I extracted the honey from the three frames off the big, lively colony, that had been sitting in the spare bedroom since last week. They were impressively well filled, with honey on both sides of every frame in every box. I think that's a record in my beekeeping career. Normally they don't bother to go right to the outside of the box before moving upwards to start on the next box. Bees like working upwards.
I meant to start straight after breakfast, but by the time I'd done all the watering it was nearer noon, and I didn't finish extracting until well gone six. OK, I took over an hour for lunch because I was getting so hot in the kitchen, but that's still about ten minutes per frame. I'm getting faster than I was, but it's just as well I'm not trying to do it commercially. The wax cappings have to be cut off both sides of each frame, then every frame has to be reversed during spinning so that both sides take a turn facing the outside of the centrifuge, and there's all the intermediate fiddling about, trying to mop up drips of honey as I go so that I don't tread them everywhere, and having the wash the sieve mid way through because it has become clogged with fragments of wax, and try to dry it.
If I rest the sieve on top of the bucket I'm pouring the extracted honey into then I can't fill the top couple of inches of bucket space with honey, because the sieve dips down into it, so I have to rest the sieve's little arms on three carefully constructed towers of tinned food. Until you've done this you don't realise how much it matters that some manufacturers don't put indentations round the bottoms of their tins so that they slot securely into the tin underneath. This is moderately annoying when trying to stack food in the larder but much more worrying when you have a sieve holding a couple of pints of honey resting on the result. Heinz soup is bad, Ambrosia tinned rice pudding and Waitrose own brand butter beans are good.
I managed not to drip very much, except for one accident when I didn't fasten the honey gate on the extractor tightly enough after releasing extracted honey into a bucket, and there was a small flood. I wiped it up as best I could at the time, and when I'd finished I washed the kitchen floor, and the soles of my Birkenstocks, and washed the kitchen floor again with a fresh bucket of water. I wiped the kitchen worktops, and the doors of the cupboard under the sink, and the Systems Administrator's chair that I'd rested the extractor on while tapping the honey into buckets. I wiped the outsides of the honey buckets. I washed the extractor, and the pyrex dish I'd been using to collect the cappings, and the board I'd been resting the frames on. I put the sieve and the knife I'd been using in the washing machine. I put the empty frames back in the spare bedroom until the morning, on the grounds that it was too late and I was too hot to start messing around with the bees this evening. I washed the spare bedroom carpet where a small puddle of honey had managed to drip on it. The clearing up must have taken another hour.
As I was wiping the last bits of honey I could spot at that moment I heard a bee buzzing. I tracked it down to the study window, caught it under a glass and put it out of the front door. Two minutes later there was another bee in the study, followed by a stream of bees in the hall. I began to get bored with collecting bees, since I had other things to do, and also worried in case they came en masse for the colander of cappings that were dripping into a big pot on the Aga simmer plate (honey saved from cappings isn't the best quality, but perfectly good for cooking and three full supers' worth will yield a jar or two). I took each successive bee further from the front door to release it, and eventually stood and watched the last one carefully to see where it went. Almost straight back into the house through the cat door, was the answer.
The cat door at the moment is nothing but a square hole in the wall, since the SA removed the actual flap to encourage the kittens to start to use the hole pending installation of a new cat door with a working catch, the old one having disintegrated years ago under the pressure of five cats coming and going. As an immediate measure I propped a piece of cardboard over the hole, which kept the bees out but also the cats. As the evening drew in it began to feel like the time when bees might no longer be foraging and the kittens ought to come inside, so I removed the cardboard and another bee came in. I caught it and decided to leave it under the glass for a while, to find out whether there was really a stream of bees coming in or whether I had removed the same one from the house half a dozen times.
The Systems Administrator was ready to start cooking supper and wanted to open the kitchen door because it was so infernally hot in there, meaning one less door between the pan of cappings and any marauding bees. However it was getting late for bees to be flying, and the SA released the bee under the glass some distance from the front door, and watched as it flew back to the cat door. The bee spent another sojourn under the glass, and no more bees appeared. Once it was really quite dark outside the bee was released for the final time, and left to find its way home, or not. Tomorrow morning I must jar up the honey from the cappings and stash the wax away with my secret supply of old cappings which I am going to melt and purify and turn into a candle any year now. Then the kitchen will not smell so strongly of honey and with any luck the supply of visiting bees will stop.
Monday, 8 August 2016
Sunday, 7 August 2016
how the summer bedding's done so far
I have been considering the success of the summer bedding, now that summer is squarely here. I don't do much bedding, and only in pots since we really don't have the sort of borders where you can slip ephemeral half hardy annuals into the gaps for extra late summer colour. I've tried it and it didn't work. They all died of drought, or were eaten by slugs, snails or rabbits.
Top prize goes to the traditional Cosmos. I am growing a white strain called 'Purity' and a mixture of dark and mid pinks called 'Sensation Mix'. These are the two varieties most commonly given away with gardening magazines, and as the open packets keep well from year to year I never feel the need to buy any additional seed. The plants are attractive in all their parts, with feathery foliage in a bright shade of mid green, and the simple pink and white flowers are carried abundantly over a long season. Indeed, I may have fed some of my pots too generously, as some plants have formed monster bushes almost a yard tall and are taking their time getting into their full flowering stride.
Cosmos seed germinates quickly and is easy to grow on. As long as you keep them frost free the seedlings are tolerant of being allowed to dry out or accidentally over watered, and fairly forgiving about when you prick them out and pot them on. I always sow too much seed, forgetting what good-natured plants they are and worrying that I won't raise enough to fill all my pots. The resulting overcrowding on the greenhouse bench of course makes failure that bit more likely.
