‘I Can’t Put A Ticket On That’

BlackbirdBlackbirds have begun to visit the bird feeder without flying off at the first sign of a human.  Until comparatively recently they would stand on the bay hedge beneath the goodies, patiently waiting for spillage from the other birds.  Now they take their own place at the table.

Jackie's garden

Leaving Jackie’s corner garden behind, we drove to The Firs for a weeding session.

There was a star shaped crack in the centre of the windscreen, fortunately well clear of the MOT failure position.  This had been inflicted last week by a stone thrown up by an overtaking vehicle on the motorway.  It needed repairing, so we stopped at Sainsbury’s superstore in Hedge End, where Screen-Care UK, in the form of Ryan, did an excellent. efficient, and friendly, job.  Screen-Care UKWatching the young man perform with a kind of injection needle, it occurred to me that his arms were quite accustomed to needles.

Forget-me-nots

Weeding required in scented bedForget-me-nots flourished throughout The Firs garden, and the amount of weeding required was daunting, especially in last year’s new beds, now sprouting rich new grass.  The three of us worked on the beds and made some impact.

Weeded bedThe fledgeling robin we had seen last year was now an adult, and certainly appreciated the work on the scented bed. Robin This little bird was enjoying a few worms and seemed to be using grass to clean his teeth.

Geoff with eucalyptus crossI described the moving of the eucalyptus on 13th September last year; and the first useful purpose found for it on 5th of this month.  Elizabeth’s creative friend Geoff has been commissioned to make a cross with some more of this dead tree.  He showed us the result, which has a pleasing flowing shape.  He still has some of the wood.  Watch this space for any further artefacts.

Gardening over for the day, we repaired to Eastern Nights for the usual excellent meal; Cobra, and Tiger beer.  The conversation turned to classic cars Dad had owned, a Singer Hunter and a Daimler.  This led me to relate a story about Rob and his Jaguar 240 g which had been beautifully restored with a wonderful dark green paint job.  On one of the family visits to Newark, possibly twenty years ago, I found myself with my then brother-in-law in a shop in the town with the ‘marvellous toy ‘ parked outside  where it shouldn’t have been.  We emerged into the daylight to see a traffic policeman, pad in hand, scratching his head in bewilderment.  As Rob unlocked the vehicle, the man, full of wonder, asked ‘Is this yours?’.  When the owner replied in the affirmative, the constable said, with awe, ‘Well, get it out of here.  I can’t put a ticket on that!’.

Meetings With Remarkable Trees

As I prepared our morning coffee in the kitchen, watching the early nuthatch enjoying his breakfast, ‘The Red Baron’ swooped, like a kamikaze pilot, with deadly aim.  The robin’s beak would have been buried in the side of his enemy, had not the milder creature taken off sharpish.

A baby rabbit sat on the grass outside the kitchen door, contemplating Jackie’s new planting, scuttling under the robin’s hedge at the sight of her, probably having thought she was Mr. McGregor.  This means we will need to put netting over the anti-deer railings, buried, according to Matthew, to a depth of six inches.  Later in the day Jackie dismantled her elegant railing structure, lifted the bricks at the bottom, and disturbed half a dozen ants’ nests.  Which, especially as that meant a trip to buy ant powder, was dispiriting.  After going off for the deterrent, she didn’t much feel like starting on the reinforcement today, which, as I would have to do the digging, didn’t exactly fill me with dismay.  So I put everything back as it was, well dusted with powder, ready for the job to be done tomorrow.

In ‘Our Shrinking World’, published on 28th April, I wrongly attributed a picture taken by Elizabeth about ten years ago.  Today I corrected this and took the opportunity to amend the text.

Berry measuring oak tree

On this glorious morning I went on a Woodland Trust Ancient Tree Hunt expedition with Berry.  When she asked me the date, and I replied that it was the first of May, she cried ‘rabbits’,  so I told her what Jackie had seen earlier.  All within half a mile of our homes we plotted five oak trees and a beech, all of which Berry will submit to the Trust for verification.  I took most of the photographs which will accompany details of Berry’s discoveries. Beech tree Oak tree 3Three oaks were within a stone’s throw of each other in the approach to Castle Malwood Farm, on the other side of the underpass.  Two more were at Seamans Corner. The beech was alongside our Upper Drive.

