PARIS AND POTTING JAM

It is Saturday.

How can I write a blog on such trivial a thing as gardening when lunatics are wandering around Paris slaughtering innocent people?
How can anyone justify murder on such a scale?
They are going to get a shock, rather they are not, when they find their martyrdom led to nothing - they will simply be dead and achieved nothing.
I am sure most of us find it hard to comprehend how someone can commit such acts - and then do it in the name of a god. Too many people have died with a god on their side.
However, it does put things in life into proportion (So R says when I moan about pond liners).

Right I have had my rabbit so what does one do when the rain falls for forty-eight hours soaking everything. It is the remains of hurricane Kate dumping its moisture on our garden.

So I make jam, summer fruits jam using blackcurrants and blackberries for R's Church Craft Fair on Saturday coming.
I am also going to pot up some rooted rosemary cuttings but not until the rain stops (if it ever does). We have a flood warning out from the Met Office.
I have bought three sacks of peat free compost and wait.

There is still a delight in small things in the garden like the fallen leaves and their colours. But the rain raineth (Ambleside is virtually cut off today (Sunday) by floods on the A59) and the liner in the pond riseth and it is dark and dismal and frustrating.

So Monday is graveyard day in Liverpool - R's family have had the gravestone of their Grandfather restored so it is off to meet the myriad of cousins.

At this time of year there is much to do and I will have to turn my hand to clearing the dead and dying growth from this year, weeding and mulching, with some good horse manure if I can get it.
Have put the asparagus to bed for the winter and need to do the same with the rhubarb and strawberries.
The leaves are off the cercidiphyllums but because of the weather we have not been able to enjoy the smell of toffee they give off after they have fallen.
A man is coming Wednesday to look at the ash tree we want felling and turning into logs. There are some nearby stump shoots he can do the same to.

Then the rain eased and I donned my Wellies and paddled down into the stream. I dug a diversion from the pond drain end so the water did not rush past the outflow (if it did outflow which it doesn't) and shoved the bottlebrush the hoe handle and finally the washing line pole up the pipe. With the latter, 9 feet long, I hit a solid obstruction at the far end which could be a sediment/clay plug but I suspect is the matting underlay below the liner.

This is how it was a year ago. Maybe I will have to dig a new way across from the stream and under the liner to release the trapped water.

Isn't this extremely boring and trivial!!

Je ne suis pas Francais mais - Paris - c'est terrible.

A CLARTY SODDEN GARDEN

I thought that I would show you this picture from last week first as that was the last time we saw the sun. It has poured down. The stream has decided it wants to go in a different direction out of the wood and I have had to return it to its proper course. I have tried to drain the water from under the pond liner with the giant bottlebrush (the one I got for getting algae out of the pond)(and is useless for that). Despite my digging and such down by the pond, it had not deterred the moorhen which came back almost immediately. 

Essentially there is just too much water in the garden. Everywhere is waterlogged and sodden.

I have tried to rake leaves off paths but they are a clarty mess and the result is far from satisfactory.

Yesterday was wet and so wet that an old man was washed away in Kendal in his car when he  crashed into the river which was in full spate.
Today the sun has come out for just a morning before gales and more rain arrive - a big storm to be followed by the remains of Hurricane Kate.

Life would be boring if the weather was the same every day - sun, sun, sun. Here in Britain we would have nothing to talk about though sometimes a little less weather would be good.

This is the abutilon with the whitefly. Though I have managed to eradicate the living bugs the backs of many of the leaves are peppered with eggs. I fear for its future. I do not want to bring it into the house for fear of the contagion spreading so it may spend the dark days out in the shed.

There is still a lot of colour in the garden especially the euonymus which just goes on flaming.

The skimmia by the back door is full of berries and, as it was yellowing a bit, I have given it a feed.

The Sedum, well there are three in a row, are splendid if collapsed, edging the paving.
They last a long time if cut and bunged in a vase.

More clearing of fallen leaves from the streams, more raking of paths, and so much to do.
I have even tidied the area to the side of the shed where stuff gets chucked so nothing is up against the shed walk to reduce the danger of rot.

Now I shall have to close as I am developing big computer screen stiff neck and it is a pain - literally. In fact getting old is a pain, literally. So, for those readers lithe of limb and strong of heart, beware, do not get old. 
For the rest of us - hard luck - just make the best of it.

(She who knows says I am becoming a hypochondriac. Well arthritic, deaf (I will not admit that yet enough to need a hearing aid), dyspeptic, dreary, etc etc - she may well be right!)

ABIGAIL IS COMING, CHRISTMAS CAKE

So the weather has been given a name, Abigail. Gail sounds about right at the moment stripping the last leaves from the trees and rain - plenty now making the grass boggy.
Water everywhere and, unfortunately, it has reared its head underneath the pond liner again - we have a small island. The drain must be blocked, I suppose.
Our moorhen is still with us and looks like has decided to take up residence for the winter. It does not mind rain.

We have the last flush of autumn in the garden but the big sycamore is stubbornly staying green as are some of the Acers - unlike the saturated red of the Euonymus alatus - winged spindle - that is at its best. The ash trees are now naked and skeletal.

