FIRST FOG, LONGER BLOG

So we have our first fog of the year - mists of mellow fruitfulness and all that stuff.
Then it muzzled all day - so I put the orchid outside for a wash etc.
 

It is so still outside, not breath of wind - which means there is no way the grass will dry even a bit - for mowing. 
November coming and the oriental poppy still has flowers with buds to come.

Time to prune the willows - PB can have them to put near his lake, they will root easily if just shoved into the ground.
 

The willows are in the pink trug with the water lily, iris in small pots and other stuff in the sacks.
All has now been collected which will make little impression, I suspect, to his lake - a few scraps floating in an ocean.
 

 The leaves on the trees are not the only autumn colour in the garden - here we have dying euphorbia, hosta and so on.

One confession I do have to make is that I should stake plants more - the Michaelmas daisy at the back has fallen flat after a day of soft wetting rain - from the weight of water.  

     

 The woodpecker has returned to the feeder - a pleasure to see - and I put up a grey wagtail by the pond this afternoon.

I have cleared away the sweet peas that never flowered and begun trimming and cutting away the debris - like the hosta leaves above. There are still some apples on the Bramley.

So we are trying to get used to the change of time - the clocks just went back an hour in the UK so lighter in the morning but darker at night. Why can't modern science sort that out - correct the tilt of the earth? Mind you, if they did - no seasons and the Brits would have nothing to complain about.

Also, why is our news continually dominated by the palaver in the USA - I mean it's simple - give Obama another year and try and find someone more sensible as a figurehead.
Michael Moore for President? Or Bob Dylan - a President who would say nothing - what a change - an enigmatic President.

It is November 1st and I tweaked my back yesterday in the garden and have struggled to put my socks and shoes on this morning. Bad news is that it hurts, good news is that I can avoid gardening for a while. (Well, good news for me but not good news for the garden.)

Oh! And the fox has been caught again on the night camera.

 The poppy is not the only  red in the garden still - roses on the shed and fuchsia by the gate continue strongly. The sedum under the Magnolia stellata is its usual flopped over state but flowering. I have raised the canopy on the tree so we can see better the daffodils that will come up in the spring below it.

As I am laid up and not doing owt I leave you with the cherry as it meets the autumn.

ABIGAIL IS COMING, CHRISTMAS CAKE

So the weather has been given a name, Abigail. Gail sounds about right at the moment stripping the last leaves from the trees and rain - plenty now making the grass boggy.
Water everywhere and, unfortunately, it has reared its head underneath the pond liner again - we have a small island. The drain must be blocked, I suppose.
Our moorhen is still with us and looks like has decided to take up residence for the winter. It does not mind rain.

We have the last flush of autumn in the garden but the big sycamore is stubbornly staying green as are some of the Acers - unlike the saturated red of the Euonymus alatus - winged spindle - that is at its best. The ash trees are now naked and skeletal.

Flowers still struggle on - amazingly last year's yellow winter pansies in a pot outside the kitchen door and the nasturtiums on the bank, not yet turned slimy by a frost. The temperature remains in the teens.

R has to do the flowers for the church on Sunday but apart from a big pot of Sedum spectabile in the porch there is not much else now usable. It will mean a trip to buy something, at least for the altar.

I rang the shed people about the wet rot at the bottom of the Wendy House door but got no satisfaction so it will mean a carpenter coming to patch it up.

I have seen all sorts of weather now, even fog.

In the paper there is a cartoon of Cameron and Obama up to their necks in the desert and Putin laughing - but now he is sinking into the sand with them. You would have thought the Russians would have learned better after their debacle in Afghanistan.

And that has nothing to do with a gardening blog.

I have collected some more of the leaves from the paths and bagged them but so much is sodden I can only watch. 
R is making our Christmas fruit cake. The dried fruit is soaked in  booze and soon it will go in the oven for at least five hours. It takes longer to cook than to eat, though to eat it all at once would be a real tour de force!

