HASTA LA VISTA

I am not topping up the feeders as much - the birds have spaced themselves out, I presume for breeding purposes, rather than all of them coming for breakfast, lunch and tea. 

What - no, not spaced out, what do you think I am feeding them, but spread out.

 Primrose still flourish and in a couple of weeks will be divided and spread. A banking of this wonderful wild plant in spring is a delight.

The buddleias that were pruned back hard earlier in the year are now sprouting madly. These are the ones around the septic tank and you can see that you cannot see it any more. The shrubs put on so much growth every year and they do not demand luxurious conditions. In fact in town they have self sown up brick walls and all sorts of crannies.

Behind the Wendy House where words pour onto paper, well into a lap top, (not me but la belle dame from the Mersey)(sorry Keats) the wild cherry trees have been full of blossom. The last few years they have been a bit straggly but the mild winter seems to have given them a boost.

With my back to the bluebells and the brambles wot need removing, this view is down the stream. At the top of the image the water bears left but the intention is to take it straight on to the hedge ditch.

We have eaten our first asparagus - one stick each - but on examining the bed there are many more to come. Recent years have been poor for the vegetable so fingers crossed. (And knees, feet and teeth.) (Whoops - a sentence with no verb - naughty writer.)(Sorry sir.)

We have also eaten our stewed rhubarb and R has found a recipe for rhubarb chutney - a sort of savoury laxative rather than a sweet one. Liking rhubarb runs in the family. (Very weak joke.)(Another verbless production.)
Also I have noticed lots of nascent figs on our bush - come on weather, let us have sun and ripen the crop.

Tadpole update - to all tadpoles in the pond, you are doing well, keep swimming. To newtpoles - are you there?

Now Harry and Cressida have had a tiff so I issue my Gadaffi/Putin invite to come for tea and let us sort this thing out. I know they will not even reject my offer (as they will not know about it) but, Hey! as Alastair says in As Time Goes By - it is an age thing, watching old gentle comedy series on the Drama channel - but Hey!

Trees in leaf, well, not the ash, they are way behind, and views up the garden become restricted, yet this creates framed vistas as one walks about.
(I know, you can hardly have much of a vista in a smallish garden (well, not smallish as it is nearly 2 acres) - cannot think of a word for a small vista - vistalette, minivista, hasta la vista (beware the Terminator)(Schwartzenegger means 'Somebody who lives up a black mountain'.)

I ramble.

As usual.

No it is not lateral thinking.

Just thoughts wandering off and getting lost.

Go on - show 'em another tulip.

All right I will.

HEADY COMBINATIONS

One of the joys of gardens is experimenting with colour combinations. Sometimes they work, sometimes - AAAAArgh!

Some are planned some are surprises.
Here are some dark purple tulips and forget-me-nots - not a combination that leaps out at one but it works, at least I think so. Not planned as the blue is self-seeding and I forgot where I had put the tulips.
In actual fact the tulips are darker than this photo shows so the contrast is more dramatic.

A surprise came when the forget-me-nots sowed themselves in a pot with a brachyglottis. The grey foliage and blue flowers work well.

Every year some of the catalogues sell bulbs as preordained selections - like the one below by Sarah Raven.

Now, orange and purple may not seem like an ideal match and as seen here it is challenging.

One last mention of tulips, a complete change from the bright deeply saturated shades above, here white tulips and pale daffodils commingle to lift the garden.
Every garden needs white - it is an essential colour (or non colour).

The predominant colour in almost all gardens is green in all its varieties so though the alchemilla with their yellow/green flowers are wonderful, mix with catmint and one enters a different dimension.

Our garden in May becomes a sea of old fashioned Aquilegia (Granny's Bonnets, Columbine) in pinks and purples all self sown as I leave the seed heads on. They are a delight, especially where the come up through grey foliage

Some years ago, before Askham Hall near Penrith (http://www.askhamhall.co.uk) became a hotel and cafe the gardens were open to the public under the Gardens scheme and they had a large border of cram be and pink foxgloves - wonderful en masse.
Now you cash go to the gardens, eat in the cafe and then cross the river and see the gardens at Lowther Castle (www.lowthercastle.org).

