Summertime – derrickjknight

Remembering The Bees

We managed a good morning’s work before the rain set in later in the afternoon.

I cut the grass while Jackie clipped more of the Back Drive hedge.

Part of this consisted of a fuchsia which, despite severe autumn haircuts, has really become very unkempt overgrown. Because it was the only reasonable plant in this area when we arrived were were reluctant to remove it. We have still kept a small section, but the main cluster just had to go. Discovering that it could not just be dug out without serious damage to the garden forks, Jackie employed her tried and tested Time Team technique requiring the use of a trowel. I then wielded a woodman’s axe to hack out the roots.

This clematis and these poppies form part of the planting separating the drive from the gravelled patio, in one corner of which

the hydrangea Serrata Miranda, behind and to the right of the planted urn, is thriving.

Between this plot and the Rose Garden, Elizabeth’s Bed is nicely plumped up.

The rose Ballerina dances us into the Rose Garden,

blending nicely with Florence’s petunias.

Summertime ascends the corner of the orange shed,

and the first Deep Secret bloom has survived balling from the rain to flower well enough. Balling is the term given to the soggy balls to which unopened roses are reduced when they are subjected to lengthy precipitation.

The solanum has taken over from the now spent clematis Montana the task of brightening the dead tree stump beside the New Bed.

Wedding Day rose, attracting hoverflies and beetles,

is now preparing to cast its veil over the Agriframes Arch.

Evening primrose blooms on the Back Drive northern bed,

where poppies are buzzing with bees,

which, when they expressed their disgruntlement at my poking a camera up their bums by turning on me and crawling around my head and neck, took me back to my first desperate encounter with the creatures.

In fact the only poppies that don’t harbour these beings are Californian.

This evening we dined on Mr Pink’s fish and chips, pea fritters, pickled onion, and gherkins. Jackie drank Hoegaarden and I drank more of the Carles.

Roses And Christmas Lights

Watched by, among others, roses

Summertime,

and Winchester Cathedral,

this morning I completed the composting of the rose garden, whilst Jackie planted bulbs such as various fritillaries.

This afternoon we began our Christmas shopping in New Milton’s Lidl and Marks and Spencer in Hedge End. Between these emporia we visited Mum, who has been struggling with back pain lately. She seems rather better.

We then went on to Wickham where we hoped to shop in Chesapeake Mill, an antiques centre, which had closed before we arrived. This was no real hardship because it meant we were able to dine at the Veranda. My choice of meal was Lamb Lal Maas, and special fried rice. Jackie chose chicken korma and mushroom rice. We shared a superb paratha and onion bhaji; and both drank Kingfisher.

Both the town and the restaurant were festooned in Christmas lights.

P.S. My good friend, Barrie Haynes, has provided the following important information:

UP THE CREEK!

This one is for you Derrick Knight, but I would like my US FB friends also to see this, as it is an interesting piece of history that people pass by everyday without knowing of it. There are a number of explanations to the expression, ‘Up the Creek’ but the accepted one in Hampshire is that many fine vessels ended their lives and were broken up in Fareham Creek, which is just off Portsmouth Harbour. The USS Chesapeake (1799) was a three masted heavy frigate that was captured by the Royal Navy. She eventually ended up at Fareham and in 1820 a miller from the ancient town of Wickham (around eight miles inland) bought her remains and used her timbers to build the Chesapeake Mill, which still stands to this day!

West Kennet Long Barrow

Drawn by the extravagant breakdance being performed outside our sitting room window by the unidentified peach rose, clearly far more resilient than plastic greenhouses, I ventured outside into the wild, weirdly warming, winds with my camera.

The rose surged backwards and forwards, defying my efforts at focussing;

those in their dedicated garden, where Summertime still has a presence, were more sheltered.

Margaret Merrill, lives up to her top autumn rose billing,

and carpet rose Kent rivals the fallen beech leaves for ground cover.

With a warning of frost and maybe snow in a week’s time, it was probably apt that the batch of colour slides from December 1976 should contain snow scenes. That was a very cold winter following an extremely hot summer.

Jessica, Michael and I were staying with her parents in their beamed and thatched house in Wootton Rivers, Wiltshire.

Mark Pearson, who, had he lived, would have been my father-in-law stands here in front of his home.

The snow was not deep at this time, but there was enough to turn simple ironwork into bejewelled necklaces;

to transform branches of trees into festive yule logs;

and ploughed fields, along which Jessica and Michel walk, into scenic Christmas cake icing.

Piper joins them in this picture. The boy to the left could be Jessica’s nephew, Tim Draper.

Here, Michael trudges on after the others.

We had, then unbeknown to me, found ourselves atop West Kennet Long Barrow.

The West Kennet Long Barrow is a prehistoric burial mound near Avebury. It is one of the largest and best-preserved monuments of its kind in Britain. Only the East Kennet Barrow is longer than this one’s 100 meters. Although we did not do so, visitors,can enter the barrow and explore five empty stone chambers in which humans were buried from 3700 to 2000 BC.

In all, the bones of about 46 individuals have been found in the chambers of the barrow. It appears that bodies were buried in social groups: the west chamber was mainly for adult males; the northeast and northwest chambers for mixed adults; the southeast for the old and the southwest chamber for children.

The tombs contained numerous grave goods, including pottery of various kinds (fragments of 250 different vessels were discovered); beads made of bone, stone and shells; flint tools; and animal bones. The pottery spans a long range of time, from the Earlier to Late Neolithic periods.

I didn’t know the amount of history that lay beneath us.

This evening we dined on the last of the shepherd’s pie; extra mashed potato, a steamed cauliflower and Brussel’s sprouts, all flavour retained. Apple and raisin cake with cream was to follow.