rose Jacqueline du Pre – derrickjknight

The Heyday Of The Cinema

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This is the view from our bedroom window that got me staggering downstairs for a camera at 4.30 a.m.

Later on Jackie and I both tidied, weeded, and cleared sections of the garden, adding to the compost heap. Jackie then planted more flowers and I continued with ‘A Knight’s Tale’, extracting edited sections of ‘A Retirement Project’ and ‘Where’s The Tripod?’, yielding more experiences of the heyday of the cinema.

In the garden the marigolds and Black-eyed Susans cone has reached its peak.

Hemerocallis

and lilies,

especially these giants in the Rose Garden, flourish everywhere.

A new dahlia has popped up in the New Bed,

where pollen-laden bees plunder poppies, the seed pods of which produce nodding sculptures.

Schoolgirl rose bends in a bow in obeisance to Jacqueline du Pre against a backcloth of white Hawkshead fuchsia. I was lucky to get these shots in, because not long afterwards the Head Gardener had tied up the errant rose.

Visible in this view across to the New Bed

is a thriving potted hydrangea;

shifting the eye slightly to the left offers the view across the Concrete Patio.

The aptly named rose Summer Wine

and golden Summer Time soar over the Rose Garden.

In between further sessions of clearing up after the Head Gardener, I watched Wimbledon tennis match featuring Britons Heather Watson, Johanna Konta, and Andy Murray.

This evening we dined on cod fish cakes, ratatouille, Jersey potatoes, carrots, caiuliflower, and runner beans. And very tasty it all was. We both drank Cimarosa Reserva Privada sauvignon blanc 2016, which rather helped.

The Dump Can Wait

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Much of today was spent planting roses, tidying beds, and pruning and lopping trees and overgrown shrubs.

I cleared up Jackie’s maple cuttings from yesterday, then concentrated on the myrtle behind the Compassion rose. Both these trees were depriving the rose of light and air, and the variegated myrtle was full of sports anyway.

Garden view from Fiveways to Compassion rose arch

The arch, as seen from the bench on the Dead End Path and from the distance of Fiveways, now awaits the retrained rose. The young leaves of the copper beech, the last to arrive, can be seen to the top left of the first picture.

Looking through the Agriframes Arch from the Dead End Path, one can see that the yellow bottle brush plant and

the Chilean lantern tree are both coming into bloom.

Elsewhere, Sweet Williams and Cerinthes romp ahead of the fuchsia beneath them.

Bright marigolds attract flies like the one in this image.

The viburnum Rhytidophyllum, with its delicate scent, creamy white clustered flowers, and crinkly leaves, is enjoying its best year since the surrounding jungle was opened up.

Gloriana, Crown Princess Margarete, and Jacqueline du Pré have all put in an appearance in the Rose Garden.

I chopped up all the tree branches and filled two orange bags with them. We had intended taking them to Efford Recycling Centre, but we ran out of steam and decided that the dump could wait.

This evening we dined on meals from New Forest Tandoori takeaway in Pennington. We both enjoyed prawn puri starters. My main course was king prawn naga with special fried rice; Jackie’s was chicken buna with fragrant pilau rice. Jackie drank Hoegaarden and I drank Patrick Chodot Fleurie 2014.

Honey Bees And Christmas Lights

Giles visited this morning and stayed for lunch.

On a wander round the garden he was pleased to notice that the mahonia was still attracting bees.

Jacqueline du Pre was enjoying a resurgence in the rose garden.

Before lunch, our friend and I took a walk across the field by the post box, through the wood to the road, and back. My phone battery needed recharging, so I couldn’t take it with us.

It is six months since Jackie and I last dined at the Family House in Totton. We know that because Lennox, the latest member of the family was due a day or two after our visit, and he will be six months old in three days time. We ate there tonight and were amused to see his parents sharing the tasks of running the restaurant and holding their son, given that that is just what Matthew and Tess were doing in their establishment yesterday.

We received our usual warm welcome and excellent food, accompanied by Tsingtao beer.

En route we enjoyed Christmas lights at

Lyndhurst,

Beaulieu,

and Lymington.

In the left foreground of the Lymington photograph can be seen the gold-painted postbox, so decorated in honour of Ben Ainslie who won his fourth Olympic gold yachting medal in 2012.

As Wikipedia puts it: ‘To commemorate British and Irish gold medal winners at the 2012 Summer Olympics and 2012 Summer Paralympics, various postboxes around the United Kingdom, plus one each on Sark and the Isle of Man, were repainted [by the Royal Mail] from their traditional red into gold. It marked the first occasion in modern times that the colour of post boxes in the United Kingdom had been changed from their traditional red. Originally intended to be a temporary measure, it was later decided the colour change would become a permanent tribute, with boxes additionally receiving their own special plaques.’

This is the story of Ben Ainslie’s: ‘For sailor Ben Ainslie, the Mail initially painted a box in Restronguet Passage, Cornwall, the place [where] he grew up and learned to sail. A member of the public then vandalised a box in Lymington High Street, Hampshire, on the basis that Ainslie was a long time resident and considered somewhat of a local legend. After initially filing a complaint, the Mail relented to a public campaign and decided to officially paint the Lymington box.’