Fatball and Robin

Prompted by two days of heavy frost, I popped out to the store and bought a packet of five suet fat-balls.  The bird feeder, currently acting as a temporary washing line post, was reinstated, the holder hung in place and I waited.  

Its proximity to the greenhouse seemed to be a deterrent so my kind husband moved the pole closer to the hedge.  Still the only visitor at first was the robin, and later the long-tailed tits came down from the birch trees, to feed and fly away.

I looked out of the front window and there was one of our blackbirds turning over the leaves on the bed next to the privet.  Two years ago this narrow area was paved, but my husband's patching of our front drive and stouthearted removal of broken pavers to the back compost bin area has resulted in a bed that holds pelargoniums in the summer and daffodils in the spring.  It has been enriched with lots of home-made compost and buried kitchen waste.  This helps us and the wildlife.  Water soaks into the soil on days of heavy inundation and an assortment of worms and invertebrates feed on the mix, and in turn feed our songbird.  

What is more satisfying I ask myself, to purchase a tub of fat-balls and watch the birds come to the feeder or to make a small change to the environment, close to the hedge, where the blackbirds, woodland creatures would find themselves at home?  No plastic tubs or nets, no factory, no expenditure save what we have produced and consumed ourselves.  The virtuous circle is simple and the untidiness that vigorous pecking has produced is quickly resolved with a garden broom.

Green Wellies

We demonstrated our eco-credentials by setting out yesterday in our matching green wellies leaving the car on the drive.  Though it is tempting at this time of year to head for the hills or to make for the sea, we chose to follow the green corridors of conserved woodland valleys that intersect the former farmlands. 

In these wildlife sanctuaries we saw wrens and robins, magpies and blackbirds singing from the scrubland.  We mentally congratulated the friends of the local park for fundraising, balsam-bashing and path laying.  We looked out over the poplar-fringed vistas of the golf course, possibly threatened by development and speculated on the identity of the large private estate ringed by high fences and security apparatus.  We saw a handful of others, younger than ourselves, and dodged cars using the old lane as a cut through.  We went along a small brook by a previously unexplored 'snicket' - my dialect - locally 'ginnel' to find ourselves at the back of a secondary school; the unfortunate trail of plastic bottles and wrappers had already alerted us to this.

This is where we live.  Green wellies make this exploration possible and like some magical footwear also take me step by step into a happy place where logs bridge streams, birds sing and the midwinter sun sets in a cloudless crimson sky.

 

Leaf Fall

Leaves come and fall in our garden from all kinds of places.  The wind blows oak leaves from the venerable tree at our corner into the nooks of our driveway and patio; the birch trees in the park shed their light burden on to our back lawn; the hazels in the hedge come down and even the trembling yellow poplars at the farthest edge of the playing field, by the old farm bungalow, are shaken by the winds and deposited here.  My husband is diligently collecting all of this potential leaf-mould for our compost bins.

Closer to our kitchen window the raspberries that survived into November have been finally caught by the frost, as have the blackcurrants.  It is hard to resist poking at a bush. Detaching the last leaf from the base of next year's bud releases a strong scent, a foretaste of summer fruit.  I think I never really noticed before how the top leading bud grows above the curved scar of the old.

The leaves that fell from the hazels, with no need of human hand, now reveal the coming year's dangling catkins, tight against the cold.  The evergreen holly that I culled for Advent decoration, is decking our hall, but upon close inspection the buds of next year's tiny white flowers were also apparent and wait to blossom on the bushes for the red berries of a Christmas to come.

The kindness of neighbours

I was cycling to my GP's surgery when I saw a notice in a driveway displaying free apples.  So on the way back I stopped and filled a plastic bag with Bramley cookers and had a pleasant conversation with the homeowner, a complete stranger.  

This was just one instance of the apples we have enjoyed this autumn, and not only apples but giant marrows, red onions, sweetcorn and runner beans.  Because, as people who have rented allotments know well, a glut is a glut and sometimes you have to beg friends to take veg. away.

