August 29, 2010

Gardens

 

It stopped raining for a few hours yesterday, nicely timed for gardening, during which I went out and strove mightily with dahlias, which is to say earwigs, among other useful and semi-useful things,** and came indoors again as the Scary Mud Monster.  Remember I told you that I’d actually staked all of my dahlias this year, and how this doesn’t happen in my garden(s)?  It doesn’t work.  Well, I suppose if you were out there with your bamboos and your twine every minute, or even every afternoon, you might stay ahead of the little sods, but I wouldn’t count on it.  You may also remember that I’ve been complaining about my seven-foot dahlias—dahlias are supposed to be sort of four to six foot.  Which is plenty.  Even a six-foot dahlia has a slightly triffid air about it.***  But I’ve realised why my dahlias are all monsters this year:  it’s so that they can hurl themselves over any foolish attempts to contain them.  Several of my beautifully-staked dahlias have a fringe of flopped-over, head-down flowers tumbling gracefully, not to say vindictively, over the top loop of string.  SIIIIIIIGH.†

            This morning after service ring†† I was out in front of the cottage, deadheading.†††  I’ve still got pansies in flower—I mean pansies that have been flowering since spring, and in a couple of cases since last winter.  If you’re clever about it you pretty much can have pansies flowering all year long—although they may shut down in self-defense in a cold winter—but this usually requires waves of pansies.  Some of this year’s have gone out back for a serious haircut, a feed, and a rest, but by no means all of them.  Some of them are still frothing down my front steps, flowering determinedly.  So I was determinedly deadheading them.‡  And my neighbour with the posh, national-collections garden at the top of the hill comes strolling down with a companion and says lugubriously to me, Oh, you’re losing that battle. 

            Thanks ever so.  You’re a real friend.

Peter and I went to another posh garden this afternoon‡‡, one of those eye-wateringly so-English cottagey things that I have the almost overwhelming urge to speak loudly and frequently, saying things like Gee whillikers! and Gosh darn!  This place is real gone!  Peter and I used to have one of those gardens . . . but we never went in for the eye-watering aspect;  ours was too clearly not under control, nor under anything resembling an all-over plan.   And I get a little lip-curly about people with full time gardeners.  (Or trust funds and no need to earn a living.)  If I had a full-time gardener I could be opening Third House’s garden to the public in a couple of (somewhat frantic) years.  The funny thing is that I don’t think I’d want to:  the pleasure, if you want to call it pleasure,‡‡‡ of opening our garden was that we were the ones responsible.  If you wanted to know about a plant, we were the ones to ask.  We might not remember, but if we didn’t, there was no recourse.§  I’m just crabby because there was a lot to like about this garden . . . till you got to the two wide bays of really ugly orange roses.  There must have been thirty of the horrible things.  All orange.  I like hot dazzling orange fine in neat little wool-and-silk cardigans such as the one I am wearing this minute.  But neon orange is not a good colour in a rose.  Especially not in ranks at the front of the sculpted topiary tunnel to the lily pond with the summerhouse and the tasteful statuary.  Gah.  No, Gee whillikers!

 * * *

 * Possibly my least favourite critter on the planet, barring things big enough to eat me and standing close enough to try 

** Including potting on two camellias, which have been quietly getting on with things for two years in the pots they arrived from the mail-order nursery in.  One of the best things about camellias is how patient they are.  A kind word and a handful of well rotted chicken crap and they’re happy indefinitely.  You think I’m anthropomorphising about the kind word, don’t you?  HA.  Show me a little old lady who talks to her plants and I’ll show you a little old lady who can barely get out her back door for being throttled by the botanical riot.  No I am not talking about me.  I am not little.  And I haven’t fully arrived at the ‘old’.  And while it’s perfectly true I talk to my plants^ I tend to say things like what are you doing that for, you frelling thing? and ARRRRRRGH.   And, when dealing with rosebushes, OWWWWWW.  But I’m mostly nice to my camellias.  I’ve pretty much even stopped cursing Jingle Bells for being fabulously healthy, floriferous and UGLY.  

