Off With His Head!

The weather was glorious for our first NGS Open Day of the year. Visitors sought out shady seats to enjoy their tea-and-cake. The sunshine of the last week has brought on the garden amazingly – which is just as well, as a couple of weeks ago I thought there might not be anything to see.

I like to place a special plant on the table in front of the house – a conversation piece. This time I chose Aeonium tabuliforme, which is growing in a clay pot with a crimped, pie-crust frilled edge, which exactly echoes the crimped leaves. A horticutural sculpture.

In the last few days the centre of the rosette has begun to grow upwards. It looks comic – as though it might be about to take off. But I’m aware that this rocket is actually beginning to flower. If that sounds good, I should say that a flowering Aeonium is not much of an asset – lots of small yellow flowers, which are often infested with aphids.  Furthermore a rosette which has flowered usually dies, and I only have one.

I purchased my plant, after a search, from Bob Brown of Cotswold Garden Flowers, and I don’t want to lose it.  So I’ve made the hard decision to cut off its head, in the hope that the remainder will grow some offshoots.

Here is a picture of my “rocket” before its drastic surgery.  I must remember to report on the patient’s progress.

Loud Sing Cuckoo

The cuckoos arrived a couple of weeks ago, and their manic calls have been echoing in my head, mocking me.

They are perfectly right – I know I must be cuckoo as I progress slowly on my hands and knees, scraping moss and dirt off the brick paving, and tidy up the edges of the grass with a pair of sheep shears.

The reason for all this crazy activity is the rapidly approaching date of our first National Gardens Scheme opening of the year – a week today.  What flowers will have gone over? Which will have come out by next weekend?  Will I have time to plant up that bare patch? And, of course, will it rain?

This is our second year of opening for the “Yellow Book” and so I’m a bit more confident than last year.  At least I’ve worked out where to put the various notices and I’ve assembled a trusty team, but life is never predictable.

If you would like to come you can find all our details, and some good photographs, at our NGS link.  Please bring some good weather with you.

“Sumer is icumin in: Lhude sing cuccu!”

Fighting the Weeds

If I were to neglect the garden it would be full of nettles in no time. Environmentalists urge us to grow nettles for the wildlife, but we are surrounded by farmland with great swathes of nettles. They need no encouragement from me.

One large nettle made an appearance last year on the first day we were open for the National Gardens Scheme. It stood there, waving gleefully at the visitors. I pulled most of it up when no-one was looking. But it was growing in an awkward place between the rabbit-proof fence around our kitchen garden and a substantial beech hedge. I realised that the ideal time to tackle it would be in the brief hiatus between the hedge shedding its old leaves and growing new ones.

So today I went forth to do battle. I had to fight my way, with great difficulty, between the hedge and the fence to get at the nettle. Having got in I began to wonder if I could get out again. Would I be stuck there? Would my cries for help be heard? It dawned on me that Sandy might notice I was missing when his supper did not appear on the table at 6 o’clock sharp. Perhaps I would not die of hypothermia after all.

The nettle roots were in the most inaccessible place possible. Sandwiched between two horizontal wooden sleepers and two vertical layers of chicken wire.

I showed it no mercy – it’s been well and truly poisoned. Then I fought my way out again and had a large cup of tea.

A Small Disaster

There was a strange noise yesterday afternoon.  I didn’t take  much notice, especially as Paul is working on our roof (many of our tiles have begun to disintegrate). But shortly afterwards I heard Paul and Sandy shouting for me, so I went to see what had happened.

It turned out that part of the damson tree at the back of the garden had fallen over.  I say ‘part’ because this old tree had two trunks – one has collapsed, the other remains standing.

For many years this was just an unidentified tree standing among the brambles and nettles in an outlying part of the garden.  When we finally cleared that bit the tree began to fruit and identified itself.  It never produced much worth eating – there is a venerable, suckering damson in a neighbouring field which supplies us with all the damsons we could wish for (and we love damsons).

But the tree was worth preserving – if only to support a climbing rose, though I had noticed that one of the trunks was beginning to sprout some suspicious looking fungi last autumn.

Now I need someone with a chain saw.  At least it missed the summerhouse!

Be Careful What You Wish For

The duck has gone. I didn’t see her go, but I think she hatched out all her eggs.  When she was briefly away from the nest I saw a small head poking out. When they went on their Great Trek to the river I hope they avoided the kestrels who are nesting in our big crack willow tree. (On the other hand kestrel chicks have to live too…)

A week or two ago I was praying for rain. I even tried a little rain dance. It seems to have worked with a vengeance. We have had torrential downpours, hail storms, and today it has rained continuously.

But if the weather has stopped me from doing ‘proper gardening’ (planting, weeding digging), at least I have the benefit of the greenhouse, and I’ve been tucked up in there, cosily, for some of the day.

I’m not very fond of Michelmas Daisies, but one good one is Aster x frikartii ‘Mönch’.  It’s a good clear mauve, not too tall, and it doesn’t get mildew. Several years ago I begged a small piece from my Mother’s garden, and I’ve been propagating it ever since. It prefers to be divided in the spring, so today was a good opportunity to turn out a dozen pots and make more.  I now have over 40 plants.  What riches!  I have enough to spread it all around the garden, to make a extensive planting in our ‘Orchard’, and there will be some to give away.  It should be a spectacular autumn.

A Sitting Duck

Our garden is definitely wildlife-friendly. A bit too friendly at times – I speak of
rabbits, moles and cabbage white butterflies. Companionable robins and aphid-munching ladybirds are welcome, as are most other life forms.

Just at the moment we have an extra ‘friend’ in the form of a duck sitting on some eggs. We discovered her by accident a couple of weeks ago, half hidden in a pile of straw I had placed last autumn over the roots of a slightly tender plant. I’ve been keeping a discreet eye on her ever since.

On one occasion I saw her more brightly coloured mate siting on the nest, which surprised me as they are hardly re-constructed blokes, as anyone who has witnessed ducks mating will testify. To put it bluntly a drake is not good in bed.

But mostly she is going it alone, sitting there patiently, hardly visible. She will have to be patient – it takes four weeks for the eggs to hatch.

We had another duck’s nest a few years ago. At that time we had a ‘wildlife’ pond (it wasn’t much good, and has gone now). When all the ducklings hatched she headed for it, straight through a dense hedge and some flower beds, followed by her brood. They all flung themselves unhesitatingly onto the water, where she had a very good wash, surrounded by a dozen balls of bobbing fluff. A delightful and memorable sight. Then they headed off to the river, a hundred yards away.

Maybe our present duck is one of her great-great grand-daughters?

A Visitor from Outer Space

Salad for supper tonight. Assorted green leaves grown in the greenhouse from mixed seed sown in an old washing up bowl in January. I drilled holes in the bottom of the bowl and it makes an ideal container.

I also dug up one of our remaining celeriac. It is a really ugly plant – fresh out of the ground it resembles a monster from Doctor Who. By the time I had trimmed off all the whiskers it looked more like one of those CGI pictures of a big asteroid – the one that’s coming to get us.

Grated with some apple and carrot it made a good version of coleslaw. It also makes wonderful soup. Growing is fairly easy. Sow in February in a propagator, and plant out in May. It needs lots of muck and water, and you should remove the lower leaves form time to time. You can leave it in the ground over winter, with fleece or straw on top to keep out the worst of the frost.

And it’s a million times easier to grow than that temperamental diva, celery!