To qualify for this national collection trees must be of a certain age, assessed by their girth; or have some other remarkable feature.  One, for example, that we didn’t have time for today, is an oak tree growing out of a beech.  There is no hurry, for it is not going anywhere.

Oak tree 5We have to plot a precise grid reference; measure the girth of the tree at the lowest point; and indicate the height at which the measurement was taken.  The tree has to be named, and described in some detail.  There are terms such as ‘maiden’ or ‘pollard’ which aficionados recognise as descriptive of the treatment or otherwise of the growth.  I’m not quite sure I have grasped their true significance.  Details of the condition of the trunk and branches, such as any dead wood on or beneath the tree, or any holes therein.  Moss, lichen, ivy, fungi, and honeysuckle were all noted; as were any particular points of interest,Oak tree 5 (2) such as the beauty of the shape of the oak outside Eugenia Cottage.  The tree does of course have to be named, and we need to say whether it is alive or dead, standing or fallen.

Pipes and gravelBerry was amused at my tendency to go off on a tangent and take photographs of such as a couple of pipes lying on gravel because I liked the symphonic colour.  This diversion tended to puzzle John Turpin when we were taking the pictures for ‘The Magnificent Seven’.

Near the farm, the cry of a buzzard alerted us to the sight of two crows chasing it off.

Today’s title has been borrowed from the BBC television series and Thomas Pakenham’s book of photographs.

Our dinner was Jackie’s liver and bacon casserole, complemented, in my case, by Piccini Montepulciano D’Abruzzo riserva 2010.  The meal was completed by sticky toffee pudding with custard for me, and cream for Jackie.

Have I Simply Gone Mad?

Robin and bluetitA robin and a blue tit saw off a nuthatch from the bird station.  Really it was the robin who did the business, the tit being like the little kid who eggs on the bully to snatch some of the glory.  The robin then stood guard, looking threatening, while the tit, knowing he didn’t belong in the same space as the toughie, head deferentially bowed,  waited his turn. Modern technology found a wonderful new way to send me ballistic this morning.  We received a phone call from the handyman who is to fix a few things in the flat.  One item was not on his list.  Since, without the agent’s say so he could not fix it, unless we contacted them we would need to continue flushing the lavatory with a piece of string which gets soggy if you drop it in the water. Rob, the handyman, asked us to call the agent.  That was when the fun started.  After dialling the number I was asked by a machine to enter my password.  Well, how do you do that on a mobile phone?  I also had an e-mail telling me the device would not receive messages because the password was incorrect. Thinking this may have been to do with my having reset my e-mail password on the BT account, I followed the directions given to do that.  I was not allowed to do it that way, so I tried another.  The new password was rejected, and the phone locked. Now, my mobile phone is on an O2 account, as my regular readers will already know.  The home phone, in Jackie’s name, is a BT account.  So you will be able to imagine my surprise, and mild expletives, when I got the same password request on the home phone.  My expletives became even milder when Jackie got the same response on her pay as you go T-mobile. Eventually, I received a call from the home phone on my mobile.  Jackie had now discovered that that had begun to work without the machine’s interference, as had her mobile.  I could now receive calls, but access nothing else on my locked phone. There are seventeen apartments in this building.  During this fiasco our entry buzzer was activated.  Hoping it was our Rob, Jackie answered the door to a deliveryman who was trying to access number 15.  Ours was one of only two buzzers he had managed to get to work. Rob arrived in good time.  He was unable to access the loo until I got out of the bath.  My ablutions had been delayed by the shenanigans.  Whilst soaking comfortably I contemplated ‘Murder In The Lounge’, posted on 25th August last year.  That story was about a cat fight.  What I didn’t mention then was that the people next door were out when I returned the perpetrator’s collar, so I put that through the letterbox and left an answer phone message.  My neighbours did not receive the message, and what is more, their entry phone did not take messages.  Nevertheless, as I pressed the buzzer, a machine from inside the hall asked me to leave a message.  So I did, and when I heard nothing more from my neighbours whose cat, after all, had left my sitting room looking like a pile of feathers after a predator had made a kill, I thought that rather churlish of them. So, did that buzzer short circuit with the telephone, or was the timing pure coincidence?  And, if that was possible, could the deliveryman, trying all the buzzers in turn, have managed the same thing?  It was, after all, only after he left that Jackie managed to use the phone.  Or have I simply gone mad? Birch on lawnDerrick's shadowNever mind, I thought, the birch on the lawn now sports fresh green leaves, and the sun casts its rays through our huge mullioned windows. There was, however, nothing remotely amusing or cheerful about the way the rest of the morning was spent.  I was rash enough to telephone O2 about the locked phone.  First of all the advisor suggested the earlier problem must have been related to the number we were trying to ring.  That made sense to me.  She then took me through the very lengthy process of unlocking my mobile.  I had to enter, ten times, the password that kept showing up as incorrect.  She could then reset it for me, but all the information carried by my phone would be wiped.  I did this, and watched all my contact information; e-mails; saved messages; texts; and anything else I haven’t thought of, represented by a black line progressing across the screen.  Twice.  When she reset it, the password I had been using all along worked.  Perhaps I have gone mad. This is exactly why I have always been reluctant to keep all information in my mobile phone’s memory.  But I’ve often been a bit lazy in this respect.  So, if you ever want to hear from me again, please send me an e-mail with your contact details.  If I don’t receive any of these, I will know where I stand, and I just don’t know what I’ll do with myself. After lunch, with all this buzzing in my head, Jackie drove us to Elizabeth’s, where she continued planting bulbs and seeds and I cut the grass.  This was slightly problematic in that I couldn’t get the mower going again.  I was just about to throw in the towel, when, realising that would only clog up the works even more, I remembered Elizabeth’s technique, displayed on 20th, of pushing the machine along, jerking it up and down.  A few yards of shoving what looked like a giant snail with hiccups did the trick. Rhododendrons We were pleased to see the early, red, rhododendron has benefited from the bracken compost and the removal of diseased buds last summer.  Before I could put my mind to this, I gleaned some family phone numbers from my sister and inserted them into my mobile.  If you are a family member do not assume I now have all your details. Danni cooked a superb roast chicken dinner with all the trimmings for the four of us.  Pudding was apple and blackcurrant pie.  Danni and I drank McGuigan Estate shiraz 2012; Jackie drank Hoegaarden; and Elizabeth drank water.

