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GARDEN BLOG
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This
garden blog is about the vegetable and flower garden, garden
plants, landscaping, gardening ideas, battles with garden pests
and everything nature does to thwart you. |
AUGUST 2010
DIG UP INCA
It sounded like a list for a proposed lifestyle change for someone dropping out of the rat race. It read: “Throw out Ambition. Dig up Inca.” Alas, it was just my list for the annual cull of dahlia varieties that are boring or poor do-ers. As it is irresistible to buy new varieties each year, it is essential to throw out the non-performers. I do the same with clothes.
HOW TO DO IN A DAY LILY
Growing a day lily is a pleasure, as it is absolutely bomb-proof. It needs full sun to flower well, but will never just keel over and die as some plants do. This is an advantage, if it is a
f ine plant in the right place. If it is neither, you have a battle ahead. It will cheerfully resurrect itself from any piece of its deep roots left in the ground. To get rid of three day lilies planted between a clump of roses and a strip of alchemilla I had to drape a double sheet over the roses, cover up beneath them with old towels and spray the day lilies with weedkiller on a windless day. Let’s see how they like that.
PURPLE SNOW
If you buy plants in flower, you know what you are getting. Having lost most of my penstemons last winter, I had to buy little plants in the spring, and believe the labels. When the penstemon bed came into full flower the colour balance was not as good as I’d hoped and planned. I checked the labels on one clump of purple ones. It said:” Snowstorm”. The company responded to my aggrieved message with a refund and their standard cover-all letter: “We are sorry you were disappointed with…”. The implication that they were patiently soothing a crochety grumbler raised my sense of aggravation back to its original level.
NATIONAL GARDENS SCHEME DAY
The date you choose to open for the National Garden Scheme must be when the garden is looking its very best. For several years this has been the 4th Sunday in August, when the dahlias are at full throttle. To avoid an exhausting weekend with the local flower show the day before, this year we opened on the 2nd Sunday in August instead. There was much anguish about what would be flowering. Oh no – the rudbeckia and Japanese anemone aren’t out yet. But look, the clematis arches and all this phlox are still hanging in there. The usual vast array of cakes were consumed and the two lovely tea ladies were rushed off their feet. The weather was perfect – dry, not too hot or too cold. We had record numbers and record takings for the charity. I have to fill in the form with the date for 2011 by the end of this month. Which date should I choose?
A MYSTIFYING HOBBY
Our book group has enjoyed reading Victoria Hislop’s “The Return”. The central character’s unpleasant mother-in-law had “gnarled gardener’s hands” and gave all her attention to the garden. She was “a slave to its carefully laid out borders and tyrannical vegetable garden, which supplied them with astonishing gluts of courgettes and lettuces at certain times of year, obliging them to live at times on a very limited diet, and then for months providing nothing at all.” Her daughter-in-law “an essentially urban creature, found this lifestyle baffling.” I winced reading this, thinking of the number of beans and courgettes we’re eating. Why didn’t this woman give stuff away, freeze it, plant fewer next year, or plant at intervals for succession? And hadn’t she heard of gardening gloves? I suppose this whole gardening lark is baffling if you’ve never had the pleasure of eating or admiring something you’ve produced yourself.
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JULY 2010
IMPULSE BUYS? SURELY NOT
The grass at the Hampton Court Flower Show was pale beige with the lack of rain. The feet remorselessly pounding it would surely turn it to dust by the end of the week. The organisers had made expensive and elaborate plans to avoid the opposite problem of wet feet and mud, by laying wide metal walkways on all through routes. I trundled nosily across these ridged tracks towing my wheeled plastic box. I had bought this plant carrier at a previous show and was puzzled to see no-one else arriving with one. On the way out many people had bought them and filled them with plants, flowers waving perilously as they bumped along. Would these new boxes be brought back to the next show? The owners probably think rationally, “I don’t need any plants, so I won’t buy any plants, so there’s no point lugging this thing all round the show.” Ha ha.
