Utensils

 I am taking an extended break from knitting and have pacified my knitting buddies by drawing hand-knitted seasonal soft toys as a record of Christmas 2024.  I can turn to my sketchbook and remember our autumn meetings together in a corner of the pub - although I haven't attempted real people yet.

I have a new topic: small utensils.  For the last couple of days I have been sketching odd items from the kitchen drawer.  These have been in our family for several generations and are the kind of bric-a-brac seen in a local antique shop causing you to exclaim that they seem familiar or regret that they were too easily disposed of in the last century.

So far I have attempted a porcelain pipe for pastry pies - to let the steam out; an apple corer, an old fashioned potato peeler, a knife-sharpener that designates itself 'loyal services' with a patent number I am unable to decipher; a pastry wheel for decoration and prinking crusts; an ornamental three-pronged fork - EPNS because my family could not regularly afford sterling silver; nutcrackers and a 'pusher' which would be given to a weaned infant to encourage them to manipulate solid food.

These objects charm me by their solidity, their fitness for purpose as they sit comfortably in my palm, their craftsmanship and their ornamentation which I discover every time I attempt to draw accurately, according to the book, what I see and not what I think I see.  Even the EPNS fork and the 'pusher' have delicate art nouveau patterns on their handles which is very difficult to reproduce in two dimensions.

The challenge of still life, according to the art book, is to position them together, having mastered them individually, and assign significance through their relation to each other.  The other really hard aspect is to learn to draw the spaces in between them.  

That will require some thought.  So before I embark, in homage to my family and Christmas past, I will attempt the coffee spoons, still in their original case; a present from Coronation Year with all the challenges of light on metal and the folded material in which they sit.

Urban Pond Margins

Pond margins should be places for bulrushes.  They should slope gently to aid emergent frogs and toads in their crawl to dry land. Moorhens should find platforms to build and ducks places to dabble.  Waterlilies should float, anchored in mud all winter long and expand and blossom in the long warm summers.  This is the idyllic picture of the countryside pond in the era before pesticides and fertilizer run-offs.

Sadly our urban ponds do not completely live up to the picture.  The ducks are there, sometimes the moorhens.  The waterlilies flower in summer and the bulrushes shed their fluffy heads in the winter.  But along one margin is an ever-increasing layer of empty plastic bottles and semi-inflated footballs.  

Now I have returned to logging on to social media, the metrics of Meta have clocked my interest in the impact of plastic on the environment.  I click on a video clip and see vast booms trawling the Pacific or Caribbean seas.  Enthusiastic volunteers clean clogged rivers in Indo-China.  Kind fishermen remove netting from entangled dolphins or release orcas and committed locals further up our Fylde Coast clear the flotsam and jetsam.

We do our bit, but only on the landward side with my husband's name as lead litter picker on the list.  We, by which I usually mean hubby, push in to undergrowth and extract squashed, tossed beer cans, vodka bottles, plastic water bottles.  But we cannot and should not tackle the pond, it is outside our guidelines and remit.

We once rescued a straying duckling at the entrance to our road.  It was captured in a dive by my husband and carried in a corduroy cap by me back to the (relative) safety of the pond, cheeping as I walked.  It swam, still cheeping, towards the other ducks as we encouraged it down the (relatively) clean side of the slope.

  

Deck the Strelitzia

As we got out the Christmas bauble box earlier this week I wondered how my husband would rise to the challenge.  I have been leaving the decorations to him for some time...

During our married life we have decorated small artificial trees, larger artificial trees with unnatural branches (from the charity shop), small conifers that ended up finding a home with friends in Greater Manchester; and finally two potted Christmas trees passed on by V, both now defunct exemplifying her oft-repeated phrase 'I kill houseplants'.

Our indoor houseplants are generally in good health. We have a Strelitzia from my family and two Sansevieria that came from a teaching assignment in North London.  Room is more limited in our front room since we acquired our two charity shop two-seater sofas so we had to confine ourselves to the houseplants and the coffee table 

All it needed was a wigwam-like framework of last season's coppiced hazel sticks from the glade, and the requisite shiny ribbon and baubles.  It took my husband most of Tuesday morning whilst I was out knitting and nattering.

