Winter garden
THE PLAN WAS THAT THEN I WAS GOING TO SHOW YOU A COUPLE OF PHOTOS FROM THE GARDEN TODAY TO DEMONSTRATE HOW FAST THINGS RAMP ON THIS TIME OF YEAR. AND THEN PETER TOLD ME WE’RE DUE TO GET A FROST TONIGHT. WE’RE WHAT? YOU MUST BE JOKING. IT’S THE MIDDLE OF MAY AND IT WAS OVER EIGHTY DEGREES LAST WEEK.
And this is England, and we’re due a frost. And I have chocolate cosmos and osteospermums and busy lizzies all over the place, including the one osteospermum that made it through the winter and is now covered with huge buds which are beginning to crack . . . no, no, no, I will have to bring that one into the kitchen, I can’t bear it. This year’s osteospermums are just little things in pots that don’t even want to be potted on yet; they’re fairly portable on a tray. I have probably half a dozen second-year snapdragons too, but they’ll stand a wisp of frost . . . it better be only a wisp . . . but the chocolate cosmos have to come indoors too. I am not going to be without chocolate cosmos.
This is from February. It was fine in February. And yes, that’s my bell tower: this is the view from my office window. I wasn’t joking about the tower being only two garden walls distant or the way the sound of the bells slides through the crevices and runs down the walls and pools on the floor. Why everyone who lives in earshot isn’t compelled to learn to ring I cannot understand.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH. This is from February too.
This was also fine in February. . . .
A lovely picture, thank you. It’s so nice to live within the sound of bells, they are between music and voices. Several times I’ve lived close to churches which ring and given a choice it would be on my preferred checklist.Still thinking about dipping a toe in the bell ringing water - might try in autumn if my new business is flourishing…
I’m looking forward to the next time you get to climb the bell tower and you take a camera :) (You shouldn’t have mentioned the fantastic view last time!)
I hope the forecasters exaggerate, and that all your plants stay well, and that the hellhounds are eating - sends “must eat” vibes to Chaos - and that you are feeling better today.
We’re all a bit better, but trying to maintain a low profile . . . WHAT new business?!? I’m sure learning to ring would ENHANCE . . . um . . . your concentration and dedication!!!!!
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Dog swimming pool! We have lifejackets in all sizes and I have my canine first aider certificate :)
Oh good! our SECOND whippet to pop her cruciate had water therapy! :)
I hope your whippet recovered? I thought of you at Middle Earth day today (Sarehole Mill, with ents and archery http://www.bbc.co.uk/birmingham/content/articles/2008/05/16/middle_earth_weekend_2008_feature.shtml ) when a woman passed me with a golden brindle whippet boy who was having a lovely time mugging people for attention :)
I’ve negotiated a deal with daughter - we start dressmaking classes (her idea) and bell ringing (my idea) in september, and if it’s anything like your descriptions we’ll need the dressmaking to make new clothes to fit our new muscles lol
My parent’s in law’s dog (a lab) tore the long ligament in her leg (same one as your whippet?) so badly they had to replace it with fishing line… That just sounds incredibly painful!!!
My sheltie had her anterior cruciate done. She is the 1 in 1000 dogs that *rejected the replacement ligament*. aarrrgggh. Thankfully we kept her infection etc under control until the joint was able to stablise. The arthritis isn’t too fun now for her.
Ow. No, we had three–two in one dog, one in a second–and they all took. Bullying said dog(s) into USING the damn leg again however . . .
Perfect! Two almost identically positioned photos from two distinct seasons. Brilliant!
LOL! In a garden the size of this one you’ll be getting a LOT of identically positioned photos! :) You can Watch the Evolution Over the YEARS! :)
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WHAT? It’s MAY. No one should get frost in MAY. I think I might CRY if it frosts here. I just planted a new lilac bush yesterday and I really am anxious to see how it turns out… I planted some pansies, too, and they don’t look hardy yet. Not that pansies ever do. And my peppers and tomatoes will die in a frost… No. It can’t frost here. Or there. I don’t want your poor snapdragons to freeze.
Where are you? (Approximately.) Pansies usually hang pretty tough, and lilacs are nearly unkillable. I was surrounded by ancient gnarled lilac bushes in my little house in Maine. I don’t think we had our frost last night, so I hope you didn’t either.
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I’m in a temperate climate that is rather cold for about six months and is rather hot for about six, and when those two extremes decide to back off, we sometimes get about two weeks of spring and autumn between them.
