rape field – derrickjknight

English Bluebell Woods

Late yesterday afternoon we were both too knackered to clear up and put our tools away. The good news about today’s weather forecast is that we will be enjoying steady rain; the bad is that this will come with 60 miles per hour wind by the evening. This meant that we had to be out early this morning making our usual preparations in addition to the said clearing up.

We emptied trugs (WP you’ve got drugs on the brain) containing compostable material and buckets of alliums for bagging separately.

The trugs were then overturned to prevent their being filled with water.

Chairs were laid down gently before the wind did it ferociously.

If you biggify this second image of the scene, and examine the owl’s head you should see Where’s Nugget Junior? (2). While he was interested in what was going on he was not inclined to come any closer.

Paths were swept and hoed.

Beautiful as they are, the Weeping Birch Bed is just one that reminds us we will need to be back on the case soon enough.

Although the wind increased in ferocity we received no rain until early this evening.

Later this afternoon we drove to Keyhaven in search of windsurfers. We found none and therefore turned inland.

The rape fields off Sowley Lane are coming along well, and the oaks beginning to come into leaf.

Ponies grazed on the road ro Burley.

Cattle, blending into the landscape, foraged at East Boldre,

where some of the stumps and fallen trees have been around long enough to host lichen and frame violets.

A number of the roads in the New Forest area have been resurfaced. One of these arrives at the green sited where South Baddesley Road begins. Clearly a troop of donkeys has been engaged to maintain the grass in keeping.

Many of our English bluebells have been replaced or hybridised by Spanish imports. We have all three in our garden, but a number of our woods still contain our home grown variety. The first image in this gallery is alongside Sowley Lane; the rest along South Baddesley Road.

This evening we dined on oven fish and chips, baked beans, pickled onions, and cornichons, with which Jackie drank Hoegaarden and I drank more of the Fleurie.

Walking in Aquitaine

With five more chapters of Little Dorrit under my belt I now present five more of Charles Keeping’s splendid drawings.

‘Mr Flintwinch held the candle to her head’.

‘It was a charming place, on the road by the river’ is reminiscent of the paintings of John Constable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Constable

In ‘He applied spoons to his eye’, Keeping has ably depicted that Young Barnacle had not exactly engrossed the assembled company.

As the artist shows with ‘Now or never was the time to speak to her’ never would have been preferable.

Charles Keeping will not be constrained by the blocks of type on his pages.

‘The brothers, walking up and down the College-yard, were a memorable sight’, gives him the opportunity for a double spread.

This afternoon I scanned and labelled another set of recently rediscovered colour slides. These are from France in April 2009.

During my sojourns in Sigoules I walked many miles in and around the town.

The blossom trees in the first picture were in the garden immediately across rue St Jacques from my front windows; the white blob receding in the far distance of the garden collecting tyres was on regular five mile circuit; for a while cattle in the field behind the supermarket were displaced for development; the church and war memorial are at Ste Innocence, near Eymet; I would pass the ploughed field on another circuitous ramble. What was built on the development site and the trip to Ste Innocence are described in https://derrickjknight.com/2012/06/10/le-code-bar/

I passed these rape fields on my fairly regular 8 mile walk to Eymet. It was probably a little after this particular time that I began to struggle with this one. The general advice when encountering the marathon runners’ “wall” was to run the through the pain. I had never experienced that particular difficulty, but surely, it seemed, the pain in my left hip would benefit from such an effort. Not so. 6 months later I was fitted with a new one. Although I continued walking very quickly after the operation, I never ran again.

Chris, Frances, and Elizabeth were staying with me that spring. We took the opportunity to visit Chris’s long-term friend Mike Ozga and his wife Oonagh who lived about 30 miles away.

A walk in the Dordogne woodland ensued. I wondered whose fossilised skull had been covered in moss.

This evening we reprised Jackie’s scrumptious beef pie dinner with similar beverages.

Where Was Little Boy Blue?

CLICK ON ANY IMAGE IN A GROUP TO ACCESS ITS GALLERY, INDIVIDUAL MEMBERS OF WHICH CAN BE VIEWED FULL SIZE BY SCROLLING DOWN AND CHECKING BOX AT BOTTOM RIGHT

Today was another very dull one, but at least the heavily overcast clouds only dropped a little rain, and we managed a dry run into the forest.

Alongside Sowley Lane a rape field, determined to outclass MacDonald’s Golden Arches, curved round a sheep field newly fenced off with planted saplings against the backdrop of the Isle of Wight.

A troop of cyclists weaved their way around cattle grazing on the verges of the lane, its pools of rainwater reflecting the surrounding trees and bovine browsers.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crxb1uQ5bak&w=560&h=315]

I know it is the wrong season, and the cows are on the verges, but I did wonder where was Little Boy Blue.

