A DARK DAY AND TUNNELS

Raining, overcast and dark. Another dank day.

To cheer us up we went and had coffee at Gilpin Lodge Hotel at Windermere.

On arrival home greeted by the information that my Uncle Gratton in Adelaide, Australia had died.

As I have said a dark day.

Let me talk of the garden instead.

The 19th July blog showed the development of the Willow tunnels.

There was a view in the blog of 19th July with a blue seat at the end.

The image on the right shows the view the other way looking up to the buddleia hedge.

Speaking of the buddleia hedge there were comma butterflies there yesterday though this one was photographed on a perennial wallflower.

The view to the north shows the lawn down the garden to

the Wendy House.

You will notice that the roof of the tunnel here is not yet complete. These willow wands were cut from the original tunnel and are therefore much younger.

Below is a diagram of the tunnels. The seat is inside on the left and the tunnel points to the right over the little bridge to the buddleias.

The Wendy House view is from beside the seat looking down the diagram.

"Still falls the rain . . "

WHAT'S IN A NAME

This is a photograph of the rose Rhapsody in Blue.

As you can see, and as with all blue roses - Blue Moon and so on - they are not really blue, more purplish.

The blue rose is a bit like the black tulip used to be - a rose breeder's holy grail.

However, with a bit of Photoshop mucking about it is possible to create a blue rose - if only in an image.

Every year I am surprised by the new varieties which adorn the magazine and catalogue pages, the new colours and colour combinations.

Which brings me to names.

I have always wondered how the house got its name - The Nook. I presume it was the result of hours of deliberation by the Reverend gentleman who built the original prefab for his summer holidays. However you would think he could have arrived at something more original?

So The Nook it was and then as we proceeded with the build, council planning documents started to refer to it as Rosside Nook. This made the address Rosside Nook, Rosside - which seems unnecessary repetition.

Anyway it has stuck.

And the sun is out

and the grass is growing

and soon it will be time

to go out and start mowing.

Or perhaps a coffee and the crossword?

SUN!

I cannot quite keep up with the weather!

R returns from Yorkshire today so baked some rock cakes - seem to taste ok.

Into the garden to pick flowers for the house - especially sweet peas - you have to keep at them or they go to seed. The whole house now smells of the flowers.

Also did a couple of vases of yellow/orange flowers and some nasturtiums for the Wendy House.

Went to the veg beds to get some beetroot to cook and pickle (except, after I put them in the bottom oven to cook I found that I did not have enough pickling vinegar. The cauliflowers are gone - rain and slugs - so uprooted and put onto the compost heap - well the big rubbish heap at that end of the garden. When I think of the rubbish I throw in there I wonder who lives there? I know there are toads and slugs and snails and so on - I have to be careful with the fork because of the toads.

Then went to my special, clever carrot pots and pulled some carrots.

They seem to have forked a bit like the one shown so not a huge success - but they taste wonderful.

Clearly the carrots are suffering from a bad dose of anthropomorphism!

Time to feed the birds again - the tits - blue, coal and great have developed a great hunger for the peanuts. The young blue tits - they have a bit to learn - even challenging the greater-spotted woodpecker.

They will learn the pecking order given time.

RAIN!

And more rain and so on.

It is dark and gloomy.

The slugs are creeping out and eating the remaining cauliflowers.

The beer in the traps is old, diluted and needs changing.

But it is pouring down.

This is the summer view from my window at nine-thirty in the morning.

Thunder has just rolled over the fields.

The stream that was dry at the end of June is bubbling away and even the birds are avoiding coming out to the feeders.

I know - the true gardener would be saying - "Git your Wellies and mac on. It's nowt but a bit of watter.

At least I have finished the inside of the Wendy House.

R comes back from Yorkshire tomorrow so I hope she will be pleased.

I am not a skilled handyman - my furniture will last but it is screws, glue and six by two timber.

Trying to get shelves to match end to end and be level when all screws are determined to go in at an absurd angle is impossible.

I have put up some trellis by the decking and bought a bench so R can sit there - presumably in the rain.

I am glad I mowed the lawns yesterday afternoon just before the heavens opened. But then, the rain will make the grass grow

and . . . .