^ I talk to almost everything except other people.  Other people, feh.  Way too complicated.  Give me a rosebush or a hellhound any day. 

*** It’s not so much the height, it’s the posture.  Forty-foot roses dangling from trees can be very intimidating, but they’re not at all triffidy.  

† Clearly I haven’t been saying the right things to them.  

†† During which I was Much Put Upon.   Not only did I keep finding myself in the long-thirds position when a single was called for Grandsire, but I fell afoul of the Dreaded Three-Four Down Dodge Single in bob minor several times, about which mediocre ringers lie awake on Saturday nights worrying about being traumatised by if bob minor is attempted on Sunday morning.  I did, by the way—get through all these trials—but I had to be carried home and fed chocolate to recover.^ 

^ And speaking of feeding . . .  Peter has just spilt chicken broth—you know, the stuff that accumulates under a roast chicken—rather lavishly on the floor.  Hellhounds did not stir.  I called them.  They stared at me.  I called them again.  Chaos, always the one more anxious about pleasing,+ crept out at last and crushed himself to me, as I knelt on the floor next to a pool of fresh chicken juice.  Here, look at that, I said, extricating an arm and pointing.  Chaos looked at the finger, the way dogs do++.  I eventually persuaded him to have a sniff at the lovely chickeny puddle.  To please me he did, with his feet braced, still leaning against me, and with his neck stretched to its furthest extent.  He sniffed.  He then looked at me with a ‘Can I go now?’ expression.

            After he had fled back to the dog bed in huge relief, Darkness came nonchalantly out to make sure he wasn’t missing anything.  He had a half-hearted lick and then turned around to fix me with a ‘You got us up for this? look.

            Peter mopped up the spill. 

+ Except, of course, when it comes to food 

++ There was an article in a recent TIME magazine about the intelligence of critters, and how there’s more of it around than generally thought.  Depends on who you ask, of course.  I know a lot of critter people who have been sniggering at the scientists about this sort of thing for years.  But one of the things the article cites is that dogs ‘innately’ understand about pointing fingers being about pointing, and not about the finger.  Well, sort of.  It depends on the dog and the context.  Pointers certainly point, and they know they’re pointing.  But your own pet dog is very likely to be interested in the finger, because it’s your finger.  Chaos has a very bad case of this. 

††† I should try to get someone to take a photo of me deadheading the Non Trailing Petunias in the hanging basket.  I can feel how ridiculous—how increasingly ridiculous—I look, especially as the petunias themselves grow more ridiculous, ramrod straight and soaring out into the ozone. 

‡ Kneeling on tarmac at least keeps the Scary Mud Monster somewhat at bay. 

‡‡ In the rain.  It came back. 

‡‡‡ I didn’t, much.  I’ve told you, I think, that Peter was always out there talking to people.  I used to try to find an especially impenetrable thicket and spent the afternoon weeding.  Peter would occasionally send people in after me who wanted particularly to talk about roses.  

§ We did have a once a week body I used to refer to as our gardeneroid.  His purpose was to move slowly around the garden looking like he was doing something, and adding rusticity to the view.  He also mowed the lawn.

August 29, 2010 | Filed Under bell ringing, critters, garden, roses | Leave a Comment 

Life in a Small Town Is More Exciting than You Think

 

Tuesday was not a great day in my life:  I had to go to the dentist rather than have my voice lesson.  How gross is that?  And I’m fretting about Peter, and it’s HOT, and it won’t frelling rain:*  and my favourite English tree is the beech, and they have shallow roots.**

            So I got back to the cottage from the dentist with my head beginning to go bang bang bang bang*** and . . . there was a rosebush sitting on my front stair.†  Yes, it’s true, I have several rosebushes out front in various unsuitable planters††, but I don’t usually have a great magnificent pink thing in full flower sitting in the space I need to stand on to get my front door open.  I approached it cautiously.  Dental anaesthesia has not yet made me hallucinate large pink rosebushes††† but there’s always a first time.

