robin – Page 14 – derrickjknight

Prints For The Exhibition

Whilst Jackie has started on her antibiotics, the virus has come back and bitten me again. I was therefore not up to much today apart from watching the Six Nations rugby matches between Ireland and Italy, and between England and Wales. It was no reflection on the first game that I dozed through much of it.

I also printed up more photographs for the forthcoming exhibition.

Some involved raindrops on roses and

on their leaves,

or on sweet peas.

This bee had a cosmos all to itself;

this one had to share another with a baby spider.

This is an early shot of the Weeping Birch Bed.

Here is a viburnum from 30th March 2015,

and a dove enjoying suet balls the next day.

This robin appeared to be attempting camouflage.

These Japanese anemones were pictured on 9th August 2014,

and these alliums on 12th March 2015.

Hordle Chinese Take Away provided our evening meal with which we eschewed alcohol.

A Day In The Life Of A Tulip

Our own cowslips are now rivalling those in Downton Lane, and in parts are tall enough to force their way through the not yet flowering geraniums.

The long-pile erigeron welcome mat outside the patio doors is beginning to reveal its woven floral motif.

We also have more tulips opened out. In the daytime that is.

Like many sun-loving plants, tulips close up at night. None were awake early this morning, although it was likely that the pink striped yellow ones, not yet open yesterday, would reveal their inner secrets to the sun when it warmed them later.

By mid-day their peeled back protective petals presented their shy stamens to the light.

As the sun departed their corner of the garden during the afternoon, the plants gradually closed, their centres snugly enshrouded for the night.

Flo continued her avian photography.

She caught a long-tailed tit contemplating the suet balls;

her friend, the collared dove, quizzically tilted his head to her;

and an airborne robin imitated a humming bird.

This evening we dined on Jackie’s luscious chicken and egg jalfrezi, egg fried rice, vegetable samosas and naans. The same beverages as yesterday were imbibed, except that Jackie drank sparkling water.

Jackdaws And Chips

Yesterday, Aaron had taken a corner off the new bed to provide a wider turning circle for Jackie on the back drive. Jackie began her day by replanting those items he had had to dig up,

then executing a perfect four point turn.

After this, Peter, Ally, Becky, Ian, and Flo joined us for a breakfast of of coloured boiled eggs, toast, and croissants.

We were running out of Mr Pink’s chips left over from four nights ago. This was alarming.

You may ask why? Well, the pair of jackdaws, if not the most timid avian visitors we have, are certainly the most alert. For several days now, I had attempted to photograph them making off with these fried, but no doubt now rather soggy, titbits that Jackie has been feeding into the food tray. It is only jackdaws that have been retrieving them. Maybe the chips still glisten and are mistaken for jewels.

It has taken only the slightest movement from inside the sitting room as I reached for my camera, or rose to my feet to approach the window for the birds to fly away empty beaked. They were even aware that I was sitting motionless in a chair by the window, my arms aching as I held up my camera. My patience was ebbing fast when the photographic task was taken over by Flo, who claimed to be quicker than me.

Even our granddaughter had to be content with taking some rather good shots of a young collared dove adjusting its position on the central arbour, a cheery robin camouflaged in the shrubbery, and that once ubiquitous, but now now rather rare, specimen, a house sparrow. Perhaps, like other cockneys, this latter bird has decamped to the countryside.

Until she hit on the idea of aiming the lens through a guest bedroom window. Flo had realised that the pair of scavengers surveyed the terrain from the rooftops and, when the coast was clear, took it in turns to swoop down to collect their chips. They must have seen safe passage as a bit of a gamble.

The assembled party lunched on Jackie’s roast lamb dinner. Roast potatoes, parsnips, Yorkshire puddings, cauliflower, green beans, and carrots accompanied a leg and a shoulder of meat. What Ian, an expert on the subject, described as the best mixed fruit crumble with custard and/or cream he had ever tasted. Peter, Ally, Becky, and Jackie drank two different sweet Gallo roses. I drank Alexis Lichine cuvee exceptionelle bordeaux superior 2013. That was enough food for me for the day.

Ian, who drove his parents home soon afterwards, abstained until he returned four hours later.

In Search Of Daylight

Eric, as Jackie has now termed our visiting pheasant, scarpered as soon as I entered the garden this morning, but the less timid robin commandeered the bird feeder, and crows circled the chimney pot. Soon they will be vying for territorial ownership of it.

Through the jungle that is the garden of North Breeze next door, another camellia, looking a bit dog-eared, has thrust upwards in search of daylight,

and our viburnum, now we have opened up the garden, and cut back this plant, has no need to climb so high before blooming.