Best Before

Seated with our coffees in the arbour this morning, Jackie and I noticed that the area around the bird bath was alive with tits and other birds.  They were in and out of the bath, but mostly flitting and swooping from shrub to tree.  We thought this must be because it is a seed season.

This prompted us to drive out to In-Excess in Ringwood.  We had noticed this on our recent trip to Helen and Bill’s.  Here we found a first-rate garden centre very reasonably priced.  We had gone for squirrel-proof bird feeders and birdseed.  We found them.  Take Jackie to a garden centre and she fills the car up with plants.  I thought I was bad enough with bookshops.  Today was no exception.  We came back with more than enough to fill the new bed.

Before returning, we had lunch in the centre’s tea rooms.  All the staff here were very friendly and helpful.  They even guided us through the maze that led to the hidden loos.  The young woman who brought Jackie’s baked potato and my Full English breakfast made us feel that it was a real pleasure for her.  There was ample room for a gentleman in a wheelchair to manoeuvre himself to a table and settle himself comfortably for his meal.

One of the bags of birdseed we had bought was specifically designed for robins.  Our robin, clearly preferring fresh food, stayed with the woodlice and slugs disturbed by our tidying up the remaining unused sections of brick pillar.  Another swooped from tree to tree from another direction, landed on the feeder and flew away.  Maybe he thought the swinging container a bit unstable.  Maybe our presence put him off.  Maybe he feared being seen off by the robin who has claimed this as his territory.  We hung two feeders on the pergola, and two on the tree by the pond.  Later, our own robin, now sporting a fine adult red breast, took possession of his new feeder and gratefully chomped away.

Jackie spent the afternoon planting our new acquisitions, especially those for the bed I created yesterday.  While she did this I began a print-out of my blog posts which I intend to bind and present to Mum for her 90th. birthday in October.

This evening Jackie presented us with more left-overs soup; shepherd’s pie; and, in my case, bread and butter pudding, in the ladies’, lemon souffle.  Elizabeth and I drank Namaqua 2011, and Jackie, Hoegaarden.

