Open Gardens 2009

It's over, we've done it. The Gardens Open weekend in aid of Church Funds has been and gone.

It's been a triumph, even if I say so myself! I may open the garden again in autumn but it will be a much smaller affair, on a much more modest scale.

For two days the weather has behaved itself, the public appeared in their many hundreds, there have been no accidents, dogs and children were kept under control and a lot of money was raised. Tonight there's the social evening for the garden owners and all helpers on the day and that'll be that for another year.

Gardener and I were still working until an hour before "gates open" on Saturday. We had forgotten to sweep the entrances, chop back some of the verdant growth on the walls leading up to the gates which might have impeded access a little (can't have that!) and arranged several trays with plants for sale. On these occasions I sell surplus plants, plants which I have divided, grown from cuttings or simply collected where they have self sown and potted up throughout the year. It's another way of making money. Gardener gave the lawn a final trim, neatened the edges and helped me stow away all tools. He left, I had a quick shower, bolted down a bite of sandwich and awaited two o'clock.

We have two entrances, we therefore need help welcoming people and taking their money. We had barely set out our chairs and a table each, tickets, programmes, maps and a plastic box to hold the cash when the first visitors arrived at the bottom end of the garden. From now on it was all systems go. Because I am the gardener, designer, expert, and all round boss-in-charge of our plot, scraper and the helpers sent all enquiries my way which meant I was on my feet for four hours solid; my advice to anybody else in such a situation is "NEVER set yourself up as the know-all, you'll pay dearly".

As in other years, visitors were pleasant, some exceptionally so. I always like the ones who are willing to talk about plants and gardens best. Groups of elderly ladies often belong in that category. Unfortunately, they tend to recognize an unusual plant and invariably ask its name; invariably, my mind goes blank at precisely that moment; expert, me?

The ones I like least are the "tickers off". They have their programme always available, ready to tick off another garden. One such gentleman, on his own, in sturdy walking boots, his hold-all strap slung across his chest, rucking up his shirt, came marching up the long drive towards me; he looked neither left nor right, thereby missing a wide border of mixed flowering shrubs, many roses in full bloom and two very beautiful Japanese acers - you can tell how proud I am of that border. I greeted him and gently reminded him that he had come to see a garden and rushing through at his speed surely made that quite impossible? "Six more to go", he said, tapping the programme in his hand with a pencil.

There are single visitors who have all the time in the world and are only too happy if you involve them in a chat. Perhaps they come because they love gardens and don't have much of a plot themselves, perhaps they are lonely and have come for a pleasant afternoon out with tea and cake in the Church Hall on the way; they will stop and discuss the relative merits of various herbs, perhaps a purple thyme compared to a silver or golden thyme. Because they know their subject they are never boring.

There are bores, of course; I got waylaid by a couple who started to tell me about a pond they had stocked with koi carp which had all got eaten by escaped mink. Personally, I dislike koi carp, can't see the point of them, but that need not deter other people from being carp aficionados. It seemed they had taken the loss very hard indeed, the fish had had names; I am not sure they didn't say the fish came when called, but I had stopped listening by then; I must have had the life history of each fish several times; luckily my helper was more sympathetic to the bereaved couple, I handed them over to her and made my excuses.

Amongst the nicest visitors was an American couple, here on holiday, Stuart and Michelle from California. Michelle loved so many of my plants she soon ran out of paper to jot down their names. There will shortly be a variegated maple somewhere in a front yard in San Diego. We discussed which plants would survive the Californian climate and decided that a cistus would probably fit the bill; cistuses (rock roses) like it hot and dryish. Michelle and Stuart both fell in love with the roses, particularly "Dublin Bay", the rose at the top of the post. They stayed for what seemed a very long time and I enjoyed every minute of it. They were absolute sweeties. Stuart noted down my email address, I have been promised news of any plants they try to grow back home.

Finally, what is most gratifying, is the fulsome praise some visitors bestow on the garden. Their appreciation is what makes all the hard work worthwhile.

