VANDELLA TIME

It is here, a heatwave - well not by the standards of the rest of the world but for here 23C in late September is hot!

What's up ex-doc?

I have turned the compost which exhausted me but it looks promising.

I will have to build something much bigger in the winter to take all the compost - but not now.

Shrubs have been moved to the bankings including a Eucryphia lucida Gilt Edge - a fragrant evergreen variegated shrub which has white flowers in summer and can grow to 10ft.

I moved a rather miserable red-leaved maple growing in the dry concrete-like soil in front of the house as well but managed to snap the stem in the effort to uproot it! So it is now a six inch stump projecting from the fresh soil where I have replanted it. We will see if it survives.

It is at this time of year that faithfuls like nasturtiums and calendulas come into their own.

Other dependable plants are the Cosmos - only grow the white - and verbena bonariensis - which survives some winters and sometimes not.

The anthemis are in full second flush after dead heading but we know autumn is here. The ash tree leaves - last to come, first to go - are falling and the fig leaves are yellowing. (You thought I was going to boast and say that they were not big enough - Ha!)

Look B - twice a week is often enough for my bloggings - your demands are unreasonable - every time you ring R you ask - Where is the blog? Well, it is in my head somewhere, I suppose, but I need a good big KitKat bar to get me going and hiding chocolate from R, (she thinks I am too fat), is not easy!

There is so much to do and not enough of me to do it (despite being overweight) -ditches to dig and manure to spread, grass to cut and sticks to collect - so I am going to sit in this sun, which we will not see again like this for nine months probably, and do a Sudoku (or sleep).

Oh! Yes - why Vandella time - 'Heatwave' - sing-a-long-a Martha.

SUNBATHING RABBITS AND STUNNED CHAFFINCHES

Before the fauna here is a produce update -

our five pears, ten beans and first damsons.

The beans were delicious and the damsons needed sugar.

At least something escaped the rabbits - well, the damsons and pears were up a tree and out of reach of our DEAR! bunnies.

Having said that I have seen one go over a four foot stone wall!

Now to the chaffinch which

has just flown into out kitchen/patio doors. It was lying on the paving stunned. I picked it up and placed it under the garden bench in a safer position. After five minutes resting on its head it recovered and flew away.

At least we have not had another fatality.

Then we come to our DARLING! wabbits.

This bold as brass Peter was reclining near the top of the banking enjoying the sun after a feast.

I managed to get a closer picture - see next.

R says she is thinking of a man with a gun but I am a bit softer - after all someone

did once ask if they could name a rabbit sanctuary after me.

So what has been going on in the garden - a bit of mowing and weeding but especially, as it has been so wet, planning.

Shrubs to move to the bankings - this will improve the bankings and free up areas of flowerbed for all those plants I cannot resist buying - let alone new bulbs and cuttings and so on.

The woodland paths, usually covered in wood chippings, have turned into mud - so either more wood chippings - out with the shredder - or buy stone chippings?

Now to preparing lunch - rabbit ragout?

5 PEARS AND 2 WASPS

This is the garden in the rain and the garden

in the sun from the window of my room.

I have picked the 5 pears on our tree - conference pears so they are in the house with a banana to ripen though, with two, I had to evict wasps who were dining out.

We also have parsnips, leeks and beetroot - and, despite the rabbits, a handful of french beans from our one remaining plant.

The marrows are getting rather big and there is hope for the late-coming pumpkin.

Best of all, we have our first damsons - enough for a pud.

Done a bit of deadheading - especially the white cosmos - and stick collecting. In fact, last weekend, before the malaise, I took my grandson aged 5 into the garden to collect sticks. This did not last more than 5 sticks at which point he announced he was returning to the house to make something from the heap of Lego he had decanted from a large box onto the bedroom floor as picking up sticks was boring.

The buddleia planted around the septic tank to conceal it is covered in Red Admiral butterflies. I have yet to complete the encirclement with self sown plants dug from elsewhere in the garden and cuttings now rooted.

