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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. |
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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AUGUST 2009
THE HOME LIFE OF HEAVY METAL
“Hen night partygoer eyes up blokes on the razzle.”
“Smug marrieds parade in front of envious bachelors.”
“Alluring dolly bird is followed by line of admirers.”
These storylines are some of the flights of fancy by the Practical One when he repositions on the lawn the steel cockerel and hen sculptures after mowing. Just when he had been running low on ideas for several poultry couples, some steel hens were sold and he now has to work with four cockerels and one hen. Let’s hope the gender balance is restored soon.
 IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER
What is a pretty flower? There is considerable disagreement on this. For example, I have never understood the attraction of orchids. In my ongoing search for new and different dahlias I am drawn to those fitting the French expression ‘jolie laide’ (better translated as ‘ugly pretty’ than ‘pretty ugly’.) Most dahlia flowers are categorised as Cactus, Decorative, Waterlily, Collerette, Pom-pom or Single, but there is also a Miscellaneous category for the oddballs. Last year’s weirdos were a great shaggy mophead of a flower in deep fuchsia, cream and apricot. Its fimbriated petals with their split ends added to the tousled effect. Who knows what was in the plant-breeder’s mind when he named
this dahlia Myrtle’s Folly? The other is firmly in the Miscellaneous category. Looking like a sunflower, it has a ring of single pink petals and in the centre a huge pincushion of yellow edged maroon petals, like a hundred tiny gaping bird mouths. This is dahlia Blue Bayou, so wacky even I am having trouble trying to admire it.
NO BILLING & COOING HERE, THANK YOU
There was a very strange noise in the open-ended conservatory where we serve teas. At first I thought Bramble was doing one of her deep vocal yawns, but she was nowhere to be seen. It seemed to be coming from the depths of the wisteria branches above. It was only when a pigeon flew out above our heads that we realised they had chosen our tea-room for their nest. What an honour! What a disaster! We decided we’d only remove the nest if there were no eggs in. Luckily we were in time, and able to pull out the bundle of twigs. So we do not have bird poo all over the tea-room, and the only downside is two seriously annoyed pigeons.
THE HAPPIEST DAY
Our garden weddings produce some unusual sights. When two jugglers got married here they invited many juggling friends. Out on the lawn next to my rose and clematis pergola balls and Indian clubs were flying up in the air and down again, or going backwards and forwards between wedding guests. Such was their expertise there were no flower casualties. Among garden games for the guests were hula hoops, twirled energetically by young experts, and more entertainingly by older and staider guests in their wedding finery. In the garden on another occasion a swingball game was being watched by a new bride and groom, when they were challenged to have a go. We have a wonderful photo on the lawn in front of the mill with the bride taking an energetic swipe at the ball, the train of her big white dress held up by a bridesmaid. The groom also had his coattails held by the best man. We suspect this was to handicap him, as the couple were playing to see who would wear the pants in their marriage.
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JULY
2009
GARDENER’S QUESTION: WHY ME?
Another fine mess I got myself into. I was astonished when Frome Festival asked me to chair a Gardener’s Question Time, but it seemed churlish to refuse, despite ignorance of anything not actually in my own garden. My sense of being a complete impostor deepened when I saw my name in the Festival programme. Fortunately the other three panellists covered the whole gardening spectrum: Charles Dowding who knows all about vegetables, Debbie Chard of Barters Plant Centre and Eric Bloodworth of Florabunda Nursery who know everything about plants and trees. The Practical One had instructions to keep me in a good mood that morning, but as we approached the Cheese & Grain building
in Frome I had a sinking feeling and hoped that no-one would turn up. In fact they did turn up and I did enjoy it. It turned out to be chatting about gardening (which I can do until the cows come home) and the real experts were there to give sensible answers.
 Debbie fielded a question about cutting back a ceanothus (blue-flowered big bush). She advised not cutting back to bare wood, adding that she had never cut one back to bare wood, so could not speak from experience. Luckily Idiot Gardener was on hand to chip in. I said I had cut one back to bare wood. A huge unwieldy bush – it was kill or cure. “What happened”, they asked. “It wasn’t cure.”
