BITS AND ODDS

Just sitting at the computer and looked out of the window - usual birds and then saw a grey wagtail under the feeders. Such a delicate pretty bird with its grey back and flash of bright yellow.

Camera was in car so no picture.

I used to draw odd birds as shown here.

Not brilliant but I think you can tell what they are.

We have a large branch down in the wood after all the rain and gales - the last 36 hours have been very wet and rather wild.

The day I go out and buy a chain saw is approaching.

I am not a machinery man - they always seem to malfunction with me. Well, that is not really true, it is just that I get in a tizzy when they do - no patience.

I have just read in the paper that if women eat a lot of watercress it reduces their chances of breast cancer.

We could sell our stream full - we have both the wild and cultivated varieties growing in the garden - and save the female world - except they might all get liver flukes!

What do I do when it rains (and rains) (and rains).

As far as the garden goes it is amassing a list of things that have to be done, things that could be done, things I can put off for a while and things I can put off indefinitely.

I can watch the birds emptying the feeders, watch the patterns of raindrops in puddles, do a crossword, watch yet another 'Escape To The Country' on BBC2, eat, drink yet another cup of coffee or tea and so on . . . .

Actually one thing I do is sort out old photographs, and "repair" them as best possible with photoshop.

This picture has been badly damaged in many ways so, with a little patience and Photoshop some semblance of the original can be achieved and a new print

made. Of course both can be

stored as digital images as well.

So, what has this to do with a garden blog - nothing!

As it is raining

I thought I would leave you with a wet picture of

alchemilla flattened by the constant falling of water form the sky.

And on this cheerful note I may have to polish my Wellies and brush down my waterproof kagoul.

FAUNA AND DOGHOUSES

Well, I am in the doghouse!

Last night I cooked some lovely Halibut (which stuck to the pan), underboiled the potatoes but cooked the broccoli from the garden beautifully.

Unfortunately I also cooked beautifully several caterpillars!

Not only that they were not found till we were eating our supper.

So, I am in the doghouse.

Now, talking obliquely of fauna - I discovered the following animal making its slow way over the tarmac from behind my car in the direction of the compost heaps.

It is called Limax maximus - presumably after some Roman general or something.

It is also a whopping slug. Not as chunky as some of the big shiny black ones but . . .

We have also had a tragic death discovered by my wife wending her way to the Wendy House to write.

There on the path was a distant relative of an elephant - a common shrew - curled up and dead. There seemed no obvious sign of injury so we will have to put the cause of death down to natural causes. (Though I suspect next door's cat to be that natural cause. We have had "gifts" before.)

We have other predators -

Look carefully and you can see the spider waiting at the bottom of its funnel shaped web highlighted by the raindrops.

We have also had a courgette/marrow problem - too many.

So made some soup -

Recipe - chop some onion and soften in pan with some oil and/or butter. Dice courgette/marrows peeling the older and bigger ones, remove seeds if necessary.

Chop a big spud, add to pan with stock and handful chopped mint, simmer an hour, blend in blender - season, done.

I have not given quantities as there are none - just what feels right!

At least only Courgette and Mint soup - not courgette, mint and caterpillar soup!

Broccoli coming up and going on heap. Still have plants for overwintering and spring purple sprouting - too early for the crawlies.

MORE RAIN

Enough said.

Yesterday R power washed some of the paving and I swept up after and brushed some replacement mixture into the cracks where the previous grouting was missing.

There is a leak in the pond.

Dug out the small ditch below the pond and raked out pond weed. Still leaking but at least the rain has filled it to the brim.

Time to cast the mind back to better weather - so a picture and a poem that has nothing whatsoever to do with the garden!

The photo came before the painting which now hangs somewhere in Overton near Heysham.

Also the picture has nothing to do with the poem as the image was taken in winter and the poem is about summer!

However, it is still good to sit outside the Mason's Arms above Bowland Bridge on a good day with good company (and a good pint) and take in the view.

How lovely are the long mornings this far north,

how quiet falls the night.

Here sunrise seems to linger

till night meets today,

and stars twinkle out

into a breath which is that dark

where two suns, rise and set, almost blend as one.