I am proud of our sustainable, low-cost and festive houseplants and am trying to persuade my husband to post a picture on his social media.  We have even encouraged a friend in the US, living in a 'condo' with strict regulations to enliven her Ficus or ornamental fig.  This Advent season, begin with what is to hand.

Improvised Feeder - Home Grown Seed

Last week we decided it was time to cut down the sunflowers in the front, although leaving plenty of stalks to support the Cosmos.  Although we are now into November this has begun to flower. The sunflowers were over and we thought the birds might come to inspect and feed on them.  However we have found an intermediate solution which is very satisfying.

My husband took last year's fat-ball container and attached for a base an insert from a microwave steamer.  (We have stopped using a microwave.)  He used four large bootlaces to hang it from the purpose-made pole given to us by a gardening customer more than ten years ago.  The pole is nearer the kitchen window than in previous years because an extension length of washing line is attached to it.  We then trimmed the driest sunflower heads to fit inside the feeder. 

After a slow start the robin was the first to investigate followed by all manner of tits from the park.  The blackbirds cannot perch on the base and have to be content with pecking around on the lawn for seeds that have fallen through it.  The squirrels have tried acrobatic leaps but cannot jump to the feeder from the apple trees.

But it is a joy to watch the tits emerge from a hole in the hedge or fly down from the hazels to the apple trees and from there to the feeder.  They very swiftly peck out a sunflower seed and fly away to split the case to extract the seed amid the safety of the tall trees.

By Bus to Boilton Wood

Last month as part of our anniversary celebrations we decided to go on a local walk.  Unlike our attempt to reach RHS Bridgewater, which was cut short at Chorley, this one proved much more satisfactory.

We began with the bus down to the barracks and then caught another for a short ride to the industrial estate.  I have only ever driven through here before so we remained the last two passengers on the bus to its terminus.  The kindly driver told us to take care (a common local admonition) as we had announced we were going to join the Guild Wheel on foot.  

Once on the path, and evading the occasional keen cyclist, it was easy.  I noted where the track of the old railway to Longridge diverged, but that is a trip for another time in fine weather.  Then it was over the main road, through the Cemetery and down the steep descent through Boilton Wood.  We pushed our bikes down here once, in a summer before the pandemic.

Lunch at the wildlife centre, where we were amused to see a corporate away-day taking place.  There were ducks and a solitary swan but a noticeboard informed us the osprey had flown south.  It was time for us to turn west.  So, under the motorway and on a long stretch next to the river which, though rippling merrily in its shoals, was not proving to be as photogenic as I had hoped. 

A pause on a bench to check readings, and then on again.  

This is the hardest part, for me, of any walk - the period after lunch when I begin to wonder if I have correctly balanced insulin, carbohydrates and exercise and how long it will take to the next bus stop.  We persevered, noting familiar landmarks until we reached the aptly named Watery Lane where streams ran in gullies on either side of the road.  The bus stop, and the bus station were not far away.

I have thought about this walk since then.  It was much easier by bus and foot and we shall be using our concessionary passes to walk other routes.  It was between five and six miles.  We both needed the exercise and this distance is do-able.  There was a sad contrast between the carefully conserved landscape of the wildlife centre and the litter-strewn banks of Watery Lane where I wanted to scoop up the cans and packets into a purple sack.  And the bus was on time, all the way from Skipton.  There's an idea.

Blackberry and Apple

From time to time we 'swop' plants with our neighbour at the end.  We gave her strawberry plants; she gave us a Heuchera and a Campanula for the front border.  We tried our chitted surplus seed potatoes, but life got complicated and we took them back.  However, when she expressed an interest in our Delphiniums we were delighted to oblige.  My husband split a clump and potted them up and we took them over. 

We came home with a thornless blackberry plant purchased from a supermarket at an unspecified time before.  I was not expecting this.  It is tempting fate to announce that there is no spare room for any new plants.  We did have a half barrel/container from the surplus potatoes and two large stakes which were at either end of the blackcurrants along the wall.  It was time to consult our organic gardening books and we (meaning of course my husband) repositioned the stakes, constructed a frame, tied in the old growth and eased the one new shoot upright.

