A JOURNEY UP THE GARDEN PATH

Beautiful morning, a walk from the pond up to the new extension. That's all.

FIRST SIGNS OF SPRING!

Brock is back, well it might be Mrs Brock, can't tell from the night video.

Poem - not one of mine - Anon. wrote it -

It's dogs' delight to bark and bite
and little birds to sing
and if you sit on a red-hot brick
it's a sign of an early spring.

And the world is crazy - it is early December and the snowdrops are pushing up through the leaf litter, daffodils under the magnolia. At this moment, outside my window, the cock pheasant is searching for seeds dropped from the feeders on the shed - blue, great and coal tits hard at work with finches - gold, green and chaffinches pushing their way in. A buzzard is crying in the sky. Last night the tawny owls were hooting through the darkness. And I have just heard that there is a flock of over a hundred waxwings down in the town. Yes we get fieldfares, redwings and starlings - but as yet no waxwings.

There is still colour in the garden especially in the grasses like the stipa gigantea or the miscanthus. The now dead grasses rustle in the breezes. Another three months and then time to cut ethan down and begin again.


There is colour in leaves too - the geranium on the left and the strawberries on the right as the green chlorophyll disappears.
Neither were planted for this purpose but now we have a bonus lighting up a drab time of year.

Some shrubs, too, are doing well - the beech hedge on the left, of course, and the Cotinus on the right. The beech will keep its leaves through the winter.

Even the dying agapanthus leaves are a blast of yellow.

And finally the honesty seed heads, left where they grew rather than taken in and sprayed with gold paint for Christmas light up a dark corner near the bay trees.

All in all there is much still to see - if one bothers to go out and look.

Have just trimmed beech hedge, cut back vicious Rambling Rector rose and put compost on asparagus and rhubarb beds. Despite a face mask got a bit of hedge in my eye - sore.
R hacking away at the dead plants clearing the rubbish.

And so to finish on a rather distorted pic from the inside of the Wendy House down by the pond where R creates her masterpieces.

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).

ALL ROOK AND ROLL

(This blog carries a warning of insensitive material later on)

In the beginning there was a heart sinking feeling as we strolled past the pond and noticed that, since the drain had been put in under the liner properly the liner was rising again!
Methinks a call to Gary may be needed. 
Very depressing.
To move on -

When the light shines through young beech leaves it is a delight.

Have just hoed around. We had stormy weather and the garden is wet so big mower will have to wait.
Where one of the drains was put in the mole has dug a new run off to the side and all the water is going that way! Not down the pipe.

R is having three downstairs room floored in oak which has floored me. One is my little private haven stuffed with . . . stuff! My stuff! And it will all have to come out.
3 days later and I am stuffed - floors done and chaos resolved, bank empty, brain dead! But the lady loves it so . . .
And have managed to mow without getting bogged down.

Still cropping asparagus, just, and earthing up the spuds.

We have had a a swarm of honey bees into the dormer roof space outside our bathroom - windows shut for the moment.

R has been up the garden digging up recurring brambles and pulling out goosegrass and tiny tree seedlings. There are millions (well hundreds) of sycamore and ash infants.

The campion is in full blossom now.

Let me chuck you a few garden shots - first looking west from the kitchen patio - what a yucky word - there must be a better.

Then to the shed from there and down to the pond. Note the candelabra primulas in full glory.

Finally a view up the garden to the west along the curved path. I prefer curvy things - like paths - except in the veg garden.

Two plants doing well at the moment are these saxifrages.

Din outside my window and I have a squirrel in the trap, no I do not, yes I do, no it is not it is a jay and it is making a terrible fuss. 
Its plumage is beautiful for a crow so out I go and release it.

The metal trap is encased in a plastic sack tied on with string and weighted down with a stone (To stop it blowing away).

The sack is needed because as peanuts are the bait they fall through the metal mesh - and if the trapped prey is in there all night a little shelter would not go amiss.

The forecast ahead is good but we have had some special rain pouring over the gutters.

However it does not last forever and the sun comes out with a little magic light.
This was a complete rainbow but I could not get it all in one image. 
When all is said light is the main essential in any garden, creating contrasts.
There is something special about the varied shadow and light in the wood, particularly when there is a gentle breeze and the leaves cast shapes on the woodland floor.

(R does not have my appreciation of the finer things in life - I am currently listening to Bubbles in the Tar by The Piltdown Men on my iTunes player.)

This year's weed be mainly goosegrass (cleavers) and covers me with sticky burrs. Where did that come from - pulling it out by the handful.

A couple of years ago I put in 5 purple alliums at the end of the rose bed and have allowed them to seed with dramatic effect.

R wants me to chuck seed into the area of yellow/green euphorbia by the path down to the Wendy House when it is ripe - should make a contrasting statement.

My taste has improved (a little) now playing Early Morning Rain by Peter Paul and Mary - showing my age (and Mary is gone as are so many).

Now, I know New Zealand is a long way away and adjustments have to be made for climate, having an upside down year and so on but there is good advice at http://www.sustainablegardener.org/latest-post/. This post on broad beans.

Sometimes this blog can get a bit too nice? Can be too sweety?
So - New Writing Cumbria's online mag The Carrot has taken a poem of mine for the second edition - the theme was 'Killing"!
Also Manchester Camerata has requested photos of Ulverston so all going on. (No pay tho').
The verse is about how all things come around and nothing is wasted in nature.

Any way here is the charming poem - 

FUTURE

Rings set by summer sun running in elm-sap,

trap, in their stain, seasons of snuffed years.

Rain and sorrows run from the furrowed bole

where, beneath the waxen bark, beetles burrow.

Dutch mandibles bring lethal hyphae,

leave bleached skeletons of silent wood

spread against the sky, rattling in the wind.