Grey light is never truly grey

but green or pink suffused

in such a way that ridge on ridge,

looking east from Strawberry Bank,

lies monochrome and silhouetted on the next.

Here distance swallows shape,

night is a time trapped between dusk and dawn,

a flicker in the sky.

A blackbird sings with a hoarse voice

from a fieldside rowan top.

COLOURS

There is something about a plant with stunning colour that attracts me- one that stands out in the garden. Of course you have to be careful where you plant them.

Big colours can clash - which sometimes works - sometimes. This can bee seen done successfully at Great Dixter.

Here are three very different plants - one low growing,

one a small shrub

and the last a six foot tall architectural splendour.

The first is an Evening Primrose and this spills from its flowerbed over the path, flowering for much of the later summer and early autumn.

I grow tow varieties, this one with the deeper yellow flowers and a paler version. It grows wild around Southport where we lived in the early 1970s.

I think it is important to have plants in the garden which have other connections, with past moments and occasions.

The second is Ceratostigma willmottianum.

I know, bit of a mouthful - but what a wonderful blue. It is difficult to find good blues for the garden.

The autumn leaves turn red and enhance the depth of blue in the petals.

At the moment it is a small shrub about three feet high.

The third is a Cardoon,

a giant thistle like plant with purple flower heads which are left through the winter top catch the frost and keep interest in the garden.

The bumble bee in the photograph is a bonus. They seem to love the big flower heads and bury themselves deep inside in search of nectar.

Three very different plants.

And, Oh yes, I keep them apart. Perhaps I have not had the courage to try and place them together but they each have their own place.

ODD PLANTS

Despite the weather warnings it has been a lovely sunny day and SAT! in the garden in the sun after lunch out.

The view across the Bay was wonderful.

Over the rolling fields and the green trees, over the sands of Morecambe Bay and the sea to - Heysham Nuclear Power Station.

Well, one cannot have everything, just hope the wind is from the north if it goes up.

I remember 1957 and the Sellafield chimney fire - we lived near Torver and the milk from our cows was poured down the drain for several months. Dad was given a geiger counter by the Government or someone - very hush hush - and measured the milk daily. In the end we were almost the first local farm to be declared problem free.

Enough of the past - looking down the garden

it is interesting to see varieties of plants.

The three types of loosetrife - the yellow flowers earlier in the year and, thinking about it, may have succumbed the the Wendy House. By the pond are both the wild purple and the pink variety. Though the photographs do not show it, currently the paler version is actually more vigorous. This is not usually the case for the wild versions a most often the stronger.

In fact the wild version is growing in the hedge bank down in the village but I suspect that this is an escape.

So I have done little in the garden today - no I tell an untruth - I have done nothing in the garden today but show friends around and shown them my giant marrow and two large pumpkins.

Make of that what you will!

TREES IN NEED OF NHS?

When we first came to the nook one of the large ash trees developed Honey Fungus!

We had to have this taken down and I took a chance and had it chopped into logs for the woodburner.

Not a great idea.

Within three years the log pile was infested with the black wirey strands of Honey Fungus hyphae.

So we had an enormous bonfire and burned the lot. Now we pray that that has done the job.

We did have an uninfected (we hope) part of the main trunk chainsawn into a seat. You can just see it under the foliage lower middle left in this picture.

In the darkest part of the far garden I planted six white birches

bought from Weasdale Nurseries.

Five are thriving though there was a moth caterpillar infestation last year.

One has developed a nasty black patch on the trunk - so - scrape it and paint it and hope.

It always amazes me the vast number of twigs that fall or are blown off the trees - especially the ash trees.

We regularly collect them and pile them in the rough grass at the far end ready for a bonfire.

There is a fallen dead tree at the far end which we have left. It was there when we came and is a favourite perch for the buzzard (when the rooks let it settle).

There is another dead tree that fell over the wall from next door. Fortunately the wall is intact but, apart from cutting off the branches, I have been tardy with the chainsaw on the rest.

This may be because I do not have a chainsaw?

It may be because I am just putting it off - much more likely.

I am alone in the house - R is in the Wendy House for the first time, writing.

QUICK BLOG

So R was looking out of the kitchen window when a large wisteria leaf shot across the paving and disappeared down a hole by one of the green oak posts.

We waited.

