ASH R.I.P.

So it has arrived at last. One of our big ash trees is showing signs of dieback - let alone smaller ones nearby. Willington Wood near Ulverston looks a disaster area with most young ash affected. There are tree skeletons everywhere.

 The only creatures that seem to appreciate it are the local rooks that congregate every day in the bare tops from where they have a good look out unhampered by leaves.

We have quite a lot of mature ash trees in our small wooded area including one venerable one and it will be sad (and expensive) if they go.

With all the rain the sensible thing has been to keep off the garden as much as possible. Plants that are over have been cut back but lawns are a no go area. 

Tulips are potted up and the sweet peas sown early are showing not the slightest inclination to germinate.

However there are still flowers in the garden - 

The hydrangeas continue to thrive though Annabelle has been flattened by the rain. This one, more sturdy, is now turning pink as it ages.

The top path is almost blocked by the miscanthus and after rain I end up with wet legs as I push past.

Whereas many flowers like the dahlias are in your face blasts of colour and form others are delicate like this Hesperantha or Kaffir lily. It used to be called Schizostylis but the powers that be love to change the names when on is not looking.

The garden is so wet at the far end the grass is like a skating rink. Needless to say, going to the compost heap I fell flat on my backside, covered in mud!

We are still enjoying the sweetness of carrots straight out of the soil and I took a large bag of Conference pears to coffee on Thursday and handed them out - instructions as to ripening given - brown paper bag, pears and a ripe banana, leave 3 to 4 days to ripen.

Recipe for pickled pears -

Put pared zest 1 lemon and juice in pan with 10 cloves, 2 teaspoons crushed black pepper, 1 teaspoon crushed allspice, 5 cm sliced root ginger, 1 litre cider, 2 cinnamon sticks and 1 kg sugar into a pan and stir over gentle heat until sugar dissolved.

Peel, core and halve or quarter pears, add to pan, simmer 15 minutes until pears tender. Remove pears and boil till liquid reduced by a third.

Put pears into warm jars, pour over syrup and seal.

It is always surprise when people say that they read this blog but a pleasant one. I know as I get older and friends and relatives suffer from age and disease (wear out) it keeps me going. Just to say I think of you all.

PONDERING

 

I can almost hear the leaves breathing in the sunshine and warmth. More rain needed - soft refreshing rain please. 

I have moved the tagetes disliked by R to the back bed where there are some orange poppies and filled the space they came from with nicotianas and cosmos.

Friends have come and I have, with apologies, dumped 20 or 30 back numbers of The Garden, English Garden, Gardeners World and Country Life in their laps. (We only get the latter to look at the houses and mutter, 'Who can afford all these multi million pound houses?'.)

The editorial staff at The English Garden would probably throw their hands up in horror at our "evolved" garden - no parterre, big borders, plenty of weeds, some vague planning - put it in and if it does not work try it somewhere else. In the end plants either find a happy niche or snuff it.

Of course some get too happy and become rampant.

Ponderings - here there is a different flora - meadow sweet (R does not like the heady scent),

marsh woundwort and purple loosestrife, veronicastrum and water lilies, marsh bedstraw, marsh thistles etc etc.

The flowering rush is admired (R would like most of it removed wanting to see the surface of the pond more and our mallard back). 

The gardener has strimmed the banking but had to leave a clump in the middle as the pheasant has decided it would be a good place for a nest.

House martins keep coming and inspecting the eaves but they have not begun serious building. 

Walking up to the top garden is like entering another small world, a good place for meditation or just escaping from this shambles of a world we inhabit. Politicians spout about measures to deal with global ecological catastrophe but I have no faith in them. They will do something but only when it is too late and not too expensive. It makes me glad I am 75 but feel for younger people and this fractured world.

Enough - 

In the trees to the back of the decking we have a clematis and the honeysuckle Halliana. The latter has a wonderful perfume and brings back memories for us of Wolfscastle Pottery in Pembrokeshire where not grew in profusion inside and outside the building.

There is a bed in the corner which a used to weed assiduously but have let go so there is some of the thug pendulous sedge there but also such as primula veris. The stream/ditch runs at the back of this plot and is a thoroughfare for animals and birds to and from the field, especially the pheasants and, less pleasantly, occasional rats. As we have stables next door (very good for manure) we also have rats. Wild yellow loosetrife thrives as does comfrey.

The red currants are gone, most of the black currants picked and raspberries in the freezer for a rainy jam day. Rhubarb is tired but we do have some sweet peas! Not a lot but a small vase or two.

Then when all is said and I am waiting for the agapanthus to flower we have ROSES, glorious roses especially the blowsy Emma Hamilton from David Austin. The only problem it has is when it rains the heads become so heavy and the petals stick together.

Then I go away for a week and it its HOT and it is DRY and plants in pots wither and a rabbit gets into the rabbit proof veg patch and digs a burrow and then we find a young animal dead in the entrance with a bite on the back of its neck . . .  

BUT, if I go away and leave things alone I can grow sweet peas !!!!

DAISY DAYS (AND SPIKE JONES?)

Got that song of his going through my head - Mairzy Doats - very sad. Spike Jones and the Wacky Wacketeers (he was also with the City Slickers). I think my parents must have had a 78rpm disc of it, possibly with Three Little Fishies on the other side?

Back to partial sanity.

Daisies, such a huge family of flowering plants - daisies of all sorts and plants that look like daisies, feverfew and olearia, erigeron by the paving down from the house, and daisies, proper ones -in the lawn and ox-eyes in the long grass.