SELF PERPETUATION

No, not me - I am just crumbling away.

I am referring to those plants which scatter their seed across the garden and appear in surprising places the next year.

The pictures are of nasturtiums so let me start there.

The first picture, of J. shows the nasturtiums flourishing in the bed outside the kitchen. In the new garden they were idea for ground cover and colour.

In the second year they were so rampant they almost suffocated the catmint which had to be rescued and armfuls of nasturtiums taken the the compost heap.

Of course we now have them forever but that is all right as I selectively weed them and

R. loves them in the kitchen.

Other plants include the poppies - opium, meadow and welsh - yellow and orange, forget-me-nots, alchemilla (you have to dead head before they seed), feverfew, rocket and best of all aquilegias - not the gaudy hybrids but good old Granny's Bonnets.

One surprise self seeding after the harsh winter was Verbena bonariensis - well I think it was as I do not remember them growing where they do now - it may just be they survived and I am going senile.

So this year the nasturtiums came, as predicted, on the banking in front of the house as seen in the third photo.

Though the bright vermillion is the most common

colour there are always some yellow - as seen here - and some darker red.

I would not be without the self seeders but sometimes you have to be a bit ruthless and compost them. (Then the compost is full of seed if you are not careful and they spread even more!)

SHRIVELLED AND DEHYDRATED AND BLISTERED

(The title of the blog could, but does not, well not always, refer to myself after a days work in the garden.)

There are times when not to dead head is the thing.

Various seed heads are worth leaving for their architectural merit - small dried sculptures (or in the case of the Crambe - large dried sculpture.)

The first and perhaps most obvious are the alliums as shown in todays two images. The more dramatic is the upper shot of Allium chiristophii.

(Hope I have spelled that right.)

(If not I must get a new tipist.)

Another plant I leave is the opium poppy because of the shape and so it can scatter its seed for next year.

Of course I leave the hips on the Rosa rugosa and Rosa rubifolia for autumn show and the various ornamental grasses for the frost to come and create a wonderland during the winter months.

In the wilder garden the grasses and the statuesque angelica are also left - there is some hogweed - not a favourite.

When I first strimmed the garden, stupidly, I did it on a hot day with sleeves rolled up.

Next day sitting with family in the Ship Inn at Coniston I noticed blisters appearing on my arms and head.

These were chemical burns from Hogweed sap - not the giant one, just the ordinary one. Rue does it (has done it to me) too and once, pruning euphorbias, I rubbed my eyes - Aaaaaagh!

So now I go out strimming, as infrequently as possible, as if I am wearing a radiation protection suit - and sweat to death.

MUCK AND STUFF

So, what do you feed your plants with eh!?

Answer - mainly well rotted horse manure topped with a bit of own compost, pelleted hen manure and growmore.

To the right you can see our compost heap - nowt goes in the green bin for the council.

I know - it looks like it could do with turning - well, yes it could. It is just that I have developed the habit of putting it off.

The Horse Manure is now nearly four years old.

When we built the house I got the builder to move the manure mountain in the next field where the ladies

have their horses (and the council wanted to charge them some ridiculous sum to take it away) to the garden. I have still not used it all - though that day will come.

It is great stuff once the weeds that have colonised it have been removed.

Then there is the question of grass cuttings - the mowing mountains.

I try to incorporate some in the compost heap but there is just too much so there are about three secret (and not so secret) mowings mountains in various corners.

A poor attempt to hide it with flowering currant has failed. I could use willow but there is enough in the garden as it is.

One thing I have not yet tried is seaweed.

Many years ago I used to visit Old Charley Porter who lived on Meeting House Lane - he was well in his nineties then and he gave me a rhubarb plant. "Go down to the shore and get a load of seaweed," he said, "Best thing for rhubarb."

So now you can have rhubarb and manure, rhubarb and custard - and rhubarb and seaweed!

WHITE AND GREEN

What's up Doc? Today is mowing as it is a beautiful day. Alfresco lunch with home grown salad, freezing courgettes and broad beans, picking sweet peas to keep them coming, treating the paths with weed killer - I know, not organic. There is only one of me and the thought of weeding paths is a step too far.