During conversation, we spoke of best before and sell-by dates.  Knowing that the provenders are bound to be on the conservative side, I tend to rather dismiss these precautions, preferring to rely on my nose.  I did this in 2006 in Newark, when I found a jar of Indian chutney at the back of a kitchen cupboard.  This had been shipped over to this country.  I could tell that because even the script on the original label was unintelligible to me.  Pasted across this was a sticker in English proclaiming a best before date of 1999.  ‘Well’, I thought, ‘it’s pickle after all’.  I used it.  It was hot and strong and delicious.  The wife of a friend of Matthew’s, on the other hand, would not entertain anything unless it was well within the recommended time scale.  Shopping with Mat one day, she refused to buy an avocado, because it did not carry a sell-by date.

Park Culture

Today we continued with yesterday’s gardening projects.  Jackie did a great deal more edging and weeding of beds, planting some flowers we had brought with us, and others from last week.  I managed to get somewhere near halfway with the new bed project.  So much for completing it this weekend.

Elizabeth has been suffering for two and a half weeks with sinusitis.  For anyone who has not experienced it, this is an extremely painful inflammation of the sinuses, or cavities, in the face.  Although I had a nasty bout of it during my first visit to Sigoules this year, keeping me in bed for the whole ten days I was there, it is otherwise something which I have not suffered for many years.  It was, however, a frequent visitor to me during my teens and twenties.  I was therefore pleased to see that my sister was clearly on the mend this evening.  She even went out and weeded the ‘hot bed’.  Since this was a very hot and humid day she had otherwise been on catering duties, especially the provision of drinks.

Each time we were given a drink, and, of course, at lunchtime, I took the opportunity to have a break.  I encountered yet more small trees, almost all suckers from next door’s damson tree.  My method of extracting them was described yesterday.  There was also quite a bit of well-established ivy, with thick tendrils and roots, which had to be removed. Robin's footprints 8.12 Our friendly robin left his muddy footprints all over one of Elizabeth’s freshly painted tables.  When I tired from pulling up small trees and self-rooted strands of honeysuckle, I wandered over to look at the ‘hot bed’ and remind myself that twelve months ago that had been a huge clump of bamboo which had taken three months of weekends to remove.  I would not have been able to achieve that clearance with the tools I am using on what is to be the ‘scented bed’.  I had borrowed a grubber axe from Geoff.  Striking the root clusters with garden forks or spades was about as effective as digging into concrete.  This particular implement made the task possible, although Elizabeth and I dug it over several times, always coming up with roots we had missed last time, before we deemed it ready for composting.

This afternoon Danni joined us.  She spent most of the time in a recliner sunbathing and reading ‘Park Culture’, when she wasn’t being frustrated by being unable to access You tunes.  But she had volunteered to cook for us this evening, and she works very hard at her sports massage practice so is certainly entitled to spend Sunday afternoon relaxing.  ‘Park Culture’ is a most impressive new magazine produced by a couple of friends of Andy’s.  His band, ‘Circle of Reason’ is, incidentally featured.  Until now, there has, apparently been no magazine focussing on artistic events in the New Forest Area.  The September issue of the journal was issued today.  It is the first.  There is coverage of literature, art, music, drama and other forms of artistic expression.  This free publication has the quality of production one would normally be expected to pay for.  There are interviews with artists and performers, illustrated in colour on good quality paper, with useful event information.  The name comes from the fact that the New Forest is a National Park.  Perhaps this is why it has such a rich artistic life.  The website of this enterprise is www.culturapress.co.uk

Danni produced a very tasty beef stir-fry meal.  We finished yesterday’s bottle of Roc Des Chevaliers, Bordeaux 2010.  Jackie had a small French beer then drove me home after one last tour of the garden.

Mudlarking

On this, the first hot summer’s day we have enjoyed this year, we gardened all day.  I had an unfortunate hiatus of about two hours during which I vainly tried to get my printer to produce the right colours in a print I was attempting to make of the picture of Harriet featuring in yesterday’s post.  I needed to get back to digging to work out my frustration.  If I know the equipment is at fault, I can cope with it.  If I am the problem I can live with it.  If I don’t know which it is it does my head in.

