The Systems Administrator has received another appeal from our alma mater to join the college network, which promotes career networking between old members and keen young graduates. They didn't bother to write to me. It must have reached their database that I've dropped out. Pity, as I should like the chance to network with Robin Lane Fox. He could put in a word for me to inherit his gardening column in the Weekend FT when he retires.
The rain had started in earnest by lunchtime. The Met Office forecast said it would, and the rain radar backed them up. We watched it pass Chelmsford, and continue eastwards. In the field next to us they are still picking lettuces in the rain. A tractor crawls at very slow speed across the field, towing a trailer on the back of which are big plastic trays. The pickers follow behind, harvesting lettuce and filling the trays. Full trays go up into the covered part of the trailer and down come fresh trays. The pickers wear their choice of waterproof clothing and stay outside. They play loud pop music off the back of the trailer as they go, which used to be an eastern European station but today sounds English. At one point the tractor sputtered into silence, and I could hear laughter and ebulliant cries in Lithuanian through the hedge. The music, and indeed the tractor, would be pretty annoying if they were there all the time, but they don't stay by our garden for long. If I were disposed to be grumpy about it I should consider how I would like to be picking lettuces all day in the rain.
The gravel garden is looking cheerful in a dishevelled way. The bulbs have finished, but their place has been taken by field poppies. These started off as pastel selections, and are steadily reverting back to the red ones, a very clean, deep shade which is completely beautiful. There are a few pinks and lilacs left, one of which happily placed itself immediately next to the Phlomis italica. This is a lamb-soft, grey leafed dwarf shrub with soft pink flowers. It was badly hit by the winter and half of it killed, but the missing half has regrown from ground level. I ought to look up how to propagate it and make some more, as it is doing well, and besides being charming in itself is a good foil for louder plants.
Various lavenders are coming out, but I don't know the names of most of them. I'm not good at identifying or remembering different sorts of lavender. I don't know why, but I read catalogues and plant labels and books, and the information wanders into my head and drifts straight out again. I think it is because lavenders are short-lived and I allow them to seed themselves. I am not even sure whether I actually planted my two fattest plants, or if they are seedlings. The lavenders make a nice underplanting for the Genista aetnensis, or Mount Etna broom, which is just opening. This will eventually make a big, airy shrub, practically a small tree. Beth Chatto uses them trained up as trees on only a couple of main stems, but mine desperately wants to be shrubby. I cut out as many branches as I dared last year after flowering, to try to start lifting the canopy and concentrate the plant's energies into fewer stems, but it seems as bushy as ever. The twigs are very slender, a pleasant shade of middling olive green, utterly devoid of leaves, and the whole plant is light and airy. The flowers are bright yellow, but so small and dainty that the overall effect is not brash. They are typical of the pea family, with an upper petal, which on Genista aetnensis is the size of a little finger nail, held upright above a delicate keel and two slim petals hanging downwards. The twig I have picked smells fragrant when held to my nose, a sharp smell that reminds me of spring, more daffodils and violets than roses and honeysuckle.
I don't think the broom really goes with the pink flowered Dierama by the pond, but never mind. I like Dierama, and don't have the space to do rigorously colour-themed areas. The shortest one has flowers of a salmon hue, and I think is D. igneum. The others are D. pulcherrimum and D. dracomontanum, but only one is flowering at the moment, I think D. dracomontanum which is the smaller of the two. The flowers are a purplish pink. Dierama germinate fairly readily from seed and you will find a good choice in the seed catalogues, or you can keep an eye out for seedlings, if you share my insouciance about precisely which species you are growing.
For years there were blue Nigella damascena, or love-in-the-mist, but there are very few this year. Maybe I managed to weed the gravel at the wrong time, but I presume the hard winter hit them. I'll get a packet of seed next spring to top the numbers up. Garden magazines keep giving me packets of mixed colours, but I want the pure blue, so never even open the mixed ones.
The cat is sleeping quietly in one of the armchairs. Fortunately he seems inclined to rest most of the time, but can now put some weight on his bad leg when he does walk around the room. He has been very good, except for one odd episode a couple of evenings ago when he suddenly went mad, and tried to climb out of the window.
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