snapdragon – derrickjknight

Down The Garden

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As it began to rain whilst they were finishing the painting yesterday, Clare and Andrew had placed the garden chairs under the wisteria arbour. This morning, Aaron carried them to the patio.

The day was overcast. Jackie and Aaron spent the morning on garden maintenance, now at its most pressing. Aaron also filled his truck with our pruning and clippings. From the patio I continued on a perambulation with the camera.

I took my usual route along the Kitchen Path, passing the rose campion planted in front of the lysimachia firecracker with feverfew to the left.

At the corner by the iron urn, in view of the geraniums and verbena in a planter above the Dragon Bed with its pink snapdragons and prolific marigolds,

I made my way along the Brick Path, past the grass patch with its bed of bright pink begonias,

taking a rest on the Westbrook Arbour bench, and looking down the Phantom Path to sculpture Florence. Penny Lane is making her way up the Gothic Arch, opposite clematis Star of India.

The campanula Persiciflora stands at the south end of the Brick Path, beneath the dead snake bark maple.

It normally takes me quite a while to make inroads into a new book. “Pilling Always Pays’, by Thomas Armstrong, which I finished today, was no exception. My post-operative lethargy probably contributed to this, but I did also think that the author’s painstakingly thorough method of introducing his cast of characters may have played a part. Nevertheless, I will not hold this against him, for he proceeded to tell a carefully crafted story with numerous apparently disparate strands skilfully knitted together in the final pages. The setting was a provincial town in 1936, with its closely interwoven upwardly mobile community. In ‘Auntie Ivy And Sir Edmund Hillary’ I featured what I had found inside my copy.

This evening we dined on succulent roast chicken, new potatoes, crunchy carrots and cabbage, and moist ratatouille, with flavoursome gravy.

Rewards

Snatching half an hour of occasional sunshine before the expected gloom set in for the day, I wandered around the garden with my camera.

Two retrained pink climbing roses are in bloom along the front garden trellis.

We have masses of geraniums palmatum. Jackie took cuttings last year, and distributed some in the front, where they are thriving and will soon replace the wind-blown crab apple blossom from above.

Similar division has been effected with libertia. My method is described in the linked post. I would have been happy to write that the libertia here frolicked solely with alliums and bluebells against the red Japanese maple. Unfortunately when I put this picture up on screen it revealed the clinging velcro strings of lady’s bedstraw, a pernicious weed we have spent two years eradicating. That put a halt to my proceedings while I assisted The Head Gardener in its immediate removal.

The maple’s red foliage appears to be extended by a rhododendron on the other side of the grass.

Snapdragons are now fully out, this one fortuitously planted within sight of one of the residents of the Dragon Bed.

Walking straight on past the dragon leads to the Shady Path, so named because of its original state.

Running roughly parallel to the right of this is the Gazebo Path.

This is the view through the gazebo across the grass patch.

Continuing along the Shady Path, red climbing roses now reward Jackie’s training.

When we arrived here, some very poorly looking slender red gladioli struggled in poor soil outside the kitchen door. Our resident expert lifted the bulbs and replanted them in the boxes she arranged at the head of the back drive. They are standing proud and coming into flower.

A mature rhododendron has been rescued from the choking jungle,

and nearby, similarly hued clematis Doctor Ruppel proliferates.

The hawthorn along the back drive has responded to pruning.

This evening we dined at Lal Quilla in Lymington. My main choice was Goan King Prawn, and Jackie’s sag chicken. We shared an egg paratha, special fried rice, and onion bahji; and both drank Kingfisher.

Knighton Park

On a continuing balmy morning I picked a December bouquet from the garden – photographically speaking, of course. We have:

Festive jewels,

violas,

petunias,

geraniums,

snapdragons,

and solanums.

Jackie went on a massive ‘operation fill the freezer up’ shop; Aaron finished off the bathroom; and I completed our last batch of cards that we posted on the way to lunch at Helen and Bill’s.