ROSES ALL THE WAY
Roses 1: A breathtaking display at RHS garden Rosemoor, visited as a coach trip with our Horticultural Society. A mass of flowers on pergolas, swags and curving beds, with some clematis and underplantings round the rose stems.
Roses 2: The rose marquee at Hampton Court. The David Austin stand was irresistible. The decision to buy did admittedly come before the mental re-design of a flowerbed to fit the rose in.
Roses 3: The brand new rose garden at Savill Garden, all swirly beds, viewed from above by a curving walkway ending in a point like the prow of a ship. The notes said that when you have 2500 roses to deadhead, the only way is to snap the dead flower off with your fingers. I think I’ll stick to my neat secateur cut down to the next leaf axil.
Roses 4: A long established rosebed on a more domestic scale, with unnamed roses planted piecemeal over a long period, some tall or bushy, some ancient woody little hybrid tea roses with 3 short stalks, and even a tiny patio rose, all mixed up together. Some were a few sticks with lots of bare soil around. Any ideas? You can’t re-plant roses in the same spot without changing the soil, so trying to even up the sizes of the roses would mean many barrowloads of soil to be moved. Sometimes it’s better just to start again somewhere else.
 MY PLANT/TREE/SHRUB IS DYING
If you attend a gardeners’ question time, it is inevitable that many of the questions begin in this way. Once again I chaired this event in the Frome Festival, despite my ignorance of huge swathes of gardening lore. The reply that springs to my lips is, “Yes, I had one of those, and it died too.” Not really helpful. It could have been the winter cold, the summer drought or it could be what the growers term “a short-lived perennial”. In other words it dies sooner than you’d expected. The others on the panel,
local vegetable expert Charles Dowding, and Eric from Florabunda Nursery provided expertise.
A PLUM JOB
After the first gales for weeks, the sweet corn plants were skittled all over the place and had to be tied up. Then the Practical One took the panel’s advice to heart and pruned our plum trees. The new whippy branches have been shortened, and weighted down to make them more horizontal. He used the green plastic balls with holes in that we use with canes to make a frame for the strawberry net. They look like weird green plums hanging there. We have three plum trees. Two new ones were planted after we allowed our old tree to self-destruct with a huge crop of plums. To avoid the problem of plums fruiting on alternate years, we picked all the plums off one tree last year, and left the other to fruit. A brilliant idea. An even better one would have been to write down which tree we stripped.
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JUNE 2010
ABUNDANT POND LIFE
To the list of natural predators of tadpoles, I must reluctantly add Springer spaniels. Not that Bramble has caused any fatalities, but that was due only to the vigilance of her owner, gardening nearby. On warm days the tadpoles sunbathe just below the surface, their wiggling a source of fascination to a dog with a serious interest in moving minibeasts. She will lie at the edge of the pond, her muzzle nearly touching the water. It was inevitable that she would try a snatched mouthful of water with a chance of scoring. On each occasion she spat out the surprised creature, which coiled itself into a glistening
black circle on the path gravel. While indicating my severe displeasure to the culprit, I had to scoop up the future amphibian and return it to the water. Children visiting here with wedding guests are also drawn to the tadpoles. Paying no heed to their immaculate pastel party dresses or tiny smart suits, they get on their knees at the pond edge. It gave an added frisson to the occasion when one of the little ones excitedly identified them as crocodiles.
 THREE CHEERS FOR VILLAGE OPEN GARDENS
Having seen some open gardens advertised each year, we determined not to miss them this time, even though it’s a fair old drive. I first checked that dogs on the lead are OK, and (bless them) they said yes. I took her for a good walk first, just to make sure – you know. Alas, she let me down on the very first garden lawn we visited, so I had the Plastic Bag of Shame warm and snug in my handbag for the rest of the afternoon. The garden lady was a dog owner, and was really friendly about it. We loved the gardens and houses – so many lovely places all so close together. It’s a great opportunity to talk to the owners about their best plants. The perfume of one pink rose really bowled me over, so I asked the owner its name. He beamed and said, “Thank goodness you’ve asked me something I know the answer to – it’s Felicia.” So I must now find a space in my garden for it. A cream tea on the sunny vicarage lawn was a great end to the afternoon.