In years to come, and I hope that time is some way off yet, we may not tramp the hedgerows in our wellies as we do now visiting our preferred blackberrying spots - the bushes that catch the sun, the places under sheltering trees, the former field boundaries by the industrial estate.  We will harvest from our very own blackberry without ditches, nettles or thorns.  

Prairie Flowers

This season I added to my repertoire by germinating some free seeds passed on by my knitting buddies.  

The 'poached egg flower' (Limnanthes) originated in California and is supposed to be easy to grow.  In this year's wet and windy summer it took its time to get going but my husband sunk it as a centrepiece in a terracotta pot in the middle of a bedding out plant display and now in the September sunshine it is doing well.  Friends have warned me that it will spread if unchecked.

I thought I was going to have a success with Cosmos but I now realise that I have been over-kind.  The plants are tall with feathery attractive leaves but no flowers.  The friend who alerted me to Limnanthes explained that Cosmos thrives on poor light soils.  We have been feeding them liquid plant food.  We should have left well alone.  We noted an attractive border of white cosmos on a visit to Lytham.  Sandy soil explains a lot.

My third plant is Zinnia.  I did not expect this to do well, as again it is a North American plant which does not enjoy wet and windy weather.  But this time we were right to feed them and they are finally flowering in two pots under the eaves by our front porch.  Definitely one to try again.

As a postscript: every morning I look at my Ipomoea for evidence of flower buds.  These have started to appear within the last fortnight.  Will I see any purple flowers?  We are in a race between the last of the warm weather and the approaching autumn gales.

Insect Watch

The decline in insect populations is a concerning trend for ecologists.  It has reached the notice of the Financial Times Weekend edition (24/25th August 2024) where I read a long article entitled Where have all the insects gone?

I notice the insects in our garden. The fruitfulness of our crops depends on them.  They generally bring me delight and are greeted with enthusiasm and endearments.  So I wondered if I could informally record any changes to insect populations this year.  Our garden is pesticide-free and backs on to a wooded park perimeter, where as I have previously posted, my husband has constructed a 'bug area' from the fallen logs of the Leylandii hedge felled during the Pandemic.

My first observation is that there have not been as many pests.  I loathe Gooseberry Sawfly and there were fewer of these larvae on my gooseberry bushes this year.  As usual I picked them off by hand.  Our moth trap did not trap any Codling Moths around our apple trees, although these are a rarity, for which I am thankful.  My Rainbow Chard seems to have largely escaped leaf mining grubs and has been magnificent.  Cabbage White butterflies are still in evidence and are in courting flight over my Kale.  Again, their eggs and caterpillars are picked off by hand.  The snail and slug populations seem down but not out.  (I continue to re-home them in the park.)

We did not get any wasps nesting close to the house this year and the bumblebees have not returned to their place in the kitchen extractor fan vent for some years.  However there were sufficient bees to pollinate both our apple trees (which are having a good season), our runner beans, blackcurrants and raspberries.  The pair of House Martins that nest around the corner returned to capture aerial insects and feed their brood.  

Butterflies have been rare (apart from the pesky Cabbage White).  There seem to be fewer flies stuck in our kitchen, but plenty of spiders which are trapping small moths.   I am hoping that when our Michaelmas Daisy clump comes into flower that we will see the Red Admirals, Fritillaries and various kinds of woodland butterflies returning.  In the meantime the bees and bumble bees are enjoying the nectar from the Lavender and the Golden Oregano which we always allow to flower.

We do what we can.  Can I encourage other readers of this post to do so too.

Ipomoea/Morning Glory

 Morning Glory is a half-hardy perennial treated as a half hardy annual.  It is in the convolvulus family.  (Before I continue I must advise that according to the seed packet it is poisonous to humans and animals.)

The packet in question came my way some years ago from one of my 'knitting buddies' as a free seed give-away on the front of a gardening magazine.  They  germinated, I planted them against a fence in the back garden and they failed to thrive.  This year I decided to try again.  So once more to the shed where the plants did well.  Then we transferred them to a very large ornamental pot (from my family) and positioned them under the eaves of the front porch.