Flowers still struggle on - amazingly last year's yellow winter pansies in a pot outside the kitchen door and the nasturtiums on the bank, not yet turned slimy by a frost. The temperature remains in the teens.

R has to do the flowers for the church on Sunday but apart from a big pot of Sedum spectabile in the porch there is not much else now usable. It will mean a trip to buy something, at least for the altar.

I rang the shed people about the wet rot at the bottom of the Wendy House door but got no satisfaction so it will mean a carpenter coming to patch it up.

I have seen all sorts of weather now, even fog.

In the paper there is a cartoon of Cameron and Obama up to their necks in the desert and Putin laughing - but now he is sinking into the sand with them. You would have thought the Russians would have learned better after their debacle in Afghanistan.

And that has nothing to do with a gardening blog.

I have collected some more of the leaves from the paths and bagged them but so much is sodden I can only watch. 
R is making our Christmas fruit cake. The dried fruit is soaked in  booze and soon it will go in the oven for at least five hours. It takes longer to cook than to eat, though to eat it all at once would be a real tour de force!

Recipe? All right - metric measures!
Ingredients 1 - 20 cm square tin - currants 500g, sultanas 350g,
raisins 175g, glace cherries 350g, rind 2 oranges, 150ml sherry, 250g soft margarine.
Chop raisins, halve cherries, put in bowl, pour over sherry add grated rind, cover, stir daily for 3 days.
Ingredients 2 - dark brown sugar 250g, 5 eggs, s/r flour 75g, plain flour 175g, blanched chopped almonds 75g, black treacle 1 tablespoon, ground mixed spice 1.5 teaspoons.
Beat marg, eggs, sugar, treacle and almonds on bowl, add flours and spice and blend well.
Stir in fruit.
Line tin with greaseproof paper, spoon in and level.
Cook in low oven (Aga in simmering oven) for 4.5 to 12 hours. Check regularly with skewer. When it comes out clean cake is cooked. Leave to cool in tin.

After that it is into storing - you can add booze a little at a time over next few weeks but beware - one year R added too much and it was all soggy! (But nice)
Later marzipan and icing as you wish.

To continue - the roses are still blooming here. Thank you to A's parents for this one.

And I leave you with a burst of sunshine from two days ago before the fog came down (or rather up with the incoming tide).

MOORHENS AND KEATS

Raining again, got up late and looking out of the window saw that we have a moorhen on the pond. It is a while since we have had such a visitor.

Then again we have a grey squirrel on the feeders and that is a regular occurrence. Yesterday one demolished a seed feeder and left in in fragments on the ground.
I have been into the garden between showers (and prolonged rain) and trimmed the beech hedge. It had grown so tall I could hardly reach the top. I had plans for it to arch over the path to the far garden but that would have meant me trimming standing precariously on a ladder so I have ditched that. As one decrepifies (new word for the OED) balance deteriorates and, no doubt, I would, sooner or later, plummet to the ground.

Having ranted about the rain we have had sun too, occasionally.
It lights up the autumn colours like this Hamamelis under the big sycamore.


Colour is everywhere.

I had thought the visit by the moorhen would be fleeting but it seems to have taken up 

residence here. 
We have bought a special device looking like a giant bottle brush on an extending handle to try and extract some of the algae from the pond. I tried it but the rake, albeit with a short handle, seems better. Also whilst there I put up a jack snipe from the ditch.

We have white fly everywhere in the living room - comes of bringing in tender house plants that have been outside for the summer. The abutilon will have to be treated and then we pray - but they multiply - I was going to say like rabbits but rabbits have nothing on whitefly - like bacteria might be nearer

The horseradish that is supposed to be variegated has, in part, reverted so I will need to dig up the gone all green bit and use the root - that will make my eyes water. Onions have nothing on horseradish. And the nasturtiums get everywhere.

Annabelle is still in full flower except when it rains and she collapses onto the ground. The hydrangeas have been marvellous this year.

So, Monday, still in the season of mists and mellow KEATS stuff - today foggy early on and now sun, and warm, and 61F 16C, and it is November! I must be a close-bosom friend of the maturing sun?

(see the poem.)

CLOCKING BACK AND HEFTING

Here we go into British Winter Time and the clocks go back and hour. It is lighter in the mornings but darker in the afternoon.

The aunties are cycling in from the Atlantic again and low pressure dominates driven on westerlies. This means leaf stripping winds and rain.

This means collecting the stuff and ramming it into builders' sacks to rot down to leaf mould. In the barrow you can see two planks of plywood.

M. Don, he of gardening advice, suggested this a while back as a good way to pick up leaves and it works. Sandwich the leaves between them and carry them to the barrow.

And the heron has returned to the pond.

And we are at 23 grey squirrels caught this year.



The attempt to use a central stake and ties to support the Sedum spectabile failed miserably and it is suffering from a bad dose of sprawl.
I will try something else next year.

When the sun shines the garden does look good.

I have checked all the ties on the new white birches but the list of things to do grows ever longer. Knee may have to wait for garden - at least for a bit.