A CUNNING PLAN
Having come a very poor second in the battle with Nature over wallflowers last year, I was looking for a way to grow 600 of them, keeping the colours separate. Last year I sowed them in the ground. The rain drowned them. I sowed them again. I weeded them endlessly. I moved thinnings which then stopped growing.
 This year I started them off in tiny peat pots in the polytunnel. Planting out was easy and I can’t help but chortle at the evenly spaced rows of little plants. The only garden pest which took any interest was the jackdaws, but I quickly stuffed a few uprooted ones back in the ground again. No watering needed, as it has rained non-stop since I planted them out. Result!
PHAROAH’S DINNER
Does the keeper of Big Ben visit clocks on his holidays? Our busman’s holidays always include gardens and watermills. Last summer we managed to combine the two in Gloucestershire. After climbing down into the dank and dark waterwheel pit, we had tea in the garden with its mill leat running through. We spotted a fine row of peas towering above our heads, with healthy fat pods. The Practical One asked the variety and got
the answer: "Mummy Peas". The owner’s ancestor had gone on the Grand Tour in the late 1700s, including Egypt, where he acquired some peas that had been buried in an ancient tomb. He brought them home, where they sat on a shelf for 100 years before anyone thought of planting them. Presumably there was no Best Before date on them. The peas grew, and the strain has been kept by the family ever since. Naturally we begged a few pods off them, and
grew the Mummy Peas this year (very tasty).
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JUNE
2009
THE MISSED MISCANTHUS
I never meant the grass to get that tall. Its label was obviously wrong as it grew to the size of pampas grass, but with more elegant plumes. These stood up boldly like a fountain in the centre. Nothing stands still in a garden, and I was dismayed to see this year the growth was lopsided, as if the fountain spout had been pushed over. Destruction of this huge plant was handed over to the Practical One. Never one to faff around, he fetched the chainsaw. It was felled, loaded on to a barrow and dragged away, its glorious plumes trailing like peacock feathers. Others in the family took a dim view of its disappearance. It was just a garden plant to me but to others is was a useful feature in Hide & Seek, and to Bramble it was a dog-house she could snuggle into for a snooze in the shade.
 
THE CUP THAT CHEERS
It takes a lot to turn a sweet-natured person like me into Basil Fawlty, but on rare occasions visitors achieve this. A group visited from a nursing home, half were carers and half very elderly. No misbehaviour there you might think. The old folks loved the garden, leaning out of their wheelchairs to smell the roses. In the tea-room among my exhibition begonias and fuchsias we made space for the wheelchairs, and served tea and cake. I was back in the kitchen out of sight when I heard one of the carers say ”Is your cup too full? I’ll just pour it away into this begonia pot.” I rushed to the window but missed the deed. My precious begonia had just been given a hot cup of tea, with a dribble of tea down the side of the pot as evidence. Recounting this tale to a friend that evening, she wondered if the begonia might do particularly well and this could be the chance discovery of an exciting new gardening technique. Hmm. I think not. I’ll keep an eye on the poor plant which had the unexpected cuppa.
DAY LILY – FRIEND OR FOE?
A friend was describing the challenge ahead with her new garden. “It’s got everything: bindweed, ground elder, day lilies…” My expression of sympathy changed to amazement. As an avid collector of the lovely new spider day lilies I was taken aback to hear them included in a list of garden horrors. Then I remembered Hemerocallis Kwanso Flore Pleno, the very common double orange one which has neither beauty nor nice manners. Years ago I bought one at a charity plant sale, the best place in the world to buy invasive plants. Yes, Kwanso did want to take over the garden, spreading into a gravel path with “weedproof” membrane beneath it. It took many attacks with a spade and noxious chemicals to get rid of it.
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MAY
2009
NOT SWINE FLU, SURELY?