By the time we sat down to our evening meal, the sun shone across our garden view. We dined on Tesco’s finest fish pie accompanying Jackie’s finestest colourful ratatouille, runner beans, and cauliflower. I drank Casillero del Diablo Reserva Merlot 2017 and the Culinary Queen drank Hoegaarden

Gold Blends

SHOULD YOU WISH, CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM, REPEATING IF NECESSARY.

Jackie did a great deal of tidying and planting today whilst I carried out a little of the latter.

We suspected that once the landscape bark in the rose garden began to attract live bird food we would need to sweep the brick path on a regular basis. That time is upon us. Like human babies in highchairs, the carnivorous members of our avian population toss out what they are not partial to.

Our camellias bloom at different times.

Whilst this deep red one is at its peak,

a lighter relative fades to meld with the neighbouring Japanese maple;

and these once bright yellow daffodil trumpets have also turned to old gold.

This afternoon I walked to the paddock in Hordle Lane and back.

The golden field visible from our bedroom window

blends in the hedgerow with hawthorn

and like-hued lichen.

This evening we dined on pork rib rack coated in barbecue sauce and Jackie’s excellent vegetable rice followed by Black Forest gateau, with which I drank more of the cabernet sauvignon.

Eric’s Trampling

Even in the restaurant last night, my camera was not safe from Flo’s clutches. Here is a photograph she took of her mother:

For those of you who have suggested the obvious Birthday/Christmas present, we bought one for this talented photographer a couple of years ago, but she didn’t bring it with her this time.

This morning, albeit painfully, I made it a couple of hundred yards to the post box without a stick. Despite the increasing use of e-mails and texts to communicate in writing we still post letters in these historic boxes. How long the increasingly costly service will manage to survive is open to question. Like most of the country’s telephone boxes this one has fallen into disuse. They remain a tourist attraction in London, but elsewhere the mobile phone has rendered the landmark red cabinets largely obsolete.

There is a gap in the hedge alongside the field, through which the farmer gains access between the rows of parked cars. Glass jars had been lobbed into the hedgerow where cherry blossom now blooms.

We have an interesting ornamental cabbage in the garden. I played with maximum saturation on this heavy crop.

The heucheras are now flowering,

which is more than can be said for anything planted under the bird feeders where Eric tramples,

before going on walkabout (photographed by Flo yesterday).

The sausage content of Jackie’s classic casserole comprised chipolatas from Lidl combined with Tesco’s finest pork and red onion. The other usual ingredients contributed to the rich, tasty, sauce. Mashed potato; and crisp carrots, cauliflower, and broccoli were the supporting cast. I finished the cabernet sauvignon, while Becky and Jackie drank a melange of rosés.

Fifty Years Ago Today

This morning Jackie and I had a trip to Highcliffe, last home to so many people that it is full of shops with good quality second-hand goods from houses recently rendered unoccupied by infirmity or death.
We went in search of curtains, of which the Sue Ryder shop provided three good pairs, and the Oakhaven Hospice a fourth. A wardrobe was also a requirement, because Flo is coming to stay in a couple of days time, and we want her to have a choice of bedrooms. This we found in the hospice where, in November 2012, we had bought our serpentine table. It will be delivered on the relevant day. We brunched in the Star cafe.

Should our granddaughter choose one of the bedrooms at the front she will have a view across fields to a rape crop in the distance. The idyllic back garden was visited this afternoon, among other creatures,

by a cabbage white butterfly and a hover fly sharing the sunlight on a hellebore. And is that a caterpillar snaking up between them?

The tulips are now so full-blown that they have a kaleidoscopic quality.

For my fiftieth birthday in July 1992, my friend Giles made me a chequerboard in stained glass. It now enhances the window at the foot of our stairs.

Fifty years ago today Michael was born.

Here Vivien holds him when he was ten days old.

I have given each of my offspring a stack of albums containing photographs of their childhood. When I phoned Michael today, he told me that Alice had produced a slide show from his albums and they were watching it on their computer.

Early this evening I strolled down Downton Lane to investigate the caravan sites, and in particular the shop. Downton Holiday Park is alongside the lane. A larger and more salubrious establishment is the Shorefield Country Park on Shorefield Road. That has a very well stocked Spar, which will be our village shop.

This evening we dined on Tesco’s finest microwaveable curries; lamb rogon josh for me and chicken jalfrezi for Jackie, with Sainsbury’s vegetable samosas heated in the oven. The oven is definitely meant to be low level, because Jackie, who is herself tall, is not high enough to read the symbols on the control dial. I opened a bottle of Isla Negra reserva cabernet sauvignon 2013 and drank some of it.