Just been down to the damson trees to check on the pocket plum - Taphrina pruni - a fungal disease, and there are a lot of mite galls on the leaves. At least the latter is harmless.

One thing that a garden can bring is flowers into the house. (Is or are - lots of flowers but 'one thing' ? Grammar, grammar.) And at this time of year that means roses. Roses with alchemilla and geranium, roses with roses and roses with lovage.

 

Not forgetting pinks. Yesterday I noticed a shrub that was a but boring had produced white flowers. It had done nothing at the back of the house so I stuck it in the lower banking. Then I realised it was a eucryphia about which I had forgotten. You can just see the flowers on the right of the small pic.

Nearly hacking back time for the geraniums - cut them back to the ground and they will burgeon forth with, possibly, another flush of flowers in the autumn.

Some flowers in the garden, especially pale pink ones just quietly get on with it. Like this pink evening primrose and the Allium Christophii. The latter appear from long grass, amongst the Rosa rugosa, in many places where they have been forgotten.

Friday/Saturday and it is raiiiiiining so bag of Seville oranges out of the freezer and making marmalade - 

To the recipe - 9 Seville (bitter) oranges, one sweet one and a couple of lemons, squeeze out juice, put pips etc into muslin bag, put peel and pith through a mincer. Shove the lot into a big jam pan with bag of bits hanging in it. Leave 24 hours.
Bring to boil and simmer till rind soft - say a couple of hours.
Add 8 pounds sugar (I warm it in the bottom range oven first) and stir over low heat till all sugar dissolved, Boil hard for 10 minutes and begin testing by taking off heat and putting a small spoonful on plate chilled in fridge. Push with finger and when ripples - done. You may need to repeat this a few times if not yet ready, boiling for a minute or two and then testing again.
You may need to do it in 2 batches depending on pan size. 
Put into hot jars and seal, label and eat.

Breakfast and open a jar and there is an earwig running about on top of the jam. Now it could not have been in there before I opened the jar - too hot - jars sealed when jam very hot. So?
I had been in the garden and the insect must have dropped off me after I opened the jar. R shudders and says there is no way she is eating that marmalade. I take the earwig outside, then return to my bread. At least I have not eaten bread and earwig.

Sunday and a novelty as we walk the 1 mile into town after breakfast and enjoy a coffee outside the Farmers' Arms pub after having temperature taken. On the way back we meet good friend NC who tells us that there is a juvenile heron standing in a field by the road. It just stands there and ignores us. The herons that visit our pond usually fly off at the slightest thing.

Picking last of red currants, more raspberries and black currants. Threatening the raspberries with the bonfire seems to have worked. Lots of pears, plums and apples to come. And first of chard for tonight. Lawns too wet to mow. 

Did nothing in garden (well picked more raspberries to go with meringue and cream).

GOINGS AND COMINGS

First of all, on request, R's recipe for flapjack/nutty flip.

Recipe for flapjack/nutty flip

(one ounce is about 30G)

Butter 6oz

Golden syrup 6oz, more if you like it sweeter,

Muscovado sugar 4oz

14oz porridge oats

Optional zest half lemon

Pinch ground ginger

Preheat oven 150C

Melt sugar, syrup, butter, add oats, lemon, ginger, mix, put in 8" square tin lined with grease proof paper, bake 40 min. Cool 15 min before cutting.

Right - 

Gardener S came and removed the water lily, well most of it from the pond, then dug a ditch for the new spring and had a go at the brambles. Next day I trudged 5 barrows full of the lily up the garden to be disposed of. Since two requests for a chunk, both collected.
 

The fence is done and I have patched over a few gaps low down as the lambs had got into the garden - no damage done.

The house martins are messing about as usual, shall we build here, no there, no somewhere else. There are now swallows about but not at the house.

Sunday - the mole man is booked for tomorrow afternoon. Normally I am anti catching anything (especially Corvid) but the molehills are becoming mountains. In the end he caught three but says they do not make waistcoats from the skins any more.

Yesterday we walked to Ford Park to buy some herbs and stuff but all we came home with were 5 1/2 parsnip seedlings and an iris. R hopes it is their spectacular white one but it might be purple.
Today we went to a garden centre outside Dalton but bought nothing. We are not really pro bedding plants (apart from the odd cosmos and ammi.)

One feature of our garden are the wildflowers - 

red (and white) campion and ragged robin,

 Sweet woodruff, forget-me-nots and buttercups,

Watercress and even the dandelion.

This, of course is but a few and most are ok but some have to be controlled - wild garlic, bramble, ivy, bindweed, the creeping buttercup, and even the campion has decided to appear in the flower beds now.

I have just sown some more cauliflower as nil came up, we do have broccoli seedlings and broad beans. Half the lettuce seedlings G and L gave us are out, the rest in the shed as back up when the pests devour them.

Let us have some colour - euphorbia, an ornamental strawberry and good old, in-your-face, oriental poppy. 

It is funny how I forget what I put where. In one of the beds I thought I did not plant red hot pokers there and then realised I had planted eremurus, fox-tail lily. The danger is, of course, one sticks in a new plant and digs up a treasure. 

One good thing about the blog is other bloggers, Chelsea Flower Show standard unlike like me, a gardener fighting nature, pests and the sheer cussedness of plants to not do what you want.
Try https://verbalcompost.blogspot.com/?m=1 .

So, back to a revitalised pond - and some primulas nearby -

with a final flourish - Hilary's rose (I know that is not really its name but as Hilary gave it to us . . . .