A SURREAL WORLD

I am reading Neil Curry's new book, William Shenstone, Landscape Gardener and Poet, a copy of which he has kindly given me.
Shenstone was a poet, gardener and tended to indolence - sounds familiar. But the thing that really seized me was when I read the quote from Horace on page 150 -

This was what I had prayed for: a small piece of land
With a garden, a fresh flowing spring of water at hand
Near the house, and, above and behind a small forest stand,
But the gods have done much better for me, and more -
It's perfect. I ask nothing else.

Well, knowing me, and my indolence, I could add a few other things like chocolate, family and friends ...

But this morning, despite the virus, the sun shines, lambs are calling in the fields, the fields are greening, both song and mistle thrushes sing, a yellowhammer is calling from a tall ash tree, the first cherry is about to explode with blossom . . .
With the virus we are walking, fields and empty lanes, enjoying the wild flowers - lesser celandine, dandelion, barren strawberry, dog's mercury, wood anemone and blackthorn.

Yesterday I mowed much of the lawns with the sit on, managed to bog it down in a compost heap and had to dig it out, then lift it out! Not good for old backs. We went to the garden centre and I bought potatoes for chitting and some veg seed. Oh! and some nasturtium seed for R.
   After raising the leaf canopy on the big magnolia it became clear that the small portion of beech hedge beyond blocked the view further on, so that has gone too. The first flowering heads removed from the rhubarb. 

Forced rhubarb is such a wonderful colour.

This is a surreal world we now inhabit, the local hospital ICU beds full and more, and I find myself sleeping too much - well it is something to do. I have volunteered to help out but being elderly they may say no - we will see.
I have ordered 2 huge bags of slate chippings for the paths and Sam, the gardener, says he will come next Monday (if he can) to do the repairs.

These leaves are called Easter-ledges (or bistort) and are used to make a traditional Cumbrian pudding - 

Ingredients: Easter-ledges about 4 inches high; half as many young nettles; 1 large onion; tea-cup of barley; 1/2 teaspoon salt; teaspoon pepper; 1 egg; some butter (or bacon dripping).

Method: Remove stems of Easter-ledges and chop well together with young nettles and onion, wash the barley and sprinkle this in among the greens adding salt. Put all together and tie up in a muslin bag and boil for one and a half to two hours. Before serving beat it up in a dish with one egg and some butter (or bacon dripping is excellent) flavour well with salt and pepper.

Wednesday morning, sunshine and warmth on my back, birds singing, flowers everywhere - a God wot day. (Thos. Brown). Picked a camellia for the house, noted the fritillaries are almost out, and there are blue tits everywhere - no wonder, they have been fed like kings all winter.

The view out of the new extension to the garden -

And a panoramic video - 

Come the afternoon, a walk to Knotallow Tarn, Horace and back, views up the Lakes, (very hazy), lapwings and skylarks calling and I found a rook skull in the roadside.

After we had a cup of tea with the doors wide open. Mr and Mrs Pheasant ambling by -

Spring is sprung. Madame Le Fevre is blasting out from her two pots -

WINTER WHIMPERS ON

The weather does not let up - I am glad I am not one of our builders. From the kitchen door, one minute it is snowing and the next we are buried in fog.

All I can do is chop back a bit here, prune a bit there and wait. The plastic heron keeps a lonely vigil by the frozen pond and moorhens swim when they can if the surface is free of ice - and the sarcococcus by the back door continues to pour out its scent.

Some plants take on a new lease of life with the snow. This particularly applies to those with variegated foliage.

And when there is not much to look at then it pays to look closely -

Dead wood mined by many mandibles,

Dead grass not yet cut back,

The red stems of the maple against a dark hedge or even a single leaf, a camellia I think, shed onto the path below the house. When all one has  are promises - daffodils stopped by the cold, flowering currant buds unopened, and there comes a time when there are just too many photographs of snowdrops it is tough to blog.

So one has to resort to pictures of septic tank tops - of course to show where the buddleia was pruned and the new mixed bed, and another view illustrating the chaos of building on.

Then I can show you a big clump of buddleia not yet cut back and the bonfire upon which it will be thrown.

None of this is exciting but anything is better that the total catastrophe of Brexit - Oh! I told myself I wouldn't mention it. 
So as the country of Empire retreats into the past of oblivion, away from the modern world and we retreat up our own small niche, I think of more important things like what should I use all the mowdywarp soil for. I wonder if it is full of weed seeds and should I not, therefore, shove it on the veg beds?

The weather has finally warmed a few degrees - so it is raining. And there is no way I am going to mention cricket in the West Indies. (Could mention the Rugby in Eire though.)

And it is a sad time for my friend N as his friend Brother Columba has passed on.

Let is dream of the spring - 

ON THAT SAME QUESTION (A LONG BLOG)

The title refers to the mystery of where ideas originate.

Anyway, this is the way to the wood up the path that will be redone soon - I have bought two great big bags of 20mm slate clippings for that.

The wood itself is heaven especially in the early evening when the sun gets lower highlighting the campion and pignut.

I have assaulted the rhododendron at the far end of the garden raising its canopy to eight feet and revealing a swathe of bare ground. The branches look very attractive and I should have done this a long time ago.

The goosegogs have sawfly and mildew and so I got out the fungal spray, put the appropriate amount into the sprayer and walked across to the tap, looked at my watch and emptied it all on the ground! The fact that Stan Laurel was born in our town is having an effect?

