OF DYING DUCKS AND STUNNED BLUETITS

At first there was mist over the fields,

then it rose and a watery sun tried to pierce the clouds.

The lone holly left from the ledge-laying last year stood out against the greyness.

There was snow on the field in front of the house.

Out with the spade and clearing track and gate. The salt left in the bin on the road from last year (they have not topped it up this one) was sprinkled on the hill outside the gate. Already there are sledge runner tracks in the field behind the house.

There is ice underneath the covering of snow.

I go upstairs with the camera to take pictures of the garden under its thin blanket.

This is the view from the bedroom window.

The wood on the right, the veg beds and fruit ahead and the end of the willow tunnel on the left.

In the middle is the glory of the septic tank now plainly visible as I have cut back the tall grasses. I have more buddleias to plant around it and one day it will be hidden by bushes covered in butterflies.

So to the bluetit which flew into the living room window.

Though stunned it is trying to preen - note the curled up left foot.

It took about five minutes to recover after I had put it somewhere reasonably safe from predators, then flew up to the peanut feeder - the bird I mean.

Unfortunately this was not the only bird problem we had.

My flying duck had lost two of its bamboo chimes so I had to bring it into the kitchen for repairs.

Hence the inelegant sprawl on the kitchen island. A little resuscitation and string on a bodkin did the job and he/she is flying once more outside the kitchen doors.

The chiming mushrooms on sticks M gave me have also been victim of wind and cold, cracking and falling off their stems.

It is hobby-horse time again.

I see it is time again for the luvvies to slap each other in the wallet - BAFTAS, Golden Globes, OSCARS - the cult of the Celeb.

The problem is, if awards were given to those who truly deserved it - carers, charity workers and other unsung heroes, then they might become Celebs too.

It is nice to receive recognition of personal sacrifice but should anyone get an award for just doing their job?

RSPB BIRD COUNT - HA HA!

I waited and waited and they all went somewhere else until the hour was up - well not quite but later in the day the bird feeders - here almost empty - were chock-a-bloc with avian creatures.

It is frosty and forecast for the week but it makes no difference to the marigolds - here they are, albeit a bit ragged, flowering next

to the snowdrops!

The sarcococcus is flowering well outside the back door which is not of much good to the memsahib as she has lost much of her pong detection to a virus a while back.

The main path has been hoed and mem' has been clearing much of the dead and scruffy stuff from the flowerbeds. However we seem to be over run by broad-leaved willowherb and cress - weeding to do.

The compost heap is too small so plans are afoot for a big drive-in one or two beyond the veg beds a la Monty Don.

The thin wide image below is of the woodland path with the snowdrops getting going on the upper side. Every year divide and spread - in the end we will have a white carpet. The price for such as snowdrops and bluebells in the catalogues is absurd.

Now some more cash would be a help for doing more to the garden - I wonder if a directorship is vacant at RBS - I could just take the bonus and resign?

And to the surviving flowering nasturtium of which I was so proud. I was tidying the bed ten feet away where there was a sad gooey mess - nasturtium remains - so I pulled (and pulled) to find at the far end the remaining flowers.

Bye bye nasturtium.

Sad.

RAMBLINGS OF A POTOPHILE

I start with an image of the garden showing the neglect caused by my inability to get out there.

Uncut grasses , tangled roses, weeds - the only consolation is that the garden is bathed in a warm morning light as the sun broke through the cloud over Morecambe Bay.

Sitting back I can see so many jobs to be done - redo the paths with new edging and chippings, ?get a sit on mower with a trailer so I can trundle down the track and get my free horse manure, the catalogues are here and Sarah Raven's looks wonderful and I know the plants will be in tip top condition - but they are EXPENSIVE.

One very welcome catalogue is from Cally Gardens in Gatehouse-of-Fleet. There are always tempting things brought back from the Far East. I have one unusual berberis from there by the back door which has the most vicious thorns.

Back to the garden and our snowdrops which are dug up every year in the green and spread out. The policy is beginning to work and with self spreading the white carpet is not too far away.