We need no prompting.  Our trees, as I have mentioned, are only two years into their productive life and taking their time to establish.  So I will take what's offered with gratitude and transform marrows into squash risotto, microwave red cabbage with apples in cider vinegar, bake almond apple cake, or oatmeal apple scone, or throw together a quick crumble enhanced on one occasion with quinces.  It is possible to live well for less, with a little help from your friends and neighbours.




 

Blackcurrants by the book

This afternoon I slowly pruned our blackcurrants 'by the book'.  This is one of the benefits of our changed lifestyle - sufficient time to reflect and to act accordingly.  So after having watched their leaves change to an autumn yellow it was time to attend to them.

Followers of this blog will know that we purchased three bushes on arrival in the north west and positioned two of them in the 'wrong' spot.  This therefore was their first full year in better conditions.  The smallest bush is closest to the edge of the border and in a slight wind tunnel.  Nevertheless it was putting up a new branch from its roots.  So I trimmed off weaker branches thereby making sure that the bush was open to air and daylight.  The second bush had grown about twice as much as the others and yielded some tasty fruit this summer.  Not as many weak and crossing branches here.  The third bush was also quite small and received the same treatment as the first.  It too was putting up a new shoot.

If I had had more patience and 'taken it by the book' I would have pruned all three right down to about six inches above the ground and waited two years.  Blackcurrants are tough, however, and they are making the growth now I first expected.  My next job will be to thin out the raspberries, whose space they share, now shooting up all over our first raised bed.

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Nectar point

At first I thought they were leaves fluttering down at random from the silver birches in the park, but then I looked more closely and realised that the brown marbled under-wings were those of the Red Admiral butterfly.  A handful of them have joined the bees I described in my last post in the search for nectar.  I consulted the butterfly book and found that towards the end of summer they will consume rotting fruit.  They also like to visit our Michaelmas daisies.

As the shade comes over our garden the warmth disappears from the daisies, but the butterflies know how to replenish themselves.  They fly up into our high hedge to catch the rays, settle, spread their wings and absorb as much of the solar energy as they need.  Then it's back down to the flowers, uncoiling their long tongues and getting that sugary stuff into their small bodies.  As a diabetic who can require glucose in emergencies I have sympathy with them.  Heat and light, food and flowers.  I need these too. 

Like this season's bees, they may not live much longer.  Some will hibernate over winter, some may migrate.  Most will die.  In spring some will emerge laying eggs on nettles, their food plant, and the process of metamorphosis will begin again.

Bee Friendly

Bumble bees, honey bees and hoverflies of all descriptions this month found our big pink Michaelmas Daisies which we brought from the allotment nearly two years ago.  These insects have an amazing aerial agility in rising up and setting down, inspiration for the miniature machines that have copied their aerodynamic mechanisms.  The stronger ones, those who I expect to survive the winter, buzzed rapidly from flower to flower, seeking for nectar.  The older ones that aroused my sympathy, moved at crawl speed. One battered specimen in particular, its woolly back showing signs of wear, clung on to a single flower long after the others had flown.

Bees do not live for ever.  Every generation and kind of bee that reappears and reproduces after the winter gives me cause for rejoicing.  I hope the vigorous ones tuck themselves away in cracks, crevices and fallen logs until the warmer weather.  As autumn advances I expect our daisies eventually to die down to  shoot up in spring, and also our Echinacea which was yet another bargain buy from the upmarket garden centre, grown by a Yorkshire nursery and labelled 'perfect for pollinators' by the RHS.  If all goes well next year, we shall split both perennials and there will be more landing platforms for these marvellous creatures, to feed themselves and to sustain life.

Propagation, Potting and Positioning

It is heading towards the cooler seasons of year up here in the north west when thoughts turn to propagation and re-potting.  In his newly-tidied shed, augmented by my family's birthday tool rack, my husband has a neat row of penstemon cuttings on the bench (my birthday present) duly dipped in rooting hormone and labelled and a terracotta pot of variegated geranium cuttings (pelargoniums) from our display at the front.  According to the RHS magazine the penstemons should take about a month to root.

Repositioned next to the greenhouse are our two blueberry bushes which have been potted on into larger containers in a mixture of existing ericaceous compost and home-grown stuff.  It was no surprise that the smaller of the two produced smaller berries and had much less extensive roots than the other.  Both were purchased at the same time and my hope is that the weaker one will recover in improved soil.