Son R is still painting the inside of the shed.

Wife R leaves me tomorrow for a week to go to the Arvon place at Lumb Bank.

And she is away all week - my blog recording for Little Cumbria is on Monday to Friday on Radio Cumbria!

So, white and green - the garden is full of colour but which two colours are most important?

Green is, of course, the dominant colour - in many shades in the early year, becoming less varied later as the trees take on a uniform dullness. so it is important to look for contrasting green foliage in the perennials and shrubs, look for variegation.

The other essential colour is, perhaps, not a colour - white.

White is vital to set off all the other colours, to lighten dark corners. A vase of sweet peas in all their colours is wonderful but a few white stems lifts it to another level.

One problem is that some white varieties of normally coloured flowers are not as vigorous nor as strong. Even so give them a go.

One white variety that outshines all the other colours in its range is white Cosmos. The 'Purity' of the white would do Farrer & Ball proud.

However white does not go with everything - yellow!

I have one or two places where white and yellow clash. Every year I make a mental note to move plants to avoid this - and then forget.

Mind you, white and yellow in one plant, as here in Lilium regale, can work - anyway the wave of scent that hits you as you walk past excuses everything.

WHEN FOOD WAS SEASONAL

No fridge - just a safe on the slate slab in the dark, cool dairy. Bacon salted in wooden boxes and hams hanging from the hooks in the beams.

I am muttering about the days of no fridges nor freezers. The image below is of our first spring at The Nook. You can see the new path on the left and the cold frame - just completed. There appears to be one slightly raised bed and the grassed over mound of horse manure behind. The rest of the garden is grass.

Back to the subject D.

I grew up, mostly, on a Coniston Farm - it was nearer Torver but in Coniston Parish. Marrows came but once a year like tomatoes and things. Food was seasonal unless bottled, preserved or kept through the winter by various methods. Potatoes in sacks or like the carrots in clamps. You do not hear much about clamping on Gardener's World now but Percy Thrower knew all about it.

The apples were on wooden racks, none touching and regularly examined for rot. Kilner Jars stood in rows on shelves.

So what am I on about?

When such as marrows were once a year they were a treat and are remembered fondly - at least by me - none of the rest of the family like Marrow much. The strawberries and raspberries came fresh from the garden for such a short time - not frozen.

Food that was seasonal was special.

Here we have some of the stuff from the garden this year - I know it might not win prizes but it tastes good.

Some things still have a season in the garden if not in the supermarket. One classic example is asparagus.

Two years ago I planted and asparagus bed with 20 crowns.

Last year we had one meal.

This year we had about four but decided not to tax the bed too much because the spring was so dry.

Next year - get out the melted butter for six May and June weeks of succulent delight.

(Unless we have a mild wet winter in which case it will be a battle with the slugs again.)

Now go back and look at the empty garden at the top. Then look at this image 3 years on.

You can see the cold frame but the rest is a lush world of lilies, agapanthus and Japanese anemones. Trees are planted around the garden and, though you cannot see it on this picture, there are now 5 raised beds, a cultivated banking for the cucurbits (pumpkins and stuff) and a bed for black currants and raspberries.

All it takes is well rotted horse manure laced with a touch of backache - easy!?

BUTTERFLIES AND BOB

Yesterday we had a visit from old friends - Bob, Helen and Val. He had been the head teacher of our three children's primary school.

There, of course, came the obligatory garden tour.

When we came to the buddleia hedge it was covered in butterflies - and HONEY BEES. It has taken long enough for the bees to find us this year.

These are the first seen.

As regards the butterflies the nettles in the corners have done their bit.

There were peacocks, red admirals and small tortoiseshells in abundance.

The painted ladies were here earlier in the year when a mass migration occurred from the south.

Sometimes the small tortoiseshell

caterpillars move in droves across the seating area outside the kitchen,

up the walls and into the roof to find a place to pupate and overwinter.

The garden has other butterflies - at least

three different whites (cover the brassicas),

speckled woods,

meadow browns, a few of those small brown ones I always find hard to

identify, and so on.

Perhaps it is time to get the book out and look more closely at what we actually

have.

