STUCK IN A BLOG

As  walked up into the wood I broke one of the steps - then realised that most of them were rotten and will need replacing.
Another job with ditches and scything and planting and removing and cutting back and so on and so on.

I have just extracted two large damson suckers from the bed by the shed to take down to Herefordshire for my daughter and son-in-law.
The damsons seem to be spreading everywhere.

Today the light up in the wood has been beautiful - real F. Clucas stuff. She called the painting she did for my Christmas Present from R - The Enchanted Wood - spot on.

As I came down from the upper garden I noticed this rather grey looking wild angelica. Then I realised it had a very bad dose of mildew. It is not too prone to this fungal infection - not like the meadow sweet.
The gooseberries seem to have avoided it this year - probably because the weather has been dry.

 Coming back down I went to examine the sweet peas with all their lack of flowers - perhaps put in too late after early failures (slugs and snails).

They are really very disappointing as we usually have a house full of their scent and colour.

Next year I will have to plan better and deal with the pests.

We had a morning of light rain and the alchemilla leaves were stunning.

The birds seem to use the feeders by the rosa rubifolia a lot and I think that is because it gives them cover and somewhere to queue up.

The ground feeders - pheasant, pigeon and chaffinch - also like the placement.

Now, I could go not further without a pond pic so here you are -

The green thing on the banking, what is it? No, nothing exotic, actually it is a dock - a weed.

To finish a burst of colour for you to give this blog a little something extra.

A little something extra is just what I could manage at this instant.

Sad - but the diet goes on - but I am chuffed as I am now 19 pounds down since January.
You would think that would take such a load off my shot at knees but it does not.

Life is a limp until I can steel myself to the alien crutch and have the right one replaced.
However, after having the left one done, a smidgeon of reluctance hangs around . .

AND IT KEEPS RIGHT ON A-FLOWERING . . .

Ah! Only a rose - 

This one's for Ib.

 The garden is still full of flowers like these white phlox, red alstromerias and orange calendulas in the cutting garden.

The calendulas are last year's plants that survived the winter and are thriving. I wonder if they will get through the one to come.

Of course there are other places which make our garden seem tame like the famous house at Coniston Cold which overflows with pelargoniums, begonias and you name it. Every year it becomes MORE - there is no other word for it. (Though I suppose some reader will be a clever boots and think of one.)

Some of the colours in our garden are very intense - here are blues, oranges and yellows. The nasturtiums have loved the warm dry September and are bursting forth. I must remember to gather seed for next year.

Having said that not all flowers are so gaudy and looking at petals lit by the sun like this rose is a delight.

Then there are even more gentle examples like the white Japanese anemone and its seed heads.

However it is not just the shades above that stand out. This morning was a murky, misty, chilly autumn on but the sun came up, the temperature rose to 18C and the greens in the garden were magnificent. 

This is one of our mature ash trees up by the top fence. The leaves are beginning to turn yellow but the breeze makes them seem to shimmer in the sun.

There you are - lots of bright pics.
End of another blog.
Perhaps I should give it up or change it to a monthly bulletin.
Perhaps . . .

THE WAY THROUGH THE WOODS

I have got to start with this - our Magnolia grandiflora has one huge white scented flower - at last.

One of the main parts of our garden is the small patch of woodland at the top and west. This is largely a wild area only minimally controlled - R removes brambles from most of it though we do have a good patch by the far wall.

This wood is approached by various paths from the house and lawns. These have all been constructed since we moved, are of local slate chippings and edged largely by branches fallen from the ash trees.

At the far corner is an open area which used to be Tom's potato patch (he was the previous owner). It would not be feasible now as it is surrounded by trees which shade it.

However it might be ideal for a surreptitious willow tunnel - do not tell R.

Part of the wood is a group of hawthorn from which the lower growth - to about five feet from the ground - has been removed. This means we can see through them as shown here -

The small bush on the right is a self sown hazel.

It is good to have some mature trees in the garden but, as they are mainly ash (and a few sycamore) we hope the dreaded ash killer currently spreading across the country stays away.