Later on when the tomatoes have finished, we will take the parent geraniums into the greenhouse for the winter and pot them in the big containers we bought for the squashes.  (Not a good year for them, unfortunately).  The fuchsia I bought from the charity shop a year ago which we would ordinarily bring in, will stay where it is in the front to see if it survives outside.  Back by the front porch are our bargain reduced cyclamens which spent the summer in a dry shady place.  Like most superstore plants they must have been pumped full of nutrients to achieve last year's large white and pink flowers.  They have now reverted to a normal striped pink and white.  But they've come through a season.  Throw-away gardening in our present culture is about instant display.  But here, let's see what survives and thrives.

Sunflower Seed

Swaying in the strong breezes of our front garden and supported by canes are the six sunflowers that we have grown from seed this year which shelter behind the hedge in the warmest spot. They are from one packet, so although the flowers are single or double, the common shade is a strong lemony yellow.  I am glad to see that they attract bumblebees.
  
Hidden in the herb area of the back garden this year is a sunflower that came in the compost.  That is not strictly true; we chucked it into a compost bin after a Sunday morning guided meditation and prayer.  It is not actually a cultivated variety, but came from a packet of birdseed.  (This church is not richly endowed.)  It germinated among our salads in the veg-table and was transplanted to its present spot.  It may or may not catch up this season sufficiently to flower.

Meanwhile, we shall leave the heads on our front garden ones to see if we in turn can provide our own home-grown bird seed.  In the warm south the parakeets descended from the cemetery upon the sunflowers that grew up randomly and in profusion on our plot from the communal compost and stripped them bare.  The nearest parakeets to us are in Chorlton Water Park, Manchester and have not ventured this far north.  Well, regardless, we will feed whatever turns up. 



 

Garden Pets

My husband received a charming and whimsical card on his 60th birthday depicting a gardener and three cats behaving themselves very nicely on an allotment.  This set me thinking about gardening and pets.  

We have no pets because we enjoy the bird life of our back garden.  Our resident blackbirds become tamer every year: last month I eyeballed a young one sneaking under the netting for a raspberry.  We are also regularly visited by pigeons, collared doves, robins, now starting to sing their autumn songs, sparrows, bluetits and the occasional wren.  We do not use insecticides, and any snails we find are thrown over the hedge into the park.  Cabbage white butterflies frustrate me, but I reason that caterpillars only attack weak plants and can be quickly dealt with.  Leaf miners annoy me but I accept this is the price I pay for organic spinach and cut out the affected bits.  

We have at least three frogs in the front and back borders: one medium large and two small; ants who have avoided nesting under the greenhouse this year, and bats that I see at dusk.  The house martins who nested up the road have left for Africa, another indication of the changing seasons.

No cats.  My allotment experience of cats is not of well behaved moggies who sit in wheelbarrows, rather cats who dig holes in the middle of vegetable beds and then poo.  Cats are not welcome.  Having said that, I met a charming animal at a barbecue this weekend who follows her owner around the garden.  She looked like a neat and respectable black and white cat, a paragon of good behaviour.  Our hosts' veggie plot was doing well.  I hope my assumptions are correct.

Vegetables in a cool climate

This month last year, thanks to a memory prompt from social media, I note that we were taking out our broad beans and sowing kale.   At present, the beans, though now succumbing to a form of 'rust' are still going and sending out fresh shoots from the base.  I'm going to leave these a little longer and see if we get a worthwhile second harvest.  Then I'll be in search of the next autumn-sown vegetables to fill these beds.

Our raspberries, netted against our bold blackbirds, are continuing to do well in their second year, and they also are beginning to flower on what should be next year's canes.  Our blueberries (in pots) are faintly purple - nets will be required in the next fortnight.

Our tomatoes are slow.  My husband has moved them into the open outside the greenhouse and tells me he can see them changing into a different shade of green.  The greenhouse is now home to a butternut squash grown from saved seed.  It is producing male flowers but as yet no female flowers are opening.  Fortunately our winter squash, positioned under our bay window, are now beginning to yield courgette sized fruits and this week I used them in an Indian-inspired soup with lentils and the broad beans.  

