BACK HOME

Here is a stone carving of me reclining in undergrowth. It is a bit like looking at clouds and seeing shapes. This was on the walk from Rocklcliffe to Kippford. If you cannot see the head do not worry, it is a bit Easter Islandish.

And we were surrounded by swallows, R almost trod on a slow worm, we followed a hare along the road, a red squirrel scuttled up a tree and two roe deer skipped into the woodland brush.

No, not here at The Nook, we were away for three nights in southern Scotland and no sign of a swallow or martin here. In fact all the trail camera saw in the last ten days was grey squirrels, pheasants and RABBITS!

And we are home and R has been weeding the veg beds whilst I am slowly dying of manflu - however I think I have now given it to R.

The gardener has been and strimmed the top banking - to come back to do the bottom one.

I am debating as to whether I should have the Russian sage, Perovskia atriplicifolia, dug up because of the war.

On the other hand it is not its fault Russia has a madman as its President. The war is only because of his failings at home and trying to distract his people from his mismanagement. 

Thinking about that - when are we going to Invade Europe Liz?

Forget the mess- the roses are still blooming.

The Conference pears are coming ripe - lift the fruit and if comes away easily it is ready. The only trouble with these pears is that they have a rather tough gritty skin but they are self-fertile trees so only need one.

Perhaps I should dig up the potatoes - perhaps not, I cannot face seeing all the slug damage and scab and so on.

It will be time soon to lift the cannas and store them for the winter. I should do the same for the dahlias but with a good compost covering they have survived last winter and are flowering well so the same again I think.

Occasionally things that flower in the spring do so now - like this Clematis armandii -

Elsewhere the Hydrangea Annabelle is getting too big? - right by the backdoor it has now moved on from white to green, more or less, but is overgrowing the sarcococcus next to it.

I can sit in my study and look up into the magnificent old ash tree outside (hope it does not fall on us) and think what a disaster dieback is. I hope the tree is a tough old thing.

And there are definite signs of autumn around, not least with the Acer Sango-kaku which is already turning.

In the spring I put in half a dozen Cosmos Purity, not all in one mass but here and there to lighten up corners. Now all I have to do is the same as with the dahlias - deadhead. Then we get more flowers.

Son came round last night - I have the get a new iPad as on my old one (R's old one) the glass is broken. I took it to a repairer and he said it was too damaged. Then I though I should replace my thick phone (a Nokia) with a iPhone - Aaaaagh!  Oh! For the old days when our telephone number was 329.

The sun is out, perhaps I will just check the trail camera first and see if there any damsons left.

WHAT A DIFFERENCE

 A mow makes!

Spring equinox, temperature 16C, not a cloud, at last!

The Madame Lefebre tulips are out as is one of the camellias.

We have our first forgetmenots, wood anemones in the wood (of course), and both the white honesty and one of the cherries is showing petals. The magnolia stellata is well on the way and joins pulmonarias and hellebores. At the back of the house we have leaves coming on the cercidiphyllum and flowers on the flowering currant. And I have failed to light the bonfire yet again.

Primroses dress the lower woodland edge. Note the logs - need chopping.

R has been hard at it shifting branches to the bonfire and dividing snowdrops now they are in the green.

Other wild things in the garden include the rabbits that are digging everywhere and down by the stream the opposite leaved golden saxifrage is doing well.

And of course there are daffodils. R suggested we dug up all but the native wild daffodil so I said she can if she wants - go and look at how many there are - she changed her mind.

Mind you the wild daffodil - Narcissus pseudo narcissus is the best.

We are in a short dry spell so have been watering the pots. Winter is done for.

R suggests we buy in lots of seeds to grow our own food after Putin throws his nuclear weapons about. It seems no one can argue with him. Perhaps a good laugh in his face would help - or put all the dictators in a locked room and tell them they can only come out when they have decided to be nice? Might be some personality conflicts there?

It is evening, the shadows lengthen and better days approach.

OH-OH, IT'S STARTING ALL OVER AGAIN

Well, that is that done, just the New Year now the we can get on with enjoying 2019 - Brexit, Trump, shifting manure onto the veg beds, intolerance, global warming, M6 traffic, paying for our upsizing, avoiding onions, losing weight, getting fitter, Brexit, Trump, etc etc.
Oh! Yes, and a golden wedding - has R really put up with me for all that time? (Well, some of it.) If I haven't had my other knee done we will probably be in Pembrokeshire watching the sunset over St Bride's Bay.

Most mornings are dull and drab though Christmas Eve was special - we walked in the Winster Valley in mist and sunshine -

In our downstairs WC, a foot along beyond the sink where the skirting board down not quite meet the floor, there lives a small black spider. When I come in he (though more probably she so I will call him/her it) will nip out a tiny bit to see what's up. Then as I move around it retreats almost out of site. It has been there for over three years and I have no idea what its feeds on.

