under the brambles

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the English are obsessed with the weather.  This could indeed be because we are a bunch of tongue-tied social inadequates, finding in the subject of whether it is raining, or was raining, or what time it is due to rain later, a safe topic with which to bridge those anxious moments of interaction with strangers.  It could be because we have so much weather, and not just climate.  Imagine living in the middle of a huge continental landmass where it is either extremely hot and humid, or else snowing.  You would feel pretty stupid commenting at the supermarket checkout that it is really hot today, when it was this hot yesterday and last week and will be until October.  Or it could be partly because we are a nation of gardeners.

When you are a keen gardener, weather matters a lot.  What is it doing to your plants, and can you get outside to work on the garden?  I managed to squeeze in two bursts of bramble bashing today, an hour after breakfast before the rain arrived, and another couple of hours after lunch when it had gone.  Lucky I'm working at the top of the garden where the soil is light, as even so it is churning to mud under my feet.  I tried to ignore the morning's rain when it first started, but it got to the point where I couldn't pretend it wasn't raining.  I badly want to get this entire area clear this side of Christmas, before the bluebells start coming through, then I can start planning how I'm going to replant it, but after last winter I would very much like not to go down with a cold that drags on for months.

I have found a box plant looking remarkably healthy underneath the Rubus cockburnianus.  It is a slightly paler shade of green than I'd normally expect with box, but bushy and not at all drawn. One spindly and solitary stem is all that remains of a Danae racemosa.  Still, one shoot proves it is alive, and the Burncoose website does warn it can be slow to establish.  I hope it recovers now it is not being over-run with ornamental bramble, as a replacement from Burncoose would set me back seventeen quid.  It is an evergreen shrub with leaves like slender bay leaves, which you might guess from its common name of Alexandrian laurel.  The BBC website (why on earth does the BBC run a plant finder website?  No wonder critics of the corporation say it has got too big) rates the required skill level to grow Danae as 'experienced'.  Oh dear.  I really should not have let brambles grow all over it.

There are two clumps of hellebores as well, looking somewhat unimpressed by the way things have turned out so far, but I daresay they'll perk up now they've been liberated.  There's a clump of plain green arum, but I'm not even sure I planted that, since I generally go for the variegated, spotted sort.  There are a couple of clumps of what I think are Tellima grandiflora, which is a rumbustious self seeder but pretty, and as the Crocus website says useful because it will put up with dry shade. The Tellima can stay for now, but the wild white dead nettle is going to have to go when I get to it.  It ran far too much last summer, smothering other plants in its path.  The primroses are happy enough under some ordinary brambles, and there should be some daffodils under the primroses, which are probably fine.  There used to be a few choicer woodlanders but it is probably safe to assume that they have disappeared without trace, though I might get a nice surprise next spring.

Do not plant Rubus cockburnianus.  That's all I can say, really.

Addendum  Last night's supper was not great.  No fault with Lyndsey Bareham's recipe for South African stewed lamb, which I've done before, but mine and Waitrose's for using what turned out to be absolutely rubbish stewing lamb.  Sometimes Waitrose have small packets of lamb steak that make great casseroles, but last time I visited they hadn't, and since the recipe specified stewing lamb I bought a packet of something labelled as such.  I could see that it had bones in it, but thought that since meat from close to the bone is meant to be the most flavoursome the stewing lamb would be fine once it was stewed.  When I opened the packet the bone seemed to go further than it had appeared to from the outside, and by the time it had finished stewing the meat had disappeared almost entirely.  Worse still, little pieces had fragmented off the bones into the juice. If there is one thing the Systems Administrator dislikes more than another it is small bits of bone swimming around in his supper.  I'm not madly keen on it myself.  Lesson learned, no more packets of bone-in stewing lamb.  If there are no steaks to be had I'd better revert to a menu plan B, probably chicken breasts stewed with tomato and rosemary.  It works every time.  Luckily there was plenty of apple pudding and custard left over from the previous day, which redeemed the situation since the SA likes apple pie almost as much as he dislikes floating bone fragments.