The tall trunks give a cathedral effect - pillars and arches - even if the masonry (twigs and branches) falls on ones head from time to time.

We had collected many of these twigs as kindling for the wood burner but I have heaped them into a remote corner now as a haven for wild life as we have too many.

Funnily enough, whilst I was deciding where to place them I found another half hidden heap I put up there in the spring - I had forgotten. Now we have two heaps. Soon we will have heaps of heaps . . .

From the vantage point of the wood I can look down on the area soon to be a white birch copse. You can see the new course of the stream and the places designated for planting - the logs.

I have been talking of wild life in the garden so here is a cuddly picture of a ravenous bunny rabbit. What a little sweetie. - ? I think it comes up the field in front of the house and through the hedge at the bottom of the garden though there are scrapings all over the place. I do not really want a warren here so will have to keep a sharp eye out for developments. If one rabbit becomes two rabbits and they are of different genders then they can become many rabbits very quickly.

The romans brought them here for a food supply which was as good a decision as bringing Ground Elder. 

My son R mooted that he might slip some fish (perhaps goldfish) into the pond whilst we are not looking but I hope I have dissuaded him as they would only be heron fodder.

D (of D & J) - see previous references to cuppas - has suggested that if I give up my cuppa I might be vulnerable to the temptation of a glass. I might be tempted by fish and chips with lashings of vinegar, salt and ketchup with bread and butter and a lager but the diet must go on . . .  and on . . . and on . . 

HIDDEN CORNERS

Let me start with a progress report - I have been raking bare areas after the ponding and scattering grass seed. I have been mowing the grass with both mowers - well not the same bits - you know, one mower for this and the other for the other. Well that makes sense to me)(which does not say much).

Here is the view down the garden from the white birches, over the pond to the Wendy House, no willow tunnel in the way - though we will be sticking in a load of birches of course. I have been digging out the few remaining roots of the willows as they were getting in the way of the mower.


In the garden we still have some spectacular flowers like these cardoons.
They will be left until the spring as they look good in the frost (if we get any this year) and just for their architectural quality.

This big blowsy rose is, I think, Emma Hamilton and Nelson would be proud of her. She is heavily scented and still pumping out petals. The other roses, except Rhapsody in Blue which did a leaf shed in August but is recovering, are also flowering - those that are supposed to.

I can say no more about the Cosmos - fantastic - keep dead heading and more come.

Now, every garden has its hidden corners and our one is no exception.
So here are two in all their glory.

This is the bonfire area and grass cutting dump up by the wood. I have just heaped up the cuttings as they were getting very spread out. The problem lies with the sit on mower. When I back it up to unload it will not go on top of what is there already. This means an ever spreading dump. I tried forking the grass into the heap but in the end found the easiest way was just to grab it in armfuls and transport it that way.

On the banking below the veg beds are the willow poles, old willow trunks and planks salvaged from the pond work. I will have to get a chain saw I think to log the trunks.

So it is bye bye time again and I leave you with another view of the Gary Primrose Pond.

THE VISITOR AND OTHER TALES

So, there was R reading a book on the bed settee in the Wendy House (she said she was doing research!) when she heard a sound. The pond had a visitor. It looked in the door and saw R sitting there a few feet away, flapped its huge wings and lifted off into the sky.
We had had an exploratory visit from a heron.

And, of course I have wrot a pome about this evil eyed birdie.

HERON

The heron concentrates 

down its splinter bill.

Its malevolent eyes burn

like sodium in a grey mist.

Without a ripple

the heron stalks water.

The headlamps of its skull

search the sluggish river

It strikes!  An arching fish 

Heads headfirst down the long throat.

The bulge that still lives

descends into oblivion -

So back to gardening - it is wonderful to have a weedy wife - she has been doing the asparagus today. We did not have much joy with this crop in the spring but it does not look too bad at the moment so we will give it another go next year.

The outdoor tomatoes are late but better than never and we have had a good crop. I have been watering them throughout the drought.