Then this appeared!

One of our Wood Mice.

When we first came to The Nook - our first visit we were taken to one of the wells and the lid was carefully lifted. The well was insulated with polystyrene sheeting and under the top layer was a well formed wood mouse nest. Mice scattered in all directions as light poured in.

Unfortunately there were also a couple of dead mice in the well itself.

Unsurprisingly we decided not to drink the water.

Mowing today after night rain.

First off to Flookburgh to collect scaffolding planks for the garden.

I seem to have an inexhaustible need for them - edgings for veg beds and paths, for bridges over the stream.

Only one picture today - but a cracker!

Back twenty minutes later - there are two mice - getting ready for a cold winter.

VEG AND SUCH

Yesterday I was Strimming!!

Honestly.

Golf in morning, strimming in the afternoon.

The problem is - today - Lowick Agricultural Show in morning and raking off the strimmings in the afternoon. This is much harder work than just strimming.

Now have backache!

To the garden - and at the show there was a large

prize-

winning pumpkin - but not as big as mine!

One of my courgettes

- it was a courgette yesterday - is now a marrow!

They grow overnight - makes you wonder which garden gnome is secretly feeding them.

There are early butternut

squashes and chillies so I hope that they will swell and ripen successfully - then recipe books out!

And we have a second ripe fig

- with the sunny weather.

My daughter gave me a great recipe -

split fig, insert chunk of dark chocolate, put in oven till chocolate melted and Voila!

Yum!

We also have a tree in the hedge at the bottom of the garden which has decided to bear small red

plums. I think it is a variety called prunus cerasus or cerasifera - whichever it is a first record for this locality! On eating they start as a sweet plum but do have a slightly bitter aftertaste.

I hope they are not poisono......

WEEDS AND WOTNOTS

When is a weed a weed?

A wild flower is not necessarily a weed. The bluebells in spring, the red campion later and the angelica in summer are all wild flowers but in the right part of the garden are not weeds.

However there are some that I classify as weeds wherever they are - especially the tenacious ones - Bindweed, Ground elder, brambles and hogweed. Now some people seem to like the majestic white panicles of the hogweed but I have been blistered by the sap! So I much prefer the white flower heads of the Wild Angelica.

Grass is grass but in flower beds couch grass is weed. Add to this clover and creeping buttercup, cress and oxalis, dandelions and docks and so on.

This is persicaria- related to Easter Ledges (still have not cooked them a la Mrs Beeton) - and redleg. It grows on the banking above the pond and makes a fine display. Weed?

Then in gravel paths everything is a weed though you can transplant some self sown seedlings like wallflowers and aquilegias.

Early on I put in some ground cover roses for a quick result and have certainly got it. Now they are rampant and need a strong hand.

The ash, willow and sycamore trees self seed - definitely weeds in the beds. Raspberries sucker and come up where they are not wanted - the list is endless.

So weeds are only weeds if they are growing in the wrong place - especially brambles.

Mind you, they do have juicy blackberries . . . .

DOG, DUCK AND BRIDGE

In our garden, outside the kitchen door,

we have a duck, a flying duck which chimes rather than quacks.It was a present from my son C. and had chuckled away for a few years when the wind blows.

Just below that, standing on the paving is our dog

who nods in the wind and also falls over when it is very gusty.

Now, recently other structures have been appearing in the garden due to J. staying with us.

This is our new bridge.

The individual poles are about six feet long and he, aged four, dragged them down from the wood at the top of the garden.

He did not use it as a dry way across but spent most of the day in the stream fully clothed !).

I assumed that this "bridge" would be used as a new crossing of the stream.

I was wrong. Quite clearly this structure is a bed!

WILLOWS

There are four types of willow in the garden - five occasionally.

One, a willow tree in the southeast corner which was,

I think, part of the east field hedge, was here before us. It is a full blown tree and I shall be interested to see what the hedge man does come November when he lays this hedge.

Apart from that the next willows to be introduced

were clearings from a nearby tarn and were stuck in the ground as scions to form the willow tunnel - these are

Osiers and since have been twisted and woven together in more than one part of the garden including a hedge at the top west and a planting in the far corner with a view to coppicing and harvesting them for firewood.

