job done

The lecture to the Braintree beekeepers about good garden plants for bees was OK in the end.  The centre of Braintree is so densely packed with small streets that while I could see my destination, Great Square, on the map, I couldn't work out exactly how it connected with the other streets around it.  I presumed that the Sainsbury's car park where I'd been told I could park would be signposted, and there was a superstore marked on the map close to Great Square, so the best thing to do seemed to be to leave plenty of time, follow my nose to Sainsbury (in a metaphorical psychogeographical sense), park, and wander about through any likely looking alleys until I found Great Square and the Constitutional Club.  The car park had notices saying it was pay and display, maximum three hours, cost refundable if you spent at least £5 in Sainsbury, but the first machine was broken with a notice saying use the one in front of the store, and the one by the store turned out to be broken as well.  I asked a security guard inside the store where I could get a car parking ticket.  He seemed a gentle soul, maybe not an obvious candidate for a security guard (the ones at Colchester Hythe Tesco all look like nightclub bouncers), and he didn't know about car park tickets, but took me to the information desk who said the car park was free after six.

The Braintree and Bocking Constitutional Club reminded me of a provincial hotel of thirty years ago, with very patterned carpets, plenty of non-structural beams, and a strong smell of gravy and food that had been boiled into submission.  The Braintree beekeepers meet in an upstairs room featuring an extraordinary wooden chandelier vaguely resembling a cartwheel.  I arrived well ahead of my hosts, but the staff were very kind, and didn't grumble at all about having to unlock the front door to me several times, while I shuttled backwards and forwards getting plants from the car.  It says something about the innate courtesy, or else sheer lack of curiosity of the English, that nobody seemed to notice as I carried boxes of plants and a fairly large Mahonia japonica through a supermarket car park.  The only tables to put the plants on were wooden dining tables, so I covered them with the only thing I had, a pair of towels that normally live in the car to cover the back seats when I'm going to the dump.

I got the plants set out in the order I was going to speak about them, and was ready to roll twenty minutes before the meeting was due to start.  With five minutes to go we still only had about eight or ten people in the audience, then the room suddenly filled.  They seemed to enjoy the talk, and bought a lot of plants.  Since I'm not on commission it doesn't make a great deal of difference to me whether they buy plants or not, but it meant that at the end with a couple of helpers it only took one run to put what was left back in the car.  The tables had gone rather misty looking, towels notwithstanding, so I hope that polishes out and the beekeepers don't get into trouble over it with the club.  I'm not entirely sure they knew what they were getting when they booked me.  Most of the clubs I speak to meet in village halls, which generally have plastic topped tables able to withstand a few plant pots.  The car had not picked up a ticket or been clamped, despite the lack of notices confirming that parking was free after six, so I trundled off home with a great sense of relief that I'd finished all my talks for now without mishap, apart from the tables.  It turned out the Systems Administrator had recorded Monty, so we can watch Gardeners' World and The Sopranos on Sunday night instead.

Addendum  The cats have forgotten that they don't like Haddock, and we have been able to palm off the two tins on them that were left over from the previous fish multipacks.

out and about

I took some bottles to be recycled yesterday, en route to Colchester.  Among them were some empty spice jars, and being a eco-conscious citizen (though not that green or we'd have bought refills instead of new jars) I took the plastic tops off first and put them in with the recycling for collection.  One of the jars must have contained garlic powder, and have not been entirely empty, because it tipped its last contents into the boot of my car.  I drove off last night to a lecture on bee diseases in a rich fug of garlic.

I had expected to see a bee inspector, but must have not been paying attention, because the talk was by my old bee tutor, now president of Essex Beekeepers.  It turned out that we had been going to have a disease expert, but she was temporarily unable to drive following a hip operation.  She has promised to visit us in the summer, bringing with her frames infected with genuine American and European foul brood, so that we can see what they look like.  Thses are about the most serious bee diseases there are in the UK, and if you think your bees have got them you should call a bee inspector.  She has a special Ministry licence to allow her to keep diseased comb on the premises, but I wondered about us, and whether we would have to attend the lecture in paper suits which we then burned.  Last night's talk was about Nosema, a disease of the gut, and Acarine, a disease of what passes in a bee for lungs (trachea, for those of you who remember your O level biology).  They do get rather a lot of diseases, but it doesn't do to dwell on it unduly, since they have been around for millions of years and are probably not about to give up yet.

This morning I set off again, still in a haze of garlic even after shaking out the boot liner, to borrow some plants for a talk I'm doing tonight at another beekeeping division, about bee friendly plants.  I expect it will be alright on the night, but I don't have a good feeling about it in advance.  It's half way across the county, the person who booked me has not confirmed it in writing and left a message on the answerphone saying she wouldn't be there and leaving me the phone number of another person, and the hall they use doesn't have dedicated parking, but it will be OK to use Sainsbury's carpark, then carry the plants up an alleyway to the hall.  Let's hope that I don't end the evening having been fined for misuse of the car park.  And that the Treasurer has been told what my fee is.  Beekeepers are mostly nice people, so it will probably be OK, but for organisation give me a nice bossy WI or long established garden club any day of the week.

One of the plants I borrowed was a Mahonia japonica, already in flower several months early.  This autumn has confused mahonias thoroughly.  My M. x media 'Winter Sun' has been blooming for weeks, not just one or two out of season flowers but a full display.  It will be interesting to see if it does it again at the normal time and this is an extra effort, or if it has just shifted in the calendar.  The M. japonica has a very beautiful scent, which almost managed to overcome the garlic on the way home.  It is very attractive to bees, and I had to shake several off it when I picked it up.

some April flowers

It being the first of the month, I took a turn around the garden to see what was flowering.  By now there are too many to talk about them all in one blog post without it ending up a mere list of names.  In the back garden (an entirely arbitrary choice, it could just as easily been the front) there are quite a few shrubs out, and bulbs and herbaceous woodlanders.  Plants originating from the floors of deciduous woodland tend to flower early in the year, then go dormant in the summer as the leaf canopy closes over them.