            There was a card.‡   It was from Southdowner and B_Twin.   I looked at the card.  I looked at the rosebush.  I looked at the card again.  I looked at the rosebush again.‡‡  They can’t have brought her here.  Southdowner was supposed to be taking B_Twin to the airport on Tuesday.  Heathrow is well over an hour from here and Southdowner lives in the midlands.  They must have had her delivered . . . even if it does look like some ordinary person or persons just heaved her up the stair and plonked her on my porch.

            Atlas was at the cottage on Tuesday so I went round to the garden‡‡‡ to ask him.   Two women in a white van, he said without missing a beat.

            Oh.

            I’m really quite alarmed at this manifestation of rampant derangement among my mods but . . . I’m a realist.§  It’s fine.  I got a rosebush out of it.  A rosebush, furthermore, with hot pink flowers the size of grapefruit. 

            And what’s more I’ve already planted her.   I know you don’t believe me.  But it’s true. 

            What happened is that I’ve had a big empty planter in the hellhounds’ courtyard for . . . uh . . . quite a while.   I was using it (oh the shame) as the legs of a seedling tray and when I finally got everything on the tray PLANTED like . . . three days ago . . . I figured I’d better fill it up and put something in it fast before it becomes a seedling tray next year too.§§  So I tipped all my remaining compost into it§§§ and promised poor Summer Song, who was an impulse buy months ago, and was still sitting in her plastic David Austin pot#, that she could go in it, as soon as I bought more compost.  But rosebushes have minds of their own, and she’s been trying to turn into a climber while she waited for permanent accommodation, and the Pink Grapefruit Rose is already a nice low sprawly shrub.  So I put Pink Grapefruit into the ex-seedling-tray-table, and freed another planter that has been the top storey of my greenhouse table, filled it up with my brand-new compost## and put Summer Song in it and to one side of the courtyard###, where a frame for her to climb up won’t block my view of Mme Isaac Periere. 

            . . . Frell.  The photos of Summer Song in her new home haven’t worked.  But here is one of her flowers:

http://www.davidaustinroses.com/english/showrose.asp?showr=4532

And, wherever Wordpress decides to put her,  here is Pink Grapefruit, aka Lady of Megginch:  http://www.davidaustinroses.com/english/showrose.asp?showr=4794 ~

I am, of course, totally predictable, and I don’t suppose Southdowner and B_Twin, having decided on their errand of insanity, had a lot of trouble saying:  that one.  She’s pink.  But Lady of Megginch was on my short list last autumn and I only barely didn’t quite buy her . . . not only is she piiiiiink, I love the name.  It sounds vaguely Cthulhuian.  

* * *

 * And I’m Forgetting Everything I Ever Knew About Bell Ringing.  See last Friday:  went wrong in Grandsire Doubles, which is a bit like Zara Phillips forgetting how to sit the trot.^  And I was so shattered Monday night I did not go ringing at Colin’s tower although I’d planned to. 

[BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH FRELLING WORDPRESS BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH GET DOWN THERE WITH YOUR FOOTNOTE YOU ^ BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH FRELL FRELL FRELL ETC]

^ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zara_Phillips 

** I haven’t quite tucked a hose among the roots of the copper beech that hangs over Third House’s garden from the churchyard, but I’m thinking about it. 

*** I may have stopped at the local farmers’ warehouse store on the way home to buy more large heavy bags of compost.  Well, I needed them.  

† Little did I know how much more compost I needed. 