So to the second image - my attempt at a cloud tree using a young hawthorn on the fringe of the wood. It is in a position where the poor light makes it very difficult to photograph (and it needs a trim).

I used to have an old pair of sheep shears what I found in my mothers garage years ago but they seem to have gone missing. They would have been ideal for trimming the clouds.

You may remember the log circle with a hearth in the centre so we could sit round on warm summer evenings and bake potatoes in the embers.

A dud! Not used and no decent weather will mean a rethink.

C is with us from London and setting up his own business - courage - but he has brains - more than I have (see note above re log circle). In fact all our children are clever, each in their own way, which is probably why they shake their heads when they see me!

Time to pick up a spade to dig holes for the transfer of shrubs to the banking - then a cup of tea to rest my brain cells. In fact I will have a cup of redbush now, all this blogging is exhausting (mentally).

LEAF FALL AND MAN 'FLU'

The leaves are yellowing and falling from the ash trees, autumn colours are coming early and I have been berated for not producing another blog sooner.

Time for excuses (not for the leaves, that is slightly out of my control) - I have a cold, otherwise known as Man 'flu', and we have just returned from three nights in Scotland.

Of course, whilst there, we visited places - Girvan which was very depressing and then I took R to Castle Kennedy Gardens near Stranraer, a place I had not been to for 50, yes 50!, years.

It became clear that we should have been there in May for the rhododendrons and azaleas, especially around the huge pond (is that a lake?) must be amazing.

The herbaceous borders were splendid and as usual, under orders, I took photographs of the things R would like in our garden. This does not include willows as she has now decided that my willow tunnel should go - I foresee stubbornness arising within me.

The last three images here are of plants which have caught R's fancy. I know what they are, approximately, so now out with the books and do a definite identification - fennel and the salvia are ok, I think the other is a nepeta but not sure which one.

So we are home and I watch the rain making all walking on the grass very inadvisable - so cannot mow and so on.

I am limited by my "terrible" cold and have to just water the houseplants. In fact, I was very much looking forward to lunch today with old friends but have had to say sorry -

they would not want this spluttering, coughing, croaking creature near them - fine present for guests.

No frost yet - some years we can get to November before the nasturtiums go soggy -

but I feel this year the cold may arrive early - it is only mid September and autumn is definitely here.

Looking out of my window I see the sun is out, the grey squirrel is lolloping up the grass bank and the leaves on the cercidiphyllum are turning.

I hope the cold clears soon so I can smell the caramel odour that the fallen leaves give off. There are three "toffee" trees in the garden. They were given to me as unused scions by the owner of a garden centre at Next Ness just before he closed.

Duty done, time for a pill and feet up.

I wonder what woman "flu" is like?

JUST A LITTLE LEPRECHAUN

My hair is full of poppy seed!

Three days away and when we come back the grass is long enough to hide the Wherearewe tribe and wet so cannot be mowed. I am dead-heading and weeding.

The photographs today are to demonstrate that there are people in our garden

occasionally.

The figure in red, B, (in the rain of course), has a touch of the leprechaun on her mother's side, the other with the purple trug - to match something - is R, the main weeder and expert garden manager with an eye for colour and design yours truly does not possess.

For me - bung it in, if it goes great, if it does not also great as I cannot be bothered to move the thing - until along comes R, slow talkin', slow walkin' R (no prizes for the source of the quote) (but something to do with Yaketty-yak!).

She will request that that section is pinks and another yellows rather than the super-clash I have concocted.

Ah! Sweet mystery of life! (Another quote, now that I've found it.)

The sun is out today so a great day for gardening which is why I am off to the golf course.

I wonder, if I do not wash my hair for seven months will I have opium poppies sprouting from my thatch?

Opium - mmm!

