I'd assumed that yesterday, 21st December, would be the Solstice, but it turns out that 2011 is one of those years when it slips forward a day, due to the earth's orbit of the sun taking slightly more than 365 days. Next year the leap year will get it back where it belongs. Although it was the shortest day it was splendid for gardening, warm, dry, and sunny, and it was a pity that I had to spend the morning shopping for food. We have steak and chips and a giant portobello mushroom (each) for supper on Christmas Eve, always. I think this tradition arose when we were still commuting, and wanted something luxurious and celebratory that was easy to cook, and not pork or poultry given the feast to come. On Christmas Day we have a free range chicken with all the trimmings (except bread sauce. Can't see the point of the stuff). We used to dutifully roast a turkey, until deciding that a whole turkey was far too big for two people, and that neither of us particularly liked it anyway. On Boxing Day evening we have cheese and watch a film. The list of required foodstuffs is thus very precise, never changes, and we are terribly particular about finding everything on it.
I got the gammon to go with the chicken in Waitrose, because they do nice gammons while the Tesco ones are generally rubbish. Then I went to Tesco because I know where things are there, and I thought it would be easier. In Tesco it took me a long time to find any cream that wasn't best before 25 December. My flexible attitude to best before dates does not extend to cream, because off cream tastes disgusting. The only fresh orange juice was best before 23 December, and they didn't seem to have any decent cheese, so I had to wrap the frozen chips up in my work coat and go home via Wivenhoe, to get cheese at the deli and see if the Co-op had any longer dated OJ. It did, also Price's candles, which I wanted to go in the candelabra (it's black painted metal from Ikea. Don't get too excited). Tesco seem to have given up selling what they used to describe as bistro candles. Unwrapping four different cheeses in the deli, and chopping bits off them, and weighing and pricing them, took absolutely ages and there were two people behind me in the queue, and nobody else for them to pay except for the man who was busy serving me with cheese. You can see why supermarkets took off, occasional stock glitches notwithstanding, although the Wivenhoe deli does do very good cheese, and stocks Oud Amsterdam, which I'm especially partial to.
I did wonder how it was that I was trecking around the grocers of north Essex while the Systems Administrator was eating potted cheese in a City chop house with some old mates, but given that I won't play any part in cooking the lunch, apart from making the rum butter and maybe offering to peel the sprouts, it only seemed fair. And I get very neurotic if we don't have the right kind of stuffing, so it's probably better if I buy it. There was one year we found we'd bought redcurrant jelly instead of cranberry sauce, which was a blow, but I was very careful today.
It was a pleasure and a relief to go out into the wood after lunch with the secateurs, saw and pickaxe, and get on with tackling the brambles and the rhododendron stumps. I got one stump out, but that was an easy one. I think a branch had layered itself at some point, and the root system wasn't all that substantial. The stump I'm stuck into now is a real monster. I've sawed through several side roots, and dug a 30cm trench all round it, and I can still barely rock it in the hole. I haven't counted the others, but there are several to go after this one, possibly hraia (a very large number, more than five), or even funfty.
Showing posts with label rhododendrons. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rhododendrons. Show all posts
Thursday, 22 December 2011
Tuesday, 15 November 2011
a (whole) day in the garden
Today I had a whole uninterrupted day to spend gardening. It wasn't a working day. I didn't have to get ready for a talk, or give a talk. No dentist's appointment, no optician, no Pilates lesson, no haircut. No calling around for coffee, or lunch, or tea. No art galleries or garden visits. No trip into Colchester to pick something up, or put up posters. I didn't even go out on garden related errands, like a trip to the dump or to collect more mushroom compost. It stayed dry so I could stay outside until it got dark. It was wonderful. It's not that I want to spend seven days a week gardening, hermit-like, and never see anybody or do anything else. I should get bored, depressed and knackered. But once in a while it is extremely nice to be able to get stuck in and put in a full day's work on the garden, at the end of which I feel I have made some progress.
I finished planting the new box cushion by the deck outside the conservatory. I started last week after picking up some nice little box plants at work, but hadn't done the QS beforehand, and didn't buy enough. Obviously it isn't a cushion yet, but it will be. I think in landscape speak it might be foundation planting, a depressing term that conjures up visions of beige coloured support hose. I am hoping the box will look good, in a sort of modernist garden goes romantic way. That was a job ticked off the list in good faith. I couldn't see anything needing doing to complete the initial phase of that project.
I picked up lots of leaves for the leaf bin. It seems almost like a waste of effort when there are plenty more left to fall, but they rake up and pick out of other plants much better when they are still crisp and solid than when they have gone soft and slimy. The 'Taihaku' has almost finished dropping its leaves, whereas the wild gean hasn't gone any redder than the last time I mentioned it, which was days ago. The hazels at the edge of the wood are starting to shed. Each big bucket of leaves tipped on to the leaf pile gives me a good feeling. With any luck the Systems Administrator will have another go with the leaf vac later in the week. Apparently if the leaves are wet the machine sprays water over the operator's legs and is not so fun to use. Given how heavy the dew is at this time of the year, not to mention the risk of showers, a leaf vac that only works comfortably on dry leaves seems to me to incorporate a fundamental design error.