In the spring, when the garlic mustard flourishes, there are orange tips. When I was a boy we always referred to garlic mustard by its other name - 'Jack-by-the-Hedge". What a strange name. I looked it up in Geoffrey Grigson's 'The Englishman's Flora'. (This is a wonderful book introduced to me by NC. It deals with the etymology of the flower names and folk traditions associated with them amongst other things.)

Other names for Alliaria petiolata include Beggarman's Oatmeal in Leicestershire and Pickpocket in Devon. Gerard's (of Herbal fame) recommends using in a sauce with salt fish.

I digress wildly!

Other more occasional visitors have included the comma, small copper, gatekeeper and one of the fritillaries.

It was an afternoon of good company and good chat and it was good to see old friends again.

They left with a marrow.

RAMBLINGS OF A HORTIPHOBIC

Just going through a rough patch - watching the weeds and grass grow and SIGHING deeply.

Perhaps I shall shut my eyes and get stoned? - Talking of stones - here is another obsession which I share with our friend Sylvia, (the lady of the oak tree) - when I am away I shove a stone in my pocket and bring it home. Of course I want then to be interesting visually if possible.

So there are stones here from Lanzarote and New Zealand - even a stone brought back from our honeymoon in Corfu in 1969!

The first picture also shows an old sundial which belonged to R's late father and was rescued from his garage.

The next shows a mixture of fossils and a piece of agate. This was not brought back from an exotic location but purchased from a shop at the Childwall Five-Ways roundabout on Queens Drive in Liverpool many years ago as a present for my wife - just a whim. I brought it in to her parents house and announced that I had something for you. R's mother turned round and said, 'Thank you, how nice,' so it only came back to us some years later!

(Any way it was probably bought by me, for me, using the gift to wife as an excuse for spending the money).

The third picture is of a small stone sink -

from my mother's garden - filled with small bits including a bit of beach ground green glass and an old stopper.

Now here is a warning - I have just picked some deep purple buddleia to go with orange crocosmia in a vase. On picking up a stem of the buddleia I was stung on the right index finger by a bumble bee. Just glad it was not a wasp - bee stings hurt a bit but soon settle but wasp stings are nasty!

Went down the garden to pick some sweet peas and nasturtiums for the house. R loves nasturtiums. In our first year we had acres of bare soil around plants so one solution to this was to sow nasturtiums - and they have been with us ever since. I have had to be quite ruthless - treating them as a weed where not wanted.

No doubt time will heal and my hortiphobia will soon change to hortiholicism. Just a bit of sun and the healing process can begin.

TIME FOR AN UPDATE

So, how does the garden look now?

It is a bit ragged as have been in bed for a few days - quietly dying - man flu - (well man something else actually).

Image on left shows house from near far end with small stream in foreground (which I dug with a spade) (Yes, bonkers!)

The next view is from in the trees in the top west corner looking over the corner of the veg and fruit beds to the Wendy House.

The lone young tree by the

path is a conference pear no fruit this year but we have Victoria plums, now thinned, as the branches were bending with the weight.

The line of raspberries in the right middle ground have had the old canes removed and the new ones tied in.

The lawns need mowing again but I am too wobbly at the moment to do much more than type and sup a cup.

The third image is taken from the lower garden near Sylvia's Oak tree. She gave us this a sapling when we came and after transplanting it to drier conditions it has thrived.

The line on the left is a copper beech hedge

- an attempt to break up the garden more into areas (too big for "garden rooms"). Then there is a gap before the buddleia hedge topped

with a stunning display of Crocosmia lucifer. I am not sure the red and lilac colours go but what the h***! Certainly catches the eye.

I wilt - time for a cuppa.

SEASONAL DAYS

No fridge - just a safe on the slate slab in the dark, cool dairy. Bacon salted in wooden boxes and hams hanging from the hooks in the beams.

I grew up, mostly, on a Coniston Farm - it was nearer Torver but in Coniston Parish. Marrows came but once a year like tomatoes and things. Food was seasonal unless bottled, preserved or kept through the winter by various methods. Potatoes in sacks or like the carrots in clamps. You do not hear much about clamping on Gardener's World now but Percy Thrower knew all about them.