Recipe? All right - metric measures!
Ingredients 1 - 20 cm square tin - currants 500g, sultanas 350g,
raisins 175g, glace cherries 350g, rind 2 oranges, 150ml sherry, 250g soft margarine.
Chop raisins, halve cherries, put in bowl, pour over sherry add grated rind, cover, stir daily for 3 days.
Ingredients 2 - dark brown sugar 250g, 5 eggs, s/r flour 75g, plain flour 175g, blanched chopped almonds 75g, black treacle 1 tablespoon, ground mixed spice 1.5 teaspoons.
Beat marg, eggs, sugar, treacle and almonds on bowl, add flours and spice and blend well.
Stir in fruit.
Line tin with greaseproof paper, spoon in and level.
Cook in low oven (Aga in simmering oven) for 4.5 to 12 hours. Check regularly with skewer. When it comes out clean cake is cooked. Leave to cool in tin.

After that it is into storing - you can add booze a little at a time over next few weeks but beware - one year R added too much and it was all soggy! (But nice)
Later marzipan and icing as you wish.

To continue - the roses are still blooming here. Thank you to A's parents for this one.

And I leave you with a burst of sunshine from two days ago before the fog came down (or rather up with the incoming tide).

A LITTLE PARANOIA AND A PLETHORA OF FLORA

Well, not quite the world but every seed eating bird for miles around. Oh! And Scuirus carolinensis (grey squirrel). 

I did catch one and being a wimp transported it to a distant wood (not one with resident reds though.)

And then there are sluggus gert biggius, snails veri mennius, mousius woddius, aphids, beetles, cuckoo spit all over my trousers, enoughius I am going paranoid.

So let me start with the view from the veg beds back to the house. This is a composite panorama of three images ranging from the woodland edge on the top left to the soon-to-be removed willows on the right. The Wendy House is visible in the distant right over the soon-to-be relocated copper beech hedge. The banking in the centre foreground is to be filled with flowering shrubs when I have got rid of the long grass and weeds.

So to to whites and some examples of colour in the garden at the moment. Above left is a white geranium, above right a splendid white penstemon. White is so important in the garden as a foil for other colours. And white and green together can be so soothing and peaceful.

Above is an allium - this seeds itself and I love the strong structure of the balls of colour against the green of surrounding foliage.

Then there are the gaudy day lilies blasting their presence but beware they can get out of hand and need digging out and shoving in a remote corner. I wonder if that shrub banking could be full of such things - possibly but another flower bed - mm! Think R might have something to say about that.

Cascading down the banking at the front of the house is a lovely blue geranium where whether en masse or as a single delicate boom is a treat. With these hack them back when they have flowered and a second flush can arrive later in the year.

Another cascade is the shrub Kolkowitzia (think I spelled that correctly), the beauty bush, currently weighed down with blossom.

Raining at the moment - what a novelty! Actually more the usual up here - but I did nip out yesterday and get the paths mown - next blog a pathy (pathetic) one. I am cutting them close and cutting the rest longer - R likes the idea so who am I too argue - would I dare!

So Putin and Obama sort of met in France with the anniversary of D Day but neither seem interested in my teaching their armed forces the Hokey Cokey to cement better relations. Anyway the Queen was there to sort them out and see fair play.

You know I sometimes wonder, with all the DNA stuff going on as to whether there is a Russian gene - there cannot be an American one as they are such a hotch potch of races - actually in America they are jeans rather than  . . .  you get the drift.

So to finish with a blast of colour, a bit of rockrose - stunning!

LAWN OR NO LAWN, LEGO AND PUTIN

So we have a small problem - lawnmower man versus nowt but paths and grass woman. Can we compromise? Can we? Mmmm! And we have the proposals from Gary re changing the garden. And I have still not got my mowers back from the service agent.