One of the loveliest whites is also a foxglove, here in the garden at Holker Hall with climbing tropaeolum. (www.holker.co.uk).

Some people find the combination of red and white has other associations (like death) and so do not use them together. This is a sad piece of superstition as the combination can be good.

Of course gardening is something that has gone on for millennia.

Here is a poem to illustrate this -

The Gardener

I took money and bought some flowering trees

And planted them out on the bank to the east of the keep.

I simply bought whatever had most blooms,

Not caring whether peach, apricot, or plum.

A hundred fruits, all mixed up together;

A thousand branches, flowering in due rotation.

Each has its season coming early or late;

But to all alike the fertile soil is kind.

The red flowers hang like a heavy mist;

The white flowers gleam like a fall of snow.

The wandering bees cannot bear to leave them;

The sweet birds also come there to roost.

In front there flows an ever-running stream;

Beneath there is built a little flat terrace.

Sometimes I sweep the flagstones of the terrace;

Sometimes, in the wind, I lift my cup and drink.

The flower-branches screen my head from the sun;

The flower-buds fall down into my lap.

Alone drinking, alone singing my songs,

I do not notice that the moon is level with the steps.

The people of Pa do not care for flowers;

All the spring no one has come to look.

But their Governor-general, alone with his cup of wine,

Sits till evening, and will not move from this place!

Po-Chu-I

(Translated from the Chinese by Arthur Waley)

HEAVEN SCENT

This is a smelly blog - a diatribe on odour, in praise of pong. And where better to start than with lilies.

These are lilium regale, the queen of lilies, possessing a scent from heaven to soak your olfactory nerves like a luxurious hot bath.

Every year I plant up a tub of them, good compost, a little bit of grit for the bulb to sit in so it keeps it bottom plate dry and avoid rot. If there is any danger of wind they will need some sort of support either individually or three sticks and a ring of string. Once flowering is over dead head them and feed well. Do not let them dry out at this stage. They do tend to gradually weaken as time passes and when this happens plant them out in the garden, reasonably deep and in good soil.

Thus, every year, I am surprised when lilies pop up  in unusual places - only unusual as I have forgotten I put them there.

Near the porch we have a Philadelphus belle etoile and passing it means traversing a lovely waft. After a few years, when flowering is finished you can cut back the old wood and prune a bit to improve the structure.

The winter flowering sarcococcus and shrubby honeysuckle get the same treatment but in the spring.

Another scented shrub R loves is buddleia. Butterflies are partial to this too. We have a lot in the garden and they get pruned hard back at the end of February. The new growth then carries the flowers. Dead heading as they go over prolongs the season.

This row of young plants hides the septic tank which is in the middle of the garden at the lawn edge. Of course in the early part of the year after cutting back the green plastic eyesore is visible but it soon disappears.

Another plant treated similarly to the buddleia is this elder. The cut-leaved variety on the banking is hacked down in early spring and will put on eight feet of growth. The flowers have a strange scent and either you like it or you do not. It is not a favourite of mine.

The tree lupin to the right surprised me with its scent - I had not expected it. Unfortunately these are not long-lived plants and our one died in the winter gone.

The list is endless - I have not mentioned sweet peas, roses, paper-white narcissi, azaleas etc etc.

It is an essential part of a garden to assail the wanderer not just with colour and form but with scent - preferably not from the septic tank.

The best way to end this blog is with another burst of lilies so here you are -

OF MAY GOSLING AND THE LIKE

Let's get the tulips done with first - orange and purple in a turquoise pot with yellow pansies - the shrub behind is a Skimmia and bursting with flower and scent. I think this is one of the pots not shown so far. The garden is exploding with flowers and everything - just mown the lawn again and it is beginning to perk up a bit. Still areas of scalping, some dead thatch and moles. I know I should scrape away the mole hills but it is easier to run over them in the mower. Our lawn is not a bowling green zone - more a sheared field.

