WILD IN THE COUNTRY

A rose grows wild in the country . . . this is a dog rose and nothing to do with the man who has just left the room. (We oldies remember the song, well, some of us, The King lives on.) 

The sun is shining through the leaves, a gentle breeze is stirring the vegetation and I need a seat up at the top of the wood. R says so I can sit there in winter when the trees are bare and enjoy the view - Mmm! perhaps when it is very hot and I can enjoy the shade. (Not a lot of chance of that in this country.)

So, what has all this to do with a garden blog you may ask. Our garden has woodland as per where these grasses flourish (until they get strimmed)(and this might change because I have just ordered an Austrian Scythe - thanks Gary (well, we will see after I have removed my leg)).

But down in the boggy bottoms is an area, soon to be eradicated? by R's plans for the garden. (R stands for Rose an' all.)

Ragged Robin to the left, Yellow Rattle to the right - both thrive there by the stream - but the stream is to go and the area become lawn and pond. (I will have my wild boggy bit somewhere.)

So here is view up to the house from my soggy bottom bit, Ragged Robin in the foreground.

Behind from where this photo was taken is a field hedge full of things such as BRAMBLES and NETTLES and other nasties - but essentials in a wild area - up to a point. The hedge has blackthorn, hawthorn, hazel, ash, oak, sycamore, willow, sallow, holly, cherry, elder and wild plum growing in it so a cosmopolitan sort of place.

Behind the house the grassy banking has a few intruders - not wild plants, at least not in this country. These include a rampant geranium, white willow herb and these oriental poppies. They thrive here in very little soil and are a left over from the previous owner's garden - before we pulled his house down and built our own.

Green and red - what more can one ask for? (The black iris in front of the house are good too.)

So a wild garden is also full of creatures, frogs, newts, toads, fresh water shrimps, slugs and snails, woodlice, ants and wasps and bumble bees, cock chafers, greenfly, cutworm and time to shut up.

I mean I might disturb Luvvy and Duvvy on their beam. That mess to their right is supposed to be a nest!

I am waiting for a call about removing my willows (:-( and am ordering the white birches at the end of the week.

I musty hasten off to the kitchen where last year's blackcurrants are simmering away before I turn them into jam - Mrs Beeton's recipe is fine.

So is her recipe for Lakeland fingers - gingery and melt in the mouth.

Gotta be a cuppa time!

OF LOSS AND OTHER THINGS

As I sit here typing I am thinking of a friend who has left us. This one is for you Nina - you who bore your endless illness with bravery and great support from your family especially your husband, Sam.

So my first picture is of the wood at the top of the garden, where the wild things are, where peace reigns, where there is a sense of reality, not the artificial construct that is a garden of beds and lawns.

And I sit here and watch the birds out of the window, doing as they have done since the evolved from the dinosaurs, finches - this a greenfinch - goldfinches, chaffinches and today a cock bullfinch in all his glory. The tits come with their fledglings - blue tits, great tits and coal tits (and occasionally the little long-tailed tit.) Pigeons strut under the feeders and Luvvy and Duvvy, our resident collared doves perch on the shed end when they are not snuggled side by side on the beam over my reading seat.

And I upset Mr. Pheas and his dowdy mate when I walked up near the rhododendrons at the top of the garden where they have their nest. They come down, him on guard, and glean the dropped seeds from the feeders. And we have hedge sparrows and tree sparrows and house sparrows and even a pair of swallows nesting by the kitchen door. Gormless young robins and blackbirds skitter through the undergrowth and so on and so on . . . 

The bed in front of the house is a mass of colours, albeit muted pinks, greys and blues.

Then there are some plants like these orange welsh poppies that shine like small suns in a bare area of banking.

Today I had the honour of a Gary Primrose visit, supposedly to ask about what to do related to advent of our new pond, but also to get him to look at the garden when it is not a wasteland. (Showing off a bit).

And R and I went to Holker Hall Garden Festival this afternoon - land of ridiculously expensive ice cream. We had a shared afternoon tea for lunch and walked the stands. R bought clothes. I bought some cheap poppies and phlox - a sucker for a bargain.

 So, here is the bullfinch.


And here is a pain in the - well you know what.
Pinching my birdseed again.
Trap reset.
Of course I will break the law and relocate the little bs. (birds' egg eaters).
They are classed as vermin - grey tree rats.