On the right by the rhododendron you can jut see the first daffodil in flower.

So I tell myself to go out and just do a bit and - it is raining again.

This typing is getting difficult as I have suddenly started to hiccough (hiccup) - ?spelling.

So out with cold keys - down the back, drink of water or best of all - just hold my breath hard for 30 seconds - it worked.

Talking of the first photo in today's blog - I love that pot.

Does that mean I am a ceramic lover, a potophile or just a bit potty?

MUSIC OF THE GARDEN?

So here I am listening to Barry Maguire

singing The Eve of Destruction just after Sonny Boy Williamson's Fattening Frogs for Snakes!

Well you can't have everything.

This is a frosty dawn from the house with a strange yellow glow.

The snowdrops have changed from odd spots of white to more of a ragged carpet. Only one daff is out, yet the marigolds flower on as does that single tenacious nasturtium.

Music has changed - to Guy Mitchell and She Wears Red Feathers - Ah! Well.

So to an amazing sunset over the garden with rooks returning to their roost next door.

Oh! My G. it is the Stargazers now with I See the Moon. As you can see my taste in music is improving with age. Now it is Lena Martell with One Day at a Time - my nephew the Rev. might approve of this one. Though the Ghostbusters theme is next so . . . .

I have decided to have a clear out - I know you do not believe it - but many of my books are just there and most of little value -though when my Granddaughter handed me The Observers Book of Wild Flowers the other day and I found a personal inscription in it from 1957! Keep that one. I have a feeling I will keep on saying, "Keep that one."

The last picture is of a wisp of Miscanthus back-lit by the sun. I am trying to increase the grasses to give some interest in the winter but I will have to watch the new growth with the mild winter to cut back the dead growth at the right time.

Now some Aussie chap is singing Duncan's Me Mate - definitely time to go and have a cup of tea but as I turn to leave Rolf Harris starts on Stairway to Heaven . . . . . .

JACK'S BACK

Second morning of frost and still the marigolds flourish.

The warm sun (in colour) lights up the garden as it rises over the shoulder of the distant Forest of Bowland - thirty miles away across Morecambe Bay.

I am torn between getting out into the garden and doing something and knowing that if I do I will be laid up with the pain in my knee and the threat of ice packs.. (Slow recovery from a replacement).

Here and there flowers still show -

pink quince and red roses.

Up on the banking the daffs are pushing out of the grass and a carpet of snowdrops is beginning to make headway.

Stinking hellebore has been in bloom for a while and the sarcococcus pours out scent by the back door.

It is wonderful to see the sun again after a dreary Christmas and New Year with cloud and rain, if mild.

The rooks are starting nest-building and we have two cock pheasants in the garden - Mrs Phes can only watch the battle.

We thought of a week of winter sun but my lack of mobility is a problem. We thought of a cruise but events off Italy (liner on its side) make one think. I could not sit for long in a plane seat without needing to walk up and down.

On that cheerful note I shall pop a paracetamol- cue for a song? - "Better pop a paracetamol or two-oo?" More cried Oliver, less cried me.

So to HS2 and all those billions of pounds.

Do we really want a High Speed rail link up north? Well Birmingham is north of Watford. With all those BBC people getting to Salford quicker and easier, I say we should have a vote on Independence from the South East of England, sell them water when they run dry and build a Watford Wall - to keep them in their enclave. (Sorry Patiopatch.)

Perhaps it should be compulsory for all students from the South to go to Universities in the North and vice versa?

What am I rambling on about?

Moon in trees, morning sun, winter garden, cup of tea and some painkillers - time to shut up.

I GOT MY WELLIES ON!

I have been around the top part of the garden today.

There are sticks everywhere (and weeds). The gales have pruned the trees.

The garden is surprisingly lush and the small area of lawn up in the wood had grass that is 5" tall.

There has been such a lot of rain and there is a new spring in the wood - just where I do not want it. Digging ahead.

The flowerbeds are neglected and need a

good feed - hence the moss as shown here.