Departures

One of the friends at the poetry group died last week after a very short illness. She kept details to herself, but once she was diagnosed with terminal cancer she set her affairs in order

meticulously, making lists and leaving precise instructions.

She refused to have the doctors "mess her about", and refused all treatments which allowed her to live an active life almost to the very end. I saw her at a poetry reading less than a month ago and she was no less cheerful and positive than she'd ever been.

She stipulated that there was to be no fancy funeral, she was to be buried in a cardboard coffin, a truly ecological burial as befits a lifelong environmentalist.

She was a very ordinary woman, or so I thought, but her determination, courage and strength of character make her into an example for us all.

She loved poetry and I think she would have approved of my choice of poem to speed her on her way.

Crossing the Bar

Sunset and evening star,

And one clear call for me!

And may there be no moaning of the bar,

When I put out to sea.

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,

Too full for sound and foam,

When that which drew from out the boundless deep

Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,

And after that the dark!

And may there be no sadness of farewell,

When I embark;

Four though from out our bourne of Time and Place

The flood may bear me far,

I hope to see my pilot face to face

When I have crossed the bar.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

1809 - 1892

Blakeridge Wood

Two muntjacs

The smallest British deer.

In its native Asia the muntjac is called the barking deer.

It has a glossy, red-brown summer coat

and a rather rounded back.

The buck has short antlers and prominent fang-like teeth.

The buck is about 48cm high at the top of his shoulder,

with the doe being slightly smaller.

The Scraper's Diary, March 14th, 1947, Dortmund (part 2)

The country and the people are very like England and English people to look at.

England has an air, an essence, that is essentially her own, and knows no counterfeit; Germany

has no atmosphere and, seemingly, no apparent character. Perhaps that is one thing they lost in defeat.

The towns are largely reduced to rubble. I am already used to seeing whole blocks of buildings crumbled to mounds of broken bricks and twisted girders - for nowhere has the damage been repaired or tidied up - but I cannot exult in this devastation. Many of my companions gloat over the destruction and take a vengeful pleasure in seeing cities that once stood. Probably, I would exult with them if I could feel an air of Germany about, but I cannot. I was in London throughout the blitz and the V-bombs, but I only feel a cold pity when I see the wreck of the Rhineland, and a further despair at human nature.

Duesseldorf, Hamm, Hamburg, Hannover, Cologne, Wuppertal, Moenchen-Gladbach, Dortmund, - all are in ruins, with perhaps one home where twenty stood before, one shop in a parade. The Autobahn from Bad Oeynhausen to Duesseldorf crosses many bridges. Perhaps one in three of these is the same bridge as it was before the war.

Then there are the people.

Walking down any street you would not think that the folk you see are underfed or underclothed. They seem healthy and active although their faces have a strange pallor. The girls, particularly, are strong and attractive, and their faces bear no sign of the cruelty that is supposed to be inherent in them.

We stood by the Rhine one morning and watched parents and children walking by. Some of the children were thin and looked rickety, but all were well-dressed in warm wools and furs. Their fathers looked prosperous, their mothers contented.

However, there is the other side of the picture.

The thin children begging by the trains, the two old gentlemen I saw in the main road rummaging in dustbins, with a pitiful look of pride on their faces, - and, of course, the black market.

I doubt if anyone can explain the black market, for it disobeys all the rules of economics.

German people bring watches, irons, clothes, tablecloths and such non-essentials down to dark streets in the towns. Soldiers with stocks of cigarettes, chocolate and soap arrive, and soon bartering is in full swing. One can usually beat a German down to well below his first price, but they are not desperate, they give nothing away.

(In camp I maintain that when you give a German ten cigarettes, you give him one shilling and twopence. Bernard maintains that you give him forty marks. Actually, it must be a compromise.)

The people in the black market look well-fed, their clothes are not shabby. They are neat and proper, and yet they descend to a degrading trade, and forget all pride. Why ?

