wisteria – Page 3 – derrickjknight

April In May

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Today our April showers began. This morning Jackie continued her planting, weeding, and tidying; while I dug out a bank of sycamore seedlings dropped onto the Back Drive borders by a tree in the garden of the vacant North Breeze next door, and a large bramble from the Rose Garden.

In the variable light numerous plants like

tiny saxifrages,

various tulips,

honesty petals and seed cases,

rhododendrons,

lilies,

and little lamiums sparkled with raindrops.

Others, including libertias,

geranium Phaeums,

clematis Montanas,

another rhododendron,

and the wisteria, were too sheltered to catch the rain.

Jackie with wisteria through kitchen window

The wisteria brightens Jackie’s view from the kitchen window,

in front of which hangs Pauline’s beautifully faceted light catcher.

Garden view with rear of Florence sculpture

The sun came and went above the garden paths, three views of which include the Florence sculpture;

and a fourth, the Brick Path.

This afternoon we drove around the forest.

Up on the moors we could watch the rainclouds sending down shafts of their precipitation, in darker indigo slashes, whilst the sun picked out the glowing gorse.

I waited a while for the sun to pierce the cloud cover and play with this scene of stepped tree roots ascending a gravelly slope.

Brooding clouds, sunlight, gorse, and thatched roofs provided a dramatic entrance to Frogham,

beyond which we spotted our first pony foal of the season, its mother providing instruction in planting yourself firmly on the road. Notice its nice new shoes.

Between Godshill and Cadnam, alongside Roger Penny Way, another, adventurous, new baby kicked up its heels and rushed back to its mother on my approach, then continued to explore the terrain at a safe distance.

This evening we dined on Jackie’s luscious liver, bacon, and sausage casserole, new potatoes, carrots, and cauliflower, followed by custard tart. She drank Peroni and I drank more of the Madiran.

The Meteorologists Kept Their Promise

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Becky, Ian, and Scooby returned, last night, to their home in Emsworth

The wisteria, sharing its perch with a red rose, is now fully in bloom;

and aquilegias (columbines in U.S.) are cropping up everywhere.

We live in a fascinating microclimate where, despite the vast improvement in the accuracy of weather forecasts, our experience is often better than we are given to expect by the meteorologists. Take today, for example. We were promised an afternoon of rain.

Our gardening was therefore done this morning.

My major task was to cut the grass, after which I reshaped the Japanese maple standing on it, so that the lower branches no longer restrict our access to the small sward, and the chimney pot planter may be viewed from the Gazebo Path.

Jackie continued tidying and weeding. The wonderful pastel shades of the peeling eucalyptus bark lead us into the first of these pictures. Not having complete faith in the promise of rain from mid-day, the Head Gardener slaked the thirst of the drooping rhododendron beside her with several buckets of water. Naturally this ensured that the meteorologists kept their word. It rained all afternoon.

This evening we dined on Jackie’s delicious sausage casserole, with boiled new potatoes and curly Kale. The Culinary Queen drank Peroni and I drank Reserve des Tuguets Madiran 2014.

P.S. Note exchanges with Mary and Gwen, below. We have Lemon Scented Gum ( Eucalyptus citriodora ),

An Enforced Eviction

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Early this morning the sun shone on the wall-bound wisteria aiming for the en suite bathroom.

Lingering early raindrops rolled around the Diamond Jubilee tulips

Raindrops and fly on tulip Diamond Jubilee

onto which a thirsty fly dropped for a drink.

Another rhododendron, leading the eye to the pieris on the grass, is beginning to bloom.

The day dulled over as it progressed. We spent the morning working on the garden. Jackie did some general planting and weeding, and sprinkled chicken pellets over the newly composted beds. Before you imagine otherwise, we do not keep chickens. The pellets come in a large bucket and are marketed as manure.

Vinca makes an attractive ground cover, but it does have a tendency to sprawl, take root, and make life very uncomfortable for bed-mates. So it has been for the Weeping Birch Bed. I therefore concentrated my efforts on that. Fast approaching is the warmer weather when a thinner duvet will be in order.