Parsnips could be left in the ground into the winter but you need a bigger crop than we had last year - this is it!

The apples were on wooden racks, none touching and regularly examined for rot. Kilner Jars stood in rows on shelves.

So what am I on about?

When such as marrows were once a year they were a treat and are remembered fondly - at least by me - none of the rest of the family like Marrow much. The strawberries

and raspberries came fresh from the garden for such a short time - then bottled or jammed.

Some things still have a season in the garden if not in the supermarket. One classic example is asparagus.

Two years ago I planted an asparagus bed with 20 crowns.

Last year we had one meal.

This year we had about four but decided not to tax the bed too much because the spring was so dry.

Next year - get out the melted butter for six May and June weeks of succulent delight.

(Unless we have a mild wet winter in which case it will be a battle with the slugs again.)

(The pot thing in the foreground is a rhubarb forcing pot I bought without a lid for a pound many years ago at a house sale. I could find a more attractive top for it than this disc of plastic though.)

THROUGH OTHER EYES

I have wondered what others who have now gone would feel about the garden as it is today.

I think Tom, the previous owner would not be too unhappy and at least glad that I have an area growing veg. and fruit. Of course it is very different to how it was when he was growing rows of potatoes in the top west corner. This picture is at least fifty years old and this area now contains a fallen tree, nettles, docks and other overgrown weeds. The field above has also been drained into this land causing flooding and bogginess.

This is now shaded by trees that were not there then - is, in fact a clearing in a small wood.. This is where I have planted the willow wands - the plan is to coppice them for firewood for the woodburner at some stage.

My maternal grandfather would have wondered why there are no beehives - he kept bees and we had a film of him covered in a swarm. I do not know where it is now. I also have a watercolour painting done by him of his garden in Liverpool - and there are biplanes in the sky!

My mother loved gardens and she would have walked around, I hope, finding corners of delight. Though, perhaps, the disorganised and wilder areas would not quite meet with her sense of order.

I wrote a poem about fifteen years ago which was quite successful in competitions -

THE FIRST VISIT

It was when the New Year storm of 2005 was still raging that we first walked around The Nook. The wind had flattened half a million trees in the north including the great cedar at Levens Hall. The main news was virtually silent regarding it but then this was not happening in the south east of England.

The old prefab had been empty for a while and was dry but cold.

The 'garden' was a jungle with a large area of bog near the far end and large conifers obstructing and view from the house.

This was the first time we saw the mouse nest in the well top.

It took until May to complete the purchase of the property and the land, the latter from the local Town Lands Trust. Only then could we begin to address both the build and the garden. The daffodils and primroses were over but there were plants flowering in Tom's old beds.

I made a temporary bed in a sunny place, (just visible upper left edge of picture taken on 15th November 2005 ), and filled it with cuttings and bits of plants from out current garden. This was a labour which proved in the end to be a fruitless exercise as the builder, after stripping off the topsoil, dumped the lot on top of my nursery bed! Lost the lot.

Incidentally, if you go on Google Earth today, you can see the original building and garden as Google have not updated the image since before 2005!

Here it is with a red line marking the boundary of the plot. The old prefab and the garage are in the top right hand corner by the gate. The track from the road comes in from the right.

When they update the image I will post the new view. There is a distant view up the field on Google Street view.

ENTROPY

What a word!

Perfectly describes both myself and my garden.

Everything returning to its lowest common denominator - e.g. zero.

The garden strains to revert to wild jungle, the body strives to return to the soil from whence it sprung - well sort of.

Everything is desperately trying to fall to bits.

Actually the Concise Oxford Dictionary defines it as (amongst other things) :- A measure of the disorganisation or degradation of the universe.

Big stuff ! Prefer just the simple thought of everything running down.

So to prevent this happening takes a lot of effort and energy - weed the flowerbeds, mow the lawn, deadhead, spread the manure, prune and trim etc. (and that's just the human body!)

So one has to get crafty.

Now, I had a banking deep in docks and nettles and hogweed and bindweed and - well you get the idea. So I cut it back and covered it with black plastic - ugly but effective. Then I dug the top of the banking and manured it well.

Into this I planted pumpkins, courgettes, butternut squashes and, at one end, some chillies.

