a garden visit

We went to see the garden at Boxted Mill, which was open in aid of the National Art Fund.  The flier promised a riverside walk with daffodils, plus tea and cake, in the beautiful setting of the Dedham vale, which all sounded jolly nice.  We had a little difficulty navigating the last stretch along tiny lanes, as my car doesn't have a Sat Nav, and the Systems Administrator's hand held Garmin kept changing its mind about the route it wanted us to take, but we got there, guessed correctly that the collection of cars parked in a field were something to do with the open garden, and sat in the car for five minutes to let the hailstorm pass.

The SA's researches on Google before we set out had led to a discussion forum about the porterage rights of canooists at Boxted Mill.  There seemed to have been some difficulties and disagreements with the landowners in the past.  My search had come up with a page on the website of the Dedham Vale Society complaining about an electricity pole at Boxted Mill which apparently dominated (and ruined) the appearance of the landscape.  Boxted Mill was clearly a contentious place.  As we walked back over the bridge from the car park (or field) to the mill we got a fine view of the electricity pole, which is spectacularly ugly, but only visible from limited vantage points.  (The road bridge was built in 1900, and before that there wasn't one, just a foot bridge.  Tow horses had to cross the Stour twice in the course of passing the mill.  Those are my two bits of local history).

The garden walk did indeed take us along the banks of the Stour, and there were lots of daffodils, growing in lush grass.  Some clumps were labelled, and few of them were names I recognised.  I'm not a daffodil buff, but my guess is that quite a few of them aren't currently available for sale, or not easily.  Some had gone over already, but many hadn't, and it was a good display.  Apart from the daffodils there were flowering trees, cherries, crab apples and Amelanchier, many labelled which is always a bonus, a couple of nice Acer griseum, and some recently planted Magnolia and other shrubs, all carefully mulched and fenced to protect against rabbits and other marauders.  All were set among grass, which was left to grow long and already richly mixed with nettles and cow parsley.  Many of the trees showed evidence of past careful pruning and shaping, and some had rambling roses trained up them which were actually going up them, unlike my 'Paul's Himalayan Musk' which always wants to go equally in all directions.  I should say that a high level of horticultural skill and effort had gone into producing such an insouciant air of naturalness.

There was evidence of the strained relationship with the canooing fraternity in the form of notices indicating where they were supposed to enter and leave the river above and below the mill race, and instructing them that they must travel straight on through, and not stop to picnic, or wander about the garden.  These were supplemented by several notices reiterating that it was a private garden and requesting visitors not to use it as a public lavatory.  When we bought our house, one of the things we liked about the position was that it didn't lie on or even near any public right of way.  It must be  very nice to paddle the length of the Stour, and lots of people do, and should be allowed to, but it must be a pain to have them tramping through your garden, let alone relieving themselves in it.

The mill race itself was rather alarming, I thought, with the water rushing over the sill.  We presumed that the house owners must have a close working relationship with the environment agency, and the mill race is all very carefully designed, but there is something frightening about the power and force of water.  The mill itself has gone (there is a very spraunchy house with Gothick windows and a lovely conservatory, and a couple of the kind of curved bow window that builders dread having to repair), but the Tate has a painting of a mill building by John Nash dating from 1962.

The view up the river and across the valley, grazed by white and brown cattle, was pure Constable, and the field next to the garden was occupied by some Jacob sheep, which alternated between grazing and marching about as if they had a secret purpose.  They had dark brown fleeces and white faces, and little white legs twinkling rather comically under the great round mass of brown wool.  Some had horns, but some didn't.  There were two white sheep, one white faced and one black, which held themselves slightly apart from the Jacobs.

The big architectural treat of the day was the waterworks just up the road.  We glimpsed this through a hedge on the way there, but I had another car on my tail, and we gawped as much as we could on the way home, but it was mostly surrounded by a very solid fence.  The waterworks was a piece of unabashed Modernism, presumably interwar, with peeling white paint blowing in the wind.  It was an image straight out of the RA's Building the Revolution.  The smaller buildings scattered around the site (pump houses? chemical stores?) were in the same style.  It would have made the perfect set for a scene in a spy thriller.  When I got home I spent some time trying to find out more about it, but without success.  The whole site must surely be listed, as it's an extraordinary set of industrial architecture to have survived anywhere, let alone in the rural Dedham Vale (I originally said Suffolk, but thinking about it the waterworks must be on the Essex side of the border).  I wish they had an open day.  I'd love to go and have a proper look.

working off the pudding

So, the presents were exchanged, and we are both the happy possessors of some books that we were hoping for, and some that we didn't know existed but like them now we've seen them.  I think the Systems Administrator was genuinely amazed to receive a copy of Revolution and counterrevolution: Class struggle in a Moscow Metal Factory, but in a good way, and I am looking forward to reading The Prince of the Marshes and other occupational hazards of a year in Iraq, though I did start yesterday with Gardens of the World.  It looked a less demanding read, after all that lunch, and it has nice pictures.  The big tabby tried to eat the string from the gammon, and apart from that all passed off peacefully.

It feels slightly odd not being at work today, it being a Monday, but the plant centre is closed.  Not for us the frenzy of the Boxing Day sales.  Since it was warm, dry and fairly calm, I got on with raking up leaves from the young oak tree in the back garden.  It was planted by our predecessors, not long before we moved in, and we always call it 'the little oak tree', although 18 years on it is not very little.  The leaves hung on until not long before Christmas, then the strong winds took them off and blew a lot of them into the borders, which is slightly irritating as I want them to make leaf mould, and it is far quicker raking them off the lawn than picking them out from among the plants in the beds.

Raking is good post Christmas lunch exercise.  I have a plastic lawn rake with broad tines, that can't spear leaves on their tips.  The secret is to grasp the handle with your palms and the flat, palm side of your fingers, all those bits of the hand that naturally and easily form callous in response to manual work.  Avoid running it over the soft flap between thumb and index finger.  It's easily done without thinking, and at the end of the session you will have removed a disc of skin from your hand, which will sting like hell.  The same thing holds true for holding brushes if you are painting a wall or fence.

I also went on cutting the remains of the long grass at the edges of the daffodil lawn.  That's a job that I started and half finished about two months ago, then got sidetracked into doing other things.  Some of the clippings are green, but I'm hoping that they'll burn OK on the bonfire, mixed in with the brambles I've been cutting out of the wood, and other woody debris.  They look too weedy to put on the compost heap.  The eleagnus hedge has ballooned out over the lawn, and I'm taking that back as well.  I can't believe that one is supposed to cut Eleagnus x ebbingei in late December, and if we have a sudden cold spell (not unlikely in January and February) the hedge may suffer and I shall wish I'd done things more by the book.  With the mild autumn the hedge has just kept growing, and if I leave cutting it until the spring I'll trample on the daffodils.  I haven't seen any emerging daffodil leaves yet, but I expect they'll be through pretty soon, if the weather continues like this.

Blackbirds and robins were singing all around the garden.  It's easy to forget that the worst of the winter is probably still to come.