A black-spotted ladybird and a tiny striped snail suffered an enforced eviction as I ejected their shelter.

Our stone urns and other containers are mounted on dry brick pillars. The ground under one of these subsided a bit last autumn and it fell over. We spent the last few minutes before lunch levelling a space and beginning to rebuild the column.

This evening we dined on succulent roast pork and apple sauce, roast sweet and savoury potatoes, with al dente carrots, cauliflower, and runner beans; followed by rice pudding and blackberry jam. I drank Reserve des Tuguets madiran 2012, and Jackie drank Hoegaarden.

Before The Thunderstorm

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For the best part of the day there were two consistencies in the weather: it was very warm and it was dry. This meant the overnight rain soon evaporated. The sun, however, vied for dominance with the clouds.

Stopping on the way to buy a necessary sack barrow from Milford Supplies, we drove to Molly’s Den in search of two more stone urns for the rose garden. We were successful and installed them into position.

We also bought a red-painted wrought iron planter.

Early on, in the front garden,

tulips’ in-built umbrellas protected their stamens.

Bees preferred the pollen from the clematis Montana. If you can’t spot this insect filling its thigh sacs, you may choose to enlarge the image,

or opt for this one instead.

Pearly drops slipped from aquilegias.

The viburnum plicatum had benefited from the warmth and the rain.

Two years ago, outside the utility room door, stood the stump of a wisteria that had clearly been heavily pruned, we imagine to make way for the plumbing for the en-suite bathroom above. It has responded to nurturing the first year, and training the next, to produce a fine drapery which should increase even more next year.

Another stump, this time on the grass patch, has recovered to produce a pieris that now shows signs of feeling crowded by the Castle Bench.

Offspring of the erigeron, outside the French windows to the sitting room, have been adopted by various other parts of the garden.

Just before the thunderstorm hit at 4.30, after Jackie had planted up the urns, I joined her for cold drinks and a rest in the rose garden.

This evening we dined on Jackie’s prize chicken jalfrezi, now nicely maturing; meat samosas, egg fried rice, onion bhajis, and parathas. I drank more of the Cotes du Rhone, while The Cook abstained.

Suburban Terraced Housing

Anne stayed the night and we got up early for coffee and seeing her off back to London before her return to Athens.

From ‘The Royal Horticultural Society’s Encyclopaedia of Plants and Flowers’, Jackie has established that yesterday’s unknown shrub is a Siberian lonicera tatarica, or Tartarian honeysuckle, regarded as a pernicious weed in North America. I amended the post accordingly.

Another four tons of gravel was tipped onto the back drive this morning. Hopefully that will be enough to complete the layer.

A light blue wash would not have been our choice of cladding for the outside of the house, but it must have been an improvement on the bright pink we understand preceded it, and we are becoming accustomed to it. I have to admit that it sets off the wisteria on the back wall rather well.

Later this afternoon I walked a few yards down Downton Lane, where Sticky Willy or Lady’s Bedstraw cast its shadow on on the hedgerows as it began to scale the other plants; and the earliest dandelions are now demonstrating that time is running out for them.

Before that I had scanned a few more slides from November 1972, from my stay at Blackheath. On a walk, Michael posed on a park bench, while Becky was too interested in whatever she was examining to take any notice of the camera.

Wherever there is a grassy bank it is imperative for children either to roll down it or to climb up it. The one we came across must have been too steep for a roll, but Michael and Matthew ascended it. Matthew and Becky enjoyed peering through the railings of the terraced housing, probably speculating about who lived there.

Land, even in the suburbs of London, is scarce. If you are rich enough you can buy a large house with plenty of space, but for ordinary people, various generations of developers have built rows and rows of these terraces, each with their own small plot of land. Although London had been growing since the Londinium of the Romans, it was the Victorians who began the serious urban sprawl. For example, after the advent of the railway, they built the southern part of Wimbledon, where I bought my first house. Each new wave has brought its own architectural style, extending what is now known as Greater London.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NB5Oz9b84jM&w=560&h=315]

Taken from YouTube, The London Evolution Animation charts the growth of the capital from Roman times to 2013. I think it repays taking up the 7 minutes playing time.