Then we planted a weeping willow tree which, so far, has determinedly decided not to weep.

Perhaps it is too happy where it is in the boggy ground at the lower part of the garden.

Next to this are two twisted willows - I saw these in Homebase looking very sorry for themselves and much reduced in price so could not resist the challenge.

They seem to be happy

and thriving two years on in the very boggy area near the ponds and the stream.

Finally there is my Granddaughter, Willow!

MATURITY

Of course - not mine - still waiting!

This is a picture of the early garden just after the path was built to the very early veg and fruit beds. This picture was used before (14th August) when muttering about seasonal food.

Having been to my brother's near Kendal yesterday where the garden has had over twenty years to mature I realise I shall be a wrinkly old man before I see the same. (Assuming I live long enough). To see walnuts ripening on his tree and damsons weighing down branches - jealousy.

Here are two more pictures from spring 2007, these before the path was built - as you can see the garden was a wasteland. One shows the view to the wood over rough ground.

The small shrub bottom left is a Davidia given to me for my birthday by my brother and sister-in-law and planted in early 2007. This will , in due time, become a handkerchief tree.

The garden has no structure, few plants and is in need of many hours hard labour - which it got!

The other image, also taken before the path was built shows the view back to the house just after the construction of the third veg bed.

The first crop in most of these prepared beds was potatoes to clean the soil (and get scab).

Gradually I have worked out what grows well and what does not. Blackcurrants and raspberries, broccoli and leeks, beetroot and asparagus, rhubarb and rocket all do well. Carrots and parsnips are more difficult - I can grow huge parsnips but they do get some rot. Carrots we have discussed before. Easier to buy at the greengrocers. (If not as sweet and tasty.)

If you look at the blog for 25th August you can see the garden three and a bit years on which gives a good idea of how it is maturing. Unfortunately trees take time to grow unless you spend a fortune buying large specimens - which would please Weasdale Nurseries!

THE STREAM

Well, hardly a stream, more a field drain.

It begins in the field behind the garden where a previous tenant farmer dug a ditch alongside the bridleway at the upper edge.

He then let this drain away into the garden when it was a smallholding.

When we first came here at the start of 2005 the water ran into the garden area and became a bog - in the wild upper garden as shown here. The white flowers are wild angelica.

Out of this came a stream which tumbled down a steep bank into long grass and a further bog. There was a ditch by the hedge at the lower border of the garden

which emptied down a steep drop and became a stream which runs down the back of Rosside House, under the road in Rosside and into Rosside Beck.

This beck later joins Pennington Beck, becomes Dragley Beck and runs into the Leven Estuary near Sandhall.

To solve the bog-in-the-garden problem I dug a new course for the water down the middle of the lower garden and made two ponds. The upper one is a settling pond for silt washed down the stream.

Before the stream was dug I had to fill in two sumps - holes about a yard across and three feet deep with running water at the bottom - in one side and out the other.

During the digging I also found some blocked pipes - evidence of a previous drainage system.

The sound of running water, when there is not a drought, adds to the garden but trimming the grass beside the stream is a bit of a bind.

Fortunately I have a wife who will do this!

EXCUSES

No blog yesterday but apart from showing Grandson J his giant pumpkin - for halloween - not in garden.

In fact have family here so garden is in second place.

This is Granddaughter W at the Kendal Maize Maze indulging in a little ice cream!

As she is too young to mow the lawn, (it is raining again anyway), we did something more educational and learned the difference between a llama and an alpaca.

(The latter is smaller and needs a haircut.)

Actually I cannot quite keep

totally out of the garden even if it was just a bit of deadheading and filling up the bird feeders.

At one point I was pushing the push chair when it rolled into a metal gate. A woman rushed over and exclaimed that she hoped the baby was not hurt only to look in the chair and find - BUZZ LIGHTYEAR!

Sausages tonight - but with some broccoli and calabrese from the garden. When we came back from holiday in early July the calabrese was flowering so I deadheaded that too and since we have had, albeit smaller, many heads more like purple sprouting broccoli.

The Victoria plums are red and juicy - unfortunately the wasps agree with me and we are having a battle as to who gets what first.

Tomorrow we travel to Whinfell to another bit of heaven - picnic lunch at my brother's house. Grandson J and I made rock cakes to take.