The leeks look good but the turnips look more like swedes - now I know that up north a turnip is a swede - no, the other way around - so what do they call a swede? A Finn? So what do fish have?

And just to prove that the weather is potty here is a picture of marigolds becoming

perennial taken today.

Winter draws (DRAWS!) on and we have snowdrop(s) in a small vase in the kitchen.

I am busy transcribing Emily Rowntree's diary notes on the last months of the life of my Great Great Grandfather - her handwriting is a challenge - but it is interesting - well to me.

Another blog I follow - Patiopatch - has just done the twelve days of Christmas - a labour of ? - but done it well and an old friend George Kosinski has started a blog with delightful watercolour sketches at http://kosinskistudio.com/journal/

The internet is awash with blog, the garden is awash - a bog!

Time for tea.

DISHEARTENED OF ROSSIDE

Not of Tunbridge Wells.

For the first time for 5 weeks had a stroll in the garden yesterday, albeit with 2 crutches. So much to do, clear up, weed, repair.

The small stream in the wood - which I cannot reach - is blocked and the water is running down the slope to puddle around the Bramley Apple. This cannot be good for it. The mild weather ploughs on and, though January is nigh, geraniums and hollyhocks flower not to mention (as I have done before) marigolds and nasturtiums.

The first tete a tete daff I potted up for Christmas is flowering on the living room windowsill.

The cold frame is a disgrace with withered willowherb

coming through the broken glass.

The top is old, salvaged from the garden that was here before we arrived and the wood is rotten.

Come better weather and limbs I will have to make a new sliding cover. Meanwhile any cuttings are either in a veg bed or in the shed by the window.

A gale is blowing yet again so there will be more arms full of sticks to collect. Almost all will be off the ash trees

The last image was taken yesterday and apart from the last rags of cherry leaves there are still a few rose flowers - pink in the photograph.

The cold frame is on the other side of the blue bench.

And so to Assad - I offered tea and advice to Gadaffi which he rejected - so now I offer a mug of hot chocolate and a hot mince pie with a daub of rum butter inside in the kitchen by the Aga to Assad. This matter can be sorted I am sure.

And thus to Ping Pong Ball and the bats.

Is he really enjoying all this fake sycophancy. I have my doubts that he has any real power - too much gold braid in his vicinity. Not the sort of career (pun) I would wish upon anyone.

He can come too, and bring Adminajabberwocky and his Persian Cat. I wonder of the cat's smile would fade away like that of Lewis C. if he realised how absurd his posturing is. (Though, admittedly, dangerous.)

Mmm! Mince pie. . . .

AVERYHAPPYMERRYCHRISTMASBLOG

What a mad weather world we live in!

Last year all was ice and snow, this year flowers still abound - nasturtiums and marigolds - even the quince is coming into flower. Astrantias and roses still bloom and daffs have pushed through on the upper banking. Snowdrops are almost out by the kitchen doors and I can even see a wallflower through the window.

It is mild and raining a lot.

Now, I know you are saying - why no blog for a bit?

Problem has been a knee replacement that has not quite gone according to plan so I have not been around the garden since November 21st!

I have to write part of this blog then get up and hobble around with the crutches, sit for a while with the foot up and then return.

See you in a few minutes.

Back.

Life can be tough and sometimes even sheep have to sleep rough. This one in the back field has a bad case of the lastyear'scoat.

I suppose, psychologically, I can identify with this ewe. Things are a bit ragged at present.

However I would rather identify myself with this fine Herdwick tup at Tilberthwaite,

king of all he surveys - but, of course, then one gets back to hormonal implants so I would not be much good as a Ram.

I wonder, do sheep get hot flushes - it would be very uncomfortable under all that wool.

So, despite the world straining to entropy, come next year and a healed knee, I shall fight the good garden fight, challenge the rabbits with chicken wire, mow the grass and slay the weeds.

AVERYHAPPYMERRYCHRISTMAS to you all.

BURNING ISSUES

Nothing political, nothing X factor (thank heavens), just nothing much as I am still 90% housebound after the new knee.