Such has been our weather that until now (August) these poor little seedlings were a miserable yellow colour, buffeted by the wind and rain, hardly winding around the ornamental ironwork provided for them, conscientiously fed by my husband.  Suddenly however they have picked up and now seem to be all over our rose Golden Showers.  I was slightly disconcerted by this given their previously poor performance but I now discover on consulting The Bedding Plant Expert (1991) that they can grow to between 4' and 10'.  Unchecked they might even reach our ground floor gutters.  However they have still to produce the spectacular large blue trumpet-shaped flowers which Dr D G Hessayon indicates will last for one day but follow in quick succession.  I inspect them every morning for buds.

All this has a certain irony.  On the allotment we eradicated convolvulus/bindweed whenever we found it.  The smallest inch of white root would regenerate and grow speedily.  Its cossetted cultivated relation has been watched over with much care.  As the old saying would lead us to believe -  there is no such thing as a weed, only a plant in the wrong place.

Delphiniums

The tall delphiniums were in the border when we arrived nearly ten years ago now.  They were concealed behind the clematis Broughton Star, and the red climbing rose, so my husband split them and planted a clump nearer to the back patio windows.  Now they are propping themselves up growing through our neighbour's cotoneaster which is fanning itself over the fence or through V's magnolia which she left us before moving to her retirement location.  The magnolia has done well out of the pot and into the ground and there is plenty of scope for the delphiniums.  We are leaving the cotoneaster untrimmed.  

The rest of the delphiniums, both clumps, are either slumped or cascading into the border, whichever description you prefer.  It is not tidy, and it is not how we (my husband) used to do with string and bamboo canes.  But in the extreme weather that we can experience they are blooming for longer and not in danger of being beaten down by heavy rain.  We think that the bees like the easier access too.  

Would we go back to the traditional method?  I think not.  As we grow older our garden seems to be becoming (selectively) naturalistic.  The Jerusalem artichokes have reappeared in the midst of our pulmonaria and nepeta; Californian poppies self-seed.  Wild strawberries are everywhere.  Some weeds I will pull, and in particular an escaped ornamental grass which seems to take over if left unchecked. (My husband feels the same way about the spread of Lily of the Valley.)  So, a quick tidy and time to enjoy the expansiveness.

Easy Peas-y?

Not this year!  My husband is now on to his third attempt with Pea Hurst Greenshaft. 

I began with two shallow trenches in a garden planter at the end of our lawn.  I am keeping records this year in a (charity shop) edition of the RHS Allotment Journal (2010) so that I can compare growing seasons.  These two rows of 15 peas went in on 19th April 2024.  Two germinated.  What happened to the rest?  My theory is that it was either the cold and very wet weather or the cheeky fieldmouse that had lost some of its fear of humans and used to bob around the base of our bird feeder snacking on what fell from the fat-balls.

The next idea was to retain the planter but sow in pots.  It would be simple to transplant the germinated peas from the pots to the soil.   On 10th May my husband did this, netted against the mouse or other marauders and left them there.  Nothing doing.  The peas seemed to have vanished.  

Third attempt on 19th May.  My husband emptied the planter, moved it to the back patio and repurposed it as a hardstanding area.  He sowed around 20 peas in pots and re-potted the two from 19th April.  Success.  They germinated and are now standing above the radiator in the bay windowsill on bright blue plastic plates from the picnic basket.  The intention is to put fresh compost and position them in the planter, initially netted against mice and sparrows who seem to enjoy the growing tips.

In these changing times it will be instructive to pick up the Journal next year and see what I record.  

Overwintering a bedding plant - Nicotiana 'Lime Green'

Strangely we appear to be 'on trend' with the RHS and its April theme of Inside Out Gardening.  We look out onto our patio through a collection of houseplants such as  pelargoniums from various sources, sansevieria from a college where my husband once worked, a strelitzia from my family.   But the prize must go to the tobacco plants, an outdoor variety from seed gifted by a friend that flourishes indoors.  

If we possessed more up to date 'tech' I would take a photo of this and send it to the RHS 'Readers' Letters'.  They were sown in a warm place and planted out in a front bed by my husband.  With their large tender leaves they seemed to be succumbing to slugs and snails so he dug them up and they overwintered in our back room.  Within the last month they have started to blossom and produce lime green flowers.  The sweet faint scent is more pronounced in the evenings 

The practice of using bedding plants as house plants is not without precedent.  Dr D G Hessayon has a section in The House Plant Expert.  (Our edition is thirty years old but the series originally dates back to the 1960s).  The nicotiana he recommends seems to be a more compact version  Nicotiana hybrida.  Ours are growing tall, with support.  I cannot tell if this is the light conditions or just the variety.