It rained this morning, a little soft rain but still rain. It is cooler with temperatures in the mid to upper teens.

I went to look at the courgettes last night and found I had missed one - it is now well on its way to becoming a marrow.
This is for me as no one else here is partial to marrow whether as jam with ginger or stuffed with mince and baked in the oven. Soup with mint is tolerated.

The two thornless hawthorns we put in last year are well hawed and I am surprised by the size of the fruit. No doubt the thrushes, blackbirds, fieldfares and redwings will not mind in the slightest.

We have definitely developed a case of resident rabbit disease and I see it almost every morning blithely grazing on the upper banking - cheek! 

We have had some butterflies but not a lot which is disappointing, no honey bees worth mentioning but plenty of bumble bees as here on the Sedum spectabile. 

In the spring I carefully staked these and supported each plant with a circle of twine - did it work?

Well not really as the painters stuck their ladders right in the middle!

So the Scots are still in the fold and we are a roughly united kingdom. All the promises from the 'No' side will presumably get lost in interparty political bickering - no way is Labour going to let the English vote on English matters - even if there were a Labour government there would be a Conservative majority in England.

No - NO! I must not talk politics in this blog - it is a gardening blog. It deals with the real world, with the important things in life like Herons and vegetable marrows.

And, D and J, I do not always have a cup of tea when I finish writing this.

(Today I have already made myself one and it is almost gone).

YELLOW

As in the beginning so at the end of the year - lots of yellows in the garden.

 There are potentillas and poppies and helianthemums and, well, so on and so on.

The welsh Poppy to the left is particularly lovely, a wild plant that self seeds. There is an orange version but I prefer the pure yellow. which often grows in shady areas and lights the garden up.

Then there are oranges like these nasturtiums that just blast colour at you.

R has been a-weeding and I have been a bad-backing from lifting water from the pond to try and start some of the old lawn seed I had scattered.

I know, I know, you think it is all fiction to get me out of doing anything. I have decapitated the copper beech hedge plants with a later view to moving them and opening up the lawn area even more. I have pruned the willows around the compost heaps and we have been carrying logs around to try and decide where the 15 white birches that will come later in the year will go.

Here you can see the six existing birches with the rerouted stream crossing the lawn in front. Each log is placed so that I can manoeuvre the mowers around them should I so chose.
There is still a trickle of water running down to the pond but not much. We are very short of rain and today the temperature is, pleasingly, an unseasonable 21C.
We have had a cracking September.

Despite this the outdoor tomatoes are only now beginning to colour up so I have been reading up on my recipe for Green Tomato Chutney. Small 8 ounce jars are ordered and the finished product brings a bit of cash to the November Church Christmas Fair for R.

Plans are afoot and later in the year I will order sleepers, a fruit cage, some slotted pipe for a drain and a great bag of chippings. The latter will be for in front of the Wendy House until we can decide on a decking extension or not.

One small thingy that is bugging me is all this Scottish Independence stuff - endless hours of it. It all seems odd - the Scots who do not live in Scotland have no vote, the English and other nationalities who do, have one. Young people from 16 have the vote, and politicians have a field day.
If they Vote no - what a waste of time and money!
If they vote yes - what a mess!
I think most of those voting do not have a clear view of what independence means (does anyone?) and emotion can and is ruling common sense.

I am English born and bred with a little Manx and a chunk of Scottish (Mother was a Hay)(from Liverpool)(her grandfather came from Coldstream which is as near to England as you can get in Scotland).
My father's distant ancestors were the Black Douglas so the less said about that the better.

I just hope everyone can calm down when this is all over and done with,

Sweet William versus Stunkin' Wullie (Cumberland) - anyway so many of our prime ministers seem to have been Scottish - .... time to stop and have a tot - of tea.

So, you may ask, what is this load of windows doing in my blog? I just like the pic.

These were taken at Sprint Mill where I learned to scythe. Have I been scything since - well not with a bad back!

I mean!