Probably for the same reason that girls sell themselves for a bar of chocolate and a few biscuits.

Another thing is that I have seen no old people or cripples or folk anyhow maimed yet in Germany.

And yet they all look well-fed and fairly happy.

I have a feeling that, as a country, the Rhineland is slipping into a dangerous lethargy. (Vide the rubble-covered pavements.)

And the soldiers, our boys, don't give a damn, - or ninety-nine percent of them don't - what happens to Germany. They would swindle the country as cheerfully as they cheat her people. They look after themselves all the time, and if that involves forgetting all rules of courtesy and acts of kindness, - or even if it entails stealing food from a starving man, well, no matter, they've been hard up themselves all through the war, and the temptation to get their own back is too great.

It's an ugly business.

Of course, coming over, as we did, on a boat with several hundred German repatriates, and having, as many of us have, some years to serve, and the war having been over for nearly two years, the irony of it all is too great for even soldiers to miss, and they feel they have some excuse.

It's an ugly business.

o-o-o-o-o

Today I had a premonition of Spring.

It's been raining all day, and the entire sky is masked by Army blankets of dirty cloud. The streets are wet, the places boring. And yet I had a premonition of Spring.

It happened at tea-time. I thought for a minute that the jam was lemon-curd, and with the taste, my mind was suddenly filled with an old nostalgic longing, a wistful emptiness for home and England and sunshine, for the faces I know and love, and for the comfort of freedom. I felt those old, nameless urges for companionship that every year flood my veins as the green shoots roll through the stretching land. I heard in my heart a singing that was all the sweetest sentimental ballads, and I knew that Spring had caught up with me, and had touched my weakening spine with her thrilling fingers. I heard the birds and saw clear streams of crystal water laughing over the shallows. I felt the kiss of the sun on my face and my soul cried out in an ecstasy of unworthiness, knowing not how to bear any more beauty.

And then I realized that it was jam after all, and I knew that it was raining outside, and that it was still winter.

Sunday Quotation (3)

Mimir,

guarding the entrance to the hollow stump

of a once proud sycamore.

"Knowing how to grow things is important if you want to make a garden,

but not as important as people make out;

it's knowing where to put them that matters."

Mary Keen, 1987

It's Now or Never

The last full day's work for gardener and me today before the Grand Opening next weekend.We

have one more evening to give the lawn the final cut, strim the edges and deadhead the roses.

If I know anything about myself on these occasions, I'll be going frantic every spare moment

next week, pruning here, staking there, tweaking this bit and tidying up here, there and everywhere.

Gardener has staked the delphiniums to within an inch of their lives.

I hope these beauties will be fully out by next Saturday. Unfortunately, they have the habit of keeling over the moment wind or rain catch them once the flower spikes are fully developed. They are just too heavy to hold their almost 2 ft heads up.

A bench to catch the evening sun.

This is where we sit before dinner, often with a glass of wine.

The pots of geraniums are awaiting a decision on their final resting place.

The rusty milk churn sitting in the hostas in the golden elder bed

is purely for decoration.

A shady spot for hot days.

Very suitable for tea in the afternoon.

The "hot" bed under the dining room window.

The plants here love hot and dry conditions. The bed is south-facing and gets any sun

there is in the English summer.

We have many roses in the garden, for which our climate

is totally suited. The air here is so pure and clean and unpolluted,

that the roses tend to suffer from blackspot.

Strange but true.

Clematis "Abundance" in an old plum tree on the lawn.

Abundance by name and abundant by nature.

At the end of the summer this plant almost smothers the tree.

Wish Me Luck

you can click on all photos.

Birthday Card

My son sent me this birthday card.

Read it and weep at the lack of respect

some children show their aged parents.

However, revenge will be sweet!

Hallmark card

Meme

It's high time I passed on the meme which Francessa so kindly bestowed on me. If my victims don't want to be bothered, or have already received this particular meme in the past, please disregard it and the instructions that go with it.