Pumpkins love to sprawl so now they can do so down the plastic - I do not have to weed and the black creates a hot microclimate.

Courgettes, picked, sliced and fried within an hour have a flavour you never get from the vegetables in the supermarkets.

Of course, if you forget to pick them you have marrows.

Two years ago I had a whopper and hung it in the shed in a net bag to keep for later in the year. Unfortunately it rotted (entropy) and when I took it down disintegrated in a mushy, smelly mess all over me.

Marrow stuffed with mince and baked is also stuffed with memories - but that is for another blog.

HOLLYHOCKS AND OTHER RAMBLINGS

The picture below right is a hollyhock and thereby hangs a tale.

I got it from Elizabeth MacGregor's

wonderful nursery in Kirkudbright a couple of

years ago.

After the hard winter I was sure it was dead.

In May we went to Dumfries and Galloway for the Spring Fling as we are wont to do.

(The Spring Fling is a Spring Bank Holiday even where artists and craftsmen across the southwest of Scotland open their doors to the public.)

We visited the aforementioned nursery and I saw another similar hollyhock but in not very good shape. I told her my sob story of the frost killed plant and the outcome was that I came away with a free but rather miserable plant. (Amongst other purchases).

So I planted it and, as the summer passed, not only did it thrive but the supposedly

dead plant came to life.

Now I have two hollyhocks and feel a twinge of guilt - but only a small one.

We have received two presents on the step of the new garden office - dead mice. I think the neighbour's cat is at large in the garden - does not cheer me up - the small birds have enough trouble with squirrels, woodpeckers and the sparrowhawk.

It is time to decorate the Garden Office.

After I applied masking tape to windows and doors R started to paint the inside of the Wendy House white - and lasted less than half an hour - came in hot and bothered and could not be bothered. Offered to do it but she is going to pay one of our sons. This is a picture of her paint smeared shower hat discarded in disgust!

What has this to do with a garden blog? Not much - reflects the frustration caused by the weather. I am not a Monty Don braving all the elements. I like it not too hot and

not wet. Mind you it has been chilly today - yet the showers keep coming.

So what can one do?

Catalogues are arriving for autumn bulbs but it feels too soon to buy tulips and daffs.

I have seedlings in the shed that need potting on but as I have not labelled them I am not sure what they are - here is the first lesson - label everything, especially if old age and intermittent memory is creeping on.

My watch has stopped.

It may be the battery but I think it got wet a week ago, probably from being under the water of the pond, so may be defunct. I have had it for over 20 years.

Time for new time? Must go to town to jewellers.

(It was the battery.)

(D***! Rather fancied a new watch.)

SOUP AND MORE SOUP

I cannot cook most things so, now retired, ?have a duty, though R is such a good cook and I have a penchant for experimentation - not following the recipe - which sometimes works and . . .

R has cooked some soda bread which is wonderful with butter. Here comes the waistline again.

Have just made watercress soup from the wild watercress growing in the stream in the garden. We have been warned not to eat it raw because of liver flukes - the stream comes out of the back field which has sheep and occasionally cattle in it.

However the RHS have said it is ok cooked so . . . out with the recipe book, bit of modification and I cooked some.

Having started I went and got some beetroot and made a jar of pickled beetroot and borscht - a Russian/Polish or something eastern european soup.

Most of the soup will go in the freezer for the winter.

Recipes - with a nod to the Cranks Recipe Book (do not know date of publication as the first page or two missing. It got soaked when we had a shower overflow in the rented house we were staying at whilst The Nook was being built).

Watercress -

Med Onion, small potato, 1 oz butter, bunch watercress (discard toughest stems), 1/2 pint milk, 1/2 pint veg. stock, salt and pepper, and, if you want a rich soup, 4 tablespoons of double cream stirred in just before serving.

Chop onion and potato, saute onion in butter, add potato, watercress, milk and stock, bring to boil, cover, bung in Aga simmering oven for an hour or two, cool, liquidize, season, freeze or add cream and eat. It is good cold.

If many stringy stem bits put through a colander. A sieve is too fine.