Jackie focussed on planting, and Elizabeth and I on clearing an overgrown area and re-discovering a lost bed.  One result of this year’s weeding and pruning has been exposing paths through the cruciform pergola.  We are now hoping to position features  visible through these walkways from different parts of the garden.  The bench containing plants ready for their final homes, somewhat blighted by the washing cradle in the background, gives some idea.

One of Geoff’s garden sculptures, now clearly visible, generously provides a feeture at the opposite end of this section.  The unobtrusive boundary fence mentioned yesterday is about to be stamped on.

Especially on a day like this, showers for the workers are necessary, as is frequent washing of hands in order to partake of drinks and snacks.  This involves visits to the bathroom, which contains a glass cabinet which Elizabeth uses to show her collection of old glass artifacts.  

Not shown in the header picture is the Victorian ceramic cold cream pot, complete with lid.  It is mainly this which, every time I see this display takes me back to the days of The Mudlarks. No, not the pop vocal group of the 50s and 60s.  Us.  The early 1980s were our mudlarking years. Strictly speaking I think mudlarking is confined to activity on the Thames.  Scavengers would, in Victorian times, and probably long before, search at low tide for anything valuable that may have been dropped in the river.  Waterside  taverns provided rich pickings.  When Matthew and Becky were small  I would take them off to a site near the river at Kingston.  This wasn’t actually on the riverside.  It was a patch of land, owned by the Council, which was about to be built on.  It covered the site of a Victorian midden, or rubbish dump.  We, and some other enthusiasts were given permission to dig here for lost treasure.  The only proviso was that we must fill in our hole when we had ransacked it.  Except for John, we all found the returning of the soil pretty tough after having dug it all out.

John was a small, wiry,  immensely strong Jack Russell of a man who would grab a shovel, get stuck in, and disappear down his hole sending up showers of earth like a terrier down a foxhole.  John’s bag would be full of finds while I was still thinking about it.  His hole would be filled in before mine had been dug.  For a time this was wonderfully exciting family entertainment.  We found lots of stone beer bottles and hot water bottles, marked with the names of brewers and manufacturers long since part of history.  Most prized by the children were the lozenge-shaped lemonade containers with marbles in their necks.  The fizz would force these glass balls to seal the bottles.  We did not find many complete ones because Mat and Becky’s Victorian predecessors had already had the marbles.  And, of course, we found little ceramic pots like the one in the photograph.  Medicine bottles, and Mexican Hair Restorer were often blue.  We saw how the shapes of Bovril and ink bottles had changed over the years.  I am looking at a James Keiller & Sons Dundee Marmalade pot from that era as I type, and Matthew and Becky still have some of those early spoils.

Only on one occasion did we go mudlarking in the true sense of the word.  If you dig a hole  on the side of the Thames it is even more imperative to fill it in.  Sometimes people avoid this process and allow the action of the tide to do it for them.  Then you get a quagmire.  As we found out.  We went hunting below a waterside pub.  All we managed to find was a few ox’s jawbones and teeth, and heaps of oyster shells.  No gold coins, nor even silver ones.  When we decided the tide would soon be coming in we made for the safety of the embankment.  Jessica, pregnant with Louisa, went striding off in her billowing Monsoon skirt and green wellies.  And disappeared.  She was in a quagmire.  With great difficulty, I fished her out.  I suppose you could say that was our only successful find that day.

Jackie decided at one point this afternoon to take a break, sit on a garden chair, and survey the scene.  She was joined by this little chap who flew down and sat on her knee.  Thereafter he was quite fearless in his foremanship.

Rather late in the evening we sat down to a meal of chicken in barbecue sauce, cooked in the oven. Why anyone would ever want to cook outside, over a grill most difficult to keep alight and smelling unpleasant when they could use kitchen equipment, I will never know.  Elizabeth and I drank Gran Familia Las Primas  2011, and Jackie had the Coop’s French Lager.  Whilst eating Jackie’s fluffy and tasty bread and butter pudding, we reminisced about Dad’s bread pudding . The only dish Dad ever produced was a real command performance.  We never knew what he would put in it.  Probably neither did he.  Elizabeth and I decided that the year it was inedible was when  he applied a liberal sprinkling of Galloway’s Cough Syrup.  Elizabeth is convinced that one year Mum prevented him from adding boot polish.  This surely has to be apocryphal.  But just in case it isn’t I’m not asking Mum.