These are the rules:

- Respond and rework

- answer questions on your blog

- replace one question, and

- tag three other blogs.

These are the questions to be answered:

1. If one song were to describe your life, what song would that be?

2. Which item of clothing do you wear most?

3. When did you get up today?

4. Last thing you bought?

5. What are you listening to:

6. If you were a God/Goddess, who would you be?

7. Favourite holiday spot?

8. What are you reading right now?

9. Favourite Film?

10.First thing you do in Spring?

11.Funniest thing you saw in your life?

12.Who is your hero/heroine?

13.Share some wisdom?

14.If you were a tree, what tree would you be?

15.Fictitious character/s who made a lasting impression on you?

16.Four words to describe you?

17.Why do you blog?

And these are my victims:

Vagabonde @ Recollections of a Vagabonde

Tabor @ One Day at a Time

Robert @ To Navigate through Life

Birthdays

Hampton Court Palace, London,

Dial of the Astronomical Clock,

made by Nicholas Oursian in 1540

This splendid example of the clockmaker's art does not go

tick - tock;

nevertheless, it measures the passing of time.

Today is my birthday, and this poem describes how I feel about it.

Getting Older

The first surprise: I like it.

Whatever happens now, some things

that used to terrify have not:

I didn't die young, for instance. Or lose

my only love. My three children

never had to run away from anyone.

Don't tell me this gratitude is complacent.

We all approach the edge of the same blackness

which for me is silent.

knowing as much sharpens

my delight in January freesia,

hot coffee, winter sunlight. So we say

as we lie close on some gentle occasion:

every day won from such

darkness is celebration.

Elaine Feinstein

Sunday Quotation (2)

It's strawberry time, the merry, merry month of June is here! What could be better than a picnic of freshly picked strawberries with cream.

Curly locks Curly locks,

Wilt thou be mine?

Thou shalt not wash dishes

Nor yet feed the swine;

But sit on a cushion

And sew a fine seam,

and feed upon strawberries,

Sugar and cream.

This nursery rhyme is surely well known and you will all forgive me the slight misuse of it as a quotation. (the strawberries become even more luscious if you click on them)

Rambling on

A sunny day at long last.

Time for Benno and me to go for a ramble, brolly at the ready, just in case.

It's buttercup and grass seed time in the paddock; we'll have to get the mowers out.

The four-legged ones.

Through the town and into the fields where the spring lambs

have turned into sheep and lost all their allure.

And off into the woods

to find the white foxgloves hiding in the shade.

Back to the meadow and the hogweed growing along the edge.

Across the ford, taking care not to slip on the slippery bottom!

Once again back to the High Street, where the Art Show

is held at the Old Surgery.

Art is not as poorly as you might expect from the sign;

in fact, it is flourishing; no doctors needed.

You will look in vain for the Castle-in-the-Air;

it is firmly rooted in the rock it sits on.

(you can click on all photos to enlarge)

Jackdaw-in-arms

This jackdaw fledgling has been hopping about the garden for over

a week now and I am sure I noticed him in the lilac hedge before then.

His parents come to feed him every so often and the whole clan of aunts and uncles

comes flying at you, shrieking and squawking loudly the minute anybody comes out in to the back garden.

He is getting bigger and his feathers are growing day by day. We'll be glad to see him go,

his safety is becoming a problem; there are many cats using the garden as a thoroughfare.

He is also learning to pick at the seeds and bits of food we leave close to his favourite perches.

The funny thing is that he hops on to one of the many sticks Benno

leaves lying around the grass after he's finished retrieving them.

Perhaps jack sees them as branches in a tree?

I am not very fond of jackdaws as a tribe, but who could resist a baby?