BAND OF GOLD
My plan of having a bed edged with various gold irises has been thwarted in the past by a clump of maroon ones. This year I remembered to put string round the offending clump and label it while it still had flowers on. The maroon irises have now been replaced with fans from a divided gold one, and I have also been able to place two gold and brown iris bought at the Bath & West Show.
 I didn’t need two more irises. When I saw the blooms on the bearded iris nursery stand in the distance I tried to resist going closer, but somehow my feet kept on going.
PEA IS FOR PERFECT
On the kitchen windowsill two plates of dry peas were soaked, one labelled tall peas, the other labelled short peas. Out in the garden were two piles of sticks, sorted into short ones and long ones. (Are you guessing ahead with this story?) The two pea rows were planted, with short sticks on one, and long sticks on the other. Both sets of peas grew and climbed up the sticks. The peas came only half way up the tall sticks, while in the other row they reached the top of the short sticks and flopped over. The Practical One is very good with vegetables, but this was clearly Operator Error.
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MAY 2010
A WILD LIFE HAVEN
Our first mill and garden visit of the summer was a horticultural society from the Midlands who arrived in 3 coaches all at the same time. It required military planning to get them all on a mill tour and through the tea conservatory in small groups. The Practical One and son-in-law Greg did mill tours all through the afternoon with one talking in the mill and one outside, then swapping over. Greg started his tour with an apology that they did not have the proper miller, but the apprentice. Then he added that even the miller agreed that Greg tells the funnier jokes. Just at the moment he said this, there was an enormous roar of laughter from inside the mill. He found out later that the Practical One had started up the mill at that moment, and the meal augur had brought out what the Practical One always describes as a “very large mouse” which had scampered off through the group of visitors.
 SUMMER IS COMING IN AT LAST
The vines were frosted and the polytunnel was filled to bursting at the end of the mid-May cold snap. Then we went straight into a heat wave and everything was taken outside. Just like last year I was surprised to find a fine toad sitting quietly among the pots. I’m ashamed of the girly scream, as toads are fascinating. It was just a surprise.
 It is also a bumper year for tadpoles, which are managing to keep the blanket weed in check by eating it. It now has a honeycomb appearance, and is at last doing something useful. Out from the polytunnel came the dahlias, penstemon replacements, and a collection of white flowering plants to go in the tubs round the gazebo. The cold spring meant some tulips were still at their peak, but out they must come to make room for marguerites, lilies and silver leafed plants. The first of the summer flowers are now out – bearded iris and glorious oriental poppies. They look wonderful
- until they fall over.
LORDS AND LADIES IN THE GARDEN
The new season’s garden sculptures are now in place. Karen Edwards has a group of
three shapes, inspired by the flowers of Lords and Ladies, called Lily Sisters Trio. However most people are reminded of a nestful of baby birds demanding food.
A ROMANTIC VIEW OF SHEEP
The wedding guests here were mainly young folks, friends of the bride and groom, all very smartly dressed. There were no children, so the Practical One did not think there would be any interest when he passed by with the lamb bottles. To his surprise he was surrounded by a group of elegant city types, and several took turns in feeding the lambs. He asked if anyone had any questions about sheep. He had great difficulty maintaining his composure when one asked, “Do sheep mate for life?” He had to explain that his ratio of ewes to rams is about 40:1.
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APRIL 2010
THE PASSING OF THE PENSTEMONS
Wouldn’t you just know it? The only year I didn’t take precautionary penstemon cuttings to overwinter in the polytunnel, and I lose nearly all of them to the ferocious winter. About a dozen out of 60 are clinging to life. I did not cut them back until late April, just in case they were still debating life or death. It’s sad to pull up a dead plant, with a label next to it, which you remember triumphantly carrying back from the garden centre only last year.