BIRDS, BUNNIES AND BEARS

Before you ask how the weather is - it has poured until 2pm and then stopped. I went out to weed the banking bed, did it but slipped on the lawn and so was clarty with mud down one side.

The bed I have done is the one just in front of this rabbit spied from my room this morning. At least it was eating the broad-leaved willowherb - a pesky weed.

This is not the only cuddly bunny in the garden - I have yet to find their burrow but indications are that it is at the top under the ash tree with the Rambling Rector.

So to bears - woolly bears

- caterpillars that can give one a rash - crawling across the paving looking for a place to pupate.

So what is the moth this caterpillar will turn into? I have to admit that I am not good on caterpillars unless they are obvious. This could be a yellow tail tussock or a common footman, a white ermine or a tiger moth - help needed - anyone with more wisdom than I out there?

And then to birds, birds, birds.

I seem to be feeding every tit, finch and heaven knows what in the north of England.

3 feeding stations and this morning I counted 38 birds at one sitting!

Try and work out the pecking order for that lot!

Must nip to West Cumberland Farmers for some more peanuts.

STONES

The wife of my late partner has a habit which I share.

Wherever we go in the world we bring back stones - be it local or New Zealand.

A selection of small egg sized pebbles sit on the windowsill of my room, the rest are heaped in the garden.

STONES

On digging new ground for potatoes I found four tide smooth stones.

“Tom brought them here,” his daughter said, “To edge beds.”

Our stones fill corners, sit on logs, fill old bowls -

slate slabs from Luing inset with cubes of shining pyrites,

rock crystal from Corfu, 1969. still exotic,

gathered from a quarry on our honeymoon,

pebbles from Menorca when the octopus grabbed my ankle

on the snorkelling beach and I yelped with alarm,

white quartz from a crag near Goats Water carried down

the old track to Little Arrow through Bannishead,

heavy haematite looking like half an enormous brain

lugged from Newgale in a backpack, now a doorstop,

small stone eggs harvested from the shore at Roanhead

whilst Jethro and Willow excavated mountains of sand,

pink Ionan granite from the beach opposite Eilean Annraidh

where we stood and stared north at Western Mull and Staffa,

slag from the bloomery by the lake near Napping Tree

where we would swim and cook causages on a wood fire.

When my father died I took a dark brown stone from Bardsea Beach

and rolled it in my pocket like a Rosary Bead, a comfort.

All these places, memories and events are now collected in our garden,

waiting in the shadows to be seen and surprise me.

Which brings me to plums - they have stones!

But most of them have been removed from the jam.

ps. It is raining again so I have Karchered most of the paving to remove the slippery green stuff.

And the week ahead - gales, heavy showers and cool - autumn is with us, winter is not too far away!

WORKING BETWEEN THE RAINFALL

There are many pests one might expect to meet in an English garden. This is not one of them!

Nor would I want this as an ornament in the garden - it would frighten R.

This is a story of rabbits and squirrels,

docks and nettles and creeping thistles,

stakes that sprout and floods and drought,

springs that spring - none one of my favourite things.

There are ditches that clog, turn grass into bog,

snails and slugs, 'pillars and bugs -

This is not what gardening's for,

this is a story of unending war,

with that which eats the fruit and veg,

it sometimes pushes me near to the edge -

until I discover a scented sweet pea, eat a plum ripe from the tree,

dump a pumpkin into the barrow, an enormous courgette (a monster marrow),

savour asparagus cut in May, just spend a day

sitting in birdsong after the mowing,

listening to water tumbling and flowing

down to the pond. I am losing the war

but, you know, here in the sun I don't care anymore.

This last image of the banking and the Wendy House by the pond shows the wonderful work done by M the strimmer.

Unfortunately the stronger wild grasses have grown a foot in the two weeks or so since this was done and I will have to nip out now with the mower (still have not got my hover mower) and try to not let it get out of hand again. (Of course it will.)

FOR B ON HER BIRTHDAY

B is coming today on her birthday to see the garden (and us?).