Let me get the daffs done first - they are splendid up by the wood and I love them tumbling over each other. I would have preferred them to be wild daffodils - we have some as you can see below - but

many bulbs were here before us and they just burst from the ground every year. We pick them, fill vases and the house is full of scent. So to those of you in Canada, especially London, at 43 deg north - come over here - we are at 53 deg north and, unlike you, it is not snowing. In fact it has not snowed significantly all winter.

Between the daff clumps there grow primroses - one of the most delicate and pretty flowers of spring. The narcissi are all a bit stiff and sappy but the primroses, especially when wet from rain or dew are a delight.

R has just been out blasting the back paving with the Karcher as it had become very slippery when wet. She seems to like doing it so who am I to object. Whilst she was doing this I weeded the bay bed by the shed and found it had become riddled with ground elder! There is, however, some satisfaction in digging up the long underground roots and following them to the end. Unfortunately there is probably no way I have got every bit. Weed killer might be called for - it is not somewhere mowable.
At this time of year the list of things to do grows faster than they can be done - well faster then I do them. The cutting garden has been tidied. Here you can see old tulips in the front and then a line of Sweet William (Stunkin' Wullie if you are Scots) which, of course, is grown as a biennial.

At the far end are the alstromerias and in between room for calendulas and other annuals. Actually there is a clump of last year's marigolds in the bed. I cannot throw them away without seeing how well they will do in their second year.
Our garden designer told me off (gently) for not using matting and mulch around all my trees and shrubs so they would grow faster without competition at the roots. Correcting this has been added to the list, slap wrist, naughty lazy boy.

Back to R and the lawn thingy - she hates lawns and wants long, wild bits with paths through. This is ok but it means that later in the year will come a need for strimming. Now my regular readers will know that I love strimming (Hem, hem) so she said we can get someone in to do it. Should I shout, Whoopee? (Love the Ray Charles version of Making Whoopee by the way).

So a big garden year approaches, my back twinges, my knees knock (and grate), you should see me - 'What a figure, what a bank balance,' what a load of rubbish. (Quote is from Major Bloodnok.)

The Invasion of the (not body) Time Snatchers comes this weekend. We are both looking forward to it and the joy they bring - the grandchildren. These events are also known as the Lego explosion when the big box in their spare bedroom is emptied onto the floor. Then from a seemingly meaningless jumble of bits of plastic comes a vehicle with a motor and flashing lights.

And final here are some pulmonaria in flower.

When I worked, in the 1980s, I had Sir Austin Bradford Hill as a patient. He was the statistician and epidemiologist who, with Richard Doll, were the first to demonstrate the connection between cigarette smoking and lung cancer. (So pulmonaria - lungs etc.)(Get on with it.) Well I visited him fairly regularly and he was a great talker but I never put two and two together (well I did and made zero) so finally he asked, "Do you know who I am?" I mumbled something negative. He then told me in no uncertain terms who he was. However he remained my patient whilst he was in the area despite this.
One just does not expect famous people to pop up in places like here.

Just a minute, there is someone at the door . . .

It is all right. It is only Mr Putin asking my advice on how he can become buddies again with Mr Obama.
(I did tell him - get everyone at the next summit to learn the Hokey Cokey but he had forgotten.)

(Any way mentioning him ups my readership numbers in Russia a lot.)

STAIR RODS, GNASHERS AND PLUMS

Fancy having wire cutters in your mouth!

Well, that is what our squirrels have. 

I have just thrown away a bird feeder for the wee grey beasties have chewed through the wires to get at the peanuts.

Here are the stair rods, wet ones courtesy of an Auntie Cycling in the Atlantic and depression here. We are fed to our teeth as another autumn AND WINTER loom.

The Vicky Plums have been great and we have sticky chins - they are so sweet and juicy. I went down the garden yesterday and had to robble ( a cross between run and hobble (those with knadgered knees know what I mean)( 3 ks - is that alliteration?)) back to the house through a downpour.