My pansies always seem to die on me. It’s no old, gnarled lilac–though I’m sure that, given time, it will be (hooray!). No frost here–thank goodness you didn’t have one there!
The awful secret truth is that pansies are short lived.
They are indeed. I’m starting tho think them an expensive habit, seeing as they never come back the next year and they all die within a month of planting ANYway becuase they don’t like my soil or something. Pansies are cute, but I’d rather have snapdragons or poppies. They replant themselves. And snapdragons can come up with some gorgeous color mixes after a few generations.
You might try throwing in a few handfuls of something-to-improve-drainage when you plant your pansies. They really should last a good year of flowering themselves silly before they fade away. I hope for two, and am thrilled when I get three.
My pansies self-seed. Had one pop up in the stones on the patio. Snappies are great. I still have one going at over 3 yrs.
I’m itching to get my tomatoes out of the house and into the ground… they’re starting to look pale and wan… and they’re outgrowing my growlight stand. *sigh*
We could possibly get snow up until next weekend. It’s happened before. *doublesigh*
Good luck on the frost!
Weather! Gardening! Climate! Life! FEH!
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Great pictures. I now have proof that my local church has ringers, at least occasionally - the other day the wind blew in just the right direction *and* I had the window open.
And now I know why you’re usually up so late - you’re listening to Radio 4’s bellringing slow. I now have a better mental image of grandsire triples…
Good! (I didn’t know about Radio 4’s bellringing show! What! I know there’s bellringing at something like 5:55 am on Sundays, but . . . forget it!)
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Ah! All these photos are BEAUTIFUL!
The garden may be small, but it is MARVELOUS.
And that the bell tower is SO CLOSE!!! Fantastic!
Thank you so much for posting these!!!!!!!!!!!
I echo southdowner in hoping that the frost is mild if it appears at all, and your flowers all keep flourishing and there are no negative effects - from weather or anything else.
And that both Chaos and Darkness eat and stay/get well.
And that you feel better too!!!
[Candles!
Hugs!
Chocolate!
Etc.]
–Julia
We don’t seem to have had the frost, but I did sleep last night with a kitchen floor pretty well solid with little green things hiding from the great outdoors.
I says it as shouldn’t, but it IS a rather magical little garden, and the bell tower is part of it. You don’t want to have to weed it though. Or for that matter walk around in it. :)
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Well, I’m glad that the frost was conspicuous only in its absence. After all, if you HADN’T brought all the plants inside, it would have been a terrible frost and so on– that’s the way it goes, isn’t it. :)
Hooray for magic gardens. Actually, I always have wanted a little garden like that.
Or a rather larger one, but all hidden my hedges and then amazing inside, like in the Secret Garden.
And I’ll have one, too… eventually.
I can see how the weeding might be a pain, though.
Or just finding the space to walk around.
Oh well. It still is a beautiful magic garden.
Yay.
–Julia
:)
I went out this afternoon and–in a burst of nostalgia–purchased a Kinks album I’d formerly owned on cassette back in my college days. Happily listening to the tracks, I was suddenly confronted with an unexpected sound effect. “Good lord,” thought I, “that’s change ringing! I shall have to tell Robin!” (Not that you should be excited that I’ve discovered a Kinks song that opens with change ringing, but that I actually recognized the sound for what it was, thanks to your blog-tutelage.)
At any rate, that’s a beautiful photo. :)
YEEP. What song?? What album???
(I’ve just ordered, as per the entry, The I Hate to Cookbook, in a similar fit of nostalgia–the OP copies are all hardback but I only ever had browning, falling-apart paperbacks–but I bet it won’t turn out to have any change ringing in it.)
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Kink Kronicles. It’s a double album; the song in question is “Big Black Smoke,” on disc 2; a song about a girl leaving her little small English town (which presumably has a belltower) and heading up to the Smoke, where of course she falls in with the wrong crowd. The ringing’s brief, at the start and end, and no doubt when you get round to listening to it you’ll tell me, “You’re an idiot, Bear, that’s not change ringing at all but just some random bells that sound like change ringing to an untrained ear.”
And on that same topic, it appears Christ Church Cathedral in downtown Indy does change ringing as well–at least it certainly sounded like it at 6 pm on a recent day when I happened to be on the circle.