It is raining tigers and wolves.

So here, for her, are pictures of some of the flowers in the garden yesterday that she will not see (unless she gets very wet).

Now most of the strimming in the wood has been done and it looks wonderful. I did not sit on my backside, much, whilst it was being done - I did clear the overgrown sides of the stream, help R make lots of plum jam - yummy - mow the lawns, plant three veronicastrum by the pond (where R had weeded). The carex pendula (weeping sedge) sows itself everywhere and is a nuisance.

I have also succumbed to some yellow pansies to put near the back door.

Pansies are not my thing - I prefer violas.

Autumn plans are astirring in my head - to move shrubs in the flowerbeds to the banking and replace with cuttings of herbaceous perennials from the shed. Two roses are struggling for lack of good soil (planted over a drain) and will need shifting and feeding.

I have ordered bulbs and stuff from Parker's (good value), Sarah Raven (top quality but not cheap) and Weasdale - two Amelanchiers after seeing Sir Roy Strong on Gardener's World had almost topiarised - is this a word - it is now - his.

And I need to buy a hover mower.

And I need to rent a scarifier.

And I need to have another drinking chocolate on this dank drear day.

Happy Birthday B.

BACK TO THE FUTURE

It always intrigues me that here we have our patch of land from which we are making a garden and all the time it is desperately trying to revert, first to grass and brambles, then to tangled shrubbery and finally to high forest.

All right I have skipped a few steps but you get the concept.

We struggle to weed, mow, prune and shape this plot against its will.

Even the "Wild Garden" is controlled, not really wild.

And it is b***** hard work.

We lost a month in the spring and have never caught up.

Also, as age and general deterioration

catch up we cannot do as much.

I can see the day when we come home, fight our way to the front door and slam it on the jungle that once was our garden.

Yet, you know, even in that jungle flowering plants will push through like the acanthus here, managing to compete with the vigour of the wild, old fruit trees will bear, fruit and daffodils and bluebells will bloom.

Just as now, when one walks up the wood and stumbles on the delight of a self sown flower the same would happen in a reverted garden.

Life of all kinds is remarkably tenacious.

The instinct is to reproduce, to survive.

Talking of newts - R saw one by the pond - I continue to excavate the stream and drag out weed, I made ten jars of marrow and apple chutney (not sure it is edible) and five pots of cauliflower soup. R likes cumin in it. I potted on some winter sprouting broccoli seedlings and potted up some Tete a Tete daffs for Christmas so they will probably flower in January as usual with Christmas bulbs.

Wet grass = cannot mow.

But the rain can produce some wonderful sights. I just wish it would not do it so often.

AUTUMN?

The conversation with myself goes something like this -

"There is something missing in the garden."

"What?"

"A week ago we were in a whirl of swallow and martin wings."

"They have gone!"

"It is still August, last year they stayed until late September!"

"The leaves are starting to fall from the ash trees."

"It is still August!"

"In more ancient times August was a harvest time and the first month of autumn."

"Summer seems to get shorter and shorter - is it that I am getting older or is that, with earlier springs, everything is tired out by August?"

"Global what?! is upon us."

Now I know that having conversations with myself might be worrying but the thought of a prolonged winter is depressing.

Oh! I love the crisp sunny frosty days when the world sparkles but that dark month from December to January and not wearing short sleeves. . . . .

Mind you the lawn will not need mowing.

This image shows some of the

produce from the garden - the seven pounds of Victoria Plums, some broad beans (we eat them with the skins on) and some scrotty little potatoes - the ones the slugs did not get. (They tasted all right.)

So to the garden and RAIN! like stair rods (now people have grippers don't they?) so like ?? ? umbrella spokes - that will do.

This last picture is of the

bottom corner by the Wendy House Decking and shows part of the stream clearance I am doing.