Colour everywhere and today I found the first mecanopsis - the orange version of the wild welsh poppy - Mecanopsis cambrica. We do have the yellow ones too and I have been encouraging them by scattering the seed in the woodland edge. I love poppies in the garden and ought to sow some more - and escholzias, the Californian poppy. I have it on good advice that if you pick poppies and seal the stems in boiling water for twenty seconds they will last our or five days. We will see. We have been trying out other ways to use flowers - these are hellebores in water in a glass cake stand. We tried dandelions in a similar way but they just closed up.

Why do some of the most beautiful flowers - like dandelions and wild bluebells - prove useless once plonked in a vase?

Down in the boggy area the amelanchier is flowering but almost over - everything at least two weeks early this year (except the skiving swallows).

Yesterday I nipped (well, staggered slowly) up to our bedroom and the window that looks up the garden. I had taken my camera to get a panoramic view of the garden. Of course the sun went in immediately but here is a Photomerge of three images.

So April is over and it is 'Oh! To be in England now that May is here,' (or Scotland). 

When I was but a lad we did not just have April fool nor a pinch and a punch for the first of the month nor rabbits, rabbits for good luck - we also had May Gosling. This is the same as April fool - 'May goslings, past and gone, you're the fool for making me one.' And on another matter from a previous blog came the question, "What in the **** is a Westmorland window?" So here is picture of ours. It perhaps started with the infamous window tax that operated in England from 1696 to 1851. So one window lit the hall, stairs and landing rather than three and incurred a third of the tax. If you look closely you can see the panes with cling film on to deter the barmy blackbirds. Put it on wet and it breaks up the reflected image - I rant, I have told you all this before - shut up yer nit. We do have a light bulb above the stairs here but it was one of those low energy bulbs and decided to cease functioning just after we moved in. It is very high up and we have not got around to changing it yet - seven years on!

I shall now go and sit down (no, I know - I am not standing up to type this) and read Neil Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane.

There, I have ended a blog without mentioning a cup of tea - D***!

SPEARS AND A SAD DEATH

Sorry, not me - yet!

Mentioning R pulling off the top of an asparagus spear - she did! Here is the evidence - one R, one asparagus bed. We have seven spears today - butter melt, mouth water.

Above this bed the stream comes down out of the top garden and beside it is a small red maple. The roots of the big ash tree at the top of the bank are directing the flow sideways and making things really boggy.

I tried removing the turf but this seemed to make things worse. Short of cutting holes in the tree roots I will have to think hard for a solution. I considered digging a hole under the roots but as soon as we have heavy rain debris washed down will block it up.

Today I began an assault on bindweed. Really I should dig up all the beds, remove the plants and then replant. Mmm! Tried an alternative today with a small jam jar of weedkiller. I dipped the heads of each bindweed stem into a strong solution. Now we wait and see.
Then I must address the couch grass problem!

Up in the top wood the bluebells are great. The plants behind the bluebells are brambles! Brer Rabbit eat your heart out.

Next to the asparagus bed is the one with rhubarb at one end, wallflowers in the middle and shallots at the other end - a mixed bed!  

I have put in the curved hoops of bright blue alkathene piping for the strawberry netting and sweet pea sticks within the rabbit proofed veg beds.

Now to a sad story.
I was climbing the stairs in the house when I saw something a bit like a dead leaf hanging from a cobweb by the roof edge. Outside I went and with the washing-line pole got it down.
It was a dead blue tit.
How it came to be stuck there in the web - ? Perhaps it had flown into the window, killed itself and fallen against the web which stuck to it. I cannot believe that a small spider could catch a blue tit in its gossamer.

And the swallows and martins have not arrived yet - yes, a few passing birds but that is all. It makes one wonder if summer is ever going to come.

Beside the mower shed there seem to have been mole hills and such but suddenly this seems to be a bigger event and the dreadful word springs to my brain cell - ?RATS!
I have been out a and tidied it up - we will just have to wait. I am loth to get out the big rat-trap as the last time I fought a robin.

Just bought a second hand shredder off IB. Might be useful when we come to clear away the willows and so on. It would provide a good mulch to go around new shrubs and trees.

Anyway - to finish - here are yet more tulips.

Gets a bit boring does it not. Well the first of the three yellow azaleas is out - sniff - Ooooh! Lovely.

