Tag: petunias

Current Condition

Early on this unusually increasingly cloudy morning, clad in my dressing gown, in silence save for the sough of the unusually warm rushing winds, wandered around the garden with the idea of using the diluted light for photography.

When admiring yesterday’s further clearance work by Martin I had

noticed the amount of blooms gracing Lady Emma Hamilton, and determined to come back today with my camera.

More roses, in the Rose Garden

and elsewhere, are clinging on to summer

in this season of dahlias and

Japanese anemones.

I also admired pink petunias, white myrtle and marguerites, pale lilac crinum lilies, yellow St John’s wort, and red/purple fuchsia Magellanica.

Some areas, like the Pond Bed, the entrance to the Back Drive, and the patio, contain their own range of blooms.

As usual, all the images bear titles in the galleries.

When Jackie noticed me pointing in her direction while she was

working on the patio she hid behind an owl.

By lunchtime the Head Gardener had finished clearing the patio and its surroundings, including refurbishing the Butler sinks. The wind, though now much cooler, persisted in blowing down the pot planted on the water fountain – she had already righted it 5 times before I set it on the ground.

I have chosen to display these blooms in location and current condition.

Jackie rarely uses a recipe and is sometimes reluctant to apply a name to a dish she serves for dinner. So it was today; it was certainly a delicious minced beef sauce containing chillies, onions and stuff on a bed of pasta which probably has a name – it was one of those where you can stick the prongs of your fork into the tubes making it easier to manage than spaghetti. I drank more of the Merlot with mine.

Presenting The Albums

It is almost two months since last we saw a puddle in the gutter alongside our front drive.

After fairly steady rain for most of the morning one built up for a brief appearance (by midday it had drained away). Jackie just had to photograph

it with its raindrop rings; a lesser pool on the patio; further fountain ripples;

more precipitation on pelargoniums, petunias, begonias, hollyhocks and Hagley hybrid clematis.

I, in the meantime finished reading V. S. Naipaul’s ‘A Way in the World’ and, after lunch, posted https://derrickjknight.com/2022/08/16/a-way-in-the-world/

This afternoon, dropping Flo and Dillon off in Lymington, we met Karen and Barry at the Community Centre where we handed them

their completed wedding albums. Jackie took these photographs.

Our friends gave us a thank you card bearing a fond message and a splendid picture someone else had produced of the confetti moment; with tokens for afternoon tea at Rosie Lea, which has become one of our favourite venues.

As we made our farewells Flo and Dillon rejoined us and we did some shopping in the town before returning home.

This evening we dined on a variety of flavoursome sausages; creamy mashed potatoes; firm carrots, cauliflower, and broccoli; cabbage fried with leaks, and tasty gravy, with which Jackie drank Hoegaarden, I finished the Bordeaux, and Flo and Dillon drank Ribena.

Hopping From Seat To Seat

Yesterday I somehow managed to strain my left inner thigh which means walking is out of the question.

Perhaps thirty years ago, as featured in https://derrickjknight.com/2013/01/17/im-only-borrowing-it/ I spent a good hour hopping from seat to seat on an Intercity train when I was commuting from Newark to Kings Cross.

The method proved useful once again today. I couldn’t walk, but I could hop from seat to seat around the garden for a photoshoot. So this is what I did.

These images were produced from a seat in the patio;

these from the Wisteria Arbour;

the Gardener’s Rest yielded just two;

then came the decking;

one from the bench at Fiveways;

a good range from the four various viewpoints in the Rose Garden;

two from the concrete patio;

four from the Heligan Path bench;

two from the Westbrook Arbour;

three from the Nottingham Castle bench;

and finally, petunias in a chimney pot on the lawn seen from its own bench. All the other titles will be available from accessing the galleries.

This evening we dined on Jackie’s succulent beef and onion pie; boiled new potatoes; firm carrots, cauliflower, and broccoli, with meaty gravy. The Culinary Queen drank Hoegaarden, Flo and Dillon drank Ribena, and I finished the Côtes-du-Rhône.

Dad Minding The Babies

Yesterday I had featured the bigger picture of the garden. Today, with the diffused light that comes from overcast skies and is consequently much kinder to photographers

I focussed largely on the individual blooms. As usual, the gallery contains individual titles.

Yesterday a frantic flapping and sounds of a rapid departure from behind the Shady Path trellis alerted me to a nest containing three blackbird’s eggs.

Today a male had returned to mind the unhatched triplets. I didn’t get too close.