Two outlets from the pond meet at the top and disappear down a ten foot drop into the field below. You can see the scaffolding plank edging on the left hand one. In the island bed on the right are candelabra primulas and irises. On the left are alchemilla (alchemilla, alchemilla the empty space filla) and other flowering plants including white valerian.

Before work the streams were choked with watercress and brooklime (lovely latin name - Veronica beccabunga - which it does).

Doing the stream is back breaking (beckbreaking) work and I am very stiff this morning.

Perhaps I should rename the stream (cannot rename it - does not have a name) Old Man's River?

PLUM STUFFED

So let me start with Victoria plums - we are stuffed with them - every pudding it seems is plums, I bagged 7 lots of 1lb for the freezer, gave some to a friend and still there are plums. The tree is young so we will need a market stall to get rid of them in the future.

There are lessons to be learned, though. In June I must thin them more - it is so difficult to pull off young fruit and chuck them on the compost heap but, where I have not thinned enough the fruit are noticeably smaller.

Having plumbed depths what else have we been up to - mowing and some mowing of rougher grass on higher setting as around the white birches.

I went down and cleared out some of the stream near the Wendy House which was an opportunity

to gather candelabra primula seed and sow whilst still fresh.

This was a very messy job and I got thoroughly wet and muddy carting large trugs full of weeds and watercress to the compost heap by the willows.

Afterwards I had to strip

in the utility room and dump my gardening clothes in the sink. Next time there will be tickets for sale (but no sensible takers!)

Rather than upset readers with images of myself here are my clothes in the sink.

R often complains, with some justification, that I go gardening in better clothes because I am too lazy to change to old ones.

This is often true. I am not very fashion conscious - if clothes fit, more or less, and keep me warm, and hide what they contain, that is sufficient for me.

Then I can spend the money on some footle or another.

HASSGROPPERS

Autumn changes are coming early - leaves changing hue and there is a sense of tiredness in the garden - except for the wasps on the plums. Those that know says it is because of the dry warm spring.

To business - first - an orange Crocosmia (montbretia)

loved by R and surrounded by purple sage, blue shrubby clematis and so on. It is a beauty and I will not divide it this year - give it one more.

The blue agapanthus has also been good and a stimulus to get MORE! But where do I put them - R has stipulated that we have too much flowerbed already. I

will have to be constructive and imaginative (and devious?)

Having said that as R reads this blog I have just shot myself in the foot (at least).

R and I have just been sitting on a seat on the paving looking at all the mowing I have done when R noticed a small grasshopper laying eggs onto the moss between the paving stones. This seems such an unlikely place that I got out the reference book and this is the Common Field Grasshopper, Chorthippus brunneus which is a mouthful of a name even for a grasshopper. They lay up to 14 eggs in a foam like secretion that protects them from predators, disease and damp. (It will not protect then from the high pressure hose when I wash the paving.)

Which brings me to a pome - I prefer pome to poem - the former seems a bit more masculine. I wrote this many years ago after a real event when in the Near Intake with my daughter at High Arrow, Torver and we found green grasshoppers (Omocestus viridulus) (or viriduli? if more than one). She ran down to the house and told my father - well read the pome.

HASSGROPPER

Isabelle, Izzy for short, and I

went for a walk to try to espy

a grasshopper, (they're terribly shy),

at the back of Grandad's house.

Isabelle, Izzy for short, and I

found a sundew clutching a fly

in a pretty, red, tentacled leaf

at the back of Grandad's house.

Isabelle, Izzy for short, and I

watched a kestrel stand in the sky

watching us watching it from the field

at the back of Grandad's house.

Isabelle, Izzy for short, and I

heard a grasshopper ticking nearby,

rubbing its legs in the warmth of the sun

at the back of Grandad's house.

Isabelle, Izzy for short, and I

found the grasshopper, (terribly shy),

climbing a reed in the sphagnum moss

at the back of Grandad's house.

Isabelle, Izzy for short, and I

ran down the hill pretending to fly,

waving our arms in the bright blue sky

at the back of Grandad's house.