I hope we continue to enjoy them throughout the coming months as they flourish in our below average conditions (18 degrees Centigrade).  Modern homes might be too warm to sustain this practice.  I look forward to the RHS revisiting this theme in months to come. 

A Guide for a 'Bad' Birdwatcher

 It was my good fortune this week to find a copy of the American edition (2005, $17.95) of Simon Barnes' book How to Be a (Bad) Birdwatcher displayed in our local charity shop.  At £1.50, in hardback, retaining its original dustjacket it was a bargain.  I think what drew me was the cheeky title and equally cheeky engraving of the little bird on the front and back.

Simon Barnes is almost a contemporary - I checked on the Internet and was relieved to find he is still alive.  He is a journalist and writes in the accessible style of the devotional or self-help guide.  I could reset that enormously loaded opening phrase 'to the greater glory of life' and then read his short pithy chapters with pleasure and profit.

The whole point of a devotional or self-help book is to move to action so I began by taking Simon's advice in chapter six.  We already have a bird book The Mitchell Beazley Birdwatcher's Pocket Guide.  This has probably been in my family since the reprint of 1986.  I picked it up and added my own name in it (in pencil) for continuity.  

Two things struck me when I read this pocket guide more carefully.  Firstly the introduction was extremely sensible and in line with Simon's advice which was not surprising as he has a longstanding connection with the RSPB.  I wonder if the very small print had previously put me off.  Secondly, and this is somewhat galling for a person with a post-graduate teaching qualification, I realised that I had not ever studied the section entitled 'How the Guide Works' or the Species List.  I had been flipping through at random trying to find the Nuthatch for example, and wondering why I landed on page 112 with the Tawny Owl.  

I am so glad that these two books have come together.  In true 'devotional' fashion I already had what I needed but needed a nudge to use it and appreciate its value.

Both will now find a place on the coffee table in our back room where we look out on our bird feeder through the patio windows.  On the floor rests a pair of binoculars but that is a post for another time.

Twigs in pots

Recently my husband potted on the willow twigs that we had rescued from the flailing hedge-cutter at the beginning of January.  They sat in a glass vase in a semi-dormant state until the daylight hours lengthened and then we saw the brown cases fall to the carpet and fluffy grey 'blobs' emerge.  They even put out a few leaves and started to form roots.

There were three twigs that my husband considered worth saving.  These now join a motley collection of twigs in pots on our back patio which I list as follows:

Two small oak saplings from the great tree at the junction of our avenue, a relic of the times, within living memory, when all around us was farmland.  These were probably buried by the grey squirrel before my husband had a chance to shout 'Oy' and rap on the window.

Another willow which came up in the midst of a flowerbed.  I cannot attribute its arrival to the squirrel.  It is a different variety, I think, to the rescued ones and has no 'pussy' buds.

A street tree, from further down the lane.  Possibly squirrel had a paw in this one.  I haven't identified it yet.

A homegrown forsythia cutting.  This will have its final destination in the front hedge alongside the others that J gave us last year.  It is small, but growing green buds.

A homegrown rosemary cutting.  I hope we will eventually be able to give this away.

Three raspberry canes donated by J.  We do have raspberries, but we had a large pot going spare.

As I look out on these from the kitchen window I wonder if we are turning into the kind of older persons that we once gardened for with their miscellanies of assorted pots and saucers for wildlife.  I cannot bear to put good trees into the garden recycling bin, they are too precious.  They will grow.  Another season, I promise myself, no need to take any decisions yet.

Recipe Box

The habit of cutting out and pasting recipes seems have begun with a grandmother whose recipe book was started before her marriage in 1915 (she has written in her maiden name and address).  It is an illuminating piece of social history and deserves a post of its own. It has come out of its drawer and gone back to my family awaiting re-binding,  An earlier great grandmother received from one of her husband's cousins a copy of Mrs Beeton's guide to household management, a fitting gift on her wedding day.