†† I kind of specialise in unsuitable planters.  I’ve just been tweeting that FOR PITY’S SAKE THE AUTUMN PLANT CATALOGUES ARE STREAMING IN . . . I am so not in the mood to be thinking about next spring’s tulips.^  Not least because I . . . er . . . have perhaps not quite got all this summer’s plants, you know, planted.^^  But (as I also tweeted) it’s surprising how well most things will do in too-small pots if you manage to keep ’em well fed.  I haven’t got ROOM to put everything that ought to be in REALLY BIG pots.  Roses, for example. 

^ Which, furthermore, I will get planted in . . . February.  Maybe March. 

^^ At least I’m consistent.  Consistency+ is not only the hobgoblin of little minds, it’s the last resort of the hopelessly disorganised. 

+ Foolishness optional. 

††† I might hate it less if it did.  I totally grant that being poisoned by forty-six gallons of anaesthesia is to be preferred to the alternative.  I’d’ve died young if I’d been born before anaesthesia was invented.  But I still feel like I’ve been poisoned for days afterward.  They keep threatening to sedate me again and I keep saying, the last time you sedated me, speaking of toxic hangovers, I fell down and broke my hand the next day.  No.  

‡ Something rude about dogs, which I will not quote because this is an all-ages blog.  Mostly. 

‡‡ I wondered if I needed a stepladder to get to my front door.  After the large bags of compost I wasn’t sure I was up to carrying the rosebush anywhere. 

‡‡‡ Where he was putting another gate into the hellhounds’ picket fence.  My feet get larger and trailing-er and catch-between-the-pickets-ier every time I step over it.  Especially when I’m carrying, oh, say a large heavy rosebush. 

§ HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA 

§§ We will not discuss whether or not it may have been a seedling tray last year. 

§§§ See?  I did need more compost. 

# But I’ve been feeding her and she’s been doing . . . surprisingly well.  As above. ^

^ Yes, it occurred to me that she might have been turning into a climber as a result of being in a majorly too-small pot.  But in fact when I tipped her out she hadn’t filled up the pot she was in.  She just Wants to Be a Climber.

## I now need even more compost.  But I’m not planning on waiting till I have to go to the dentist again to get it. 

###FRANTIC RESHUFFLING OF THE TOO MANY POTS AND PLANTERS ALREADY OCCUPYING THAT SPACE. 

~ If anyone is paying attention, you will notice that both of them are described as arriving at ‘4 x 3′’.  Yes.  And Fantin Latour is supposed to stop at 6 x 5′.  And Souvenir de la Malmaison is supposed to stop at 12′.  In pots I have some hope of persuasion. . . .

July 8, 2010 | Filed Under Surreal world, garden, roses | Leave a Comment 

Mottisfont

Was it last year or the year before I gave you a Mottisfont post?  Maybe both.  Well, here’s another one.  You can kind of figure there’s going to be a Mottisfont post most years:  National Collection of Old Roses?  Hellgoddess?  . . .  Any questions? *

        Given the lateness of the hour and the fact that Wordpress will doolally my text anyway, I’m going to declare the following self-explanatory.  If any of them aren’t, post questions to the forum and I’ll answer. **  I do wish to state however that I had no idea that Mottisfont’s new flyer was colour-coded for my new t-shirt.  I also wish to draw your attention to my belt buckle and my All Stars.  Cathy emailed me photos of All Stars available in my size this year at Jack’s Shoes around the corner from Wiscon–you know, the store I bought nineteen pairs of All Stars in the year I attended Wiscon, that Wiscon also being where I met her blah um I forget number of years ago***;  she’s a regular attendee–and I chose these and she nobly brought them over.  Pink.  Yes.  Flowers.  Yes.#  Oh, and my hat says Swan Bells.  Western Australia.##

        And I didn’t buy any new rosebushes.  No!  Not one!   We’d had a fast whirl around the sales area and we were actually leaving, me empty-handed and triumphant . . . and was frelling shanghaied by one at the gate.  Damn.  I should have bought her too.  But I didn’t.  Damn.