Isabelle, Izzy for short, and I

chased a cabbage-white butterfly

and climbed a gate which said 'Please Shut'

at the back of Grandad's house.

Isabelle, Izzy for short, and I

told her Grandad about the fly,

"And we saw a hassgropper," Izzy said loudly,

"A big green hassgropper," Izzy said proudly,

"You know, the one that's terribly shy,

and we chased a flutterby, Daddy and I,"

and Grandad laughed till he started to cry

and Granny laughed with tears in her eyes

back at Grandad's house.

WINGS AND THINGS

I have just been out after breakfast and the house is surrounded by a whirl of swallow and house martin wings. They are hawking around the garden, zooming up under the eaves and chattering like a bus full of schoolchildren. On the wire by the gate I counted 24 swallows. It is only August yet they are gathering, ready for the long trek south.

The feeders - these are by the shed - are inundated by tits and finches and it is getting expensive feeding the hungry masses. Collared Doves, pigeons, dunnocks and chaffinches patrol underneath for titbits until Mr Pheasant (the bruiser) comes striding along.

Autumn is appearing in the trees as well - some leaves are beginning to yellow and the field maple, especially, is reddening.

Two days ago I went in search of a couple of small courgettes for dinner and noticed that the grass had grown over one corner of the bed.

Parting the grass revealed three 4lb marrows (about 2 kilo each). Marrow and ginger jam and marrow chutney time is upon us.

I do like squashes but all the butternuts have been rabbited - perhaps they are less bristly than the courgettes?

Back to birds - one problem we do have with the birds is that, to see them at the feeders from inside the house requires windows - with glass that the birds do not see. Every so often they scatter in a raucous panic - ?cat. ?sparrowhawk, ? nothing but a twitchy greenfinch.

When then do some of the birds

fly into the windows. In the past, as I have previously mentioned, we have had fatalities. This week both birds survived. They had hit the glass in the open door from the kitchen onto the garden and been stunned. Both tiny things needed picking up at releasing.

You can see them, bills open as they gasp for air, recovering from being dazed.

The coal tit on the wall hung

there for about five minutes after being let go - then headed straight for the feeders again.

The strimmed banking makes me realise how few shrubs we have there. R is all for growing lots of cuttings but that will take years before we have adequate cover. The old credit card will have to go to work, I think.

So, as the lethargy of shortening days takes its toll on the willingness to labour on the soil, and the falling of rain soaks the enthusiasm of this gardener I will take my leave of this blog for another day.

MORE BANTER A LA JARDIN

There are moments in gardening when the spirits lift. When we first moved here four and a half years ago I had had several damson suckers given to me by my sister-in-law K.

These were bunged in at the periphery of the garden and left to their own devices.

So, yesterday, I was trying to kill the weeds growing up through the cattle grid when this caught my eye. We have damsons - albeit not quite ripe yet.

Like the first eucryphia flower and going today to get the blood test and opening the envelope and finding the result was NORMAL! this produces elation.

So, into the garden and the scent

of Lilium regale, its (or her?) huge white flowers pumping heaven into the air. Not a masculine plant, I think.

I am sitting at the computer listening to the dulcet tones of a strimmer. PM has arrived and is doing the banking!

Then the tuneful buzz is ruptured by the plaintiff mewing of the solitary buzzard up in the ash trees. After a while the sound of our feathered tree cat is irritating.

So to a problem - where to put all the mowing, dead-headings, strimmings and so on. The compost heap is overflowing and there seem to be mounds all over the garden.

Soon drastic action with Monty Don sized heaps will have to be created and hidden somewhere - not too far from the house but not too near. The two current heaps are too small - 4 feet (1.3 metres) square as in the one shown.

It is lovely to sit in the sun - yes sun! - and listen to the sounds of the four stroke motor slicing weeds and grass but I will have to get out and do something.

I did not win the Euromillions lottery again!