Helen produced an excellent roast venison meal for us; for Shelly and Ron; for herself and Bill; and for their delightful son, David and his lovely wife, Jen. The starter was tasty pate with redcurrant jelly and salad. The meat was served with plentiful carrots, Brussels sprouts, green beens, and roast potatoes and parsnips. Chocolate roulade with strawberries, melon and cream was for dessert. Cheese and biscuits was to follow. Afterwards we just about managed coffee and mint chocolates. Various red and white wines were the accompaniment.

Convivial conversation with a sprinkling of reminiscence kept us going well into the evening. Ron told us about a terrace of houses in Knighton Park in Barton which sported splendid Christmas decorations, so we decided to visit it on our way home.

We were treated to a staggering display, complete with a singing reindeer strapped to a post.

Other people, such as the little family in this shot, had come out to see the show. I was asked to photograph them on the mother’s phone.

The whole of this terrace was festooned with coloured lights representing numerous motifs, and the tiny front gardens were crammed with glowing figures, including a few cribs, snowmen, and Santas.

None of the facades or sides of the dwellings was neglected.

The street was lined with parked cars on which the scenes were reflected.

No further sustenance was required after we returned home.

Flaunting Longevity

This morning, before the afternoon wind got up and rain came down, Jackie and I weeded and removed more leaves from the rose garden, in readiness for the application of compost.

We still have flowering snapdragons

and geraniums,

whilst winter cyclamens emerge from hibernation.

The pink rose stands sentinel on the Oval Bed,

and, showing signs of age, Margaret Merrill still blooms.

The honeysuckle rising from the blue arch flaunts its longevity before the falling beech leaves.

This afternoon I inserted the last of the pictures into the garden album.

This evening we dined on Jackie’s luscious lamb jafrezi and choice chicken tikka with mushroom and onion rice. She drank Hoegaarden and I quaffed Old Crafty Hen.

Early Christmas Lights

Mike, the plumber came today and made excellent progress on fitting the new bath and retiling the guest bathroom.

Jackie continued potting up plants for the cold frames and greenhouses.

I received a positive response from livelytwist, and began the second volume of the garden album bye mounting the sections on Phantom and Helicon Paths.

Today was wet, but the wind had dropped and the temperature still very warm. Raindrops clung to numerous plants, such as

snapdragons

and nasturtiums, which knew very well they should have succumbed limply to cold weather by now;

and the leaves of the red Japanese maple have been transformed into early Christmas lights.

This evening we dined on Jackie’s perfect pork paprika (‘Don’t ask for a recipe. I haven’t got one’), a special fried rice, followed by bananas sliced into vanilla and caramel ice cream with toffee sauce. Jackie drank sparkling water and I drank more of the Malbec.

Reversion

This afternoon I tackled sports. Now, please don’t imagine that that means my knee is miraculously fully recovered. I speak of reversion; not of myself, but of the horticultural variety. Variegated plants are generally selected from a sport, or mutation, of a pure green plant. The sport is then propagated by cuttings, grafting or division to retain its features. However, the mutations within these plants are not always stable and can be prone to reverting back to pure green shoots. Reversion is the name given when a cultivar known for a particular leaf shape, colour, or other striking characteristic returns to a different form found in the plant’s parentage. The term is often used to describe a variegated shrub or tree that produces non-variegated shoots.

This euonymus is a case in point. Jackie cut it right back last year, but it continues to revert. I took out the new, much stronger, green stems. This exercise left a few gaps.

It was a much hotter, equally humid, afternoon when I wandered around the garden and down to Roger’s fields and back.

Perhaps it was natural for a minute, black spotted, yellow bug to seek refuge on this snapdragon.

A verbascum towers at the eastern end of the Phantom Path;

in the former compost bed a gladiolus tangoes with a viburnum bonarensis, beyond which

lurk echinaceas.

Our lost label rose proves not to be an Aloha. We still don’t know what it is. Any ideas?

Roger’s hay bales were better lit.

I am not an expert on butterflies, but my research suggests that this very small one that, with its companions, flitted about the footpath hedgerow, tantalising me for some time before it settled, is a Small Skipper.

This evening we dined on rack of pork rib coated with barbecue sauce, and Jackie’s egg fried rice. I started on a fine bottle of Catena malbec 2013 given to me by Shelly and Ron for my birthday.