So to some pics of the wonderful November 5th we had at The Nook, fire, fireworks and family. No big bangers just sparklers and such. The snowstorms are not what they were, nor are the golden rains - remember the ones with a handle so you could hold them!

Could not have a fire today as it is raining steadily.

The garden is full of pigeons come in from the fields and yesterday there was a large flock of fieldfares hunting for berries.

I gaze out of the window in the study and can see the weeds growing, the dead plants needing cutting back and Bert the Rabbert is chewing away on the banking. Mr and Mrs squirrel are still at the feeders and managed to dismantle one last week. No sign of bramblings yet.

The last picture is a morning after one of the bonfire - November 6th. The ashes were still hot and burst into flame when I stirred them. Then I chucked on some damp leaves and such, hence the smoke.

One visitor to my Flickr site said that it resembles a ship going down with its funnel crooked.

What a good job I had the knee done whilst the garden was not in need of too much attention.

Time for exercises and another ice pack.

Yuk!

SPEAKING OF DECAY

If one is trapped indoors by a new knee and a pair of crutches, well, actually a pair and a half, how do you write a garden blog?

(At this point I should say that three crutches a used - one left at the top of the stairs and one at the bottom as only one is used for going up and down).

So, to start with the decay of leaf litter, there are still beautiful patterns and colours, look closely. Then, if a frost comes, this heightens the detail.

Going backwards to autumn, (I was mobile then), many of the old and diseased leaves had dramatic hues and shapes as with this example of a sycamore.

Some leaves, for example, cercidiphyllum, smell of caramel or toffee.

As the green cellulose degenerates and disappears other hidden colours, yellow and reds come to the fore.

This is particularly noticeable with the maple family.

Unfortunately, though sycamore is a maple, most of its leaves go a muddy brown, If they went a spectacular yellow the British countryside would be fantastic.

But they do not.

Then there are the trees and

shrubs which keep their leaves through the winter, some dead as with beech and to a lesser extent the oak, others living as with this next leaf - Magnolia grandiflora.

The undersides of the evergreen leaves have a wonderful warm hue.

(I just wish that the shrub would flower in the summer - we are still waiting.)

Another dilemma is how to get images for the blog - through the window? Is that cheating? Should I change tack and ramble on about banks, the Euro, politics and other things that seem totally irrelevant as I sit in the garden and decay along with it.

Absolutely not!

This is a Garden Blog not Panorama or Question Time.

IDEAS IN CLOUD COALTIT LAND

By now I will probably have a new knee - this is written in advance in case I am indisposed for a while.

This is the big sycamore - a "notable" tree according to the Woodland Trust - and would be splendid for a tree house.

A bridge could be built to it from the high ground by the compost heaps ending at the level of the main fork - but it is extremely unlikely to happen - but one can dream.

One snag of this tree is the mountain of leaves which rain down in autumn and sycamore are not the best for making leaf mould - not that that will stop me. Time can do many things given enough.

Why does everything occur at once - operations, leaking bath/shower and floor tiles being ripped up with underfloor heating and so on and so on.

It was foggy and dead calm this morning - mystical - even the birds seem to twitter quietly, the rooks mumble.

There is still leaf colour as the mild autumn weather finally looks to

turn colder and wilder.

It is so mild there are caterpillars chewing away at the brassicas and the grass is growing - unchecked, unmown. There are Small Tortoiseshell chrysalis under the eaves and some in the shed but I have not seen a butterfly for a week.

I am now going to lie on my front and peer under the bath with a torch.

Perhaps this is a new door into Narnia - push past the leaking pipes and . . . .

Update - new knee in place - home and asleep.

B IS FOR - ?BRASS (copper and lead)

B is for Blog of course, and beech and for basil,and the

backside I ought to get off.

With the economy up the drainpipe is it time for the concept of growing your own to expand. Fallow land could be rented out much more widely for allotment plots - they do not have to be council owned - it could be yet another sideline for hard pressed farmers. Now, I know it is being done but, not yet, on a sufficiently grand scale.