(click on him to see him in all his fluffy glory)

Summer 1945 - Food and the Lack of it

Don't you just hate grocery shopping, the ordinary kind of supermarket shopping; not shopping for special and particular meals, meals to be shared with friends, meals for parties and family occasions, but the everyday "catering" kind of meals, the repetitive, boring meals. The "what on earth am I going to cook today" kind of meals.

Queueing is another pet hate. There's usually a queue at the deli counter and you stand there with your ticket, waiting for your turn, keeping a very close eye out for shoppers trying to jump the queue.

In the summer of '45 things were rather different.

The cupboards were more or less bare, the meagre rations weren't enough to keep body and soul together and the shops had great difficulties providing the staples. There was milk and the bakers were given flour to bake bread, often supplemented from US army rations. Farmers had been able to till the land with the help of every old man and young boy in the village who wasn't needed elsewhere, clearing rubble, filling defensive ditches or dismantling military structures.

But the harvest was months off; everybody was waiting for potatoes, cereal and cabbage, the main crops of the area. As I have already described in the last post on the time, women and children went out daily to gather anything edible they could find in hedgerows, field edges and woods.

There was almost no meat or fat. On several occasions, there were rumours of a delivery of fish to the fishmonger's. The first people lined up at daybreak, waiting for the shop to open, only to be told that there had been no transport available that day and that the fish had gone elsewhere. Another time the fish had arrived but the queue was so long that it was a question of first come first served and people at the tail end of the queue went home empty handed.

Typical meals mother cooked for us were a thick, unsweetened rice pudding sprinkled with nutmeg, a buttermilk barley broth with prunes, or dumplings made out of flour and yeast and water. Even during the war mother preserved and bottled fruit and vegetables which were kept in the cellar and at that time we still had shelves with a few jars of last summer's bottled plums which made the dumplings palatable. There were green beans, preserved in salt, which had to be soaked in clear water before they could be cooked. Sauerkraut was another staple of the area and every harvest time the housewife bought a dozen or so heads of the large white cabbage and made her own Sauerkraut, which was kept in an earthenware crock in the cellar.

And then there was the absolute treasure of the cellar, worth more than rubies to a hungry household, the Einkellerungskartoffeln, potatoes for storing over the winter. If you had potatoes left over, you were rich. By now, last year's potatoes were dry and wrinkled and sprouting; in ordinary times they would be fed to pigs. These were no ordinary times and even the shrunken tuber could be mashed with carrots, cabbage or beans to make a meal. We also had a dish called Himmel und Erde, heaven and earth, which was potatoes mashed with last year's stored apples.

By late summer the harvest began, I learned the art of gleanings and to hack for potatoes.

Sunday Quotation

Quotations can be fun, uplifting, entertaining, wise, silly, heartwarming, admonishing, and much more. You can show them off, use them appropriately and inappropriately, with raised index finger or as a throw away line. In short, quotations can be everything to all men, relevant or not relevant.

The Scraper and I use quotations all the time, we pick them up as we go along, and use them in any of the above ways.

Every Sunday, barring some unforeseen obstacle, a quotation will appear on these pages which I consider shareable; so, please bear with me.

Yesterday and today it has been raining non-stop, the sort of English rain which goes on and on, drenches everything and makes me very depressed. To cheer me up, here's the first Sunday quote:

The Rain it raineth every Day,

upon the just and unjust Fella.

But more upon the Just,

Because the Unjust has the Just's Umbrella.

Anon

Disgraceful Behaviour

When did I get to be old enough to nod off during a performance in the theatre?

The scraper and I went to see Michael Frayn's comedy "Alphabetical Order". The play is a two acter about a chaotic newspaper library which is transformed into a place of almost painful order; the play finishes with the announcement that the newspaper is about to fold and the staff deciding to attempt a take-over.

Michael Frayn is a very funny and clever playwright, humourist and novelist; his columns for the Guardian were highly amusing and satirical. He has also written serious plays; "Copenhagen" was a fascinating work.

