sprinkler – derrickjknight

Starring Seed Pods

Today, by our standards, unseasonably hot for September, was definitely one for sprinkling the garden.

Even the wicker owl appreciated its shower.

By late morning we had become too heated to complete our work on pruning, cutting up, and composting the wisteria, seen here from above and below.

While taking the overhead wisteria pictures I added some more general aerial shots;

back at ground level the Brick Path and its arches; and the Gazebo Path, returning to my puzzle theme with “Where’s Jackie?” (5);

and the Triangular Bed beside the iron urn.

Today’s starring seed pods are on an ornamental allium.

The temperature rose as the day progressed; the sun became veiled by voluminous hazy clouds; the atmosphere increasingly oppressive. Late in the afternoon, in order to shake us from somnolent stupor we drove to Ferndene Farm Shop to buy some vegetables and eggs. There were no eggs.

For the last week or so, this outlet has been selling live chickens from its stock in the next door field. This has been because the older poultry do not lay in the quantity needed for a commercial enterprise. They are replaced by younger models and offered for reduced domestic production. Apparently the new birds haven’t yet got into the swing of things.

Afterwards we took a drive into the forest.

Along Holmsley Passage, tails constantly whisking, ponies dotted the landscape.

So it was for the rest of our journey, for example along Bisterne Close where we encountered

a mare and foal. Like all the youngsters, the stubby little tail didn’t seem adequate for seeing off the flies

and this infant had me backing off at a rate of knots in order to maintain focus as it attempted to brush off its flies with my beard.

On our return via Holmsley Passage ponies slaked their thirst in the rapidly diminishing wayside pool.

This evening we dined on Mr Chan’s Hordle Chinese Take Away’s excellent fare with which Jackie drank Hoegaarden and I finished the Bordeaux.

Our First Meal Out Post Lockdown

This morning’s early light presented us with

glorious garden views from our upstairs windows.

At midday I accompanied Jackie on the big Tesco fortnightly shop; sat reading in the car while she did the business; unloaded the trolley into the car; emptied the purchases into the kitchen, then washed my hands.

This afternoon Jackie took the sprinkler on a whistle-stop tour of the garden, while I took my camera on another.

I pictured begonias, petunias, allium, hemerocallis, phantom hydrangea and phlox, all images of which are named in the galleries that can by accessed by clicking on any one. Each photograph can be viewed full size by clicking on the box beneath it, then further enlarged if necessary by repeated clicks.

Bees have shown themselves to be partial to these alliums.

Outside Bramshaw, on a drive to the north of the forest, we encountered ponies ignoring flies; sheep steering clear of the equine droppings; and donkeys keen to approach us in the hope of treats.

It was the Lamb Inn at Nomansland that had the honour of providing us with our first meal out since the recently partially relaxed coronavirus lockdown began.

My main meal was a tender rib eye steak with a bucket of chips and French fried onions; Jackie’s chips in a bucket were of sweet potatoes served with her haloumi burger. Mrs Knight drank Diet Coke and Carlsberg while I drank Timothy Taylor’s Landlord beer.

Naturally Jackie photographed the hanging baskets and

the sign in the outside dining area which had me wondering whether I was meant to use the letter box.

The Herbaceous Borders

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Jackie continued her planting today. My major task was dead-heading.

This section of the Dragon Bed shows how what was a large, gangly ficus until Aaron removed it six days ago has been replaced by the Head Gardener’s selection.

The chimney pot in this shot of the view from the butler sinks at the end of the Dead End path

is one of the three in which Jackie has now completed this year’s arrangements.

The stone planters in the Kitchen Bed have received similar treatment, as have these two urns leading us to the original section of the Brick Path taking us from the south end to the house. This pair necessitated an urgent trip to Otter Nurseries late yesterday afternoon to buy a few more geraniums.

A yoked pair of hanging baskets introduces us to Margery’s Bed,

alongside which raking of the Phantom Path has commenced. The gorgeous pink rhododendron seen through the arch on the Cryptomeria Bed

is also visible from the brick section of the Oval Path, along which coils

the hose delivering sprinkled refreshment to the Weeping Birch Bed.

A white rambler and a purple clematis share the Gothic Arch;

The combination is similar on the Agriframes Arch, and we can name the rambler which, yet to bloom, is Wedding Day.

These Rozannes behind the iron urn are perhaps the most unusual of the blue geraniums.

Beside the potting shed at the corner of the Rose Garden sambucus nigra and geranium palmatums sit happily together.

Rose Absolutely Fabulous

occupying the foreground of this image is now beginning to bloom;

Just Joey and Love Knot are at the far end.

Lady Emma Hamilton

peeps round pink foxgloves at Absolutely Fabulous.

The aptly named Little Rambler scales one of the pergola posts.

I concentrated much of my dead-heading efforts on the Rose Garden, giving me ample opportunity to photograph hoverflies like these skimming For Your Eyes Only. For this purpose my camera hung round my neck as I snipped.

The beds alongside the Back Drive have demanded that they now be called the herbaceous borders.