The view from the house, like this from the living room is a bit depressing - a load of wet plastic, but, when there is sun, despite the building works, the garden has some highlights- a rose here, the beech hedge in full leaf colour - 

and one or two premature snowdrops showing their white flowers. In fact there are flowers on one of the wallflowers, on the odd bramble in the hedgerow and the mild weather (fingers crossed) seems to be deceiving many plants. As usual managed to pick a small vase of flowers for the table from the garden - I mean the table is not from the garden but . . . . well . . . 

New Year's Ever tomorrow and an early bed for me - to be woken by people launching rockets and such at midnight - just hope they are not North Korean nor Putin's new whizzers.

The light of the old year is fading and colour dissipating. Let us hope next year is not a monochrome year.

Here is hoping for a garden full of flowers, fruit and vegetables, body that will let me shovel horse manure and less argy-bargy in the political world. 
A happy and hopefully good New Year to everyone.

Now, where's my drink.

What do you mean the kettle's on?

(Pinched the title from Brenda Lee.)

Fed up with jargon -

NAVEL GAZING

I am liking Pam Ayres more and more

After reading the latest editions

Of Poetry and PN Review.

Good verse does not have to be obscure

And I wonder if those who profess

To understand the contortions

Of language manifest in their pages

Really know what is being said.

Modern verse takes a delight

In inaccessability, poetry-speak.

It is not surprising it is disappearing

Up its own niche, one so narrow

As to exclude so many readers.

A spade is a spade not a wrought

Implement with design for the transfer

Of materials from one place to another

Or the excavation of earthy material.

Well, it is the latter, but why not

Just say it is a spade?

LIFE IS A LOAD OF HORSE MANURE

Delivered this week outside the cattle grid, well rotted, fine stuff. We have already started spreading the good news - well, good for the starving plants. Cow is better and not so full of weed seed but this is well gone so we hope for the best. Anyway we should have good rhubarb next year.

R is forking away like mad, wielding the wheelbarrow with a will.

Doc does not seem to mind the new covering on the poppy bed.

So photos of the garden in all its glory, well, not quite, to the right before they poured the raft and below after and after the rain came with water on the top of the concrete slab. My old rose bed does not look too good now and the path around the front of the house is somewhat chewed up despite sheets of plywood on top of it.











The weather has turned wild with storm Diana hunting us down on Thursday. 

Cannot go out in the garden for fear of the cock pheasant coming over and begging for sunflower seed.

We have our own infinity pool on top of the concrete and the pond is redolent with reflections now the water lilies have sunk from sight. There still are a few flowers in the garden if one searches - roses, the fatsias and this feverfew.

 In the house the gerbera, Transvaal daisy,  I forgot to put in the garden, is flowering in the kitchen window but the rest are hunkering down for winter - though the good old orchid has sprung a new flowering stem.

I have picked up sticks from the wood - R will not do it - "There's no need and anyway more will come down" - but if left the whole place will become a tangle and a mess. In heaps they can be havens for wildlife - like hedgehogs (if we had any).

Small birds are eating us out of house and home. Counted 9 tits on the feeders and 8 chaffinches, two sparrows and a dunnock on the ground beneath this morning.

So I sip my tea, eat a ginger biscuit and gawp at the mess the world is getting itself into - is Trump real? What does Putin have over him that Trump never criticises him? After all the Brexit stress and cost are we going to end up still in the EU? David Miliband for PM? Personally anyone but Corbyn and anyone in the Tory Party, SNP, DUP, etc - far too many TLAs (three letter abbreviations in use.)

It will be a relief to get back to little stuff - like global warming and the end of the world as we know it.

Let's end with a poem that has nothing to do with anything but the underlying essence of the universe - 

FIBONACCI

I

wonder

about the

mystery of the

magic Fibonacci numbers.

Can they be thought of as originating from God

or are they something fundamental underpinning the structure of the universe?

Blake,

to see

a world in

a grain of sand and

a heaven in a wild flower,

where the whorls of sepals, petals in the perianth

all perpetuate the series, so begin - one, two, three, five, eight, thirteen, twenty-one . . .

And

on and

on and on - 

mathematical

symmetry symbolising what?

Thirty-four, fifty-five, eighty-nine - get the series?

We did adding-up like this at the end of my junior school education - sums.

And

someday 

someone will 

summon the thought that 

somewhere there’s a fundamental

truth in Fibon

acci num

bering

?.

AND A BLOGGY NEW YEAR

Starting at dawn here are three miserable images from the kitchen door, well, the first one is not so bad.

To move on to the garden where shapes are the thing - like this spreading cherry tree silhouette. 

There's a dead rat under the Magnolia stellata - a very long dead rat - shovel out and shift somewhere away from the house.

So how are we to come to terms with poseurs at the helm in both USA and Russia. There they are ranting away at one another and increasing nuclear arsenals and world instability when they should be getting together to engender world peace and saving the natural world.

Said my bit for the nil effect it will have.