Down at ground level there are various primulas and assorted violets.  I was pleased to see a double primrose in a pleasant faded shade of pink still with me.  I think it is 'Dawn Ansell' but it might be an un-named hybrid bought because I liked the colour.  Double primroses tend not to be long lived, and the books talk about dividing and replanting, but I seldom seem to organise myself to find the time.  Three plants of P. vulgaris subsp. sibthorpii, a pink form originating from the Balkans and South East Asia are also looking well.  There are some cowslips blooming in the lawn, mostly raised from seed, though not a great display.  Maybe this is yet to come in a few days, or maybe the past month has been too dry for their liking.  A hybrid cowslip with red centres to its petals, growing in one of the borders, has made an enormous clump.  I don't know if that is the effect of hybrid vigour or of not having to compete with the grass.  The Primula denticulata in the same border look sadly puny, and I'm sure it has been too dry for them, though I wonder if the white one has seeded itself.  These were evicted from a pot where they weren't happy, and I can't remember how many I planted.

The violets are a real hotch-potch.  I have planted a lot of Viola odorata over the years, some of which were named forms, and they have since seeded themselves, so I don't know what most of them are, but they are very pretty.  The little purple leaved V. labradorica purpurea is seeding madly as well, but I don't mind that.  In a large country garden it is useful ground cover.  The violets and primroses are self-sowing into a mossy corner of the lawn shaded by birch trees, which I like in a Primavera, Allegory of Spring way.  I am not a lawn enthusiast.

Also down at ground level, Omphalodes verna is running about happily, forming a dense mat of foliage at this time of year with little blue flowers above it.  The blue form is much more vigorous with me than the white. O. cappadocica 'Starry Eyes' has two-tone flowers that are attractive, but doesn't cover the ground so enthusiastically as O. verna.  Some little treasures have reappeared, such as my Anemonella thalictoides, bought from Beth Chatto, which has anemone-like pink flowers and foliage resembling a very low growing Thalictrum, but it has to be admitted that the best overall garden effect comes from the plants which have spread so that there are lots, or else I could afford to plant lots in the first place.  I think there is more Corydalis solida around now than I remember originally planting, and its soft pink flowers and divided grey leaves look very nice creeping up through other things.

There are not so many Anemone blanda as there were.  Maybe they are not long lived, or the site is not quite to their liking, or maybe they were eaten by whatever ate most of the crocus corms out of the border.  I stick to blue, when I have any, which I prefer to the pink.  However, A. sylvestris are starting to run around to form a goodly patch.  Their flowers are a pure and brilliant shade of white.  A. blanda grow from little nobbly black corms, which one is advised to soak before planting, while A. sylvestris grows from black bootlace-like roots, which run when happy.  Some Erythronium dens-canis are flowering, pink above mottled leaves, and the more vigorous yellow flowered E. 'Pagoda' are getting to the end of their season.  'Pagoda' splits well, once it has made a large clump.  I discovered this when I accidentally dug up a dormant lump of it.  There are some Fritillaria meleagris blooming in the middle of the lower lawn, along with the cowslips, but not many.  Again, it is early for them, but it may have been too dry.

Wandering up the hill, the two flowering currants, one red and one white, are looking good.  I don't know the name of the red one, which was a present.  The white one is 'White Icicle' and has not made as large a plant so far, but has not been in the ground for as long.  They tolerate a fair amount of shade from the hedge behind them once it comes fully into leaf a little later in the season, plus root competition, and the flowers provide good forage for the bees early in the season.  And I think they are pretty, quite apart from the fact that they are long-suffering and useful.

Anyway, that's enough flowers for one evening.

Ribes laurifolium

I said I would return to the subject of Ribes laurifolium.  This is an evergreen ornamental currant, which is just coming into bloom now, so it is ahead of kinds of currant in the garden.  The flowers are individually small, five petalled and faintly fleshy in appearance, held in racemes (a raceme is a simple elongated inflorescence with stalked flowers.  Now you know).  They are a pale creamy greenish yellow, paler than primroses, and they are very pretty in a lush but restrained way.  Bees love them, and looking at the spray I picked for my desk so that I could examine it as I typed I see the base of each flower glistens with what is presumably nectar.  I have never detected any scent, pleasant or otherwise.

It makes a spreading bush, wider than tall.  Mine after some years is about a metre across, and less than that in height.  The leaves are leathery, mid green with toothed edges, about 10cm long, ovate (the broadest part of the leaf is towards the stalk end).  They are not very exciting but make a perfectly pleasant background for other things later in the year.  Gardens where everything is exciting all the time are not very restful anyway.  It will bear a lot of shade.  Mine is between two conifers on the north side of a hedge and never sees direct sunlight.  It is in part of the garden where the water table is high for most of the year, and I don't honestly know how it would do given dry shade.  In this shady corner it makes an open shrub, though healthy.  Some of the ones pictured on the internet are bushier, and I wonder if they're growing in more light.  I've found it good natured and reliable, the main problem being that muntjac like to have a nibble if they can.  A friend who is a good and skilful gardener had no joy with it at all, though she did plant it on her dog's grave.  Maybe it doesn't like rich living, or maybe it is temperamental and I've been lucky.

There were a couple of honey bees out foraging yesterday afternoon when it was warm and sunny, on the dwarf iris and the snowdrops.  They didn't succeed in recruiting many other foragers, though.  Consensus in the hives must have been that it was still too cold and too early.