They contain different varieties of poppy,

and Félicité Perpétue now wears a green and white shawl.

This evening we dined on pizza supplemented by a topping of bacon rashers; plentiful salad, and cold baked beans. I drank Cahors malbec 2015. Jacke had previously slaked her thirst with fizzy water, or, as she termed it, ‘eau petillante’.

Lurking In The Shade

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Today Aaron and Robin levelled out the soil flanking the new fence and cleared away our last items of debris in preparation for building a log store.

The rubbish included the buried bath, now in its last resting place on the Back Drive, before removal to the dump.

I finished reading Barrie Haynes novelette ‘Walking in the Sea’ this morning. The illustrator is Barrie’s young granddaughter whose cover appeared on https://derrickjknight.com/2016/08/05/deadheading/

The blurb accurately describes the essence of this scurrilous romp which would probably, perhaps slightly Bowdlerised, provide the basis of a good TV detective series plot. Written almost entirely in the present tense, with direct, uncomplicated, and amusing prose, the book carries the reader along, keeping its essential secrets to the end. It was certainly easier reading than Jane Austen, its humour requiring rather less work.

I have occasionally mentioned our ongoing battle against invading brambles. This is what happens if we relax for week.

This time I reached over the fence with the long loppers in order to stem the flow at the lowest possible level.

On my way back down the garden I spied The Head Gardener lurking in the shade beside the Dragon’s Bed.

There are two types of crocosmia in this bed. The yellow one did not flower at all last year.

Drowsy bees clambered in and out of the cosmoses.

Here is Florence’s view past the hanging geraniums to Compassion rose climbing across the Dead End Path;

whilst beside the Phantom Path to the left, Margery’s hollyhocks soar aloft.

There are several clumps of Rudbeckia. This one is in the Palm Bed.

At the corner of the Cryptomeria Bed, ornamental grass; petunias, lobelia, and geraniums in hanging baskets; nicotiana; and buddleia stand in line.

We enjoyed a drink in the Rose Garden where Jackie operated the sprinkler, and

a fuchsia leads us past phlox and through the arch beside the hollyhocks featured above.

Jackie’s dinner this evening consisted of pork medallions baked in mustard and brown sugar topped with almond flakes; courgette, tomato and onion gratin; crisp carrots and green beans; boiled new potatoes; and tasty gravy. The Culinary Queen drank Becks and I drank sparkling water.

Taking The Plunge

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Whilst I am very happy with my Canon SX700 HS camera, I am becoming increasingly aware of its limitations. In particular I do miss my SLR film cameras with good quality zoom lenses. It was such a device that enabled me to fill the frames of the colour slides featured yesterday without poking a lens up the children’s noses and thus spoiling the spontaneity. This would also have captured our garden birds without their constantly taking flight. Who knows, I may also be able to catch them on the wing.

This morning I took the plunge, sought advice from my friend Alex Schneideman, and, following it, researched suppliers on the internet, and ordered on line a second-hand Canon EOS D5 Mark 2 DSLR with a couple of lenses from Camera Jungle. All I have to do upon its receipt is pluck up courage to try it out.

We have both been feeling a bit off colour for a few days. Jackie was able today to return to her weeding and planting

and set the sprinkler operating.

I spent some time deadheading and weeding. It was a dull day, which made work a little easier.

The front trellis now sports a couple of clematises, two pink roses, honeysuckle, solanum and nasturtiums;

while on the opposite corner of the entrance Marguerites blend with potentilla, hydrangea, and the rambling Félicité Perpétue rose. Nasturtiums and geraniums are also in the bed.

On the trellis covering the garage door, a clematis winds above lobelias and begonias in a hanging basket.

Other clematises, such as these over The Head Gardener’s Walk

and The Shady Path, now festoon the garden.

Star of India will soon wind around its obelisk in Margery’s Bed.

From the Kitchen Bed urn

there is a clear view of The Dragon Bed.

This evening we dined on pizza and salad. Jackie drank J.P.Muller Gewürztraminer 2014 and I drank Reserve des Tuguets Madiran 2012.

Imperial Leather

Jackie spent the morning weeding and planting. I chipped in with an hour of clearing up the leaves and other debris from our recent burning session.

After lunch I received a call from BT level 2. This is a more experienced adviser than the poor cannon fodder who field the first problem calls. Since we have had no interruption for the past eighteen hours or so, and I am convinced the problem is outside the house, I was not willing to waste my time or hers by going through the checks all over again, whilst I hung on to the phone when I could be doing something else. We compromised. I hung up. She asked me a few questions, then ran the checks, and called me back.

Well. What do you know? The problem is outside the house. Something I have been saying for a fortnight. There was a term for this, which I didn’t catch, since it was spoken in an Indian accent. There are three possible areas of difficulty: the exchange, the cabinet in the street, or underground. At least that is what I understood. An engineer is to be given the task of investigating this, and I will receive a phone call in three to four days time.

I was at last being given some sense, but we won’t hold our breath.

Our new bath was delivered on Thursday when I was in London. The man who brought it would not help take it upstairs because he wasn’t insured for that. At least he put bit in the hall, which is where it stayed until Jackie and I took it up ourselves. It helped me relax after yet another long distance technical conversation.