Thus I cannot have a full time gardener to do all the bits I would like someone else to do. I could just sow seed and take cuttings and tinker.

I wonder how much R would charge me if I asked her?

On second thoughts - far too much - and she would not have time to write.

EUCRYPHIA, I'VE FOUND IT!

First and foremost, the Eucryphia, seven feet high and slender as a model, has its first flowers.

We did not expect it to flower for a year or two more so this is a welcome surprise. Admittedly there are only a handful of flowers and the tree is famous for an abundance of blossom but this is a beginning.

Before I say more I have to mention the Victoria plum which is a victim of its fecundity - it has found a way to relieve itself of the burden of its offspring. I went down the garden yesterday, we had been weeding and trimming and so on, and the tree was literally on its knees resting its fruiting branches on the ground.. At least none of them had snapped off. Clearly I will need to be much more ruthless with the early thinning than I have been.

Last blog I mentioned pots from Viet Nam - well here is a smallish one which, I think,

resembles a piece of sculpture. It sits on an access manhole cover for the septic tank - if you cannot hide them . . .?

Inside the pot is a small ash tree grown from a seed for our grandson J.

I also bought a larger pot and this is by the back door full of herbs so R does not have to keep asking where I have put this and that. It has sage, rosemary, bay, thyme, marjoram (2 sorts) and a basil (which will not last the winter). Mint can go rampant elsewhere.

All the plants are from cuttings except the bay - see Saturday 9th April Blog.

I have been around the garden marking shrubs and trees hidden in the jungle with white topped sticks. PM was coming Thursday to strim but all was too wet (it still is) and is to try again next week. (With 'PM' and 'wet' why does 'Thatcher' spring to mind?)

So, R has wanted topiary in the garden for some time and she has had a go at the variegated pittosporum outside the kitchen, (she broke the shears). Ignore the glad' to the right - it was a freebie and keeps coming back year on year.

Our bedroom has dual aspect - out across Morecambe Bay and up the garden. Recently house martins have been making feeble attempts to build nests at the top of the gable above the window and, in the morning, we can sit in bed and watch them flying up and down past the window. They have a slightly higher pitched chatter than the swallows.

R has gone to church so, now onto my knees and pray for a dry day so the grass can be cut.

ps. We though the rabbits had gone elsewhere but the sight of no broccoli and stumps of french beans tells otherwise.

pps. My dwarf (Doc) has fallen over so must hurry out and restore him to verticality.

I FORGOT THE FIG

So this is a conference pear and it is getting bigger. It will be important to pick it whilst still not quite ripe and then let it ripen and be juicy. Cannot wait.

It is not a lonely pear - like our last surviving fig.

The rabbits have now eaten all the seedlings for winter purple sprouting broccoli but I cannot accuse them of fig-thievery.

Our Bramley apple has

two, yes two, apples. Both are rather small and out of reach as you can see in the next pic. We had hoped for more but there is time as the years pass.

Elderberries are starting to warm up their act and there seems to be a good crop coming despite picking quite a lot of flowers for elderflower cordial earlier in the year.

The third picture is of a beast of burden - our gallant Victoria plum

bent double under its abundant fruit, some branches are propped, fruit was thinned earlier in the year but it is struggling.

It is essential to get to the fruit when they ripen before the wasps and be careful when picking them.

Yesterday I went to the most amazing Nursery - Inglefield in Staveley Near Kendal. Bought two pots thrown on the Mekong River in Viet Nam and imported. The place is wonderful for trees and POTS! There was one 100yr old olive in a massive pot and they had just sent a thousand year old olive to Dubai or somewhere on the Gulf.

If you want a pot you want to go there.

If you want to go to pot then contact me - know all about it!

Ah! I am sure that I have never mentioned this before but it is raining, has rained all day, is not raining cats and dogs - but elephants and whales (or even Wales), is going to rain tomorrow.

Film Instruction - dissolve to next blog.