Within the darkness of an autumn hanger,

from the brown of beechwood litter

and black-edged mould, a parasol emerges,

a Destroying Angel dressed in innocence,

pure and virgin-white against the soil:

and when the ignorant have eaten well

bells ring for worms and new mycelia.

At the north gate of the cattle paddock

past hangs in the dull eyes of a dead rook

hooked by its black neck to barbed wire.

Future crawls in its corrupt corpse, a white choir 

of gorging maggots warming the tangle of its rotten guts,
moulding old flesh to new flesh and paper wings.

Such a gentle little ditty - chicken for supper!!?? Or as was eaten in the last war - rook pie.

HASTA LA VISTA

I am not topping up the feeders as much - the birds have spaced themselves out, I presume for breeding purposes, rather than all of them coming for breakfast, lunch and tea. 

What - no, not spaced out, what do you think I am feeding them, but spread out.

 Primrose still flourish and in a couple of weeks will be divided and spread. A banking of this wonderful wild plant in spring is a delight.

The buddleias that were pruned back hard earlier in the year are now sprouting madly. These are the ones around the septic tank and you can see that you cannot see it any more. The shrubs put on so much growth every year and they do not demand luxurious conditions. In fact in town they have self sown up brick walls and all sorts of crannies.

Behind the Wendy House where words pour onto paper, well into a lap top, (not me but la belle dame from the Mersey)(sorry Keats) the wild cherry trees have been full of blossom. The last few years they have been a bit straggly but the mild winter seems to have given them a boost.

With my back to the bluebells and the brambles wot need removing, this view is down the stream. At the top of the image the water bears left but the intention is to take it straight on to the hedge ditch.

We have eaten our first asparagus - one stick each - but on examining the bed there are many more to come. Recent years have been poor for the vegetable so fingers crossed. (And knees, feet and teeth.) (Whoops - a sentence with no verb - naughty writer.)(Sorry sir.)

We have also eaten our stewed rhubarb and R has found a recipe for rhubarb chutney - a sort of savoury laxative rather than a sweet one. Liking rhubarb runs in the family. (Very weak joke.)(Another verbless production.)
Also I have noticed lots of nascent figs on our bush - come on weather, let us have sun and ripen the crop.

Tadpole update - to all tadpoles in the pond, you are doing well, keep swimming. To newtpoles - are you there?

Now Harry and Cressida have had a tiff so I issue my Gadaffi/Putin invite to come for tea and let us sort this thing out. I know they will not even reject my offer (as they will not know about it) but, Hey! as Alastair says in As Time Goes By - it is an age thing, watching old gentle comedy series on the Drama channel - but Hey!

Trees in leaf, well, not the ash, they are way behind, and views up the garden become restricted, yet this creates framed vistas as one walks about.
(I know, you can hardly have much of a vista in a smallish garden (well, not smallish as it is nearly 2 acres) - cannot think of a word for a small vista - vistalette, minivista, hasta la vista (beware the Terminator)(Schwartzenegger means 'Somebody who lives up a black mountain'.)

I ramble.

As usual.

No it is not lateral thinking.

Just thoughts wandering off and getting lost.

Go on - show 'em another tulip.

All right I will.

FROGSPAWN IS IT AND THE HOKEY COKEY AGAIN

And so early!

Here are there of the first clumps in amongst the water cress.
So, off I went down the garden carrying a rake and a plastic sack. I filled the sack with loose stones and buried into the hole in the pond wall. When the stream flow falls the pond will empty and leave the spawn high and dry. Then I raked mud from the bottom of the pond over the sack in an attempt to keep the water level high. I had meant to properly line the pond before spawning but have been to tardy.

Now it is too late.

The pond is on the bottom east corner of the garden in front of the Wendy House (R's writing shed) in the boggy area. The stream runs into one end and out true other. Unfortunately this means that silt and muck are washed down and fill it up.

I am glad to report that, despite slipping in the boggy bank I failed to fall in and lighten your day.

So, what does the next picture show?

It shows manure, good ripe horse manure lavished on the flowerbeds. I have been ranting on about this for a long time so thought I would let you see what it all about. The green shoots in the foreground are day lilies, a camellia to the right and roses straight ahead. The green bush on the left is a genista.

Not all parts of the garden are actively cultivated. The old log pile by the path down to the pond, well rotted and now gathering moss, is left well alone. This is a haven for invertebrates, small mammals and toads. It is infested with fungi and full of interesting nooks and crannies.

Now I know these are not our native wild primrose - still in leaf only - but a bought primula - I think given to us in a basket full of plants. It was plonked by the Wendy House and every year it starts to flower in January - a little ray of sun in a dark corner.

And so to the Winter Olympics - how contrived can events become - sliding on ice on tin trays, dancing on ice - is dancing a sport? Then there are Moguls - bumpy skiing - and suicidal jumping on a a skateboard without wheels.

I am surprised they do not have timed ice lollipop eating, whippy ice cream serving, standing on one leg on ice after dark whilst eating dry crackers competitions, curling hair and so on. Anyway it would be no good holding them here this year - speed skating would be breast stroke and crawl, backstroke and butterfly.

Perhaps they might have a special Putin gold award for the best prat fall on ice - did you see that only four of the five olympic rings opened - I wonder which one was the flop (I know it was the right hand one)(actually that fits - with Russia's political leaning being to the left)(Then again somehow the regime in Russia reminds me much more of a right-wing dictatorship).

Just a minute, someone is knocking on the door.

"Ah! Hello Vlad. Have you come for me? Mr P. objected to my linking him to the Hokey Cokey, did he."
"Oh! No, he wants to learn how to do it. He thinks it would look good on Mayday if the Red Army all did the Hokey Cokey in Red Square as they go past."

The mind boggles!!