And after all this my mind goes back to Nina and her family.

Won't forget.

CLAGGING AND CLARTING

We have swallows nesting under the roof outside the kitchen. Never thought they were coming.

This is a path!

The plants, especially the day lilies, have grown over it. Now, this is fine in dry weather but definitely to be avoided when the leaves are wet. Then you emerge the other side with wet leg disease.

 The garden is bursting with flowers and we are amazed at the white lilac - before it has only had the odd flower but this year - well! And the scent of that and the sweet rocket next to it is heady.

As usual the comfrey has self seeded despite attempts to avoid this. Now I have to decide whether to leave it be, dig it out or make an evil brew from it. The evil brew is a foul smelling concoction created by steeping the crushed plants in water. However it makes a good plant food if diluted in water.

This comfrey has particularly blue flowers and is rather beautiful so I will be leaving it be, for now.

I am in need of mowing but the weather is overcast and spitting, the grass wet and it will clag up the mowers. (Don't you just love the word clag - it sums up what happens when the grass sticks and the blades grind to a gluey stop. The word is of Scandinavian origin - sticky mud. (Danish - klag.) (Isn't the internet wonderful?)  (Sometimes.) There is another word we have here - clart. This means almost the same and the OED just gives it 17th century origins. (Much older than that, I think) (Words like clag and clart must be Norse or Anglo-saxon in origin - they are not latin like at all.)

Where was I?

This is a big foxglove, big because it is growing in the manure placed around the variegated horse radish - small white flowers.

So many plants in the garden have medicinal uses - digitalis for heart disease from foxgloves and we all know what you get from poppies - heroin, but also other opiates like codeine, morphine and so on. Mint to settle the old colic, Oh! cannot go on for ever - Herbals are hundreds of pages long.

Some plants are strongly aromatic. I went out to a poetry meeting last night and R had cooked pasta with lots of GARLIC! I had to sit a bit away from the fray. However there is something special about aromatic leaves - brushing the hand through them or occasionally rubbing a leaf - lovage, sweet cicely, catmint, santolina.

I just read that lovage can be Chelsea chopped - cut half of the long flowering stems back now and they will flower later.
I will not be doing that though as I like the eight foot high stems making their statement by the back door. (The one at the side.)

 To finish - here is a photo of the boardwalk (rotting), Wendy House (okay) and invisible pond before the big pond people get at it.

Feeling a bit nostalgic already.

PAINTING, SACKS AND BOOT-WEARING

Fiona Clucas is up the garden at this moment doing my Christmas present. I am rurally looking forward to this - see not about wood and photo below.

Let me start with a load of old plastic sacks - these are the tulips evicted from the spring pots and bagged up until they die back. Then the best bulbs can be stored until next year.

One of the emptied pots was the one made from a hot water cylinder we bought at Canon Frome last year. This has been bedded with annuals.

So from sacks to boot wearing - this is the parsley, unfortunately beginning to grow successfully. I say unfortunately because of the old saying that where the parsley grows well the lady of the house wears the boots.
I do not really mind as she has always worn the boots and I like parsley. (Had to put that in.)

Today I have been fighting the weeds which I had left far too long. Bindweed and the odd grassy weed I am used to, creeping buttercup is a real PAIN!!! and now we have been invaded by common vetch, latin name vicia - so you can see where the word vicious came from. It has entwined itself through the saxifrages and amongst the white campanula.
I filled two wheelbarrows with the stuff.

The aquilegia are again fantastic and the deep purple ones put into a vase with the overwintered campanulas - the big orange ones - are a great together.
I love purple and orange together but they are not complementary colours - like red and green. Orange goes with blue and yellow the one for purple (or magenta.)
Anyway I like the two together.
Be bold, I say, be bold.

This morning I got out of bed and took a leisurely look up the garden and there, down by the asparagus was a RABBIT!
Here we go again.

Up in the wood the wild flowers are just magical, especially in the early morning light, wrapped in bird song and before the breeze gets up.
Early or late can be the best time to walk the garden.

Coming back from the wood towards the house our chappie is still reading his book by the ash tree. At least the weather is warmer now.

And then around the front of the house the clipped shrubs are getting too big - lovely shapes but a hack back will be called for later in the year. The greys are Brachyglottis and the yellow one a something else - It will come to me one day.