Have we talked about Peg Bracken before, you and I? Because she is my all time favorite, can’t live without her cookbook author. My copy of I Hate to Cook was a gift from my mom while I was in college, and it is well loved and stained in a way most of my cookbooks are not…
Well go find OUT if it’s change ringing!!! :)
Have we talked about Peg Bracken before, you and I?
********** Oh, excellent cool! No, I don’t think so. I’ve been thinking about her because she died recently and I pulled out her obituary. I read her cookbooks first when I was only *just* starting out and ONLY made peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies, pretty much, and the first book covers desserts/puddings with Irish Coffee, which did *not* go over with me. :) It took me a few years, and cooking dinners, to discover the pure crystalline point . . . :)
I have only owned “The Compleat I Hate to Cook,” so not sure how the two volumes broke down originally. I love her commentary and asides–”The Daily Anticlimax–entrees for the simple-minded.” Her cornbread recipe is the ONLY cornbread recipe. And Chilly Night Chili, and Stayabed Stew…. all staples of my years in Chicago, when I was first cooking for myself with no one watching! :)
I’m still toying with the thought of baked custard, darn it.
When you stop toying, please post recipe. :)
Will, if I can get it right. As I recall, I am somewhat untalented at custard-making; it’s been a while. I’ll try it, then will post whatever actually works.
I know, the weather here has been strangely cool as well. It was only a hundred degrees today. In Las Vegas! I can’t believe it but I am thanking anything it is possible to thank because it’s usually a hundred and ten or a hundred and twenty at this time.
I would kill for some frost. There aren’t any plants to kill because we have rocks! Beautiful gray rocks! Robin, I think that you should uproot all of your plants and replace them with crumbled concrete. Think of the convenience! Never again will you worry about frost.
AAAAAUGH. No wonder CSI is so peculiar. All that anti-social behaviour is from living in a town that only grows ROCKS.
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Slightly off topic….
But Amazon has the cover of Chalice on their website!! (apologies to all who noted this ages ago lol) I notice this just after I had convinced my mother to do a suitable cover with bees, honey, Dainty Bess and a nanny goat or two. Dang. LOL
Have you considered growing dwarf Sweet Peas up the picket fence? This year I’ll try with Matucana. They are not actually dwarf, but perhaps they are willing to grow horizontally.
Anette
I’m growing clematis slantwise on the fence. I grow full size sweet peas up the wall . . . and up roses, and the big daphne, and anything else that stands around . . . :)
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My clematis are the kind that tries to take over major trees, but sweet peas in alba roses works very well for me. This year I’ve tried alternating with some purple Morning Glories. They would have done better with more fertilizer last year, when I tried them in the hazels.
Chocolate cosmos rocks! Mine died (I thought) but it decided to turn up again (IN AUTUMN) and grow…go figure. Also go figure the fact I have a blooming daffy bloomings, HELLO ITS MAY, ITS SUPPOSED TO BE AUTUMN!!!
Oh well, least I bought more violas on the weekend, and they are still in their pots…and rather foolishly ordered another half a dozen lawn chammomiles…
Me again.
I meant to put this in my last comment post thing, but by the time I finished writing I had forgotten.
So-
have you seen the bbc virtual garden thing?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/gardening/design/virtualgarden_index.shtml
It is ridiculous how much time one can spend designing and redesigning and things. Fun, though.
Another link that you might like:
http://apps.exploratorium.edu/10cool/index.php
All kinds of really cool, interesting, time-wasting, educational type stuff to enjoy and explore!
Now if only we had the time to spend…
Oh well.
Have fun!
:)
–Julia
Thank you for all the pictures.
Ack! Peg Bracken died? I love her cookbooks!
Actually, I think the only thing I make regularly from her books is Elevator Lady Spice Cookies, but I still love them, I just have trouble getting behind the casserole-with-mushroom-soup school of cookery. I love them because of the writing, and because I grew up reading my Mum’s copy (which has an elastic band around it, and ‘Property of J. M. M. Do Not Remove From Premises’ written inside it, for fear I’d steal it.)
The photos are beautiful, and I’m glad it didn’t frost. It’s close to frosting here, after two weeks or early summer. Bleh.
Yes, I have to go bring everything indoors AGAIN TONIGHT here in a minute. I still make Peg Bracken’s Good Sesame Cookies which I will post some day because mine have *evolved.* And yes, a lot of the fun was the writing. I’m not sure how many recipes I’ll actually make again . . . I think that’s how I lost my original copies, one of those awful house moves when you can only keep what you’re GOING TO USE.
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