers, please, to identify. The first is the white one originally featured on 28th April:White unidentified plant
It is from a bulb and has trefoil petals. Maybe this photograph will aid recognition better than the last.Allium

Secondly, can anyone name this allium?

Zola novelsAnother complete day in the library probably progressed the project, although at times it looked as if we had more boxes to empty than we had when we started. However, by lunchtime the Zola novels were in place. This gave impetus to the afternoon’s work, and poetry, plays, literary criticism, and history were all on their shelves by early evening. We might have been even quicker had we not kept coming across more containers labelled history, and another of poetry and plays just when we thought they were all done.

The discovery of the day for me was an annual report cover. In the 1970s and ’80s I was a member of the `Committee of the Queens Park Family Service Unit. I designed several of the covers of the Charity’s Annual Report. As with other drawings for such purposes, I never kept the originals which were retained by the organisations concerned. One summer, a few years ago, I found myself walking past the said FSU and popped in to see if they had a spare copy of a particular publication. I was told that the unit was moving the following week and I could help myself from a box of annual reports that were about to be binned.Sam as cover 1981

I couldn’t believe my luck when I found exactly what I was looking for. This was the annual report for 1980-1981, featuring Sam reaching for a daisy being handed to him by Jessica. Our son is on the back, with the two hands on the front. The drawing is taken from a black and white photograph taken late in 1980 at the Owl House Garden at Lamberhurst in Kent. The Annual Report is a bit grubby and I have left it that way.

I thought I had lost it again, and found it sandwiched between two history books.

There has been the occasional moment when Jackie has politely requested that I remove myself from her china shop. This I believe is a reference to the phrase ‘like a bull in a china shop’ applied to someone who rushes in without thinking and messes everything up. It seems a little unfair to me, but I have to admit that Shelly reminded me yesterday that she had witnessed one such event. We have some tiles on the kitchen wall which had been covered en bloc by a large sheet of cork tiling. we thought this ugly, so I took the said bull by the horns and started stripping it off. We then discovered what the cork was doing there. There were two tiles missing.

Tiles & dummiesThe glue used to stick the offending cork in place was pretty strong, so there were bits of it stuck to the remaining tiles. This bull had, in fact, made a right pig’s ear of it.

Among my art materials is a stock of variously coloured card, and an assortment of pastels. Jackie has used some of these to produce dummy tiles, and fixed them in place with contact patches made from carpet tape.

Are you able to spot the dummies?

This evening’s dinner consisted of a delicious liver casserole Jackie produced, with crisp carrots, cauliflower and boiled potatoes in their skins. Afterwards we enjoyed a Post House Pud. This is what I erroneously called Post House Mess yesterday. In my defence I submit that it is prepared in the same way as The Firs Mess. It has now been given the benefit of alliteration. One of today’s ingredients was breakfast apricots from a tin. I don’t suppose it matters that we consumed them at the other end of the day.