Things up here take their time; I am slowly adjusting to growing vegetables in a cool climate.

Keeping an eye on salad

About a year ago we purchased what I have named a 'crib' but the manufacturers label as a Veg-Table.  It does indeed look like a small manger, raised up to about waist height with the dimensions of a largish square coffee table.  One of the ideas that sold it to me, for a quite considerable sum, is that the depth of soil will help to grow larger veg.

With this in mind, we lined it as per the instructions, filled it with shop compost and sowed lettuce 'Arctic King' in the hope of overwintering salad.  We left it outside on the back patio at one end of the greenhouse, in the sun, and waited.

Alas, Arctic King failed to thrive.  It was time for a rethink.  First of all, wrong soil.  It seemed not to contain enough nutrients for the winter period and beyond.  So my long-suffering husband emptied it all out, and proceeded with his 'patent mix' of horse manure and partly broken down leaves added to the existing shop compost and turned by hand.  Then it was time to man-handle a very bulky wooden structure across the lawn and on to the smaller patio next to the raspberry bushes where, as I have noted, there is summer sun from noon onwards.

I sowed four rows - rocket, mixed salad leaves, beetroot and carrot and am glad to say that they have all germinated, although not growing at quite the speed I would hope.  I say this, because I go out and look at them every day.  The weather has been colder than usual for the season, but here is my future salad, not at the rear of the garden where I could forget it, and not in a raised bed hidden behind the broad beans where snails play havoc.   I am keeping an eye on it.

Strawberries

A local supermarket is selling cardboard punnets of deep red strawberries (no clingfilm) bearing the legend 'picked today at 6.00 am in Kirkham'.   My thoughts go out to the agricultural workers of the Fylde who on hearing the dawn chorus rise up to gather and pack this lovely fruit.  I am tempted to buy them but remember that to pick strawberries I have only to go out of my back door.

It was not always so.  Strawberries grew well on our allotment, once again a substantial donation from H and an additional plant of the giant variety brought from Cheshire.  But they suffered from several drawbacks.  Firstly, as I posted at the time, I ignorantly planted some of them in a frost pocket and neglected to protect them adequately.  Cold weather caught us unawares in the warm south east and frost blacked out the centres.  There was nothing for it but to pull off the damaged flowers and wait for the succeeding buds to grow.

Secondly, as with the cultivation of our raspberries, hot dry summers often prevailed.  This meant many trips to the water tanks.  Weeds were also a perennial problem, particularly as I did not think to clear the ground, put down weed suppressant black fabric and finally make slits in this for the strawberry plants.  Too mean to buy fresh straw, I sifted out dry stuff from the communal manure heap for the ripening fruit to rest upon and was surprised when meadow grasses germinated.  Too sentimental to save only the strongest plants I let runners proliferate and found them growing into the grass paths or tangling over each other in the centre of the bed.

But limited space once again helps me to concentrate on good growing.  We have a healthy selection of plants from my sister's.  They are in rich soil, against a wall, sensibly spaced and netted against the pigeons.  They are late by southern standards but in traditional time for Wimbledon.

Home-grown strawberries, home-made cake, a sprig of mint and for cream substitute some Holmfirth yogurt.  Enough is as good as a feast. 

Raspberries

Raspberries are one of my favourite soft fruits.  I could claim to start with an advantage because my Dad grew them, and my grandfather too, but at an early age I was more concerned with eating than learning about cultivation.  So when H on our allotment gave us some surplus raspberry canes I put them in the first spot that came to mind, planted far too deep, on a sunny windy corner and wondered why they took so long to establish.  I should have observed her originals next to the boundary fence, shaded by blackthorn and wild plum trees.

Another donation was from the late B who gave us his autumn flowering yellow ones with the comment that they hadn't done much.  We put these behind our large greenhouse in a more sheltered position and happily they thrived, once winning a prize.  Most years they were fine, but raspberries do not appreciate excessive heat.  I mulched them most years but in the hot summers of the south east they sometimes dried up before they were fully ripe.