* http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-vh/w-visits/w-findaplace/w-mottisfont.htm 

** Probably.  Unless they’re to do with sequels to SUNSHINE.

*** Long before the blog was a twinkle in Merrilee’s eye.   Or a flanged mace in her armoured fist. 

# It’s going to be really hard to pretend they’re roses however.  They have only four petals.  But gold glitter makes up for a lot.

## http://www.thebelltower.com.au/

June 24, 2010 | Filed Under adventure, roses | Leave a Comment 

Pink Things

I was going to do an Ask Robin tonight but I was waylaid by pink things.  Mmmmm.

Remember I told you that Sunday mornings after service ring I go to the florist’s, and she’s fallen into the deliciously decadent habit of giving me things she’d throw out otherwise, because they’re too beat up or blown to sell?  Some of them it’s perfectly true only last a day or so.  But some of them I totally luck out on.  For example.  Speaking of (pink) peonies:  I wouldn’t dream of buying cut peonies;  they cost a bomb.  No, a bomb and a half.  But she GAVE me these.  And they’ve lasted all week. 

[Okay.  Now we enter into the surreal world of Wordpress' ideas about relocating text and photos.  Sigh.  Brace yourselves.]

First two photos of Mme Pierre Oger, who is yet another favourite rose.   She’s in the new big brick SUV-repelling planter in front of the house, which I should try to get a photo of the entirety of, but at present it’s busy being laced into a snug leafy wodge by the frelling sweet peas which are refusing to climb up their nice bamboo frame, guys, will you please pay ATTENTION. 

         If you look closely, you can see some sweet peas ignoring their bamboo canes in the background.

        I have a thing for pale-pink candy-striped roses.  Mme Gregoire Staechlin, whom you have often seen before, is one end of the candy-stripe spectrum;  Mme Pierre is the other.  Peter Beales describes her as ‘of moderate vigour’ which is to say she’s a total frail weeping heroine type.   Well, she’s a Bourbon, they’re almost all cranky, one way or another.   But if you feed her like crazy and generally pet her and tell her how lovely she is, she may surprise you.  And part of her charm is her willowness.  The flowers themselves are almost round and the petals are nearly translucent:  on the delicate plant that she usually is the whole show is ethereal.  If elves grew roses, they would grow Mme Pierre.

And here she is again. 

       [Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah--trying to fill up enough space that Wordpress will leave text location alone--blah blah blah blah di blah blah blah di blah.  Blah.  Blah.  Di blah blah.]

         Okay, it’s probably not going to work.  So anyway the next two photos, wherever they are, are of Ayrshire Splendens.

         Who is, as you will immediately notice, another candy-striper.  

         I’ve put the two together in the hopes that proximity will let you observe that while they’re both small, pale pink, roundish, and striped, they’re not all that similar after all.  Mme Pierre is nearly globular;  Ayrshire is more cupped.  And Ayrshire is not only a rambler, although she is slim and wiry, she’s clearly a tough old thing, and not a fainting maiden;  and her flowers don’t have that ethereal quality:  the petals are thicker.  She’ll also get to twenty foot;  Mme Pierre tops out at five or six.

           She also has an unusual scent.  I do have a few almost-scentless roses;  scent is very high on my list but it’s not a deal breaker.  (The rose just to the right  of Ayrshire is nearly scent-free, but I’ll post photos of her some day soon and you either will or won’t immediately see why I had to have her anyway.)  But Ayrshire’s isn’t like anything else I know.   It’s not at all a common rosy scent–as Mme Pierre’s is, for example.

And now, for something completely different:

Good, huh?

           It’s years ago now that I first saw that Dualit, the world’s best toasters, had started making them in colours.  Including PINK.  At that point I already had a perfectly good original shiny stainless-steel Dualit.  I had no excuse.  There was a shop in Mauncester that sold coloured Dualits, including pink.  I used to go stare at them occasionally.