 POTS AND POTS OF DAHLIAS
When our frost hollow garden went down to minus 13°, at least I did not have to fret about the dahlias, snug and safe in their underground room under the mill. At the beginning of April they were barrowed out, and divided up, some in an orderly fashion with secateurs, and some I split by jumping on them with a spade. They were then potted up to start them flowering earlier. Their destination – the cold frame – had succumbed to old age and had been awaiting repair since last summer. The Practical One put the cold frame to the top of his to-do list on the day the dahlia pots were ready to go in. He made a fine job of replacing the wood in the frames of the lift-up lids.
MORE MOLE SOLUTIONS
When I give gardening talks I always ask the audience for ideas to tackle the mole problem. Last month I passed on to you the solution involving a vacuum cleaner hose and a car exhaust pipe. The most recent solution I was given involved a turned-on garden hosepipe and Springer spaniel (an alternative ingredient suggested was a Jack Russell). The mind boggles.
 PROVERBIAL WEATHER
Anyone remember when it rained last? The polyanthus started wilting and needed to be rescued. Yes, it is April, famous for its showers, and yes, I did have to start watering. That’s certainly a first.
ALIEN TIES UP CLEMATIS
No messing about – it needed a ladder. Each year the clematis are reaching higher up on the creeper-covered wall of the house. The same varieties on the arches are cut back to 12” each spring, but the mauve Perle d’Azur and purple Jackmanii on the house are encouraged to go as high as they like. The long sappy new stems had knitted themselves into a tangle, or were waving in the breeze unsure what to hang on to. The weather was finger-numbingly cold, but the timing was critical. The stems were untwiddled and spread out in a fan shape by a figure swaddled in coat, scarf, hat and fingerless gloves. The Practical One took a picture of the task. Passing the camera to me to view it, he apologised, “Sorry. You’re just an amorphous blob.” Has the magic gone out of our marriage?
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MARCH
2010
NOW HERE’S A TRICKY QUESTION…
Ask any woman on a maternity ward if she has just given birth, and you can be pretty certain she will know the right answer. Not so with sheep. In the pen of pregnant ewes the Practical One found a new-born lamb with a ewe which had not yet given birth. She must have kidnapped it. It is not easy to take a lamb away from a ewe in the full throes of maternal protectiveness. She circled him as he tried to carry it away, making that repetitive
 staccato growling which sounds very threatening, even when coming from a sheep. He managed to get the real mother, the lamb and himself through a gate and shut it behind him, leaving the dim-witted ewe on the far side. Soon after the kidnapper had triplets, so he was able to use maternal confusion to his advantage by giving one to the ewe with the single lamb. “Hang on. How many did I have? Oh my woolly head. I suppose it must be mine.”
TIDYING MAINLY DONE
One of the last chopping down jobs in the garden are the grasses, which have looked great on bright frosty winter mornings. Naturally Bramble regards the clumps as a potential source of something alive and chaseable, and snuffles noisily in the foliage as the stalks are cut away. As the grasses are near the stream there is a real possibility of chopping frogs, so the job must be tackled with caution. Most of the frogs are elsewhere – propagating with gusto in the pond, where there are record quantities of frogspawn.
GARDEN WMD
At the end of a gardening talk I gave recently I listed the creatures I have to battle against in the garden, starting with moles. I ask the audience for solutions that really work, as we all know those battery-operated buzzer things don’t. Two people gave me their tried and tested
 solutions. One recommended mothballs in the runs. The other said they backed the car up to the edge of the lawn, connected a vacuum cleaner hose to the exhaust pipe, put the hose down a molehill into the run and ran the engine for ten minutes. This was repeated round the garden. The moles vanished.
THE DELPHINIUM FLATTENER
The delphiniums had their usual winter treatment of pour-on liquid slug-killer, then a good layer of sharp sand to really annoy the slimy little blighters. Walking round the garden to check on the new shoots just bursting through, I found one plant with the sand scratched up and spread about, with clear evidence of cat latrine activity. Why do we give a home to these creatures who damage our property, order us about, and never listen to a word we say (unless food is involved).
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FEBRUARY
2010
THE SLOW STRANGLER
There was a good reason why people started having to duck as they went through the arch into the veggie garden – the roof was getting lower. The 50 year old wisteria trained round the edge of the open-ended conservatory was slowly detaching one of the boards that held up the roof and gutter. Wisteria stems contract as they age and were gradually pulling the roof apart. Harsh decisions had to be taken – every stem trained round a support had to go. The brutal massacre was completed before growth started, so the wisteria can use all its energy to shoot again.
