Although it wasn’t to last long, we awoke to our first proper frost of the season
Jackie photographed the panoramic views from the dressing room and from the garden bedroom upstairs.
She then toured the garden and brought back this gallery of images. As usual titles are given on accessing the gallery with a click on any of the pictures. The sun soon brought the temperature up and each one of the wilted plants on display had returned to its full glory by midday.
This evening we dined on Jackie’s splendidly matured succulent sausage casserole; creamy swede and potato mash; crunchy carrots and cauliflower; tender curly kale; and red cabbage imbued with the piquancy of vinegar and soy sauce.
I couldn’t resist nipping out this morning to photograph the dawn skies. When Jackie opened the bedroom curtains she saw what she later described as ‘this loony standing in the middle of the road in his dressing gown and slippers. He must have been freezing’. The first two pictures above are looking down Christchurch Road at the front of the house. The others are from the back garden.
The wind was eerily still after several weeks raging.
Even the Ballerina just outside the rose garden held a motionless pose.
Sub-Zero temperatures overnight have not killed off the pelargoniums, although some are looking a little crinkly at the edges;
and their hardier relatives, geranium palmatums having been fooled, by the earlier temperate weather, into a fresh flush of flowers, remain resilient.
This morning, Aaron and Robin completed the pruning of the griselinia hedge,
then cut down a self-seeded beech tree that was threatening our neighbour’s fence. In cutting inserts for rain, Aaron had a stab at engraving his own initials.
I pasted the recycling section into the garden album, and printed up the next section.
This evening we dined on chicken and bacon pasta bake, cauliflower, carrots, and green beans, followed by Post House Pud. My choices of filling for the meringue nest were lemon cheesecake and vanilla and toffee ice cream. In case you are wondering, that wasn’t a great mix. I drank Bardolino classico 2013.
The blackbird still sits on her nest. Peering through shrubs at a safe distance, sometimes her bright little eyes are visible to the viewer, sometimes her upturned tail.
Today’s task for me was to clear one bed of brambles and other unwelcome growth. Simple enough for a day’s work. I thought. In fact the wild blackberry bushes were the least of my problems. As I began to feel my way into the undergrowth I came across a number of previously unseen plants. One was a heavily-budded passion flower which had become entwined in a hebe, and, of course brambles. The necessary disentanglement was a most delicate operation. Having carried out the surgery I gave it a leg-up by means of netting attached to a metal post set in concrete that Jackie had found elsewhere in the garden. Another such climber had clung to the weeping branches of the birch tree, but had many stems trailing in and out of the bed grasping at anything in its path. Further similar treatment was required. This time the netting was strung between two wooden stakes. Two types of tree that are abundantly self-seeded in this garden are hawthorn and bay. There was one of each in this bed, their roots, as always, taking shelter among those of other plants; in this case the weeping birch and some lilies that have not yet flowered.
I had no chance of reaching them unless I removed the wooden bed head nailed to the tree. No doubt this once had a decorative purpose of sorts. I couldn’t prise it off. Once the rust had been scoured off the nailhead it turned out to be a screw, so dilapidated as to be bereft of a slot. I tried to make one with the trusty hacksaw. I couldn’t get it deep enough. Then along came Superwoman, who saw that if we removed the rickety slats and the other end, we could leave the post where it was. D’oh! That is what we did. I dug out the offending trees and replaced the rest of the bed head. Two of the joints had by now disintegrated, so nails will have to be used, when I have bought some of sufficient length. In order that it does have a decorative function, I optimistically fed a passion flower stem through the secure bit. Jackie speaks of the June gap, which is that unproductive time between the finishing of the spring flowers and before the arrival of those of the summer. The planting here has been so well planned that there is no such hiatus.
I took a break after lunch and photographed water lily, philadelphus, roses, petunias, diasca, pelargonium, begonia, poppies, verbascum, rodgersia, and clematises which are just a few of those we currently have flowering.
Our blackbird is still awaiting the emergence of her chicks. Not so the owl in my friend Hari’s tree. Her two are about three weeks old, and able to reach the ground, but do need to be returned to their Mum. If I am able to photograph our fledglings I am confident that my pictures would not be as striking as the one Hari e-mailed me today. She believes the creature was displaying a mind of its own when it stared back at its rescuer. I rather like her term for a baby owl, especially one with attitude, which has provided today’s title. This evening’s meal was Jackie’s beef and mushroom pie with mashed carrots, swede, and potatoes; and crisp cauliflower and broccoli. Tiramisu ice cream was to follow. Jackie drank Hoegaarden and I finished the tempranillo. If you have a shop that can sell you ready prepared pastry and have saved enough beef casserole (recipe) you, too could make the pie. Simply drain off the sauce from the casserole and use it as gravy; roll out the pastry, insert the filling into it, and bake it in the oven for about half an hour on 200. The chef, when pressed for her timing, said: ‘Oh, I don’t know, I didn’t time it, I just stood and looked at it until it was the right brownness’. I don’t expect she did this for the whole time, but I think that gives you the idea.