MERRILY, MERRILY, MERRILY, MERRILY . . . .

As usual the forgetmenots are flowering in the edge of the rosebed, and elsewhere - particularly up in the wood where I dumped a load of deadheaded stuff two or three years ago.

Blue is always valuable in a garden and sometimes difficult to find - good blues that is. We have the forgetmenots that are a chalky blue and bluebells that have a violet tinge. When you see the classic bluebell pics like this one be SUSPICIOUS! There is some clever colour shifting going on. This was taken some years ago in Colehow Wood. Tilly has been gone from us for a lot of years. (And yes the question of another canine member of the household comes up regularly - we have just not quite got there yet).

Bluebells are in danger of becoming a weed in some parts of the garden and, horror of horrors, one clump looks suspiciously Spanish to me. I think I will have to dig them out to be safe but as the bigger Spanish version is everywhere in gardens hybridisation is a done deal and our lovely bluebell will change - sadly.

In the first photo you can see a yellow shrub under the cherry - this is it, not broom but a genista - and it is scented - not unpleasantly but not quite the butter of gorse.

Talking of yellow here is a wallflower plant in full bloom outside the back door (the one at the side) and it is three years old. It has been trimmed as they get woody and a bit straggly if left to their own devices. True they do not give the show grown as a biennial but still a useful addition to the garden. Well, I think so.

And, rambling on further here is a vase of sycamore with their green flowers. Actually they are attractive - and not something you see often in a flower arrangement. So, to the next pic and greater stitchwort in the hedgerow, an April delight. These are known as Poppers locally as the seed heads, if squeezed, pop.        

Well, this is a rather drab and boring diatribe today, tottering on the mundane. All the news is things like mowed, weeded, dead headed - no wait! We have our first three asparagus spears through - now two as R assiduously weeding the end snapped of the top of one of them.

So, Mow, mow, mow the grass all across the lawn,

Merrily, merrily, merrily merrily, life is just a yawn.

So let me blast away the blues (the other sort) with this pot of tulips and pansies. I got the bulb selection from Sarah Raven last autumn and boy have they been good.

Now, of course I have to decide what to do with the bulbs when the foliage dies down. Where do I put them? Not in the wood - out of place, not by the pond, they are really a bit dramatic for naturalising. 

I will have to animate my brain cell (the other one) and contemplate the future for these tulips. Any suggestions instantly rejected (unless from R when deeply considered)(before carefully being forgotten)(until she brings the subject up again) and so on.

Stealing myself for a Monopoly marathon - here come the grandchildren - lawns mown, rain falling so not much excuse. No, seriously, here comes a fantastic weekend - just wished we lived nearer to one another. But then we would have to abandon the garden here and they would have to abandon their amazing hilltop in Herefordshire.

Time for a Kakuro and a cuppa then off to collect them at Galgate.

SO MUCH GOING ON

You know how you can get a pulse in your lip or eyed and it twitches away for hours, well, I have a vibrating left nipple. No I do not have my phone in the breast pocket I just thought it was something I ought to share with you.

Loveliest of trees the cherry now . . .

I am writing this as the first signs of the blossom going over are here. The Plum has already gone but the pear is wonderful.

R has been brambling in the top of the wood and tells me that ivy is taking over - spreading across the ground. Looks like another job for the garden assassin. Whilst she was up there she said the breeze brought the scent from the rhododendron up to her - a bit of heaven. The azaleas have yet to come and pong us silly.

I have been putting up poles and tying them together for I have finally sown sweet peas - the special ones from Sarah Raven - in pots and put them in the shed window. I have also sown our courgette (marrow) seeds saved from last year.

Out in the cutting bed last year's calendulas are flowering and I have sown more Sweet Williams, wallflowers and creamy yellow foxgloves for next year as they are biennial.

The tulips in pots are fantastic - will do it again next year. We are blasted by colour. I tried to do a Dixter with them and mixed all sorts of colour in a big way. (For those who do not know Great Dixter was a magnificent garden owned by the late Christopher Lloyd where he never held back on colour unless it was intended). Does that last sentence make sense?