The clematis was very sick, a victim of severe abuse. The catalogue had pictures of a healthy plant with gorgeous flowers, and stressed its rarity and desirability. It was reassuringly expensive. The box it came in was shorter than I expected. This was because the stem had been bent double to fit it in. The leaves were pale yellow and the stem spindly. I wouldn’t have touched it in a garden centre. The grower’s note assured me the plant was dormant (?) and not to fret as it would be fine when it got going. With muttered expletives and without optimism I put it into intensive care: re-potted, its stem splinted, and protected from fierce light. Blow me if the grower wasn’t right. It greened and thickened up and grew strongly enough to go out in the garden in no time. Let’s hope its tenacious grip on life continues.
TULIPS: CLUMPS OR REGIMENTS?
We needed flowers for our early weddings from late April and all through May until the irises flower and the dahlias go in after the frosts. 700 tulips were planted in clumps of one variety (like a bouquet) among the growing perennials. The different clumps were colour-themed with wallflowers. As a tulip novice, I have been given these tips about tulips:
Most people advise buying fresh bulbs each year, as few do well next year.
If mice and squirrels dig them up, dip the bulbs in paraffin before planting.
If you want to delay flowering, plant the bulbs on their sides. This gives a stronger plant. The professionals do this for their Chelsea display.
WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE
Mild-mannered, that’s me. I don’t put myself in confrontational situations where I have to be subdued by water cannon. However I do often experience something similar in my English country garden. It doesn’t matter how tightly I secure it, the hand-held watering squirter keeps flying off the end of the hosepipe, soaking the aggrieved operator. After the latest encounter with this unexpected garden water feature I abandoned the squirter and used a different hosepipe to connect the soaker hose which waters the tomatoes. Turning it on I was nearly drenched from a different source. The spectacular fountain came from where the Practical One had neatly sliced through the hose with the rotovator blade while turning round on the path at the end of the potato rows he was earthing up.
 A LAMB’S TALE
“There’s a lamb in the mill leat” was the breathless message from the young lad. The Practical One got a ladder, rope and waders and we set off. He went down the ladder, across the water and tried to grab it. It bounded back across the leat and hid under the ladder next to a bank of nettles. “Rather him than me” thought the dry photographer on the riverbank. The Practical One managed to tie the rope round the lamb’s middle as it huddled under the ladder in the water. He gave the end of the rope to the two young brothers and told them to hold tight. He hauled the lamb out by the rope and picked it up. If you think climbing a ladder with a paint pot is tricky, try it with a wet struggling fat lamb though a bed of nettles. At the top of the ladder, it leapt out of his arms. It raced off and was brought to a sudden halt at the end of the rope, with two young boys hanging determinedly on the other end. After release it hurtled off to join its mother who had been hanging around, presumably feeling like one of those supermarket mothers whose children have been playing up.
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APRIL 2009
MIND THOSE TADPOLES
A heavy frost and a B&B guest who wanted only toast for breakfast – perfect conditions for a spot of frog-mothering. The sunshine had encouraged the growth of a layer of blanketweed over the pond surface. With a pond full of tadpoles you can’t just scoop the weed out with all its inhabitants. At night the tadpoles swim down to the bottom of the pond, presumably where it’s warmer. An early start was essential, while there was still an ice crust on the weed. The B&B lady was served her dainty breakfast by her immaculate hostess, who then
 sped off to muck about with green slime. Part of the weed had to be left in place as a string of late toadspawn was still intact. Just feet away I had a close encounter later that day with what may have been its mother. On the path round the pond I was trimming off last year’s growth on the daisy-flowered erigeron at the foot of the low wall. There are always holes in the path and flowerbed which I assume belong to some pesky rodent, so I fill them in firmly. As I plugged a hole a cross toad burst out, causing me to leap back in surprise – the first time I’ve been scared by a toad in the hole.