THREE AGAINST ONE
It was a bitter winter’s day with occasional snow flurries. “I don’t expect you’ve been gardening today, have you?” asked a friend that evening. “Oh yes, I’ve been out planting penstemons.” What can you do when a badger digs up half a dozen of them, leaving their poor little roots out in the freezing air? Luckily the moles - Public Enemy Number One - had raised a fine collection of molehills all over the lawn, so I was able to transfer bucket-loads of fine loose soil to fill the holes left by the badger, Public Enemy Number Two. Next day I checked the penstemons had not been attacked again. All over the patch of fine smooth flat soil were unmistakeable cat footprints. P.E. No 3 had found a new loo.
 MORE STICKY TOFFEE PUDDING ANYONE?
The Practical One cleared out a long neglected corner and gave me two unexpected heaped barrowloads of muck. What to do with it? All the roses and clematis were ankle-deep in the stuff already. It was a bit like getting to the end of a meal, relaxing with the brandy and mint chocolates, then being told you have to have seconds of pudding. The blackbirds had scattered the original muck layer round the roses (very annoying near gravel paths) so the roses got a new dollop each. I hope they don’t suffer from the effects of over-feeding in the same way as their gardener did over Christmas.
THE TASTE OF SUMMER
The Practical One uses my birthday (the day before Valentine’s day) to remind him to cut down the Autumn Bliss raspberry canes. He forks around the stems, clearing the weeds but admits defeat with the convolvulus roots, inextricably mixed up with the raspberries. He puts muck over the lot and puts it out of his mind. Bramble takes a keen personal interest in the transfer from the muck heap, as who knows what might be living in it. One of the benefits of belonging to the local horticultural society is when you are offered summer-fruiting canes from a friend with magnificent (but unnamed) raspberries. They have their own new row, convolvulus-free, at least for the moment.
FIVE STAR ACCOMMODATION
Another really cold winter – minus 13º some nights. Once again I had to take pity on the tender cuttings in the polytunnel and put them in a bedroom window. In a moment of frustration and extravagance I ordered a polycarbonate cover for my propagating bench. Made to order, it arrived after the period of snow and ice had finished. It is magnificent – the little marguerites are warm and snug at night, and in the day the front and top are opened for air circulation. A little voice does keep asking if it wouldn’t have been easier and cheaper to buy all the plants from the garden centre, but my rule has always been that if there is a difficult, time-consuming way to garden, we will always find it. Why else do we grow delphiniums and dahlias?
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JANUARY 2010
EXCUSES FOR NOT GARDENING No. 1: COLD AND ICE
Applicable: over Christmas and into the New Year. There were just a couple of sunny afternoons when there were two hours to get on with some rose pruning without fingertips turning blue. The lovely deep pink rambler on the rose arch, Excelsa, had all the short flowering stems trimmed off, three old long stems cut off, and three new long ones tied in on each side.
EXCUSES FOR NOT GARDENING No 2: SNOW
Applicable: from 6 January, when the flowerbeds disappeared. Alerted by the overnight snow warnings, I had mulched the last dodgy plants the night before. Let’s hope their overcoats of sheep muck keep them snug. Winter sights included an igloo made on our car park, perfect except for the more technically demanding roof centre. The Rambling Rector on the rose pergola gave a passable impression of its June glory with big blobs of snow instead of white heads of blossom. Our garden sculpture, The Lovers by Janet Swiss, had a fine dome of snow on the gentleman’s head, giving him a hairstyle much like Elvis Presley’s. Long tailed tits have made regular mass visits to our squirrel-proof peanut feeder, the wire cage completely filled with tiny bobbing bodies and long tails pointing in all directions.