The stump Aaron has trimmed on the back drive presents glorious golden abstracts.

This afternoon I finished reading the fourth of G.K. Chesterton’s ‘Father Brown’ stories, ‘The Secret of Father Brown’.

Later, when the skies had dulled over, and rain begun to fall, from inside the sitting room, Jackie spotted a goldcrest in the shrubbery. From a good metre our side of the window I pointed my Canon SX700 HS, set on auto, at the bird, which had by then dropped onto paving beneath. I pressed the shutter an instant before it flew off. There was no second chance. The uncropped image above is the whole scene. Beneath it is the cropped version. I publish both, not to display my dubious photography, but in praise of the camera.

Keen to begin watching ‘Agatha Christie’s Marple’ in time to give me a reasonable chance of staying awake, Jackie decided to dictate the description of our evening meal. ‘We had the same as yesterday and Jackie drank water’, she said. Who am I to argue?

A Time Check

We all like a camomile lawn. In the right place. What is not so attractive is an onion lawn in the wrong place. Jackie has been working her way along our paths eradicating smelly alliums self-seeded and creating such a carpet. With their heady aroma permeating my nostrils, I took a hoe to a section this morning, without the aid of my stick. The bulbs didn’t all emerge, but I wasn’t about to get down on my knees to dig them out. I took a short break to photograph the delicate pastel shades of the peeling eucalyptus bark. The wheels were generously left behind by the previous owners.

Peering through the shrubbery, I admired Becky and Ian’s Christmas clock on the wall of the house.

Unaware that a blue tit behind it was making a beeline for the feeder, a robin popped down to check the time.

On the side wall outside the kitchen the leaden Lucille Scott hat bought at The First Gallery now sprouts pansies.

Slight constipation is one of the side effects of Co-codamol. When she returned from shopping Jackie brought back something she thought might relieve it. My friend John should approve of the brand.

Answering an advertisement in Streetlife, Jackie drove us to the donor of 725 small paving blocks which should be just the job for our rose garden. Most of the concrete and bricks dug out of the former kitchen garden have been used elsewhere. I then confirmed with Aaron that he could transport them in his van tomorrow.

This evening Jackie fed us on roast gammon, piquant cauliflower cheese (recipe), and crisp carrots and green beans followed by Aunt Bessie’s rhubarb crumble and custard. She (Jackie, not Aunt Bessie) drank sparkling water, and I finished the Chateauneuf-du-Pape.

‘…..Or Grandpa Photographing A Leaf’

We enjoyed another gloriously sunny day. The sky and seas were both clear blue. It was nippy in the shade, but the sun was warming, as I took my usual walk to Hordle Cliff top, where the browns and ochres of the hillside brambles and the shining shingle contrasted well with the brilliant blues.

The Solent had looked most inviting from Downton Lane, where a row of mirror glass had been laid along the pitted footpath through Roger Cobb’s maize fields.

The Shorefield rooks are becoming more vociferous, and distant houses shimmered as I walked along the path to the beach.

Robins are territorial creatures, so the one I stalked from stalk to stalk among the brambles was probably the one I have photographed before on that same area of the clifftop.

I exchanged greetings with a passing jogger and his dog I now see quite regularly on the coast road.

Another customary acquaintance is a gentleman with a little dog which befriended a woman and a little boy who walked down the steps to play at the water’s edge.

Further lengthy conversations somewhat extended the timescale of my outing. The first was with a very gregarious woman who was checking the times posted at the bus stops in the jogger picture. With her pass it is worth her while to visit Waitrose where, if she spends £5 in the shop she can enjoy a free coffee and a copy of the Daily Mail newspaper.

After this, I met Roger outside Hordle Manor Farm, now occupied by his son Matthew and his family, who had indeed rescued Scooby on 17th August last year. He also told me that the lake I had photographed filling his field eleven days ago had now disappeared. This is apparently quite a regular occurrence.

In the car yesterday, Becky had described the 2012 film ‘The Sweeney’, in which a far more thuggish, twenty first century, Ray Winstone reprises John Thaw’s Jack Regan role. The eponymous TV series of the 1970s was iconic. ‘Sweeney!’ (1977) and ‘Sweeney 2’ (1978) were feature length cinema spin-offs. Our daughter, who had watched it with Flo, described an amazing car chase through a single lane winding ‘tree tunnel’. Becky had speculated about what could happen if various pedestrians, such as an old lady walking her dog, had been the other side of one of the bends. Flo had finished off the list with: ‘Or Grandpa photographing a leaf’. It just had to be done, didn’t it? The title, incidentally derives from ‘Sweeney Todd’ (the demon barber of Fleet Street), cockney rhyming slang for the Flying Squad. The way this verbal device works is to take a two or three word phrase and just use the first one as the required term. Another example is Plates (of meat) for Feet.