TOILING IN THE VINEYARD
I love my polytunnel, but is it beautiful? No. Last year we tried to hide it with climbing beans, and this year we are planting a row of vines between it and the main garden. The Practical One showed just how practical he is by setting into the ground seven sturdy poles, all exactly the same height. The vines are grafted on to root stocks, and the top four inches of the stalk are covered in green wax, which the
 buds are piercing through. We were intrigued by the instructions, which said: ”Plant this new graft (root downwards) with the roots below the ground.” I’m sure the grower would not have written that if some twerp had not planted them upside down and then complained.
IT’S WHERE IT’S TO, DUCKY
The evening light was fading but I was determined to finish cutting back the penstemons by the pond. The new stems were growing strongly so the timing was perfect. Secateuring away on the pond-side path I became aware of splashing noises. A pair of wild ducks were enthusiastically dabbling in the waterweed taking no notice of me, just feet away. I tried to keep movement to a minimum – difficult when filling a barrow with armfuls of foliage. After beaking through every corner of the pond, they stepped up on to the island. Just days before sculptor Karen Edwards had brought over her work for this season’s garden sculpture exhibition. On the island were three pottery roosting birds, trying to look natural. They must have succeeded as the wild ducks decided it must be a prime location. The best roosting spot was already taken by the silent trio, so the duck clambered up into the middle of my ornamental grass and trod down a comfortable spot in the middle. The drake settled on the rocks next to her. Both put their heads under their wings, stood on one leg and went to sleep. As a wild-life loving gardener I was quivering with indecision. Hoping to annoy them ever so slightly, so she’d get off my grass, I fetched the camera and stood close to them to get a good shot. Completely impervious. I hope the grass will straighten out again.
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MARCH
2009
ARE YOU MY MOTHER?
If you woke up after a lovely long snooze and found all your family and friends had disappeared, how would you feel? The poor little lamb was on its own in the middle of the field – no mother, not a sound. Its pathetic bleating was heard by the Practical One. The ewes and new lambs had followed him and his bag of meal from the field to the sheep shed, where they would spend the night safe and warm. A head count had shown one was missing. He was scouring the edges of the field when he heard faint baaing from the middle. His options were (a) to catch it or (b) to get it to follow him. Rejecting (a) as an athletic feat he was unlikely to achieve, he opted for the marginally more promising (b). Luckily the lamb was so distraught it was ready to follow anything that moved, even if it was the wrong size, shape and colour. As the unlikely pair started their walk to the sheep shed, the Practical One decided the only way to reinforce his impression of the lamb’s mother was to sound like her. He was fortunate there was no-one around to witness a grown man baaing loudly, apparently taking a lamb for a walk.
FIREFIGHTING IN THE GARDEN
The big winter garden tidy-up was much delayed by bad weather at the start of the year, and it is now a desperate race before the new growth gets in the
way to cut down last year’s dead sticks, including the ice
plant on the left . Everything must be cut back in a certain order, with penstemons and lavender at the end of the queue. Hacking away deep in the undergrowth is considerably complicated by having to guard against amputation of any part of a frog lurking unseen among the dead leaves. There have been a couple of near misses when a frog leapt out at the last minute as the secateurs worked through the plant towards him. We obviously have a healthy population, judging by the masses of frogspawn in the pond.
As shown in the picture below right, the jelly has just disintegrated, leaving the minute black wrigglers to swim free. We are watching the progress of the 800 tulips we planted, wondering if they will be in flower for our first wedding. I know
crocuses were a little late this year, so wonder if our display will also be affected by the cold earlier on.
BUMP IN THE NIGHT
There is a downside to composting. The Practical One’s nerves are still jangling. Our compost heap is in an open-topped disused pig pen, walled on three sides. We add the occasional bucketful of vegetable peelings to the garden refuse. This compost had reached the top of the chest-high wall. At about three in the morning the Practical One was plodding down to the sheep shed, still half asleep, to check on the lambing. His head torch was the only thin light in the pitch dark, as he walked past the wall of the compost heap. Suddenly a badger leapt off the wall in front of him. I’m not sure who was the most surprised – him or the badger disturbed in his snack of peelings.
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