 
EXCUSE FOR NOT WRITING A PROPER GARDEN BLOG
See previous two excuses. I shall now brazenly pad out the Garden
Blog with a tale loosely related to outdoors. As our Christmas present to the three youngest resident family members, I bought a climbing frame on Ebay. About 18 x 4 feet - how do you keep such an enormous thing a secret? We drove off in the dark and no-one spotted the trailer. We arrived back at nightfall, unloading the pile of bars into the sheep shed. The seller had given us a CD of pictures taken as he dismantled it, so the Practical One had no trouble assembling it. (He had loved Meccano as a boy.) He had not yet brought in the ewes prior to lambing, so there was plenty of room in the sheep shed to hide this huge construction by gift-wrapping it with old silage bags. On Christmas morning after the last parcel had been given out, one youngster mentioned wistfully that they had not found anything under the tree from us. We had the fun of watching their faces as we explained that it was too big to go under the tree, in fact too big to get in the door. We showed them a picture of it and all grabbed our coats to go and find it. The three children were rushing in all directions looking for it as we headed down towards the farmyard. The huge black plastic shape was unmistakeable if you knew what you were looking for and they leapt on it with glee. We had to carry it up to the lawn near the house, but the low winter sun does not reach the farmyard, which was under a thick sheet of black ice. Unable to tiptoe round the edge when carrying the frame, we had to head straight across the middle of this skating rink. It would have made a good Laurel & Hardy film. We did not fall over as we had the frame to hang on to. Our feet were walking, but did not create much forward movement. Like a demented beetle with many unco-ordinated legs we zig-zagged slowly across the glassy surface. With relief we reached the sunny thawed roadway and carried the unwieldy contraption on to the lawn. It has since repaid all the effort.
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DECEMBER 2009
IS THERE ANYONE OUT THERE?
At last I have found the answer to a question which has puzzled me for some time: does anyone read my witterings?
The Garden Blog appears here on the website, and I do once or twice
get email comments. It also appears in the local papers. Usually I email it
off to the papers, it appears in print and no more is said. Last month the Garden Diary included an account of my first ever gardening talk to a garden club, given with a hand full of burn gel, after putting my hand on a hot plate on the cooker. Now closet readers reveal themselves by coming up to me with kind enquiries about how my hand is healing.
THE BIG PRUNE
Time to start on the rose pergolas in order to get them all done by the spring. The big platform ladder was carted out, and has been in use every dry daylight hour since then. Unfortunately there have been very few of these, and the big red ladder sits unused, gently rusting under the pergola.
 AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY
DIFFERENT
To be perfectly honest, there’s not much happening in the garden at this time of year, so I’ll share with you our day out in the glorious countryside. We’d been planning a day’s walking with the dog for some time. Now the forecast promised a dry day. There had been ¾” of rain the night before last, so we knew it might be a bit damp underfoot, but we heard the words “sunny intervals” and there was no holding us. Perhaps it was a mistake to walk near the Somerset Levels as we saw plenty of water standing in the fields. Our footpath led us across a field to the far side where we saw, between us and the style, a wide band of churned up mud with water in the holes. “Just step on the high bits” urged the Practical One, who has a more gung-ho approach to unpleasant outdoor conditions. Moments later we were both totally stuck, sunk in mud over the top of our boots, flailing wildly, shouting “Hold my hand” or “Let go or we’ll both fall over.” (Guess who said what.) Incredibly neither of us went flat into the quagmire. After extricating ourselves, the Practical One made the typical male error of laughing heartily and trying to make light of the situation. His grim-faced wife informed him crisply that she would let him know when her sense of humour returned.
Some time after this we came to a gate in a high hedge, between wide open fields, out of sight of all habitation and roads. We decided to answer Nature’s call on opposite sides of the hedge, but without any other cover. Keeping a wary lookout in this exposed situation I proceeded as fast as possible. What I had not expected was a low helicopter flying over.
It was a long day. I will gloss over the incident of Bramble catching her first ever rabbit, and the difficulty we had dissuading her from carrying it for the rest of the day. We finally walked into town with our filthy springer spaniel, mud dripping in rats’ tails underneath. We sat outside a café and never have tea and toasted crumpets tasted so delicious. Bramble sat making spaniel eyes at passers-by, and a child walking past said, ”Look. Why can’t we have a dog?” The mother replied, “Because you’d have to clean it up when it got as dirty as that.”