The lower photo shows how it was six years ago in the early days.
What a change time a (and a load of well rotted horse manure) can do.

It is a pittosporum.

I have just read Gardeners World Mag. and sent off four images to their readers' photos page - well you never know. (Perhaps I do.)

So Chelsea Flower Show is over. I did not watch it all on the TV - talk about overkill - and anyway I am not interested in hyper-manicured plots, things that cost tens of thousands of pounds, gadgets that every gardener should have but will never use. (I call this Lakeland Plastics Syndrome - the things one has to have but will never use more than once.)(Our ice cream maker sits in the Utility conceding defeat to a plastic tub from the supermarket.)

Totally disconnected thought - somebody needs to make an efficient, quiet and light to handle strimmer.

Thought over.

We had asparagus for lunch - but only two spears were our own - the rest were from the supermarket - and tasted poor compared to our own. I have decided to try and restore the asparagus by moving it, and getting some new stock, to another bed. This one will have better drainage and a lot of grit and sand in the soil to make it lighter. I remember as a young man the plant growing wild back of the dunes near Southport.

Perhaps I will divide and move the rhubarb to the existing bed to revitalise that. It has become overcrowded.

Perhaps I will not?
Perhaps I will have a cup of - no - a glass of beer!
Yes, that is it, beer.
Two barrows of weeds - I have earned it.

WHITE AND A SMALL BIT OF GREY

I am still recovering from wonderful scones I ate two days ago - thank you Barbara. I need half an hour in the Gym and water for a week to balance the calorie count. But they were superb.
Then I took R to see, well rather listen to the Courtney Pine Band at the Coro. (Coronation Hall in the local town). Sound blasted and stunned - some virtuoso playing.

Back to gardens -
So, I am talking white, in the month of May, when the track up to the house is bounded by hawthorns dripping in petals like snow. The May blossom has been wonderful this year.

And then, when one gets close up it only gets better. The energy required to shove out so much must be staggering - it is such a pity the fruit are not as luscious. Imagine if the berries were like small Victoria plums - sweet and juicy straight from the branch.

Out in the garden the left hand side of the lower banking is now a haze of Hedge Parsley - though with it being a wild plant, weed I hear some cry, you have to be a bit careful or it can spread everywhere. In fact, this year, I am surprised by the number of hogweed seedlings in the flowerbeds - a nasty plant that can burn you with its sap - but majestic in stature.

To the right of the paved area, by the path up to the wood is a white lilac. This has flowered a bit before now but this year it is splendid. Across the path the white Dame's Violet is falling onto the path. The rain has weighed it down. As soon as it starts to go over I will trim it back and move to another location. It has become very large and is really in the wrong place - hiding the oriental poppies from view as they are also coming into flower. 

Above on the banking are two cercidiphyllums (cerciciphylli?) and R thinks one should be moved. However I like to flout "rules" if I can - plant in 3s, 5s etc - and want to see how the two close together develop. (And I have just realised that the entwined willows by the pond will go when we excavate - Boo!)

This plant is an osteospermum - not fully hardy previously in our garden, it has survived the mild winter and is flourishing. There is a big one at the golf club locally and this has thrived for many years though they are nearer the sea and its warmth.

In the banking in front of the house is an area with very poor soil and here saxifrages like this one and London Pride grow happily.

The white of the cherries has passed on to the May and to finish on a grey note, the collared dove is still ensconced on her sticks on the beam above my bench. Not much of a nest, is it!

(I hear a cry - 'What mucky paintwork under the roof!'
Well, yes - but we have a man coming this summer to repaint - which causes all sorts of bird nest difficulties. And the colour in the image is wrong - something to do with low lighting - we paint with a Leyland double for Farrow and Ball Grey Number 91.)

Just had my cuppa tea so must go out and fill the bird feeders now. Wooly top on - temperature has dropped 10C in the last few days.

Well, I am English (albeit with some Scots and Manx chucked in) and we cannot go long without talking about the weather.

RAMBLING 'ROUND THE GARDEN

Well, plenty of rambling as usual.

I water the rhubarb and it rains. It pours with lightning and thunder - cause and effect?

Look at this, only a couple of months ago here was nothing here except a leafless white lilac. There is also white hesperis everywhere - scented sweet rocket. Another name, for the pinkish variety, is Dame's Violet. I got some seed from Sarah Raven and whizzo!