This evening we dined on Jackie’s excellent fusilli and tagliatelle Bolognese followed by lemon tart, with which we both drank water and I finished the Cotes du Rhone Villages.

Crunchy Cottage Pie

On a mild, dank, morning a friendly robin trilled a greeting from a neighbour’s birch tree, encouraging me to take my walk to Hordle Cliff top and back.

The daddy longlegs that had splatted against the bus shelter window during the summer is well on the way to becoming fossilised.

By the time I returned through Shorefield Country Park, the skies had cleared to reveal a splendid sunny day.

The rest of the 1982 black and white images that I scanned yesterday involve a stay in the Drapers’ home in Meldreth, and another with Maggie and Mike in Southwell. As far as I remember Jessica and I were house-sitting at ‘The Dumb Flea’ in Meldreth, so named after the Tudor public house it had been before its current extensions.

Matthew and Becky, who are seen here holding baby Louisa, decided to cook cottage pie for our evening meal. Having worked away in the hot kitchen, the two red-faced, glowing, children proudly placed the dish on the table and we all eagerly tucked in. The mashed potato topping was appropriately crisp and soft, but the filling was a little crunchy. And some. When Julie and Peter returned they explained the reason. They kept dogs. The children had used dog mince which must have been three quarters bone.

After their London wedding some years previously, Jessica and I had not seen Maggie and Mike until I ran my first Newark half marathon later in 1982. We visited them, not dreaming that five years later we would move to Lindum House. The story of the renewal of our friendship is told in ‘Mordred’.

We will miss the Emsworth family who returned home this evening. Becky sent a text saying ‘Look at moon’, so we did. It was full, with a halo and balanced the rear lights of cars speeding along the darkness of Christchurch Road.

Egg, bacon and chips was the perfect meal for anyone wishing to come down to earth from an extended festive season. That is what we ate this evening.

Our Christmas Fairy

Our fairy helper was very busy overnight, embellishing every corner of the house with Christmas decorations. Here is a selection:
One string above the photograph of Flo on the sitting room wall is particularly pertinent to the season. Beginning with our granddaughter’s first conscious Christmas Jackie, for a number of years, produced an annual fairy dress for her. This, the second, was the first of a series Granny actually made from scratch. As the festive season progressed, her tiny tummy expanded, and the garment became gradually tighter, but the little fairy adamantly refused to take it off.

Ragged robin straggled among fallen autumn leaves on Downton Lane when I took my Hordle Cliff top walk this morning. Apart from the presence of its avian namesake perched on a clifftop post it was hard to believe that this was mid-December in Albion.
Two pairs of mallards scooted along the Shorefield stream, where I had to be quick to take this shot.
Feeling rather smug at having written half our Christmas cards in time for second class post this afternoon, I flourished my fountain pen, the top of which flew across the room and under the sofa. This meant, I thought, a painful grovel underneath for its retrieval. Our lithe Christmas fairy, however, was much more up (or down) to the task, and fished it out for me.
This evening Becky and Ian came to stay the night and take Flo home tomorrow. We all dined on Jackie’s superb roast lamb meal followed by rice pudding covered in raspberry jam and/or evap. I finished the Madiran, Jackie drank Hoegaarden, Ian Leffe. Becky drank rose wine and Flo J2O.

Fag Ends

Benjamin Renouf and Tony of Abre Electrical arrived on time this morning to fit a new fusebox, run a power cable to the kitchen from the upstairs circuit, and generally check over our supply. They were quiet, efficient, and wasted no time, although they were here all day. I would certainly use them again.
I spent the morning further clearing the front garden. This involved the usual uprooting and pulling out bramble and ivy, and heavy pruning of overgrown shrubs.

By noon I had a large pile to be added to the vast, constantly growing heap at the far end of the garden.
Before lunch I trudged down to the postbox and back. A trudge was all I could manage.

