MUNCASTER, HOLKER HALL AND SPELT BREAD RECIPE

Three pics of Muncaster Castle gardens - two of the bluebells and one of the view over the shrubs to Scafell.

Back to earth after such heavenly gardening delights - The Conference pear and to some extent the Bramley apple have, I think, canker, Nectria galligena and dead twigs coated in lichen.

Enough - I am scratched to bits by brambles - still clearing the jungle in the far corner. Just as I was about to start the wheelbarrow had a puncture so had to wrestle with a new inner tube and all that.

I could start a forest with the tree seedlings in the garden - mainly ash and the dreaded sycamore.

Whilst we were at Harlow Carrr, the RHS gardens, the other day we bought 2 good sized earthenware pots (2 for the price of one so R could not resist the offer)(but they were good value) so I have crocked the bottoms and filled them with compost. Now we just need something to go in them. (Saw same offer at Beetham, same price, yesterday).

R decided she would read a Harlan Coben paperback I had just finished but gave up when a woman was shot in the knees - not for R - Miss Read come back, all is forgiven. (Actually my knees are pretty shot at.)

Garden getting dry, the big yellow scabious collapsed and had to be watered. All the pots need regular attention but the weather girl on the BBC says it will piddle down on Tuesday and Wednesday - so what's new?

We have been to Holker Hall gardens - we can get in free as we are both members of the RHS.
The bedding in the central beds was a delight - 
forgetmenots, pink and white tulips. And the wild ramsons (garlic), despite the pong, was in wonderful carpets by the ha-ha and the great lime trees.







We do not have tree sparrows in the house martin nest this year - we have house sparrows. I can see them flying up to it past our  bedroom window as I sup my morning cuppa.

Last autumn my daughter gave me a paper bag full of calendula seeds and I have been travelling the garden looking for bare patches sowing them - we will see. I have also found a jam jar full of poppy seed I collected for cooking but have spread some of that about as well.

The aquilegias that self sow (Granny's Bonnets) are out as are the yellow azaleas, first oriental poppies and wall flowers.
The abutilon has survived the winter and a plague of whitefly and is now out on the table on the paving, fed and tidied.

Come Wednesday morning, it has rained last night, not a lot but I liked it.

As the house martins are trying to build outside the kitchen window and we remember a grey squirrel robbing a previous nest the squirrel trap has been out again - one caught, more to go.

The garden from the west.

Gardening, in fact anything to get away from this stupid referendum - only a distraction from the real politics going on (perhaps that is politics?) - both sides unable to admit the other has anything worth saying - I hope when all is over we can get on with being part of Europe again and business can move ahead knowing where it stands.

Off to the kitchen where I have just baked a loaf of spelt bread - half wholemeal, half white, very easy -

250g white spelt flour
250g wholemeal spelt flour
1/2 teaspoon dry yeast
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
300ml warm water

Mix it all together and then knead for a good 5 minutes, slap in a well oiled tin and leave to rise somewhere warm - about 60-90 minutes.
Bake at 200C - 25-30 minutes in our Aga.
Eat with melted butter (or marmalade)(or marmite)(or syrup).

MORE CHERRY STUFF AND LEAVES

There are all sorts of cherries, not just trees - Bob Cherry (Billy Bunter's schoolmate), Trevor Cherry (Leeds and England fullback), Cherry Wainer (organist with Lord Rockingham's XI), the bake off lady Mary Cherry - no hang on Berry - actually a cherry is not a berry it's a drupe.

Where did I ramble to - Pondicherry, Cheeryble Brothers - now this is getting out of hand.

Anyway there are more flowering trees at it in the garden than cherries - amelanchier, magnolia stellata, damsons, Victoria plum, wild plum, blackthorn - you see what I mean.

 I cannot stop nipping out to take photographs like the one above.

Though blossom and daffodils are the main thing at the moment (chuck in a few thousand bluebells) new leaves are also a treat. Left Acer sango-kaku, right a cercidiphyllum. The small shrub below cost virtually nothing at a Christmas Fare. I wonder if the white and green is the reversion or the gold.

 There are other flowers in the garden - the forgetmenots in the rose bed (and up in the wood where we chucked the remains from clearing the old plants over the last few years.)

Managed to nip out and do a little mowing before heading to the jungle at the top of the garden and debrambling it. The soil was so soft I could pull whole blackberry plants out of the ground.  So half done and cleared. Hopefully the bluebells all spread and fill the area. Later in the year I will gather seed and help the process.

The first few asparagus spears have appeared, a bit early but who's complaining.

R continues to deadhead the daffs and I have dug out the stream in the far garden. After 36 hours of rain, though, the lower garden is a sponge - sodden.

And finally some warmer, drier weather.
Just been away and R has taken a fancy to a Snow Gum - a white barked eucalyptus so now I am searching for one.
We managed Studley Royal with Fountains Abbey, Newby Hall and Ripley Castle gardens in one day and then went to the RHS at Harlow Carr the next!

At Harlow Carr there was an eye blinder of a tulip bed. And with little photoshopping a rogue tulip appeared! Can you spot it on the right? 

We have so much rhubarb I am wondering what to do with it - making rhubarb and ginger jam is a fussy drag and the freezer is still full of last year's crop.

Anyone wants some and will come and get it let me know.

Today has been a mowing day and a discovery that after waging war on ground elder I have failed and it is spreading on the bankings. If I had a gun (or a ballista) I would shoot the Romans who brought it here. The same goes for rabbits, I mean shoot the Romans for them too.

Now R wants to saw the posts off our four-poster bed - sigh!
I'm going to have a beer.