We then planted up yesterday’s three rose purchases and gave the whole of the rose garden a good sprinkling.

These are two views from the bench by the orange shed.

The clerodendrum trichotomum undergoes quite a metamorphosis during its flowering. In future posts I will demonstrate this.

Butterflies, such as the Speckled Wood, are enjoying the sunshine.

When our new bath is installed our visitors may well be supplied with Imperial Leather soap. Alexander Tom Cussons 14.7.1875 – 20.8.51, chairman of the eponymous company, is best known for manufacturing this body cleansing agent. He also manufactured a number of others which have since been discontinued. These included Apple Blossom, Linden Blossom, Lilac Blossom, Blue Hyacinth, and beautiful rose perfumed soap that led to the naming of the famous Wendy Cussons Rose. The rose was bred by Gregory & Sons of Nottingham, and was intended to be named after Tom’s daughter Marjorie, but instead she asked for it to be named after her brother’s wife, Wendy as she bore the name Cussons. This extremely successful fragrant hybrid tea has won many awards, and is still available today, over 50 years after its introduction.

Ours is now blooming.

This evening we dined on pork spare ribs in spicy barbecue sauce, savoury rice, and boiled new potatoes, followed by vanilla ice cream. Neither of us imbibed.

Problems With Networks

This morning we took a trip by car to the municipal dump which is a short distance away, between home and Lymington. Following our tidy up of the skip pile we took down the back seats of the Modus and

loaded it with the dog-sodden carpet (one of the items the previous owners had left for us thinking they might be useful); the rancid toilet seats; a few stale paint pots; bits of lino and other carpet; and a some other small objects, and joyfully tossed them into the various bays in the waste disposal and recycling centre. True to family tradition, we did not go away empty-handed, because Jackie bought four plastic window boxes from the Sales Area.
Flushed with the success of recovering the garden’s irrigation system, Jackie applied herself to the apparent ornament in the form of a sunburst which she thought must be a sprinkler.

She rigged it up, attached a hose, turned on the tap, and the sun spiralled spinning arcs of water around an area large enough to keep us leaping for dry land. There must have been a rainbow somewhere, but I couldn’t see one.

Yesterday afternoon I had begun tackling a tangled mass of ancient clematis Montana and brambles, each with stems as thick as small trees, which were pushing the kitchen garden fence onto the shrubs next door. It wasn’t long before I realised that our neighbours were suffering an invasion such as the lonicera one that beset us on the other side of our property. I needed to discuss with Bev what I planned to do. She was out. I left her a message. She responded a little later than I would have wished to start, so we agreed to meet this morning. Our very friendly neighbour was happy for me to deal with our side and said she would take care of theirs. A young horse chestnut that had no business being there was providing boughs to add to the jumble. That would have to go as well.
On our return from the dump, I got stuck in to the task. And the brambles got stuck into me. Unbelievably, three very old members of the most prolific of clematis specimens had been trained against the fence and never pruned.
During our lunchtime break our phone emitted a squeak and we lost our telephone and broadband connection. We waited a while for it to right itself. It didn’t, so I girded my loins and made the call. On my mobile, of course. BT, like all conglomerates that have outgrown their user friendliness provides a machine to respond to customers. I am sure my readers are all familiar with the rigmarole that I was presented with, so I won’t go into great detail in a rant. I will say, however, that it is no help whatsoever to be given choices of reporting either a problem with the phone or with the broadband when you have problems with both. Eventually I conveyed to the robot’s voice that we had a fault. I was put on hold whilst this was checked. Whilst on hold I was told, repeatedly, that I could go on line and use the self-help facility. The chance would have been a fine thing.
Eventually I received confirmation that we had a fault and an engineer would be arranged. Should the fault lie with our own equipment this would cost £130. If the fault was their fault I presume it would then be repaired free of charge. The problem would be resolved by the end of the day on 7th of this month.
I raged back into the garden to take out my frustration on the clematises. Whilst I was doing this Jackie came out to tell me we were back on line. The BT machine had taken my mobile phone number and promised to keep me updated by text. Or I could follow progress on the website. I wasn’t told how I could do that. I received one text confirming this. No more. Had Jackie not periodically checked, we would have been none the wiser. At no time was I ever given the option to talk to an adviser, which is what they usually call a real person.

I managed to clear two of the clematises, and to remove the offending conker tree. Whoever had trained the plants, had fixed a thick wire network reaching a foot above the six foot fence. When I came to the third tree that should have been a shrub, I found that the weight of the tangled mass had brought the top section of the network forward, so I had that vying with the brambles to take my eye out.
Already ragged from the BT experience, and letting forth a somewhat less than mild imprecation, I determined to tackle that one tomorrow;

admired the new poppies, and lit a bonfire.
Having burned some more of the cuttings pile I joined Jackie for a

delicious meal of her juicy chicken jalfrezi (recipe) which was just the job. Ice cream was to follow. I drank Las Primas Gran Familia tempranillo 2013.