"Alphabetical Order" was one of his early efforts, probably far more relevant to the time it was written, after all, newspaper libraries and paper archives no longer exist. One click of a key will conjure up all the information you might be after. Still, the script is sharp, fast-paced, clever and funny enough to chuckle along.

So really, I have no excuse for what happened. Except, except......

This was an afternoon performance, after a generous lunch and a glass of wine (always a risky thing for me, drinking wine with lunch) and instead of the expectant buzz that comes from an audience which is alert and looking forward to an evening's entertainment, this was more of a coach party outing, with an elderly audience, people who might be ready for a snooze after lunch on an ordinary day ( like me), creating a soporific atmosphere rather than an electrifying one.

So there I was, gently nodding off about half way into the first act - the sort of nodding off where you can still hear everything that is being said, albeit from a great distance, but the words don't really make sense and, actually, you'd prefer them to stop and let you sink into a peaceful slumber for just a little while.

I woke up with a start when the scraper laughed out loud; I sneaked a guilty look at the occupant of the seat on my other side: had she noticed my disgrace? Far from it; the lady's head had sunk on to her chest and she was breathing softly and regularly, giving a little puff at the end of each breath.

Who, me?

Francessa has  meme'd me. Like most bloggers I've come across, I am shy and retiring and not at all willing to talk about myself. 

Apparently, there are rules attached:

-  Respond and rework

-  answer questions on your blog

-  replace one question, and

-  tag three other blogs.

Questions first.  

I can't believe that a) I am doing this, and

                                  b) I am actually thinking about the answers!

1.  If one song were to describe your life, what song would it be ?

    A different song for different periods of my life; at the moment I would go with Paul Simon's     "Yesterday, it was my birthday, I hung one more year on the line, but I'm having a good time   

2.  Which item of clothing do you wear most?

      

      knickers

      

3.  When did you get up today?

       8am

4.  Last thing you bought?

     a digital satellite box to receive Central European TV channels here in the UK

5.  What are you listening to?

      the lyrical, melodious, mellifluous tones of a blackbird sitting on the edge 

      of the roof outside my window, which is wide open. It's 2.30 in the afternoon and I've

      fled indoors to escape from the unseasonal heat.

6.  If you were a God or a Goddess, who would you be?

     I'd love to say Baldur, the God of light and harmony, but it'd probably have to be 

     grumpy old Thor, the God of thunder and black moods. (Oh dear, really? maybe not)

7.  Favourite holiday spot?

     The Auditorium of the National Theatre/The Royal Opera House

     

8.  What are you reading right now?

      Just finished the last thriller/novel/philosophical treatise by Kate Atkinson 

      "When Will There Be Good News". I have tremendously enjoyed all of her books so far.

9.  Favourite Film?

     For a few years now I've only chosen to watch rubbish, hence "Four Weddings and a 

     Funeral"    (Hey, Francessa, I loved Wim Wenders' " Wings of Desire" too)

10.  First spring thing?

       Get out there and start pruning.

11.  Funniest thing you saw in your life?

       The face of George Bush at the Inauguration Ceremony of Barack Obama.

12.  Who's your hero/heroine?

        Don't have one, we all have feet of clay, some more brittle than others. Having said that, 

        I admire people who overcome the most horrendous obstacles to do good, like

        Helen Keller.

13.  Share some wisdom?

       Don't beat yourself up about things you cannot change and forgive yourself for mistakes 

       you made in the past; after all, you (probably) did your best.

14. If you were a tree, what tree would you be?

      A willow, I can bend.

15.  Fictitious characters who made a lasting impression on you?

       That's easy! My favourite speech by any character ever is Polonius' farewell to Laertes  in 

       Act I, Scene III of Hamlet and my favourite bit out of that speech is the quotation at the top        of my blog.            

16.  Four words to describe you?

       

       Knows what she wants.

17.  Why blog?

       The more bloggers there are, talking to each other, making friends, getting to know each 

       other, the more people there will be who realize that we are all the same under the skin;

       it might even be a small step towards peace among men.