Raspberries grew in our orchard plot, under the apple trees.  This should have been a good position, except that these bushes, possibly old, seemed to have reverted to a wild state.  Every year I would hope that with additional manure and care they might improve.  However their fruit was consistently small and squashy.  Rather than pull them up it was easier to leave them for the birds.

Up here, we drove to the agricultural college and bought ten new canes of a Scots variety.  As I have previously noted, I planted five in an inappropriate position and my dear husband had to move them.  One that he could not uproot remains as a testimony to my romantic ideas of interweaving fruit and flowers.  It is not doing well.

On the other hand the ones that we planted or relocated are showing promise. They are in partial shade, enjoying afternoon sun.   They are visited by bumble bees, have set fruit and are also putting up next year's canes.  The next challenge, of course, will be not to damage them but to successfully net the fruit against all the garden birds we have hitherto regarded as pets. 
 

Walled Garden 2 - Compost Bins

Composting regulations arouse strong feelings and can lead to compliance or non-compliance.  The walled garden where we volunteered had extensive bays, situated towards the bottom by the glasshouses.  Each bay had a notice forbidding or encouraging the gardeners to place particular items there.  Perennial weeds and other bulky woody items went to a separate pile and were burnt at a later stage.  It was a bit of a bind to wheel a barrow uphill and out of the walled garden to find this dedicated spot, but when twenty or so other volunteers are also present it is harder to cheat.  It is also easy to become censorious on finding that some person has chucked in a nettle or a buttercup for example.  Sometimes food items which I regarded as perfectly able to be salvaged found their way onto the heap, beetroot or over-large and woody parsnips for example which would not sell at the coffee break, and, after checking, these usually found their way home with me for soup.  Those who I will entitle 'guardians' of the heaps had strong views, and were best treated with tact and discretion.

Unfortunately our allotment site had notices aplenty but little compliance. Looking back, I attribute the latter to the lack of a formal allotments committee.  Our skip, after one final clear-out, was withdrawn by the council because its use was being abused by persons who brought household items such as old paint cans, large items of wood and broken clothes racks and deposited them there.  The compost areas, unlike the walled garden ones, had no notices instructing us to, 'fill this bin now' and so tended to be filled in a haphazard fashion.  Woody stuff which does not break down easily, such as vine prunings, regularly found its way there along with blighted tomato plants which is an insult to good plant hygiene.  Individual plot holders decided when best to take compost out of the bins.  The notices besought us to compost as much as possible on our own plots, but in some cases to no avail.  And because of local government regulations on smokeless zones, burning was traditionally limited to one night a year - Bonfire Night.

Up here we have our own three bins at the back of the garden.  Once again we are faced by a local government challenge - we have paid for the first time for our garden waste collection, but the council will no longer collect food waste.  Should we compost this ourselves?  This is under discussion.  Meanwhile we have a household system that works well.  My husband is in charge of composting and lets me know which bin to fill first.  We source horse manure from the local constabulary and leaves from the church garden where we volunteer.  He is in charge of inspecting, layering and turning this. Perennial weeds and woody stuff like hedge cuttings still go in the garden waste collection.  All is on a small scale - so far so good.  

Walled Garden Part 1 - Long Border

It was H on our allotment who introduced us to the gardens of Copped Hall, a private charitable trust (open to the public) situated close to Epping, Essex.  H volunteered, taught and gardened there and such was her enthusiasm that she persuaded us to join.  So we took early communion and then drove up the road to report for Sunday morning's task.  It was (and still is) a great place to make friendships, pull weeds, enjoy the sun and shelter from the rain, eat home-made cake and buy home-grown vegetables.

H's special responsibility was the long border outside and along one of the high brick boundaries of the walled garden.  It has an amazing collection of herbacious perennials and roses in the style of the last Edwardian owners of the mansion which is still in the process of being restored.  As I thought about all the hard work that has gone into Copped Hall, I looked out at our own miniature 'long border' which brings me so much pleasure.

Like our volunteer work, this involved some cutting back as my husband tackled our clematis Broughton Star, finding a poorly rose bush and some delphiniums to be moved them up the border to a sunnier spot.  We learned about the dry spot in the shade of the hedge at the bottom and planted herbs and a broom tree from my sister.  We had plants to introduce - our honeysuckle and the michaelmas daisies from a gardening customer.   We found things that we wanted to keep such as the camellia, the peonies and the pink geranium sanguinium and we bought others in keeping with the style of the border - a lavender cutting, pinks from the superstore (rescued once again) and gifts from our neighbours - the sweet williams that are now coming into flower.  