Borscht -

med onion, small potato, 1 lb raw beetroot, 1 oz butter, 1 1/2 pint veg stock (recipes say 2 pints but I think this makes the soup too watery), 3 tablespoons cider vinegar, 1 teaspoon Marmite, salt and pepper, ground nutmeg to taste (optional).

Chop veg - it easier to peel beetroot if boiled for a few minutes first and allowed to cool a bit (unless you have asbestos fingers), saute onion in butter, add potato, beetroot, stock and bring to boil then bung in the bottom Aga oven - takes a bit longer than watercress so a good 2 hours. Cool, liquidize, add s & p, cider vinegar, Marmite and, if you want, nutmeg, freeze or serve hot with dollop of creme fraiche and chopped parsley.

Now I will go and pick one or two courgettes for N. N has MS and is almost housebound. Her amazing husband looks after her and is a good friend. I know she loves sliced courgette fried with garlic and butter so will take some to him tomorrow.

I though that no one read this other than loyal family and friends but have had an offer of advertisements from America (declined) and from BBC Radio Cumbria to read some (minded to accept).

THE YEAR TURNS, THE WORLD TURNS

As I woke this morning I heard a buzzard mew from the tree outside the window. So August is here. The rooks have left the rookery for the open fields and the buzzard feels unpestered enough to return.

When we came here first a pair of buzzards were building in an ash tree at the top of the garden and would often sit on the fallen dead tree at the far end. Then rooks arrived and set up a rookery just over the wall next door.

The buzzards were driven away.

So the year turns - the rooks begin after Christmas fetching sticks for nests and generally making a raucous din. The volume is turned up as the young arrive until, suddenly, they fledge and leave the rookery.

Mornings become quiet, the cacophony stilled.

After the garden being stuffed with birdsong,

summer and moulting bring a deadness to the

place. Then the swallows start to whirl around chattering at one another and the horde of young bluetits twitter on the peanut feeder. (The squirrel has managed to rip apart a second one!)

The grass is cut (I got out the strimmer yesterday!) and tiny frogs can be seen skipping about near the pond. Where the frogs are the heron cannot be far behind.

The garden moves on through the summer and sweat and effort try to tame its determination to submerge all in long grass and tangles of bindweed and goosegrass.

Then the swallows will leave, the finches flock and the coming of winter be announced by the arrival of the redwings and fieldfares. Most evocative of all - the skeins of geese will fly north to the Duddon, their calling bringing us out of the house to watch.

Come January we will be woken again by the argumentative rooks and it will be a new year!

DONKEY OR WELL

In the deep jungle at the top of the garden R has uncovered a mound whilst clearing brambles.

This mound may be the earth dug up when a new well was put in by TJ, the previous owner but - donkey?

We know from C&C in Hebden Bridge that there is a donkey buried somewhere in the garden.

I think that it is now between the house and the pond under the extra hardcore we brought in to build the house - but?

We know that TJ's ashes are scattered at the top of the garden near where a clump of wonderful primroses burst forth each spring - as if he is saying, "I am still here in this beautiful place."

There are the tops of two wells in the garden - the one by the mound and another lower down. When we first came to the Nook this was the only water supply.

Being inquisitive I lifted the lid to find a mouse nest in the polystyrene insulation on top of the well. The animals scattered in all directions.

To commemorate this R was given a knitted mouse by the mother of the friend of C who is the daughter of TJ.

To make the well safe - for grandchildren - the lid is now nailed down and enclosed in wire netting.

I am striving to grow a rose over it.

It is hidden in the flowering currant to the top left of the second picture.

The steps were made by son R from cast-off scaffolding planks - not deemed safe for use by the company and available for a small sum.

They make good edging for vegetable beds and as the board walk by the pond.

The surface of the steps, laid two years ago, was wood chippings but most of this has now been replaced by slate ones.

Ah! Yes, the wheelbarrow story - bought new wheelbarrow from West Cumberland Farmers with plastic grips on handles - forgot to tell the electrician, JT, putting in cable to Wendy House that there was a problem. Off he set down the steep path with a barrow load of chippings and he was left standing with the grips in his hands as the wheelbarrow careered away into the bottom!

Enough - was going strimming but is raining AGAIN!