           And then thanks to MEnopause and other things beginning with ME I more or less gave up eating toast.  [Insert wailing and rending of garments here.]  So when Peter’s toaster broke, I gave him mine.  I promise I had no ulterior motives.  No, really.  But that was last winter when the Aga was on, and if I decided to live dangerously and have a piece of toast, I had the Aga, which makes divine toast, it’s just slower, and sweeping the crumbs out is more of a nuisance. 

             But then summer came barrelling down upon us and I’ve broken with tradition and turned the Aga off . . . just in time for an assault of house guests.  Most normal people like a nice piece of toast in the mornings. 

             I may forgive them for eating toast in front of me, for having provided the excuse to buy my pink toaster.

 

June 20, 2010 | Filed Under Piffle, coolness, food, garden, photos, roses | Leave a Comment 

Roses

Okay.  More roses.

Mme Isaac Periere.  One of my can’t-live-without roses.  Although a beautiful bush she is not.   You want some serious disguise action for the bush part.  Inadvertently what I’ve got is eight square feet of Fantin Latour lying all over the landscape.  Mme Isaac pokes her head up through just fine, although one of these years I’m going to plant a clematis to climb through her (and perforce Fantin too).  I rave about Mme Isaac’s perfume every year.  So, here we go:  rave rave rave rave smell rave perfume rave whole house rave rave lie in bed at night with windows open rave. *

Lichfield Angel.   She’s an Austin,** and is doing the standard Austin thing of producing long floppy stems but I said to myself two years ago when I bought her, this is an Austin, she is going to be floppy, prepare.   So I put her in a pot, and, lo!, she flops out of it very gracefully.  This is her second year and so long as she stays healthy and produces flowers like these she can be as floppy as she likes.

Chantelle in bud.

HERE WE SODDING BLOODY GO AGAIN WITH SODDING BLOODY WORDPRESS AND ITS REFUSAL TO LEAVE YOUR TEXT WHERE YOU PUT IT.  OKAY, THE PEACHY-ORANGE BUD IS CHANTELLE.  THE PEACHY-ORANGE FLOWER IS CHANTELLE.

Chantelle in flower.

THEN YOU HAVE THE PALE CREAMY-PINK-YELLOW COMTE DE CHAMPAGNE.

AND THE DARK RED ONE AT THE END IS SOUVENIR DE DR JAMAIN.

Comte de Champagne.  Another Austin.  Guess why I had to have her. *** And I get around the floppy thing by having her grow among Ghislaine de Feligonde of whom there is a lot for growing among.  Even more than Fantin, but you’re expecting it with Ghislaine.  Ghislaine is also denser:  Ghislaine contains multitudes;  Ghislaine is a jungle.  If you’re ever chased by an axe murderer and you have a Ghislaine in your garden, go hide in her and you’ll be fine. 

She’s not out yet.  You’ll have pictures of her later.

Souvenir (there are actually many Souvenirs.  It’s just in this garden, ‘Souvenir’ tends to mean the Creamy Pink Monster Menace, which is to say Souvenir de la Malmaison) de Dr Jamain.  This is the one I mentioned a few days ago:  I’ve had something like three die on me, and while I’m not promising anything, I put this one in a pot where I can keep a beady eye on her, this is her second year, and she’s actually thriving.  But ask me next week.

And Black Bear asked which amusing All Stars would I have worn to the cathedral yesterday if I’d had time to change my shoes.  These: 

* * *

* As I recall the chemistry of rose scent says you aren’t going to get any in the middle of the night.  Tell Mme Isaac and Souvenir de la Malmaison.

**Yes, I grow way too many Austins for someone who keeps saying she doesn’t like them much.

*** I have Champagne Moment on order.  They ran out last year.

June 14, 2010 | Filed Under Piffle, garden, photos, roses | Leave a Comment 

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Outside of a dog, a man's best friend is a book. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read. -- Groucho Marx