Our long border will never rival its bigger role model, but it is fragrant, old-fashioned and colourful.  And I don't have to drive a fourteen mile round trip to appreciate it.
 

Intentionally Intensive Gardening

Adjustment from three allotments to one section of our back garden has proved to be slow.  I have some good memories of our successes in the first year.  There were the squashes by our bay windows, cherry tomatoes bought in from our local college, french beans, broad beans, herbs and our soft fruit.  But things are getting better.

This year my husband sowed his own tomatoes and the greenhouse is full of those reliable standards Harbinger and Moneymaker.  The squash are back - both our own 'allotment' variety and seeds saved from a supermarket butternut squash have germinated.  Basil is now thriving on our kitchen windowsill and parsley in terracotta pots on our patio.  I rescued a sturdy mint from the superstore for a pound and it is coming on well.  Broad beans are flowering at last, pollinated by the bumble bees which I suspect are nesting in a bird box next door (I shall not be mentioning this to our neighbour).  And there is the always reliable rocket.

This year, I am not quite so much 'wait and see'.  I do not have the luxury of space.  I am uprooting weak plants such as sickly beans, and watering healthy ones.  I am pulling up rosebay willowherb whenever I see it.  I am successionally sowing rocket so there is more to follow on of this lovely peppery salad.  I shall be netting our soft fruit promptly and not providing a feast for the wood pigeons.


Once I had a dream that we would pioneer back garden vegetable growing.  In this era people would ask us and we would show them just how much can be achieved with application, rotation and a selection of raised beds.  But whether that happens or not, I shall keep on gardening intentionally and intensively.

 

Pansies, Violets and Violas

There have been times this month when I thought my sister's violas were never going to come into flower.  Other varieties in our garden did not share this problem.  Tiny wild violets in our lawn and borders emerged in sunny weather.  In fact they spread so easily into our veg. beds that I am tempted to treat them as weeds.  Seed heads from last year's pansies chucked towards the hedge germinated among the daffodil leaves in our front border and now look as decent as shop-bought ones.  A reasonably priced tray of traditional pansies from the superstore with their smiling 'faces' established themselves in the border by the back patio and now bask in early morning sun.  But my sister's violas, a packet of seed from the Netherlands have taken a long long time.

My husband started them in the house in our back 'den' on propagator trays, not heated in this case, but covered.  They had a good germination rate and he pricked them out into pots and put them in our unheated greenhouse.  They seemed to stay there for weeks and weeks.  Eventually he moved them out on to staging by the greenhouse to harden off.

At last, this week, we have noted the first tightly furled purple flower buds.  This is encouraging since they will be going to a warmer coastal climate very soon.  My sister is going to need plenty of pots.

Would I do this again for our own benefit?  I am not sure.  It is so convenient to drive to the superstore for a splash of colour and instant results.  I am more used to growing vegetables from seed than flowers.  My husband, with his patience and nursery background has done this sort of thing before.  Just as the test of home grown veg. is in the eating, so the test of home-grown bedding plants is going to be in the flowering.  We will wait and see. 

Gardening Tips - From Fife to the Fylde*

This April has seen an upsurge in our activity attributable to our recent viewing of a programme on BBC I-player.  Climate and conditions looked familiar (even though they are several hundred miles to the north of us) and thus a handy tip from the Scottish Beechgrove Garden prompted a search for bio-degradable pots. I have now sown broccoli and carrots in these in the potting shed, to be transferred to the greenhouse once they have germinated.  With our shorter growing season and cold soil the idea is to give these vegetables a head start before planting out.