This evening Jackie’s superb savoury rice accompanied Lidl’s splendid rack of ribs in barbecue sauce, for our dinner. I imbibed more of the Merlot and Jackie drank sparkling water.

‘Not Two Peoples…….’

When you wake up at 6 a.m. in an all-electric house to find you have a power cut and cannot make your morning coffee; and you have often passed a cafe in New Milton that professes to open at 6.30, there is only one thing to do. We did it. Dopily, Jackie drove us to Sunny Side Up Cafe. When, on entering, you learn that the big breakfast contains Ferndene Farm Shop sausages, suddenly coffee doesn’t seem enough. Jackie enjoyed her poached egg on toast, but I just had to have the full works.
And I could read about the Test match in yesterday’s Sun. Moeen Ali, permitted by the English Cricket Board to wear wrist bands bearing the legend ‘Save Gaza – Free Palestine’, had been stopped from doing so by the International Cricket Council. Steve Harmison, M.B.E., former England fast bowler has been quoted as saying that the spinner’s action on a cricket field was dangerous. Perhaps so, but Gaza has been an insurmountable problem for generations. Even without being able to unravel the rights and wrongs of the situation, I don’t see why he shouldn’t have made his statement.
Through the cafe window we watched the driver of a huge articulated lorry tidily loosening his load for delivery to Travis Perkins. We had watched him drive past the depot, presumably because he could not negotiate the left turn, and on to the next roundabout where he could backtrack and execute a right turn from our side of the road. Others were queuing, awaiting the store’s opening for their reception. From the top of the pillar box a POST OFFICE sign has been removed. Our home therefore has a shared history with the eating place, as does the Upper Dicker Village Shop, and no doubt many others of our smaller post offices which have been lost.

I took a walk along the maize field and collected more flint stones, completing the head gardener’s path on my return. I blame my Dad for the visual pun, because I thought of him as I peered down a hollow tree branch lodged in the hedgerow. One day when I was very small my father appeared in the doorway with one cardboard centre of a toilet roll held up to each eye, thus forming a pair of makeshift binoculars. Somewhat mystified, I gazed up in amazement.
‘Not two peoples’, said Dad. ‘Two peepholes’. Yabba dabba doo!
He would have been proud of his grandson Matthew’s offering related on 31st August 2012.
Between the tyre tracks on the path alongside the field, bees worked their way along ground covering convolvulus. Back home, another burrowed into a morning glory.
This afternoon I dug up and stacked more of the heavy concrete blocks and a few bricks from the kitchen garden, and Jackie completed her compost wall, then pruned and trained the wisteria.
This evening’s Red Admiral butterfly perched on a solar light, presumably waiting for it to come on in order to enhance its colour. It is of a duller, more orange, variation than, and consequently perhaps envious of, its redder and brighter relative seen yesterday.
We dined on Hordle Chinese Take Away’s delicious offerings. Jackie drank T’sing Tao beer and I finished the Cotes du Rhone.

Necrotising Fasciitis

Yesterday evening I read Charles Saumarez Smith’s 2010 introduction to The Folio Society’s edition of Kenneth Clark’s 1956 study, ‘The Nude’. Later, I began the book itself. As is my wont, I will comment on the work when I have finished reading it, but here I reproduce the binding illustration. Both the back and front boards are illuminated with Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’ magnificent 1808 oil painting, La Baigneuse de Valpincon.
This morning Jackie and I jointly undertook some more seriously scary pruning at the far end of the path by the empty house. Sports had to be removed from a euphorbia; yet another bay tree and mature suckers from an as yet unidentified shrub had to be brought to earth; and a pyracantha and viburnum much reduced. Finally, we removed some dead sections from the snake bark maple. The log pile for winter burning on the stove increases by the day.
Against the window wall of what is now our utility room, an adjunct to the library, a mature wisteria had been cut right down to a stump, presumably in order to facilitate the insertion of the bathroom of the master suite. Healthy new shoots have been burgeoning all summer. The first blooms have now arrived.
Early this evening, our friends Heather and Brian came for a visit and to collect books to be sold at a Charity Fun Day at Billericay Rugby Club on 3rd August, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. This is in aid of the Lee Spark Foundation which engages in research and disseminating information about Necrotising Fasciitis. Commonly termed the flesh eating disease, this is a condition caused by bacteria which can rapidly strip the affected areas of flesh of a human being to the bone within a couple of days, and is quite commonly fatal. Lee Spark was 19 when he died of the disease. Here is an extract on the event from Heather’s Facebook page:

”held to support The Lee Spark NF Foundation http://nfsuk.org.uk/ who help with research and raise awareness of Necrotising Fasciitis known as the flesh eating bug. Their mission is to educate and inform health professionals and individuals how severe streptococcal infections may develop into necrotising fasciitis. To help them recognise the early warning signs and symptoms and to generate continued support for research into the prevention of NF.If you know me you know I went through hell for 2 years nearly losing my life and a leg to this debilitating life changing horror.
So many people suffer much worse than me and so many people lose their lives to this horrendous infection. I’m one of the lucky ones.
Should be a great day loads to do, plus craft stalls, music etc. Ill be there with a second hand book and DVD stall. Please come and support us. If you can’t support please consider a donation.”

Having loaded our visitors’ car with several boxes of books, we all four went on to dine at The Jarna where we enjoyed the usual excellent fare, and, for Jackie and me, Cobra beer. A very pleasant evening was continued at our home.

Nearly There

The only bathroom cabinet in the house capable of containing anything useful to ablutions was in the downstairs loo, where it was probably superfluous to requirements. It was so positioned that, I have it on good authority, when rising from the lavatory seat one was likely to hit one’s head on the bottom corner. We took it off the wall this morning and replaced it with a mirror.
The rest of the morning was spent on progressing the installation of the garage library. Whilst Jackie built three IKEA Billy bookcases, I carried most of a lifetime’s collection of large Smith’s photograph albums upstairs to a very useful wardrobe cupboard that could have been tailor made for them. There will be more under the piles of Safestore storage boxes. I considered myself fortunate to have discovered as many as I did. This had the benefit of clearing more space to work in the library, but my system is such that I can’t start the process of filling shelves until I find the box marked ‘Novels A’ which has so far proved elusive. This will be the one that contains my copy of Daisy Ashford’s ‘The Young Visiters’.

During my preprandial tour round the garden, I photographed two different tulips, one very delicate in colouring, the other of the deepest red.

A heavily pruned wisteria lies, at present, beneath the pergola. It will, no doubt, once more festoon the wooden structure.

Furry orange bees are lapping up the ajugas.

Whilst I was wandering about, Jackie made a delicious vegetable soup for lunch.

Afterwards, with minimal help from me, she continued building the bookcases. Today’s tally was seven, leaving two more for completion tomorrow. The library is nearly there.

The Plough Inn at Tiptoe still serves the best pub food in the area. We reminded ourselves of that by dining there this evening. My choice was the fish combo with which I drank Doom Bar. Jackie opted for a half rack of ribs and Peroni to drink.

Jackie’s Post

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“The only time I can hear birdsong is when I’m sitting on the loo”.

When Jackie, delivering this sentence yesterday to her sisters in Milford’s Polly’s Pantry, became aware that she had raised her voice – as she told me this morning – she had hoped other customers had not heard this taken out of context. Having been beset by building works on one side of our garden and hedge-cutting on the other, that, opening statement was indeed true. This is because baby sparrows in the nest in our extractor fan are currently clamouring for the food parents are bringing home. Even while the fan is operating, a clunk, as the meals on wings arrive, is followed by intense tweets that would put Mr Trump to shame. Two adults proceed in non-stop convoy throughout the day.

When we first arrived here four years ago the front garden trellis bore quite weedy specimens of pink and red rambling roses, clematises and honeysuckle. Heavy pruning and nurturing has resulted in a splendid floral wall. The roses, in particular, shelter the entrance to the nest from view.

As always, the birds do not fly straight to the nest, but perch somewhere nearby to recce the surroundings before diving in. Our foraging parents choose first to alight on the trellis foliage. This morning, Jackie watched the proceedings through the hall window and photographed the birds transporting wriggling beakfuls of juicy breakfast.