Move on - it is Christmas, it is dark and gloomy outside albeit mild - 10C. Inside it is coloured lights, too much food (that is both inside the house and inside me), Mr Claus has been, the sherry and mince pie have been consumed (have, has?) and the carrot shows Rudolph's teeth marks. The presents are clustered under the tree, the grandchildren have opened their stockings. (They were told that they could wake etc when it was light enough to see the pond. Unfortunately with the ambient light in the sky this meant our grandson could see the pond at 3 am!)

And suddenly it is all over, all gone, the house quiet as a church woodlouse. R gave me a gardening book with lots of labour intensive ideas :-( .

This is not of now but an old photo I discovered - and not used before. I thought it would cheer us up in days of dreary winter.

We woke this morning (Tuesday) to skeins of geese flying east from the Duddon to Morecambe Bay, their cries always seem to call us to the window to watch.

Talking of looking, DNA is a funny thing - looking in the mirror this morning I was surprised to recognise the lower half of my face as that of my Great Grandfather at the same age!

So, after the gales, it is back to pick-up-sticks time again in the garden - ash trees are dreadful shedders of dead twigs.

Wednesday and a still, cold morning, woken before 6 by a parliament of tawny owls in the ash trees. Later the dawn was greeted by a mistle thrush - a harbinger of the new year to come.

Went for a walk across the River Leven at Greenodd and round by Mearness Farm (where they were shooting pigeons and pheasants). Coming back along the old disused railway the gorse was in full flower. 

THE CYSSAN BUSH 

(cyssan - O.E. - a kiss)

Gold gorse,

the kiss thorn,

with soft keels

and knives drawn,

spikes doused

in flaxen fire,

branches bound  

with barbed wire,

Gold gorse,

the wild whin,

one flower

and kissing’s in

but no bloom,

kissing’s out

and love drowns -

a kiss drought -

but kiss of life,

kiss of death,

saw, saying,

shibboleth?

Kiss the rod?

Scourge the punner?

Kiss the daughter

of the gunner?

Gold gorse,

the crackling shrub

with brittle pods

and bodkin scrub,

with linnet nests

of woven grass

wrapped in shards

of broken glass.

Gold gorse -

paper of pins,

that’s the way

it all begins,

that’s the way

to love and bliss,

one flower -

one kiss.

THE CONTINUING STORY OF BUNGALOW BILL

Except we don't live in a bungalow.
But my first name is Bill (well William) even if I don't use it much.

Here we go again as I have just deleted the start of this blog (insert a grumpy) and - well, R has dug out the past-it forget-me-nots and put them up in the woodland to self seed. I am covered in greenfly and whitefly after weeding under the big sycamore (Notable tree - Woodland Trust) as the tree is a metropolis of little flying things.
Roses are being dead headed, weeding goes on - carrots, Nantes, are sown - the last, really the last, asparagus cut and eaten by R who loves it - a bowl of strawberries on the kitchen island - the Sweet Cicely cut back and chucked in the compost bin.

This is outside the kitchen doors -

and this the view down to the pond from there.

This is the house martin nest from where the fledglings went - just above the top picture. The swallows still seem to be building and a community on the beam seems likely - i.e. more than one nest. No sign of egg eating squirrels for a bit - fingers crossed.

The elder is flowering well but we are not making elderflower cordial this year - too lazy.
We have mullein moth caterpillars chomping our plants so have had to take action. 

On the shed the clematis montana Albert is in fine flower. I also have two montana Elizabeths in pots and still do not know where to put them.

Up something I suppose - but what?
The catmint (nepeta) this year is splendid and spilling onto the paving. It goes so well both with the alchemilla and euphorbia - both yellow/greens.

This is Rose Golden Showers, one of two we have and it is flooding the garden with sunshine despite the rain.

The poppies continue to blast us with colour, both in the flower beds and growing semi wild up on the banking near the fig. We have many colours but the good old blast of orange vermilion is still the best. (Goliath and Patty's Plum are not bad either.)

Now, every time I mention Putin I get a surge in hits for the blog - am I being monitored by the Russian secret service? It seems silly but could be true. On the other hand could it be the Vlad fan club - like its members in Marseille? Ultraviolent - the n is there on purpose - nothing to do with a suntan. 

Come Tuesday and a largely sunny day and I half kill myself hover mowing the lower banking. I forgot that if I perspire the flies come homing in on me.

Went to supermarket and bought a pot of basil and one of coriander. Each pot contains many plants so took out a few of each and planted them in the veg beds.

The pond is looking good and I sent a pic to Gary Primrose who helped us build it. He lives near Tarn Hows at a place called Yewfield and has a blog - http://www.yewfield.co.uk/about/gardeners-blog.

Well worth a visit on the net. There is a link to the left of this blog.
One last thing, pond related - the yellow mimulus (monkey flower) sows itself everywhere and R said we should try it in a vase. I thought it would be useless but to my surprise it has lasted over a week and is still going strong!

The rain has made many of the strawberries rotten so I am going to have a cup of tea to drown my sorrows.