The geraniums formerly overwintering in the greenhouse are now planted in the front garden, and the strawberry plants from my sister have been moved.  So all our permanent fruit is in the back garden.  The strawberries are in a long narrow bed next to our wall where I hope they will enjoy the mid-day sunshine.   The geraniums are sheltered by our front hedge and we hope they will benefit from the heat of the surrounding pavers.  We toyed with Beechgrove's idea of growing salad intensively among pavers, but it seemed too much of an upheaval (literally), so rather than creating a pattern of extra veg. beds in our front we are sticking with squash in containers under the bay windows.  My hopeful husband has sown saved seed of butternut squash and winter squash in the aforementioned bio-degradable pots.  These are 'heavy feeders' so last week we made a return visit to our source of free horse manure which is now mixed and ready to go.  

I am also delighted that the radish seed I saved from the allotment has begun to sprout next to the rocket.  Today I thinned the rocket for our first taste of home-grown micro-leaves.

*  Finally, we aren't actually located in Lancashire's famed lowland farming country - The Fylde.  But it is only about six miles to the boundary.  

Forget-Me-Nots

We were very familiar with Forget-me-nots during the time we gardened for a living.  Along with bluebells they were the kind of common plant that customers either loved or instructed us to remove, particularly once they had flowered and become straggly. They don't last long in water either.   But they look good massed together outside.

Our back border is now full of them, bringing welcome colour to this grey spring.  I think I could become fond of forget-me-nots.  Like the primulas, sweet william and bellis perennis (daisies) amid which they are springing up, they are resilient and easy to grow perhaps because they are not far removed from their ancestors our native wildflowers.

Later as summer comes our border will have the cottage garden look - hollyhocks (from seed), lavender (from cuttings), michaelmas daisies (from the allotment) poppies, peonies, and a cornflower mix sent to us by G and M which we will inter-sow among the perennials.

Simple and colourful - it seems to be the rule for garden survival up here in the north west.  

 

  

Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme

Parsley: On Sunday afternoon I decided it was finally warm enough to sow parsley in the greenhouse.  Last year's curly leaved parsley was not a great success, therefore when this year's germinates it is going to the front, where it is warmer and drier.

Sage: This herb came from the college garden shop up the road, where they were selling four plants for a fiver.  I tried it in the cavity wall but it did not thrive, possibly too windy and again not enough sun.  My husband moved it to the most sheltered spot in our back garden adjacent to the greenhouse where I am glad to say it is recovering.

Rosemary: One of our 'rescue' plants from a local superstore. It is now situated in the same sunny herb patch as the sage.  It has come back with minimal brown dead bits.

Thyme: I bought two thyme plants from the college, a green one and a golden one.  The green one (lemon scented) is fine; the golden one, like the golden sage before it, is struggling in the cavity wall bed.  I have another 'rescue' thyme from the supermarket (alpines selection - somewhat surprisingly) and another green one grown from seed.  All in the same spot along with a golden oregano from the same superstore - a bargain at a pound and now flourishing. 

I look at our little square of herbs approximately two feet by two feet and remember a former customer with an ornamental fishpond surrounded by paving where thyme grew in profusion among the cracks.  This was something of what I was trying to recreate here by placing it in our low cavity wall bed.  Only the green thyme has spread out of the bed and over the wall as I hoped.

This place constantly makes me evaluate what works and what does not work.

 

Robust and Reliable Rocket

It is now the first full week of April and our rocket has begun to germinate.  It's currently the most hardy occupant of our raised beds no doubt because of its previous success on our allotments.  There is no sign of the broad beans which I sowed at the end of last month (new season's seed); nothing from the beet spinach or ruby chard (the remains of last season's - fingers crossed).  However, the rhubarb now in its second year is doing well.  

Radishes, broccoli, beetroot - the gift of our friends G and M  - it is  at least a month until I think of sowing these.  I am resisting the urge to sow them now so that I can point out a little green line of leaves when they first come and visit us.  Overwintering lettuce - staggered through the cold in the 'crib' by the end of the greenhouse and I intersowed the remainder of last year's salad leaves among them.  Borlotti beans (saved from the allotment two years ago) are now in the warmth of the potting shed.

Violas for my sister have been potted on by my husband and are in the greenhouse - so far so good - and most of our geraniums from last year are coming out of their dormant winter period. 

Meanwhile the sun shines amid intermittent blustery showers and daffodils which would be surely over in the south cheer our front bed.  Results come more slowly up here, are more hardly won.  Let's hope they are longer lasting too.
  