Now, I may have put all this together and added my twopenn’orth, but this is quite clearly Jackie’s post.

This evening we dined on beef burgers, onions, carrots, cabbage, and mashed potato with tasty gravy.

Furzey Gardens

Early this morning I walked down to the village shop, returning via the church footpath and The Splash. The snowdrops, crocuses, and daffodils have made way in the churchyard for cow parsley.

On my return I had a chat with Gladys and Dave in the garden. John, otherwise known as Sisyphus (see 19th March post), was just arriving for his day’s gardening. Nodding in the direction of Jackie who was sitting outside our kitchen door, Dave said she was about to be upset because John would start the day’s lawn mowing. ‘Oh no’, said I, ‘she loves it. We are going to Furzey Gardens this afternoon. She cannot go out in the morning he visits because she gives him coffee at eleven o’clock’. Gladys responded that she provides his one o’clock cup of tea. ‘He also brings his own flask’, added Dave. I was still laughing when I returned to our flat and told Jackie this. She quipped that he was like Six Dinner Sid. Sid is a cat, the hero of a story told by Inga Moore (2004). He visits six homes in turn, all of which provide him with a dinner.

It is just as well there are no cats, either resident or visiting, in our building, because we are really getting to know our nuthatch family. Dad has been visiting the feeding station for some time now; having a scoff and a few words with Jackie; then, sated, flying off with some food in his beak. Now he just feeds himself. Mum has presumably been sitting on a nest somewhere nearby, but definitely not in the tree to which Dad has been flying as a decoy. The eggs must have hatched and the juveniles grown up a bit, for she has now emerged and taken her place on the finial of the pole, surveying her offspring’s fearless adventures.

The younger bird has not learned to be afraid, and consequently skips around beneath our feet. He nipped up the steps as Jackie stood watching amazed, and, skirting her trainers, explored the stonework, no doubt seeking insects.

In order for John to prune the hedges around Jackie’s hanging baskets and bird feeders, she has had to move them inside for the day. The fliers zooming in for nosh were somewhat confused by this. They swooped, they saw, they scarpered. ‘Where’, you could see them thinking, ‘has it gone? I know I left it here’.

The trip to Furzey Gardens was the culmination of three consecutive days of horticultural feasting. Aviemore provided breathtaking beauty in a compact, packed, area; MacPenny’s offered maturity in a large space; Furzey is endlessly stunning in acres of rolling woodland. Berry had told me this was the time to come because of the rhododendrons. We have magnificent species in our garden, but nothing could have prepared me for this dazzling array set off at its best on a gloriously sunny day.

Created in 1922 the house and garden remained in the Dalrymple family until the 1960s when it was bought by the charity that now runs it in partnership with the Minstead Training project.

Numerous paths take the visitor on a magical tour of shrubberies filled with the most unusual bushes, trees, and plants, collected from all over the world. There are thatched buildings dotted about, many of which have liitle doors set for fairies. A child’s note accompanied by a wilting bunch of wild flowers lay on a spar of wood. A play area contains climbing structures, swings, and even a disused rowing boat that looks as if it had been stranded when the waters of the winter subsided. A number of plants such as the enormous gunnera or the abundant, healthy, candelabra primulas, provide evidence of the boggy nature of some of the forest soil. There is a substantial pond. A wisteria Elizabeth would be proud of, festoons a rustic pergola and seat. The alpacas featured on the 30th March can be seen in the distance in a meadow of wild flowers accessible only to staff and students. There is still much to be done to restore parts of this amazing treasure to its former glory, and inroads are definitely being made. I am not sure how much of the uncultivated area is to remain wild, but I hope a reasonable amount. The original house is now a place of retreat.

At Chelsea in 2012, the Minstead Training Project carried off gold for the Show Garden. It is in the process of being brought back to its roots in Furzey Gardens.

This evening we dined on belly of pork roasted long and slow by Jackie. I drank half a bottle of the Blason des Papes Chateauneuf du Pape 2011, a really excellent wine she bought me for Christmas.