Flo weeded paths and Jackie continued planting this afternoon.

This evening we all dined on oven fish and chips, green peas, pickled onions and cucumbers with which Jackie and I both drank Phantom River Chilean Sauvignon Blanc and Becky and Flo didn’t.

Hanging Baskets And Other Containers

The sun shone for a few hours this morning. Thereafter we experienced sudden heavy showers falling from an overcast sky, until all cleared late in the afternoon.

Pulling up a few weeds while carrying out a dead heading session providing me with olfactory delights as I reached into the sweet scented rose bushes was my contribution to garden maintenance whilst Jackie continued with the planting. Such was the rate at which she and Flo have been emptying bags of fresh compost and refilling hanging baskets and other containers we needed a mad dash to Ferndene Farm Shop to buy three more large bags.

Here are some examples of the work in progress.

This evening we dined on Red Chilli Takeaway fare. My main course was Naga Lamb; Jackie’s, Chicken Saag; Flo’s, Makhani Lamb. We shared Paneer Tikka, Saag Paneer, Pilau and Egg fried rices, plain paratha, and peshwari naan. Jackie drank Hofflegen and I drank Castellore Barolo 2017, both brought by Angela yesterday.

“Hello Barbara”

Mum perked up yesterday afternoon. When Elizabeth and Jacqueline arrived she was sitting up in bed, drinking from her own cup. She stayed awake for two hours; conversed lucidly; and consumed a little liquid nourishment, antibiotics, and water. Staff were concerned about her breathing overnight and she is to be given morphine to make her more comfortable.

Early in the evening Jackie photographed her favourite view from the stable door, and two along the Gazebo Path.

For Mothers Day earlier in the year Becky sent her a bouquet from which she has rooted a chrysanthemum in water.

She also pictured this which has been nurtured to produce a flourishing plant and will find its way into a bed next year.

A significant amount of rain fell overnight, refreshing the garden.

I produced a range of random images each of which has its own title in the gallery.

While I was wandering about, Jackie was talking on the phone to our friend Barbara who had telephoned in response to my post of yesterday.

“Hello Barbara”.

This evening we dined on Jackie’s flavoursome sausages in red wine; crisp Yorkshire pudding; creamy mashed potatoes; firm carrots, cauliflower and peas, with which I finished the Rioja whilst the Culinary Queen abstained because she had enjoyed her Hoegaarden on the patio beforehand.

Her Autumn Garden

Jackie spent the day in her element, nurturing

her Autumn garden, which I photographed at intervals. WordPress willing, each of these images is individually titled in the gallery.

Later, I scanned the next four of Charles Keeping’s superb illustrations to ‘Our Mutual Friend’.

‘Composedly smoking, he leaned an elbow on the chimney-piece and looked at the schoolmaster’ displays both arrogance and reserve.

‘Spreading his hands on his visitor’s knees, he thus addresses him’

‘The little expedition down the river’

‘Crouching down by the door and bending over her burden to hush it’

This evening we dined on Hordle Chinee Take Away’s excellent fare, with which Jackie drank more of the Pino Grigio and I finished the Faugeres.

Dank

During the morning of this decidedly dank day Jackie worked on tidying the lawn and its surrounding borders, while I did something similar in the front garden, cleared up debris and fed the compost bins front and back.

Just in time for lunch a downpour sent us indoors. The Head Gardener left her tools outside, so, when I took advantage of a drier period to wander around with my camera, I gathered them up and deposited them in the greenhouse.

A hoverfly wasn’t too bothered about the raindrops on clematis Mrs N. Thompson; other clematises, nasturtiums, Black-eyed Susan, angels wings and day lilies were similarly bejewelled.

Various hanging baskets and other containers are flourishing, well stocked with petunias, lobelias, begonias, and more. Beside the vertical picture of Alan Titchmarsh, deep red Love Knot and lighter hued red carpet rose, are portraits of Ernest Morse and the climber Super Elfin. We have encouraged the honeysuckle to infiltrate the Back Drive from the garden of the adjacent care home. The purple and white Delta’s Sarah is in the patio bed.

Five more chapters read of Charles Dickens’s novel, David Copperfield, carry five more of Charles Keeping’s superb illustrations to my Folio Society edition.

‘She was sitting by the fire, suckling an infant, whose tiny hand she held against her neck’

In ‘We stand around the grave’ the artist chooses to place the burial party in the distance.

‘Away we went on our holiday excursion’

The figures in the foreground, bursting out of the frame of ‘I lounged about the streets, insufficiently and unsatisfactorily fed’ give a typical perspective to Keeping’s street scenes.

