rose Summer Wine – derrickjknight

Storm Damage

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This scene has featured in a number of posts over the years. The snake bark maple died in 2015, and has since been home to hanging baskets and climbing plants watched over by a wicker owl.

Sadly the avian guardian could not protect the living monument from last night’s severe winds.

The tree, complete with adornments, lay across the Brick Path this morning. Crashing down along the West Bed have come beams bearing a clematis Montana now lying along the West Bed. Fortunately, the blue solanum has a stout stem which looks to be intact.

This pot containing a red hydrangea had stood on the ground beside the Oval Path across which it now lies.

The rose Summer Wine has been freed from its moorings at the entrance to the Rose Garden, and will need a new set of stays.

Although much calmer this morning, winds have picked up again during the day, preventing any possibility of sensible recovery work. No real harm appears to have been inflicted.
Elizabeth was out this evening, so Jackie and I finished her delicious Pilley Celebration Chicken dish with Jackie’s special savoury rice and tender green beans. Jackie drank Hoegaarden and I finished the Fleurie.

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.

She Powdered Her Face

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Today’s weather would have blessed any Summer’s day. It was warm and sunny, and Jackie and I raised a sweat as we continued weeding, planting, and lopping. I use ‘we’ loosely. I mainly tidied up after the real work. We transported the two full orange bags of cuttings to the dump, and later almost completely refilled one of them.

Clematises are now bursting out all over. The first two depicted here are Niobe and Passion Flower. I can’t name the others.

Roses like creamy golden Summer Time,

Roses Summer Wine and Madame Alfred Cariere

Roses Summer Wine and Madame Alfred Carriere 2

white Madame Alfred Carriere, and glowing pink Summer Wine clamber up structures in

the Rose Garden, over one corner of which Altissimo dances the tightrope.

while Compassion rewards us for clearing its space over

Garden view from patio along Dead End path.

the Dead End Path.

Foxgloves

and geranium palmatums are beginning to prepare us for their annual profusion.

Diascas,

bidens,

and marguerites are just three of the plants carefully positioned in a variety of containers.

A Painted Lady who had definitely seen better days powdered her face in the erigeron pollen.

This evening we dined on spicy chicken kebabs, plain boiled rice, and plentiful salad. Jackie drank Hoegaarden and I drank Cabillero de Diablo, reserva cabernet sauvignon 2015.

The Head Gardener’s Hod Carrier

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Jackie continues weeding, clipping, planting, and replenishing soil. This involves a certain amount of popping out to a garden centre. Today, for example, she departed for some lime and returned with, in addition, a garden tray, a parasol, and the obligatory few plants. Here she was working away on the Dragon Bed near the house end of the Brick Path a couple of days ago.

Here is a current view of the Wisteria Arbour where, accompanying the eponymous plant, can be seen a red rose and Carnaby and Star of India clematises; with bronze fennel, cerinthes and Sweet Williams in the foreground bed.

From the corner of the patio the view across the Kitchen Bed contains the white clematis Marie Boisselot reflected by libertia; alliums, pansies, and diascias bringing notes of purple and pink; and russet triangle points made up of the recently pruned maple, the distant copper beech, and the now fully blooming

Chilean Lantern tree.

Rose Peach Abundance soars over the Oval Bed,

as does Altissimo beside the potting shed.

Mum in a million,

Crown Princess Margareta,

and Schoolgirl are all flourishing in the Rose Garden

where Festive Jewel

leads the eye through For Your Eyes Only to Gloriana, with Love Knot to the left;

and a small hoverfly investigates Summer Wine peeping from its rack on the entrance arch.

The Head Gardener is wondering whether the splendid, flouncing, heucheras are now putting the roses in the shade.

My primary function has been to explore all paths and corners of the garden seeking out heaps of weeds and clippings and either chopping them up to fill the orange bags, or dumping them on the fast developing compost piles.

These contributions can crop up anywhere, especially, it seems, when I think I have finished.

This was just the first wheelbarrow load today.

Pushing it happily along the Brick Path, I discovered the next two loads. It is fun being the Head Gardener’s Hod Carrier.

Fortunately, Jackie had produced enough of her marvellous lamb jalfrezi meal yesterday for it to be reprised this evening. As usual, this offered some enhancement. The Culinary Queen drank Hoegaarden, leaving the Kingfisher to me.