Last blog I mentioned white and as it is now June here is the May blossom on the way up to the house.

On my mower shed the white Clematis montana (I think it is Albert) is in full display. It looks pretty good in the left hand photo - on the right is another view over the bin store. Well, have to put them somewhere.

There seem to be too many house martins for one nest but they have built two nests actually against one another - communal living.

Other birds are paired off too - goldfinches and pheasants.

R has retreated to the writing shed some afternoons and is unaware of the ducks flying in to land on the roof waiting for the ladies with the horses next door to feed them - poem -

"YOU CAN'T CATCH YOURSELF DOING IT?"

Written after reading 'On That Same Question', page 15, On Keeping Company With Mrs Woolf by Neil Curry.

There are ducks on the writing shed roof,

Or is it duck? A pair of mallard

Risen from the pond where they dabble

And sow duckweed, eat the tadpoles.

Soon only the drake will visit

Whilst she sits on the nest above the dam,

Tucked in the reeds (or is it reed)

Of the mill reservoir in the back field.

They are waiting for the horse ladies

To scatter seed which they do every day.

Rooks congregate in the ash trees above,

And pheasant, or is it pheasants, strut,

At least the cocks do. The hens skulk

In the brambles, plumage blending in.

Then there is a thunder of wingspan

As hefty pigeons clatter in.

I sit up on the terrace and watch,

Hear the gentle quack of bonding.

If I had been in the shed, writing,

I would not have known they were there.

Apart from all that the garden is bursting with flowers - R is not so keen but I love things that scatter themselves around like the aquilegias.

I have also started, as I have mentioned before, selective mowing (being a bit lazy) which has gone down well with R as the longer areas are full of buttercups.

She also has a dandelion moment in the spring when there is a splash of gold in the fields and hedgerows, not I am glad to say, in the garden.

Our six new Erysimun Bowles Mauve have turned into two rather scraggy old plants as this was all the man on the market had left - they were cheap so I should not complain too much.

Woke this morning to birdsong, chattering martins above our window nest building and a snoring pigeon on the roof.

This is going to be a long blog as I only posted yesterday and have written all this.

Tried an experiment as the rhubarb looking a bit sad with the heat and dryness - pulled off all the stems on two plants, watered and fed them, will see how they regrow.

It is only Saturday - I said this was a long blog - and in the afternoon R cleared the forget-me-nots whilst I watered - the BBC weather forecast said it would rain but it didn't. Still dry.

Looked in the freezer and still had 20 pounds (about 10 kilos) of frozen plums. So I have made some Victoria Plum and Cinnamon Jam - just a hint of spice. As I was doing this a fledgling blackbird arrived at the open door and peered in. It seemed completely fearless (or stupid) and only wandered off after I took its portrait to a background of parental cacophony.

The mallard are almost tame now, sit outside R's shed whilst she works, only six feet from her. They did not even move when I came out having fuelled her up with a cuppa tea.

It is the next day I am hiding in my room, as R has taken over the house with her friends, drinking wine and eating apple cake. I am stiff from being sorted by the osteopath and acupuncture by needles. So why not continue make this blog longer - because it is long enough.

As the bluebells are now over let me give you a blast of Carstarmont Woods in Scotland to finish.

DROUGHT

It is Sunday 27th May, 26C, a bit humid and the garden is bone dry. We had a little rain on Friday but none is forecast for a fortnight.
Thank heavens for a borehole - I am out reviving collapsed rhubarb and lovage, watering the transplanted roses and seed beds.

Sitting outside on the bench in a cloud of self sown aquilegia, under a whirl of house martins wings, is bliss. I am with a beer (R glass of wine) and some black pepper crisps looking across Morecambe Bay to the Ashton Memorial at Lancaster, at least eighteen miles away as the crow flies (40 miles by road).

The watering is done for the day (we had a shower of rain two hours later)(of course) and I did a bit of grass cutting (to reveal the glory of the Viburnum plicatum Mariesii) and trimming of the beech hedge so we can walk through to the top garden (wood)   now a carpet of campion and pignut.
  

Asparagus continues and the new plants thrive, germination of seeds is slow except for the courgettes and butternut squash in the shed. I have bought six new plants to fill in gaps.
The boggy bit of lawn has been tined with a fork and a small trench dug to the ditch from the new spring by the eucalyptus. 
This tree does not look too happy and I wonder if it is the very cold winter or the ground in which it stands becoming soggy.

Come Monday and by midday it is 27C here in cold damp Cumbria. Five pounds of rhubarb put in the freezer and asparagus for lunch again.

Everything is growing so much in the warm weather - the sweet cicely is 5 feet tall! Must buy some fish - hake great covered in chopped lovage and sweet cicely in melted butter.

Found an old wren's nest in a honeysuckle by the wood shed, a ball of moss with a narrow entrance hole.

Down by the pond the candelabra primulas are fine - I decided not to weed this bed this year and see how they went - and they are okay though the thug pendulous sedge is making a comeback.

There are poppies everywhere.

And a lot of white - the lilac is so white, and scented

and the two viburnum on the banking splendid, Mariesii left, wild Guelder Rose right.

Some people suggest I talk a lot of rhubarb so here it is. 

Having called this blog drought it has just started raining (Wednesday evening).

My good friend Neil Curry has just presented me with his latest collection of poetry - On Keeping Company With Mrs Woolf published by Shoestring Press - I cannot compete with that.