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NOVEMBER 2009
FORCES OF DISORDER
We thought we’d finished planting out all the wallflowers and tulips. One morning we found a bed full of plants on their sides, one uprooted, and a hole dug with a badger’s calling card in it. Maybe it was the bonemeal I put under the tulips that attracted it. The wallflowers were straightened up and replanted just in time for the overnight severe gales to knock them all flat again. The gales also blew down two sections of the curving row of clematis trellis round the paved circle. Another job for the Practical One.
 UNACCUSTOMED AS I AM…
The Practical One had been very persuasive. He had given talks on the
mill and local history and had invested a significant pile of our hard-earned cash in a laptop and digital
projector. He thought I should put together some pictures and give talks on the garden. I baulked at the thought of learning a new computer programme, and the journey to some distant village hall on a dark winter’s night. He promised to talk me through Powerpoint and to come to the talks as technical assistant, so what possible problem could there be? It was safely six months into the future anyway. I sent my details off to the Garden Clubs Speakers’ List. The summer came and went, and I had a month to plunder the amorphous mass of pictures files on the computer, and put them in a sensible order before the first talk.
Much of the talk was to be about delphiniums, daylilies and dahlias, so I had been taking pictures of these at various stages: escaping the clutches of snails and slugs, growing up, falling over. I had close-ups of my favourite varieties. Would I remember all their names when the adrenalin flowed? No chance. I do tend to remember the dafter daylily names: Octopus Hugs and Yabba Dabba Do, but the more prosaic names escape me. No point in blithering to the audience that it’s on the tip of my tongue, so I put names of varieties on the pictures.
The evening came for the first talk, a reassuringly long way from my home patch. If it were a disaster, maybe word would not get back. I was not nervous. I had found a very effective way to quell all anxiety about the talk. Cooking supper before we went out, with my mind on the evening ahead, I moved a boiling pan to the back ring, then forgot I’d done so. Wishing to put a bowl on the cooker top, I checked the temperature of the front ring with the flat of my hand. It’s astonishing how fast you can move from cooker to cold tap. Some burn gel was pumped on it, and I went to get changed with one agonising hand full of gunge. I put on my jacket with my hand in a plastic bag, but had to get the Practical One to tuck my top in. The pain eased a little during the hour’s drive to the hall. Should I go to the loo? Would I be able to come out again without a wardrobe malfunction? What would people think if I asked the Practical One to come into the Ladies with me? I decided to attempt the whole procedure single-handed. I and my handful of goo did some acrobatic contortions and finally emerged, probably with a significant VPL, but at least decent. So what happens next? Oh yes – give a gardening talk, I remember. The talk went fine. I did not
smear gloop on to the computer mouse. Only two old ladies went to sleep. They asked some questions
and clapped. My hand improved enough for a good night’s sleep.
Roll on the next talk.
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OCTOBER 2009
BLACK GOLD
“I know you’re loaded. Don’t fritter it all away. I want a big pile of it to call my own.” Not a WAG to a footballer, but me to the Practical One, as he drives the full muck spreader out on to the field. It’s that time of year when the sheep shed has to be cleared out so the ewes can come inside before lambing. On a fine day when the ground was firm the tractor trundled round the field, tossing muck in all directions. My task was to clear the rest of the previous pile, so the next heap could be stacked in the same place. The muck had been covered with old silage bags, and had rotted down to the texture of Christmas pudding, but less fragrant. In my wellies and gloves, in the middle of the black squelchy mess at the bottom of the pile, forking great clods of muck and wriggling pink worms, I though wistfully of other more glamorous professions. The satisfying part of the job was tucking the muck around the bases of the roses and clematis all round the garden. There is a pink moss rose framing the front door, brought here by the Practical One’s father 60 years ago. Advice to B&B operators is to make the entrance to the property attractive and welcoming. What will guests make of the two big piles of black sticky muck on each side of the front door?