Chelsea Flower show is upon us and, this year, I have not chopped back my sedum spectabile etc but remembered to tie them in to a central stake. We will see if it works or the plants just do the Chelsea flop as per usual. The paths in the wood are looking more pathlike and I am going to experiment with the rough lawn area. paths will be mown with the small mower set low and on mulch. The rest will be mown with the big mower set high and we will see. I am thinking that I will save seed from the bluebells, red campion and pignut and sow this amongst true white birches. Perhaps I could follow this with Ox-eye daisies.

I have just been to see how much old sleepers are and found that they are about £30 plus - and I need about ten at least - and that does not include the thought of steps down to the new pond.                     (:-( )=

Why do smileys lie sideways? 

The green flowers are naturally sycamore - I muttered about them before as poor man's laburnum and such stuff.

These are the six white birches in the far garden where I may (pricey) plant another dozen or more.

The red candelabra primulas are in full swing with an odd creamy one. The yellow are about to come out. The orange ones seem to have gone and a new sowing will be needed after the pond is done.

I have just taken out the old tulips from the pots and bagged them up in old plastic sacks (thank you Sue) in some compost. Holes were put in the sack bottom for drainage and now we wait for the foliage to die down. Then the fat bulbs will be cleaned and put somewhere dry until the autumn. The small ones can be thrown away. (Or you could plant them in a disused corner and wait a few years fro them to fatten up.) Sue has given us a tray of seedlings including white cosmos. A concerted effort will be made to not let the slugs and snails have them this time.

We are about to have our second meagre meal of asparagus - not happy veg. May have to scrap them.

A bit about birds - we may have two cock pheasants and partners, long-tailed tits nesting somewhere nearby, kestrel overhead, collared dove steadfastly siting on her beam, swallows nesting in the stable next door but NOT here, tree sparrows making a din and mess at the gable top in their purloined martin nest and so on. And the cock chaffinch outside my window is still singing all day - now for nine weeks - some voice box.

Finally here is my lovely willow avenue again.

'Nuff said.

TALKING BLUE

It is hot - well for here, 21C and my extra lard cover is causing overheating, (let alone overeating), problems.

Just noticed our variegated phormium has put up a flowering stem - this is going to be dramatic but we must be aware of its self seeding potential.

The garden is bursting with stuff and my willow avenue (that was meant to be a tunnel) is looking fantastic. So, will I be resistant to it being cut down and taken away under the new plans?

The removed clematis and honeysuckle are doing well in their pots - will I want to put them back?
Will R let me?
Will Gary Primrose put his foot down?
Who cares if it does not lead anywhere?

Have put in a big leaved rhododendron from Stonefield Castle at the foot of the path up to the wood - it can grow away there without care.

I have trimmed back the grass, put down a black permeable membrane and covered with old manure as a much on the small shrubs below the path. The strawberries are strawed as they are in flower. I have been told I should nip out all flowers this year but Hey!

So now I am going to talk blue for a moment, no not that sort of blue - I mean, would I talk like that? Well, perhaps after nettling myself or grasping a bramble in error. I mean as in bluebells in the wood or forgetmenots in then rose bed as shown here. Blue is such an interesting colour in the garden - good blues are hard to find as so many are violaceous (big word) or purply. Actually bluebells are a bit like that. 

And now for Sweet Cicely, a wild umbellifer with an aniseed flavour in the leaves. It seeds itself about so one has to be wary but it thrives in the garden. Here it is already becoming dwarfed by the lovage (lemony flavoured leaves) at the back. Umbellifers are welcome - most of them - in the garden. The wood is a sea of beautiful pignut, small and delicate. Queen Anne's Lace (hedge parsley) had responded to being sown on the banking by R and flourishes, the garden is host to wild angelica - ok - and hogweed - dramatic but a nasty piece of work.

And here is the inside of the rhubarb forcing pot - a thrushateria with ready to go snails.

I read today that if you throw them more than 65 feet away from the garden they do not come back so i must go out and get a catapult. Actually I could make a catty with some knicker elastic and a forked twig.

On the left are flowers on the crab apple, on the right red currants behind netting. I have hopes that we might get some before the blackbirds but they are cunning and persistent b****rs. No, not that but beggars - you thought different? We are back to blue?

Well, I am exhausted, my thought processes and inspiration is/are exhausted and I fancy a beer - yes not a cuppa tea!

More soon.