Well, he sort of helped.

- He will certainly help to eat them!

MEUM

Woke up this morning and staggered to the window overlooking the garden. The air was full of whirling, chattering swallows - are they gathering already?

The garden is a place of sounds and silence broken only by the distant roar of a motorcycle or the siren of an ambulance on the A590 a mile and a half away.

Today small birds chatter, jays argue, collared doves coo and the mew of a buzzard comes down from the sky.

The sun is shining.

This is the view from the kitchen.

Out to lunch today in Flookburgh so time for a story.

As a small boy I was interested in Botany to the point where I became involved with the mapping of the British Flora through the Botanical Society of the British Isles.

I know - what a nerd!

Well, I was about twelve and walking with my mother near Coniston when we sat down on a banking for a rest. My mother moved to one side, pulled out a feathery leaf she had been sitting on and asked what it was.

It was Meum athamanticum - spignel or meu. A plant that does grow elsewhere in the east of Cumbria and was sent to London on trains in historical times as a Dill substitute. Its leaves have a lemony scent. Three plants of it now grow in the garden at our house.

Now the last record of this plant anywhere near Coniston was pre 1930 and reputed to have been made by John Ruskin - and not seen since.

This was a big rediscovery.

I duly filled in the record card and sent it off to Franklin Perring.

Soon after a lady arrived from the Barrow Field Naturalists to verify the plant. She was somewhat taken aback to find I was but a strip of a lad. (Actually a bit podgy).

The record was then logged and I did not think much of it till many years later when Geoffrey Halliday published A Flora of Cumbria.

The Meum was mentioned but its discovery was attributed to a lady from Barrow!

(I had this remedied for future editions.)

This lady, no, woman had purloined my glory, stolen the discovery from a small boy!

Actually that is not strictly true. It should have been attributed to my mother's derriere as that is what found the flower!

NOOK GARDEN AND STAKES

Time to give you an idea of what The Nook garden is like this week.

There are four

pictures taken here - when I dashed out between the showers as the sun shone.

Lawns are mowed but did them

quickly with the mulch setting rather than lugging

loads of grass cuttings to the various heaps.

Why is it that when I mow the mower always runs out of petrol at the farthest end of the garden? It does not seem to matter which way round I travel.

We are eating courgettes by the bucket load and the butternut squashes have finally begun to develop. The pumpkins continue to swell with all the rain - they are now safely sitting on a bed of straw.

Reading a life of Thomas Cromwell at the moment - the man behind many of the atrocities committed in Henry VIII's reign. He got his come-uppance in the end but treacherous, nasty, ruthless, heads on gates etc etc.

We have a cartoon in the downstairs WC which shows three heads on stakes over castle gate. One is saying to the other two - 'Well, so much for plan A!'

Think I will have another cup of tea and do the Kakuro.

THE TALE OF THE TOOTHBRUSH

It is all my sister's fault - we talked on the telephone yesterday - but first more of the garden.

(She has emailed me having read this blog and denies toothbrush culpability!!!)

So what have I been doing whilst the rain comes again and again.

I cannot mow the grass as it is so wet.

First the old raspberry canes have been

removed and the best of the new ones tied in for next year.

Then they have been pruned at the top - at about six feet or so. A little later in the year they will get a mulch of well-rotted horse manure both to feed them and suppress weeds.

Then I went to the victoria plum tree - only been in for two and a half years and now with some of its branches supported by stakes.

The fruit has been thinned - about sixty per cent removed so the rest can mature without snapping the branch.

I have already eaten one and it was wonderfully juicy.

It is a pleasure just to pick a piece of fruit of our own tree or bush, or pull up a carrot and eat. The flavours are so much stronger and sweeter than supermarket fruit and veg.

And what has this to do with a toothbrush?

Nothing.

My sister asked me what I had got up to whilst R was away for the week. Amongst other things, I set myself the task of cleaning the grout in the travertine floor in the kitchen and utility.

It is a big kitchen.

So I spent a good part of my time, not in the pub, not living it up, not playing golf but on my knees (hard floors, travertine limestone) with an old toothbrush.

Whenever you go away always pack your toothbrush - you never know when it might be useful!