We are Sweet Pead, if you know what I mean - inundated this year, wonderful - I think I have dealt with this before but they are so fantastic I am mentioning them again.
Some fruit is abundant - blackberries, plums, some is a wash out - apples and pears. I can only assume that it was the cold spring that got to the blossom and the bees.

Last blog I rabbited on about yellow and orange flowers at this time of year so, just to show you what a load of rubbish a prattle here are some pinkies.

Cosmos, clematis and Japanese anemones top to bottom.

R is in her shed and all is well with Cawthwaite.com, hang on - we are being assaulted by felines and canines (not teeth) again - and the sun is out - cannot see a rainbow though.

Does one prune buddleia or not? Well, one could but not this one as we have so many around the garden that it would be a horrendous job. (an horrendous?)
What is needed now is thinning and dividing and replanting and stuff. I hate to throw plants away but sometimes there is no choice. I will stick them on the banking and in corners but there are still barrows full of them even after that.
A note on our willow that would not weep, had two stems, got the dreaded lurgi and all the leaves fell off. Thought it was dead - well, one stem was but the other has sprouted and the new growth is bending over a bit - perhaps a weeper after all! (Good writers do not use exclamation marks)(so now you know about me.)

And Syria - Putin is still puttin' it around but more deviously, Obama's cavalry are humming and ha-ing, fidgeting with their stirrups and looking uncomfortable, Cameron is less Churchillian and more Blairite, Assad is just sitting and waiting for the hoo-ha to subside so he can get on with eradicating anyone who disagrees with him (I wonder if Assad has some spare weed killer?) and the sweet peas need picking again. And the plums. And the carrots. And the weeds definitely need eradicating.

So I just suck on a juicy plum, stare at the garden, realise that I cannot do it all and ring the man. The man, however, is giving up doing his gardening job so I shall have to find another man.

Shall I go gardening?
No just Skype the hyper grandchildren.
Much better idea.
But not for the garden, alas.

COUCHES AND COLOURS

The phone is dead, the mobile reception is poor and anyway I was out in the garden mowing uphill. I am a bit wary of slopes with the sit on mower, especially side on, but straight up and down seems ok and the more I can do sitting down the better my couch potatoes will grow.

Speaking of potatoes - they have flower typical of the Solanums -

Colourful and beautiful?

Yesterday, with the rain coming, I mowed the lawns and then cleared out, cleaned and reorganised the shed. The day before I had been ditch digging, and stream digging and back aching and belly-aching.

I have been growing some oriental poppies from seed so these have been potted on and I went around the garden collecting trees from 6 inches to four feet tall to take to Orcop Hill for my daughter and her husband. They are pruned and potted.
Having attacked the blackcurrant bushes I made ten bundles of ten cuttings for R's coffee morning, and made another load of blackcurrant jam.

We are eating Victoria plums - so juicy straight off the tree - yum! They are so sweet (a bit like me!)(and sickly?)

Have you ever truly looked into the heart of a flower - this is a rose backlit by the sun.

Many flowers at this time of year are, like in the spring, yellow like this helianthemum. They can get out of hand though - eight feet tall and spreading by underground runners.

And then there is orange like this day lily, also out of hand.

So much to do and so many potatoes in my couch!
My cousin J sent me copies of family silhouettes today and I was glad to see that the older ancestors fed themselves well, some too well. Few were shadows of themselves - Oh! Ha Ha!
In fact the one of Great Great Great Grandfather Robert's double chin just looks too familiar.

Enough - back to the couch and a can o' lager and salted cashews.

Now it is another day and I am still couched - the heavens have opened and water is cascading over the gutters. Do not think I will dig the stream at the moment.

Did you see fantasy land in Russia with the 20 G strings? Putin posing and puttin' himself about, Cameron Churchilling and Obama trying to bring up the cavalry.
Look lads, come up to The Nook, I'll put on the kettle and we can have a chat in the scent of sweet peas and a juicy Victoria plum off the tree.
As for Assad - as said - sad.