The gov. seems to move EXCEEDING slow with so many things. Take all this metal theft - license the scrap merchants and take that license away if they do not behave.

When will it happen? Who knows. Probably when someone nicks the lead off the Houses of Parliament. Sooner or later people are going to die because of these pilferings - so the gov. needs to act NOW!

Enough - off my hobby horse.

Things that are dead and are attractive have been left as with the Wild Angelica heads here. (The green behind is watercress in the lower pond.)

The last picture is of our basil tree which is a year and a half old. It resides on our kitchen windowsill and has only been potted on twice. It is watered when it starts to flag and fed occasionally.

Tender herbs have been taken in - mint in a pot, parsley too though that looks rather sad.

I have also jarred mint with vinegar and put some in a freezer bag in the freezer - it then goes brittle and can be crushed.

Cuperttea time is here with piece of homemade shortbread - found the recipe in my mother's little book entitled Mrs Tyson's shortbread - which I have modified -

6oz plain flour, 3.5 - 4 oz butter - rub together, add 1.5 oz rice flour (ground rice), 0.5 oz ground almonds and 2 oz caster sugar, knead to a dough. Press into a tin - tin size will determine thickness. Cook at 180C until just turning slightly golden. (We have Aga - top of bottom oven.) The more butter the softer the shortbread.

Eat!

Bulletin - R won first prize in the Mince Pie competition at the local Christmas Fair!

(And she said they were rubbish.)

Yum!

TRUE BLUE

Before the blog proper can I just mention that one of my readers and friend, Keith Fairbairn has died. He will be missed.

There are so few true blues in the garden - so many are shades of violet, purple and mauve. Blue roses are not blue, bluebells are not really blue but a bit of jiggery-pokery in photoshop can make them so. Harebells, the Scottish Bluebell fares better but what is a true blue?

Having said that my son went to a meeting in London two days ago and was Bluen away - Tories to the right of him and the left - reminded him of University he said.

So, to more important matters - I have planted two Amelanchier lamarckii and then trimmed them. Unable to resist, I trimmed the trimmings and stuck them in the cutting bed - I know not whether they will take but nothing lost . . .

If you look closely at this pretty poor image you can just see sticks protruding from the soil - these are the cuttings.

Other plants continue to flower as the November weather is so mild.

Marigolds are doing well.

The pink(ish) version of Hedge Parsley has come into flower and penstemons are blooming.

Every time I go into the garden - usually at the moment to rake up fallen leaves (must get a blower for next year) I see something new - geraniums, roses, catmint - let alone the usual nasturtiums and so on.

Then I looked out of my window yesterday and the oriental poppy is blasting us with its vivid colour.

I have postponed fixing the chicken wire to the posts around two of the veg beds.

It can wait until I have recovered from having my new knee.

I am now wondering what to do with the forty corks on my windowsill. There must be something creative I could do with them.

Perhaps I should have gone to the true blue meeting in London. I might have found somewhere to stick them?

WASHING TREES AND WRITING LETTERS

Yes, I have been washing trees - the white birches and the eucalyptus. Didn't seem to make much difference though. I read about it in a magazine - brightening up the winter garden.

Back to the mad garden again - it is November and brambles and woundwort are flowering in the hedgerows.

Though we have now had two frosts things are surviving and behaving irrationally? Despite the daylight hours get less the weather is still

unseasonably warm. Soon the southerly airstream will turn to the north and Brrrrr!

R weeded another bed and I have been muck-spreading again. I have put in posts in preparation for chicken wire netting - two beds are to be bunny free as I have said before. The posts lean out slightly to stop the cottontails climbing in - I mean it - climbing in. The guage on the netting is 25mm to stop the rabbit kittens (that is what they are called not babies) squeezing through. The bottom of the netting will have to be buried and turned outwards underground.

I have a very literary friend who is writing letters to dead (and some living) people as poems and I have just had the privilege to read one about Alexander Pope, a gardener as well as poet - brilliant.

Now, I am in a new knee situation so you may find there is a gap in this diatribe shortly.

Perhaps, whilst I am in hospital, I should write to

my garden and its inhabitants?