After lunch I took a break and watched the birds. The avian activity was fascinating. Some were prepared to share the feeding station with others. The robin and the great tit seemed unfazed by the other’s presence. A young blackbird, however, was most disgruntled at the invasion of its territory by a starling. After it had seen off the rival, it turned around and began to scoff.
It was fascinating to follow a blue tit’s progression from the netting to the seeds.
The crow has desisted from trying to clamber onto the feeder. Other birds, like this female blackbird, a little larger that those others depicted, flap around somewhat, as they have trouble landing.
The strong sunlight revealed the inner nature of honesty:
and lit attractive patterns on the geranium palmatum, such that it was tempting to play around with the image:

or perhaps not. One can’t really improve on nature.
Throughout the day, Jackie continued with her creative planting, weeding and watering. This involved the removal of some heavy stones with her Time Team trowel.
While we sat on the patio before dinner, Jackie mentioned how some visitors had ground their cigarette ends into her grass and patio paving whilst sitting in her garden. This took me back to one summer in the late 1980s in Newark, and to Lincolnshire N.S.P.C.C. I was facilitating some team-building days for this staff team in Lindum House. Before the ban on smoking in the workplace, I ensured that there was a plentiful supply of ash trays in the rooms being used. No-one smoked. Yet after each break period the trays were filled with dog ends. When I asked why this was, I was informed that the smokers had all enjoyed their cigarettes in the garden, but had brought the stumps inside so as not to spoil the garden.
After this chat, Jackie collected fish and chips from Ashleigh’s, and we ate them at home. I finished the Bordeaux with mine.

A Result

Today being Jackie’s birthday, her choice of activity was to work in the garden. Oh joy.
We managed to postpone finishing off yesterday’s task by going on an arch hunt. Otter Nurseries in Everton didn’t have metal ones; Everton Nurseries had some but they were too small; so we went off in the opposite direction to Stewart’s in Christchurch where we had seen the very thing when we bought the tower/obelisk. Albeit more expensive than the Gardman product, this was much more robust and exactly the right size.
They only had the model on display. We could have it with a 25% discount because it was the last one, and a bit dusty. The very helpful young man dismantled it for us and helped us into the car with it. I commented that it was a pity we didn’t have a bigger car then he wouldn’t have had to dismantle it and we wouldn’t have to reassemble it. Jackie commented that her drive was much easier than had been the one with Elizabeth’s rose arch occupying all three passenger seats and part of hers. We had bought that at the Bishop’s Waltham Garden Fair in May 2012. It did not come flat-packed, as it had been handmade by a local craftsman. There was no room for passengers in the car, so Jackie had to drive alone with the lanky rustic creation attempting to cuddle her all the way to The Firs.
The trip to Otter Nurseries wasn’t exactly wasted because they had a special offer on four bags of gravel, so we bought some.
Straight after lunch I attacked the lonicera, brambles, and ivy once more. Yesterday I showed you what the view over the fence looks like.

This is what the lonicera looks like through the remnants of fence after I have hacked it back:
Again, a sister and brother in law provided an opportunity to take a break, by making a visit. This was Shelly and Ron who also brought more of the plants they have been fostering.

All the flowers, including these geraniums, have thrived through a comparatively mild winter under Shelly’s attention.
Ron, having broken his heel, was somewhat restricted, but I was able to take Shelly round the garden. Among all the other interesting

specimens we have, the Chinese lantern tree is now in full bloom, and a red climbing rose enhances the back of the house.. While Jackie joined Shelly on her tour, I sat and chatted to Ron.

The bird feeders have now been erected and he and I watched a young robin trying them out.
Before and after enjoying our visitors’ company I tackled the undergrowth behind the broken arch,and Jackie cleared the front, and fully exposed the edge of the path. The Virginia creeper and all the brambles mentioned yesterday had choked and obscured a very leggy climbing rose which possesses one red bud.
Before attempting to reassemble the new gothic arch, we needed to untangle, and free from the surrounding vegetation, the creeper and the rose. We decided to give the Virginia climber a most severe skinhead haircut in order to allow the rose to toss out its tresses. Jackie climbed the stepladder to tie up the limbs. The arch was fairly straightforward to put together, a little less so to set astride the path. But we managed it and are very pleased with the result. In fact, in football parlance, to obtain the last one the store was ever going to stock, at such a discount, was in itself a result.

This photograph was taken from the Heligan Path, which would not have been possible much more than a week ago. Yesterday, the large tree to the left of and behind the climbers on the arch, was obscured by undergrowth, as was the metal rail and knotted jumble behind that, which is the subject of the first picture above. Incidentally, this clearance seems to be adding about four feet to the width of our shrubbery.
Dinner this evening was delicious chicken jalfrezi (recipe) with mushroom rice and vegetable samosas accompanied by Cobra beer.