SORTING OUT THE DAY LILIES
In early October I cut the leaves off the day lilies. At this time of year it does no harm and removes the refuges of pests. The plants are given fertiliser afterwards to keep them happy. After cutting one plant back and removing all visible slugs and snails, I moved on to the next clump. Looking back I saw Bramble staring intently at the cut-off plant, her whole body a-quiver with excitement. Correctly interpreting her fascination, I hastened back.
A collection of mini-beasts had decided to stop lying low, and was heading off for a new home, unaware of the large furry predator about to dive in. The largest of the livestock was picked off, and firm words were spoken.
PHEW, THAT’S IT.
It’s the end of the garden wedding season. The lawns are no longer aerated by killer heels, and there are no more champagne glasses tucked away in the flowerbeds. We finished the season with our own do in the marquee. Every dahlia in the garden was picked for the fifteen table centrepieces, which were added to the auction. We raised over £3500 for the Friends of our three local churches. With this in mind we had named each table with a problem with a church building. As hosts we bagged our two favourites: Lead Strippers, and Mice in Hassocks. Our bellringing friends were seated at Bats in the Belfry. We hoped no-one would get uppity about sitting at Death Watch Beetles, Dodgy Flashings or Organ Failure, and we chose very carefully and with some glee the group of people whose table was labelled Old Boilers.
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SEPTEMBER
2009
ANOTHER GLUT TO EAT
We went to a posh lunch in London, and what did they serve us for pudding? Stewed plums. I’ve eaten plums with all meals for the last 3 weeks. The freezer is stuffed with them. The jam shelves are full. Our old tree fruits only on alternate years and then produces a vast crop. We have a cunning plan: we planted 2 new Victoria plum trees, and this year we picked all the fruit off one tree when they were tiny. Next year we shall strip the other one, and see if we can get them into a pattern of fruiting in different years from each other. Our original tree grew too tall to thin the fruit, and we should then have propped up the laden branches. To our dismay the tree has opted for DIY pruning, with cracked and broken branches. At least it makes the fruit low enough to pick.
SMALL BUT SCARY
Spectacular caterpillars live in the wisteria in our tea conservatory, and on a few occasions one plummets to the ground to the great glee of the youngest family members. Lemon yellow, covered in bristles, it has a fearsome bright pink spiky tuft sticking up from its tail. If it is annoyed (for example by some kind soul trying to move it to a safe spot) it arches its yellow back revealing black stripes between the bristles. It gets its message over quite
 unmistakeably
that it is not a snack. Checking a caterpillar identification
website (thanks once again, Google) I found it turns into a mousy drab moth, with only a distant memory of its gilded youth.
 GONE WITH THE WIND, AND BACK AGAIN
The dahlias have grown tall and lush this year. To avoid ugly staking I just use one central green cane, but must sometimes pay the price for this minimalist approach. We had one night of rain and gales, and some dahlias were flat on their faces next day. They were duly hauled upright again, and carried on flowering unperturbed. The sheer mass of flowers makes up for the fact that they are not in the same league as the cosseted blooms seen at the National Dahlia Show at the Gardening Show at the Bath & West Showground in early September.
A STRAIN ON THE BRAIN
We went to a talk at the RHS garden at Wisley by the clematis expert Charles
Evison. The talk was free. The 4 clematis we took away weren’t. September is a great month to visit Wisley as the plant trials were well advanced, and the fruit and vegetable areas at maximum productivity. The Practical One inspected the immaculately trained fruit trees (trying to banish the memory of our collapsed plum). I was picking up ideas for new soft fruit varieties. Severely hampered by leaving my biro in the car, I was committing names to my faltering memory. Raspberry
Tullameen? Make a mental picture of ‘Tools in the Mill’. Currant Red Lake? Pool of blood under the bush. When I had stacked up 5 variety names the little grey cells felt as if they had been egg-whisked. I abandoned all propriety and approached 4 jolly ladies by the long border, and asked if they could lend me a biro for a few moments. You can’t imagine the relief in unburdening my memory of its overload – just like putting down heavy bags of shopping after sprinting in from the car in the rain.
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