Dear grey squirrel,

Why don't you shove off and let my friends the Nutkins come back. I will be sending you a bill for all the feeders you have pulled apart and have asked the small birds to harry you.

It would not be so terrible if you did not eat their eggs and, when I catch you at the peanuts, you just hang there, challenging me. And then you have the audacity to scold me when I chase you off.

I shall set Doc on you, beware.

If only I could run up trees . . . .!

BIRTHDAYS, BONFIRES AND BEACON

What a weekend!

Weeding, wheelbarrowing muck to the veg beds and collecting every stick I could find for a bonfire.

Then it had to be built and the sticks were wet. Used dry logs, cardboard and newspaper, white spirit and even a couple of firelighters.

It worked, fortunately, and we had a great blaze.

Some quiet fireworks were lit but even so my Granddaughter W left in a hurry for the house (she is only 2).

Finally sparklers and sitting watching the sparks whirl into the cold, moonlit night.

After that it was Cumberland sausage and mash followed by Eve's Pudding and custard.

Next day was my daughter I's birthday - 21 of course - and we walked up to Beacon Tarn at Blawith and then onto the Beacon.

This is one of the great viewpoints in the Lake District and here is the drawing of Alfred Wainwright made at the summit looking to the Furness Fells. (Not copied from a book).

Left to right they are - a bit of White Maiden, Brown Pike, Buck Pike, Dow Crag, Goat's Hause, the mass of Coniston Old Man and Wetherlam.

However the view is 360 degrees from the mountains here to those above Ambleside, High Street and right round to Ingleborough in the Pennines. Below lies the length of Coniston Water and south Morecambe Bay and the Duddon Estuary with a cluster of offshore windmills. Moving right is Black Combe and the fells beyond Dunnerdale, Caw, White Pike and back to White Maiden.

All this is just one enormous garden, albeit much of it wild.

So, weekend over, we scraped (R did) and treated the moss on the tarmac and the paths (I did).

Now I must buy some chicken wire to try and make some of the veg beds rabbit proof.

Frost yesterday but mild again today. The flowers have survived and one of the day lilies is coming into flower. I think it might find this is a mistake!

Autumn is hanging over the garden with a heavy hand, it is dull under the cloud cover, an occasional spit of rain falls, leaves hardly stir and it is very quiet.

The world is pulling up the duvet.

THERE'S NOWT AS GOOD AS MUCK - AND A PERM

Let me start with the image of an orange Welsh Poppy which means it is not really a Welsh Poppy as they are yellow.

R likes orange.

There is still colour, not leaf colour, in the garden. Marigolds, nasturtiums and poppies, all yellow or orange, to brighten up the darkening days.

So what's up? R has been weeding the asparagus bed, I have been top dressing a veg bed with a good layer of well-rotted horse manure and tidying goes on.

I had forgotten that I had trialled growing potatoes in the side of the manure heap so every forkful produced a small potato I had missed.

The ones I dug up at the right time were not successful as the slugs and pals had had a field day. We were only able to eat parts of a few of them - not the slugs, of course, the potatoes. (I wonder what curried slugs are like?)

As well as the manure we have a small compost heap - bigger plans are a foot for next year - and leaves have been collected for leaf mould.

All this stuff is to improve the soil which is rather clayey and shallow.

Sticks have been collected - not for shredding as the shredder has gone to the tip - will need a new one - and heaped up but the continuing wet weather has soaked what could have been a bonfire. Anyway the heap would have to have been deconstructed and rebuilt to save any frogs, toads and hedgehogs overwintering in its depths.

To the perm -

this is the head of my youngest son who has gone one better than Movember (grow a moustache for November in aid of The Prostate Cancer Charity) and had decided to have a perm - done on November 1st - and keep it for a month.

He has already raised

over £600 through the following website -

www.justgiving.com/Permroland.

On that haircurling note I sign off for today knowing I must ring Weasdale Nurseries so they deliver my two large amelanchiers in time for me to put them in (holes dug) - having a while off in aid of a new knee.