R has been at the asparagus bed and cut back the dying stems and then weeding. I have put a 4 inch (10 cm) layer of very well rotted horse manure all over it. I have also turned the more mature compost heap.

The remaining rhubarb leaves and stems have been removed and I think I will need to divide one or two of the older plants - replant them after division - and then leave for a year to get settled before harvesting.

Now for some more autumn leaf colour from the garden. In the outer world the woods are really getting hued up now. 


The azaleas - rhododendron lutea - is especially good as you can see with these red tints.

So today R and I went to the Wool Gathering at Kendal where all sorts of spinning and weaving and things were happening. Some fantastically coloured dyed skeins - but many a bit pricey.
Our local sheep - the Herdwick - native to the Lake District have a rather rough wool. Mind you they need it, wintering in the mountains.
When I was a boy I lived on a hill farm and we had a hefted flock of almost 1000. (Hefted not hefty - means they will return to their home patch etc  etc.)
We once sent our pet lamb (reared by hand and bottle) to market 14 miles away when it got too big, but it escaped from the Auction Mart and, in due time, turned up back on the farm! It did not escape the next time.

Actually I like to come home - suppose I am a bit hefted too (and hefty I hear the cry!)

AUTUMN CREEPS ON APACE

The autumn leaves drift past my window . . .

Autumn is with us. Leaf colour is intense but many trees are still green. However some shrubs are in fine red and yellow fettle.

(S says it is snowing in London, Ontario and who wants to be in the Philippines with their typhoon!). 

We have just walked in Sea Wood and the fungi are having a great time digesting dead trees and stuff. I am sitting at the computer watching a grey squirrel going into the trap without setting it off - some adjustment needed there. Hang on - gotcha! Time for another relocation job.

The broccoli has been caterpillared, thoroughly. We have given up eating it as the steamer reveals the cooked insects. It has been netted and picked over but to no avail.

Disaster - I have left the big marrow far too long and it has gone rotten, is full of gorging woodlice and other slimy munchers.

I have started then autumn clear away cutting back the shrubby clematis and Marguerites. 
In the garden we have a lovely white Michaelmas daisy, almost six feet tall, and now it dresses the house in various vases.

And leaf colour is not all - the berries on the cotoneaster are splendid - does this mean there is a hard winter coming?

The maple has been pruned to five feet from the ground to encourage it to take the form of a tree rather than a shrub.

There is one apple still up the tree, a big fat one and I cannot reach it and it will not fall when I shake the branch.

APPLE

His first flowering came in the spring.

He missed the late cold

that affected so many.

It was a pleasure to watch him

that summer, his skin filled,

his progress was remarked upon.

The fall came in the autumn

when he ended on the grass

a little bruised but not broken.

His companions went off to market

but he was bundled 

with other damaged souls

and sent scrumpy making.

That Christmas he was remembered fondly

and his health was drunk

throughout the orchards of Herefordshire.

So fare thee well from the garden for another day. It is Wednesday and finally we have rain after a long dry month - or more.

ROSES, SNAILS AND KNEES

Some of you know I do a bit of photography and sometimes I take an image that, unlike my miserable pessimistic self, exhibits pure joy,

(or manic craziness). This has nothing to do with the garden, just loved the photo.

Anyway, so we go away for a few days and all is calm and dry and on return a lot of leaves now fallen. Funnily we are not further on here in the north than Oxford or Herefordshire (where we have been).
The courgettes are still churning out produce and the marrow is still getting bigger.
This might be a good time to take acanthus and cardoon stems to hang up to dry for winter flower arranging plus anything else good. The Stipa gigantea (a big grass) has lots of leaf but no seed heads this year.
R has been dead heading and dead other things as well.
Some of you may know that I have a tin left knee and the right one is disintegrating. In Oxford and Herefordshire I limped painfully around on hard pavements. Today I have played 18 holes of golf (no I did not win) and mown all the lawns, hoed the veg beds and cleared away the final beans (leaving the roots behind for all their nitrogen fixing bacteria).
So do I need a new knee now?

Taking of beans how about this for supper. It took me a lot of time in Photoshop removing the mud from my wonderful grandson's face!

To move on - No rain for some time and all is getting dry - it is October! 

I remember that the third week in October used to be the best for autumn leaf colour but that has now moved on to early November.

With the weather cooling snails are going into hiding and sealing themselves off - here in a crack in the paving by the house.

To move on - 

The roses in the garden are having a splendid second flush -

So how doers one collect leaves - with a blower blasting its noise across then garden or with a rake? Barrow them and place in a big builders sack to rot into leaf mould - not much nutritional value but a good soil improver. Actually on the lawns, if they are not too wet, using the mower will pick up most of the leaf fall.

My sister and her husband come on Monday so not another blog for a week or so. It will be good to see them.

The tulips have come from Sarah Raven - late purchase discount plus another discount from a magazine. Among other things have got a scented tulip collection for the pots outside the kitchen door.

R is in therapy (that means she is ironing clothes and sheets). She actually enjoys doing it. If it were me I should have wrinkled clothes to go with my wrinkled skin!

Ironing - what a thought - need a cup of tea (and a biscuit).