I store most of my recipes in a box inside plastic wallets recycled from the decades when I taught using photocopiable worksheets.  The recipes needed to be kept splash free and legible.  But they were beginning to spill out of the box and escape their category dividers.  So I had a sort out and wondered how my tastes had changed.

Most of them date from ten or more years ago when we lived in London.  Two neighbours would pass women's magazines to me when each had finished and I would cut out recipes and knitting patterns, some of which I still have and have knitted up.  

Economical and tasty recipes (one of the favourite descriptions of the magazine) have stayed in.  The vegetarian section seems to be the largest because I enjoy cooking with pulses and finding good uses for 'stickered' vegetables such as  cauliflowers.  It is so easy to revive these by cutting a slice from the base of the stem and leaving the cauliflower in a bowl of cold water overnight.

I have discarded the glossier stuff that is more time-consuming, the upmarket store magazines trying to sell their pre-packaged ingredients, and almost all 'family dinner' recipes for roast lamb or pork.

I have kept a selection of recipes from our grandmother's book that remind me of the home baking Friday afternoons of childhood - parkin, bannock cake, rice cake, chocolate cake  - and copied them out on recipe cards with their date and provenance.

My slimmed down box now sits happily on the island table of our kitchen, propping up a good selection of cookery books.  I am not proposing to dispose of these any time soon.

Viable Seed 2024

 I noted from the January pages of the RHS Allotment Diary that it was time to select seed for the coming season.  So we had a stock-check and made some decisions on what we would like to grow.  It reads like the fashion advice given in popular broadsheets, namely:

Out go plants that did not thrive last year.  Cucumbers even when transplanted to the greenhouse failed to do well.  Likewise our neighbour's blue green pumpkin which was disappointing when compared to our own saved winter squash.  (It probably does much better on her allotment).

'Must haves': Winter Squash, Runner Beans, last year's discovery Pea Greenshaft, reliable Kale and Swiss Chard. We will try our own saved seed French Beans again, but we are a little too far north for these most summers.  Salads are in particularly oriental salads, lettuce, rocket and my husband's greenhouse tomatoes Moneymaker and Gardener's Delight.

Sunflowers cheer up our front garden, so once again I will grow from saved seed; wallflowers too.  Over to my husband for Sweet Peas.

Best Newcomer Second Early Potato.  This year we will try Jazzy.

Why are we hanging on to these?  This is a question I sometimes pose to my husband.  Why did a friend pass on Catmint when we do not wish to attract cats?  Hollyhocks - the triumph of hope over experience as far as my husband is concerned.  Verbena Bonariensis - now seeding itself unaided into the cracks in our patio paving.  

Feeding the birds

Last Sunday afternoon we watched Disney's Mary Poppins (1964) on terrestrial tv and perhaps subliminally I got the message to 'feed the birds'.  Fat-balls, even at the bargain price of two packs for one, cost considerably more than tuppence a bag and I was initially disappointed to see that apart from the bluetits there was no return on my outlay.  So it was time for a rethink.

Over to my husband to rejig what had been handed on to us to make it more accessible for small birds.  The double cage structure (possibly squirrel-proofing?) disappeared, the inside was retained and what he labelled a 'budgie perch' made of some old garden stick was attached.

Down to me then to re-read the packet instructions and ask him, nicely, to reposition the holder we inherited from one of our gardening customers closer to the hedge to give our avian visitors a better feeling of security.  A few additional pieces of useful string (thanks to my niece) and our redesigned feeder was ready.

This time we have been rewarded.  We have seen a pair of nuthatches, bluetits, coal tits and long-tailed tits plus hedge sparrows.  It is a delight to watch them alight on the landing stick and then balance on the wire. The blackbirds, who are too heavy for the budgie perch, peck around at the bottom eating up the crumbs that fall and then fly to the raised beds and happily turn them over in search of insects.  

The robins are bobbing along our fence.  The woodpigeons roost high up in the trees in the park, coming down to flap about in the ivy.  Long may they remain there.  Unlike Disney's lyricists I do not love pigeons.

PS It has taken the blackbirds less than a day to work out how to land on the perch.