I started cutting back the brambles at the end of the wood, which have grown up since we cut the Rhododendron ponticum down last winter, admitting light, which favours brambles. This is preparatory to starting to pickaxe out the rhododendron roots. Fired up by my success removing the hebes, I thought I could tackle them one at a time between other jobs, and so keep a balance between the big renovation projects that need doing, and the more genteel tidying up tasks. One of the Writtle tutors said that garden restoration was a sign of failed maintenance in the past, which is true, but only up to a point. Shrubs do succumb to old age or adverse weather conditions, and areas of planting that worked well for years cease to do so. We never actually planted the rhododendrons. We inherited some from the previous owners, and some of those must have reverted to the ponticum rootstock and then seeded themselves. It is true that we should not have allowed them to do that, but we did have many other things to worry about as well at the time. We will be left with one large one with deep red flowers, which I like very much, not sharing the current prejudice among chic designers against rhododendrons. I wish I knew its name.
The other reason for wanting to clear out at least some of the rhododendron stumps is to make space to plant my Michelia doltsopa 'Silver Cloud' into the ground. It is still in its pot, and has been much happier since being moved out of the conservatory, but I don't want it in a pot outdoors over the winter. It may not prove winter hardy, which will be a shame, but it could be fine. The boss says they are hardier than people give them credit. It was going to die of red spider mite under glass, so it and I have nothing to lose by trying. If I manage to clear out several stumps I would have room for one of the lovely Oemleria cerasiformis we have at work at the moment.
I finished trimming the lawn around the slabs set in the grass. That was a relatively lightweight tidying up job, but makes things look much sharper. While I was at it I had another go at 'Paul's Himalayan Musk', which was once again trying to grow out across the steps to the lower garden, and trimmed some low branches from the birches and zelkova in the lower part of the garden, so that tall people can walk around it without ducking. I'm short myself, so they didn't bother me, but I thought it would be nice for the SA, and any full size visitors, and actually having your entire garden designed for the convenience of people who are only 1.6m tall does give it a slightly hobbit-like air.
I finished planting the new box cushion by the deck outside the conservatory. I started last week after picking up some nice little box plants at work, but hadn't done the QS beforehand, and didn't buy enough. Obviously it isn't a cushion yet, but it will be. I think in landscape speak it might be foundation planting, a depressing term that conjures up visions of beige coloured support hose. I am hoping the box will look good, in a sort of modernist garden goes romantic way. That was a job ticked off the list in good faith. I couldn't see anything needing doing to complete the initial phase of that project.
I picked up lots of leaves for the leaf bin. It seems almost like a waste of effort when there are plenty more left to fall, but they rake up and pick out of other plants much better when they are still crisp and solid than when they have gone soft and slimy. The 'Taihaku' has almost finished dropping its leaves, whereas the wild gean hasn't gone any redder than the last time I mentioned it, which was days ago. The hazels at the edge of the wood are starting to shed. Each big bucket of leaves tipped on to the leaf pile gives me a good feeling. With any luck the Systems Administrator will have another go with the leaf vac later in the week. Apparently if the leaves are wet the machine sprays water over the operator's legs and is not so fun to use. Given how heavy the dew is at this time of the year, not to mention the risk of showers, a leaf vac that only works comfortably on dry leaves seems to me to incorporate a fundamental design error.
I started cutting back the brambles at the end of the wood, which have grown up since we cut the Rhododendron ponticum down last winter, admitting light, which favours brambles. This is preparatory to starting to pickaxe out the rhododendron roots. Fired up by my success removing the hebes, I thought I could tackle them one at a time between other jobs, and so keep a balance between the big renovation projects that need doing, and the more genteel tidying up tasks. One of the Writtle tutors said that garden restoration was a sign of failed maintenance in the past, which is true, but only up to a point. Shrubs do succumb to old age or adverse weather conditions, and areas of planting that worked well for years cease to do so. We never actually planted the rhododendrons. We inherited some from the previous owners, and some of those must have reverted to the ponticum rootstock and then seeded themselves. It is true that we should not have allowed them to do that, but we did have many other things to worry about as well at the time. We will be left with one large one with deep red flowers, which I like very much, not sharing the current prejudice among chic designers against rhododendrons. I wish I knew its name.
The other reason for wanting to clear out at least some of the rhododendron stumps is to make space to plant my Michelia doltsopa 'Silver Cloud' into the ground. It is still in its pot, and has been much happier since being moved out of the conservatory, but I don't want it in a pot outdoors over the winter. It may not prove winter hardy, which will be a shame, but it could be fine. The boss says they are hardier than people give them credit. It was going to die of red spider mite under glass, so it and I have nothing to lose by trying. If I manage to clear out several stumps I would have room for one of the lovely Oemleria cerasiformis we have at work at the moment.
I finished trimming the lawn around the slabs set in the grass. That was a relatively lightweight tidying up job, but makes things look much sharper. While I was at it I had another go at 'Paul's Himalayan Musk', which was once again trying to grow out across the steps to the lower garden, and trimmed some low branches from the birches and zelkova in the lower part of the garden, so that tall people can walk around it without ducking. I'm short myself, so they didn't bother me, but I thought it would be nice for the SA, and any full size visitors, and actually having your entire garden designed for the convenience of people who are only 1.6m tall does give it a slightly hobbit-like air.
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