Fruit in the rain

There may be a few signs of an early spring around us: the first yellow celandines in ditches, snowdrops in our back border, but I am relieved to say that the apple trees in the lawn are still dormant.  The rain water that washed up and back again from the park appears not to have damaged them and these young trees needed minimal attention in December/January.  I took off one small twig that was growing at an odd angle downwards.  I haven't bothered to prune the blackcurrants, or our two new blueberry bushes that have been potted up a size in the correct compost and have been placed in a warm spot by the greenhouse.

Out in our front garden the strawberries sit above the water-table on a mound formed by my husband.  We go for local walks in brief sunny periods where early and amorous birds sing in the woods.  I look out of my window onto sodden grass and embroider stylized fruit on a small canvas square, strawberries flowering and fruiting in cross stitch - in a world where slugs do not strike, birds do no damage, frost brings no blight and damp does not rot.

Forced rhubarb

January is the season for Yorkshire forced rhubarb and our local supermarket had some on the 'reduced for quick sale' counter.  I picked up the rhubarb at once - my husband enjoys it, it was a bargain, I love red and coincidentally a soft cardigan I bought a day later in the January sales almost matched it.  So I made a crumble at speed using the microwave.

I don't think that I would ever force our own rhubarb which is now beginning its second season in our back garden.  Forcing is not recommended for newly established rhubarb and repeated forcings may weaken the plant.  Our rhubarb, misled by the mild winter poked a few inches above the surface of the ground and then stopped as hail showers fell as forecast.

In the warm south, my husband brought me great thick stalks from a customer whose rhubarb seemed to thrive on neglect. I used to manhandle the cooking scissors to cut it into thick green chunks.  On arrival here we planted ours in as close a position to hers as we could remember, and hope for the same results. 

We polished off our crumble pretty quickly.  Forced rhubarb is fine for a treat, or for those customers who can pay full price.  It is tender, unlike our former customer's, and sweet.  It doesn't go very far.  I think I shall be waiting until midsummer for ours.

Collecting kindling

Yesterday I found myself tidying our church garden, picking up the ash branches that fell on the lawns in the recent storms.  They were thick and knobby like fingers and I snapped them to fit into the brown recycling bin.  

At home, the birches had shed their fine twigs in the gales.  They were carried on the rainwater that comes up and then soaks away from our garden and lay washed up along the edge of the lawn like flotsam and jetsam on a miniature beach.  

On the wall in our dining room is an old picture that belonged to my grandparents, depicting a scene close to Roughlee. There must have been watercolours like this in many a municipal gallery.  A young woman in a red blouse, black skirt, stout boots, clean but tattered pinafore is dragging a large branch down the grass and sedge of an autumnal hillside.  A less distinct male figure behind her hauls an even larger fallen tree.  The sky is clouded, it looks as if it will rain

Sitting before a coal fire, safe in a stout terrace, I imagined my grandparents contemplating this portrait of the romantic poverty of earlier generations, as I in turn looked eastwards down the terraced streets to the wooded slopes above the Ribble.   

  

Sunlight falling on alders

Sunday afternoon winter walks resumed this week to the benefit of my blood sugar levels.  Our intention is complete Preston's Guild Wheel in sections, but this time instead of joining it close to home we took the car, parked up and walked for a little way beyond the M6.

Winter walks bring me so much pleasure. The presence of sunlight is paramount, the low rays of the declining sun pierce the clouds and fall like a spotlight on the deep red twigs of alder trees, birches and hazels.  There is the sound of running water in the brooks which to my relief in this area have not broken their banks.  There is the joy of wearing wellington boots, squelching through mud and detouring up rutted tracks without a map but still with an eye to the landmarks -  motorway, farms and the wooded valley on the right.  

We splashed on towards some outbuildings, located the Guild Wheel and walked a section to complete our circuit.  It then began to rain again as I scrambled over a rivulet to reach the driver's seat.  I am a lowland person, not for me the heavy weather gear, the kit, the O/S maps, the compass and mint cake.  I like the familiar Sunday afternoon, complete with exercising dogs and cyclists and the prospect of toast and tea.