Note the artist’s trademark dog in ‘There was a very long-legged young man, with a very little empty donkey-cart, standing near the Obelisk’

This evening we dined on more of Jackie’s hot and spicy pasta arrabbiata with full, firm, and tender green beans, with which she drank Hoegaarden and I drank more of the especially smooth Rioja.

The wind is whipping up, reminding us that tomorrow afternoon we will need to batten down the hatches in the usual manner in preparation for the gale expected to strike early the next morning.

Hunting In Pairs

“The Bishop” was the penultimate story that Anton Chekhov wrote while seriously ill with tuberculosis from which he died at the age of 44. This is a deeply emotional tale of the main character’s life and death, and his effect on family, prelates, and congregations alike. I finished reading it last night, and with it my Folio Society 1974 edition of translator Elisaveta Fen’s selection from the author’s prolific output of short stories.

Fen’s introduction to the book is informative and insightful. She includes a specific section for each story and it was interesting, after almost half a century in which to forget my first reading, to study these pieces after I had revisited their relevant story and to compare my thoughts with hers.

Nigel Lambourne’s occasional full page aquatints are well drawn, but on the heavy side for some of the characters.

It is perhaps appropriate that ‘ ‘Don’t disturb His Eminence,’ Sisoy told Maria’ should be the last of these illustrations.

Much of this warm day was spent on continuing garden maintenance consisting of weeding, pruning, dead heading; and bagging up for removal or adding to the compost bin all the resultant refuse.

Towards the end of the afternoon, while Jackie, sharing views with Florence sculpture, surveyed the fruits of our labour, I wandered round with my camera.

Hanging baskets and other containers now bear, for example, various petunias, geraniums, cineraria, calendulas, hot lips, Erigeron and their shadows.

As can also be seen in the foreground of the Florence picture above, geranium palmatum is prolific throughout the garden. One of our Rosa Glauca bushes blends nicely with the geranium in the first of this pair of photographs.

Here are a few more of our various day lilies, the first bearing a hoverfly.

I traverse paths like the one named Gazebo quite regularly. Today I also ambled along the Back Drive and selected for attention

roses white Félicité Perpétue; a yellow climber; pink Doris Tysterman; paler pink rose from Ringwood’s Pound Shop; and rich red Ernest Morse.

Wedding Day is now coming into flower on the Agriframes Arch which it shares with a deep mauve clematis.

Magpies hunt in pairs in our garden. This evening, as we took our drinks on the patio, the enjoyable, sweet, birdsong was interrupted by

the raucous rasp of these predators communicating their casing of the joint from the branches of the copper beech. All of a sudden they took wing and sped off in another direction. Soon our own avian friends came back to life.

Our dinner consisted of chicken marinaded in a tangy mango and chilli sauce topped with yellow and green peppers and onions; new potatoes; firm cauliflower, and tender green beans, with which Jackie drank more of the New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc and I chose more of the Australian Cabernet Sauvignon.

The Plant Pulley

Today was very hot and sunny. Until fatigue forced me inside I put in

more work on the stones of the Weeping Birch Bed footpath.

It is now possible once more to sit on the chair beneath the tree and look across to the Rose Garden. A raised stone sits in the foreground of this picture. I picked it out of the undergrowth with the intention of using it on the path. When the Head Gardener informed me that it was part of another path leading in the direction of the crow’s flight from the chair, I was somewhat disappointed. Ah, well.

In the Rose Garden we have, among others, Altissimo, foxgloves, Gloriana, Madame Alfred Carriere, and For your Eyes Only.

Red and white mimuluses are blooming in a hanging basket over the Heligan Path; yellow ones in a tub beside the decking.

White petunias share a pot with angels wings, and blue pansies in a hanging basket beside the greenhouse are almost fluorescent.

Planting was again Jackie’s main occupation today. Here she displays a tomato grown from seed.

She has also installed one of Shelly’s Christmas presents, namely a retractable plant hanger which, when attached to the top of the Gazebo can be applied to a hanging basket and retracted to a position giving the required headroom for passing husbands. This one certainly appreciates it.

We have a number of clumps of Erigeron and various peonies.

This evening we dined on Jackie’s flavoursome savoury rice topped with an omelette and served with two preparations of prawns – one tempura with sweet chilli sauce, the other hot and spicy. We both drank Concha y Toro Reserva Casillero del Diablo Sauvignon Blanc 2020.