Our singing chaffinch is still belting it out - he must be hanging upside down by one claw by now.
Only a quick glimpse of a passing swallow and no martins yet.
Mr Pheasant struts his stuff but suddenly no sign of the two mates. I suspect they are sitting on their nests up under the rhododendrons as usual.

Not all the flowers in the garden are colour-blasters. Some of the less obvious ones are also beautiful in a very different way.












These are gooseberry on the left and redcurrant on the right. Many plants have wonderful flowers - take the sycamore whose greenish yellow tassels can compete with laburnum - well nearly. A big marguerite has splendid daisy flowers but the small common daisy has not just white and yellow but later in the year sometimes red tinges - go on, down on your knees and look.

On Monday the temperature got up to nearly 20C in the shade - glorious but not too hot. Almost makes one want to dive into the pond - almost.

This makes me wonder if our new pond should be a wild swimming pool. That does describe the stroke I use - a sort of sluggish pull with a twisted leg kick - five strokes and then a float on the back for a rest.

We are in drought - well not far off! R has been secretly watering the primroses on the banking as they are wilting. The garden is becoming dry and we have not had any significant rain for some time. The stream is trickling rather than running and the pond is low.

This pic is a cheat - water does not only come from clouds.

Nipple is off again,
Bye.

PERSECUTION COMPLEX, AVIAN MENTAL ABERRATION

Blackbird brown bird singing in the dead of night all the time, driving me mad, waking me up and if I am not mad I am sure she is.
We have replaced our window attacking blackbird with a female, same species. Only this time she is halfway up the tall Westmorland window (a window shedding light onto the stairs, narrow and about ten feet high) where I cannot reach. Other windows still have on cling film to stop this incessant tap, bang, clatter as her bill has a go at her reflection. The film breaks up the image.
I can hear her in the background as I type. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!

This is a cock blackbird for comparison. As far as I know he is sane.

The muck heap over the cattle grid is getting smaller and more spread out as the lamb gang crawl under the field gate and play King of the Castle. This scatters my precious resource so I am barrowing it down the garden to the veg beds. An extra mulch and some onto the compost heaps.
I have also been removing some of the hundreds of sycamore seedlings scattered across the garden, and ash.

This is the far corner of the garden. My strimmer man (now retired) cleared it in the autumn/winter. Since then I have mowed a bit, levelled a bit. What to do with it though we have not decided. Probably because R has not really become aware that the jungle has shrunk again and the garden got bigger.

Anyone got a Mrs Blackbird trap? Tat, tap, tap all day long, dawn to dark.
Yibbledeboobleyukbubbletibum!! I am going nuts! It is worse that water torture.

Right. change of thought - I have found my seed packets - they were on top of the old radio in my room. So now sowing is overdue. Anyway, can I really be bothered to sow anything that the slugs will just eat (and if not molluscs then mice or pigeons or something). I suppose I will have to get the sweet peas in even though a bit late. Two to a small pot and plant out when the danger of frost is over.

The stream where it comes down over the tree roots has decided to soak sideways and make the banking boggy. This will need some remedial work when I get some dry weather - come on rain!

The pots just get better and better. I must have put several layers of tulips in each. The pot in the middle is two ranunculi R bought locally. They are splendidly gaudy and cheerful. And finally there is the magic that is spring - everywhere - not just in the brown blackbird's head. Early morning sun and dew, backlit cherries and maples.

Just a minute - bye bye sun, here comes the wind and rain. Back to real British weather. Well, then I can have a lie in.
No, I cannot, that bloggy bird will be clattering its beak on the window above the stairs.

Anyone know of an avian psychotherapist?

What would Freud (not Clement), Jung, Adler (not Larry), let alone Pavlov (nothing to do with ice cream or ballet) have to say about this?


PS - Just been to Ford park garden and done my usual - not reading the instructions. It was a seed swap, so I did take seeds - including some aquilegia and meum athamanticum from my own garden, but I also took plants! Any way, we had a nice cup of tea and a chat with Sarah, and I gave her the chunk of variegated horseradish for the Ford Park garden as they had none.
Oh1 For their wonderful soil and many volunteer gardeners.