New for the first time this year I've grown Cosmos sulphureus 'Bright Lights'. It has slightly more substantial foliage than the pink and white sorts, finely divided but less feathery, like lightweight flat leaf parsley. The flowers are a little smaller than the other, in a slightly more orange shade of yellow than I was imagining, and very generously carried. Again, germination was rapid and the growing on was trouble free. I have them grouped with various frost tender permanent inhabitants of pots, all flowering in shades of orange and yellow, and find the whole combination cheerful. I like orange and yellow flowers, in moderation and provided they are the right shades of yellow, and do not subscribe to the school of thought that takes banning them from your garden as a marker of good taste. I wouldn't go so far as to put them with pink, though.
Altogether less satisfactory was Zinnia 'Purple Prince'. This was another magazine freebie, and since the stiff, double, daisy like flowers in a bright shade of purple looked rather jolly on the seed packet, and would go nicely with the pink Cosmos and pink dahlias I was planning to stand outside the garage, I gave Zinnia a go. They have a reputation for being tricksy, and I was pleasantly surprised at how quickly they germinated. However, losses set in from the potting on stage onwards, with plants collapsing overnight as their stems developed brown dead patches that buckled under the weight of the top growth. Those that made it to be planted into the final display pots have an annoying habit of dying back at the tips, while individual leaves further down the stems have crisped and browned. The purple flowers are fun, reminiscent of the cut Gerbera flowers beloved as table decorations by chains like Pizza Express, but there are not nearly enough of them to compensate for the grotty leaves and general difficulty of cultivation. I presume they are unhappy with my watering regime, but I have a lot of pots to get round. I need plants that will be happy just to get some water, thank you. There isn't time to heft every pot each time and put every one on its own individual diet.
A few Ricinus communis 'Impala' have made rather skinny plants after not being potted on as fast and lavishly as they would probably have liked. At least, I think that's the problem. Maybe they will surprise me and keep growing on through the autumn to end up as large as the ones I've seen bedded out in London's parks. What there is of them is pretty, and the pink of their flowers and pinkish-grey of their leaves goes very well with the pink Cosmos flowers.
All the other pots contain tender perennials or sub-shrubs. I am pleased this year with Dicliptera suberecta, a grey leaved shrubby little thing that sends up vertical shoots with dark orange, tubular flowers. I was immensely taken with one I saw at a garden we visited in Worcestershire a few years back, but Dicliptera is not the easiest thing to get hold of. Then I found it on the list of a nursery in Lincolnshire I was using for hardy plants, and snaffled one up. It lived for its first year in the conservatory, and was not awfully happy, so this year I moved it to a bigger pot in case it needed more space to encourage it, and stood it outside for the summer so that it would get more light. Lo and behold, it sprang into growth and is looking much better and flowering much more. Some plants seem to need a minimum pot size to get them going, examples that come immediately to mind being Salvia confertiflora, Impatiens auricoma x bicaudata, and Begonia luxurians. Maybe I will tell you about them another day.
Top prize goes to the traditional Cosmos. I am growing a white strain called 'Purity' and a mixture of dark and mid pinks called 'Sensation Mix'. These are the two varieties most commonly given away with gardening magazines, and as the open packets keep well from year to year I never feel the need to buy any additional seed. The plants are attractive in all their parts, with feathery foliage in a bright shade of mid green, and the simple pink and white flowers are carried abundantly over a long season. Indeed, I may have fed some of my pots too generously, as some plants have formed monster bushes almost a yard tall and are taking their time getting into their full flowering stride.
Cosmos seed germinates quickly and is easy to grow on. As long as you keep them frost free the seedlings are tolerant of being allowed to dry out or accidentally over watered, and fairly forgiving about when you prick them out and pot them on. I always sow too much seed, forgetting what good-natured plants they are and worrying that I won't raise enough to fill all my pots. The resulting overcrowding on the greenhouse bench of course makes failure that bit more likely.
New for the first time this year I've grown Cosmos sulphureus 'Bright Lights'. It has slightly more substantial foliage than the pink and white sorts, finely divided but less feathery, like lightweight flat leaf parsley. The flowers are a little smaller than the other, in a slightly more orange shade of yellow than I was imagining, and very generously carried. Again, germination was rapid and the growing on was trouble free. I have them grouped with various frost tender permanent inhabitants of pots, all flowering in shades of orange and yellow, and find the whole combination cheerful. I like orange and yellow flowers, in moderation and provided they are the right shades of yellow, and do not subscribe to the school of thought that takes banning them from your garden as a marker of good taste. I wouldn't go so far as to put them with pink, though.
Altogether less satisfactory was Zinnia 'Purple Prince'. This was another magazine freebie, and since the stiff, double, daisy like flowers in a bright shade of purple looked rather jolly on the seed packet, and would go nicely with the pink Cosmos and pink dahlias I was planning to stand outside the garage, I gave Zinnia a go. They have a reputation for being tricksy, and I was pleasantly surprised at how quickly they germinated. However, losses set in from the potting on stage onwards, with plants collapsing overnight as their stems developed brown dead patches that buckled under the weight of the top growth. Those that made it to be planted into the final display pots have an annoying habit of dying back at the tips, while individual leaves further down the stems have crisped and browned. The purple flowers are fun, reminiscent of the cut Gerbera flowers beloved as table decorations by chains like Pizza Express, but there are not nearly enough of them to compensate for the grotty leaves and general difficulty of cultivation. I presume they are unhappy with my watering regime, but I have a lot of pots to get round. I need plants that will be happy just to get some water, thank you. There isn't time to heft every pot each time and put every one on its own individual diet.
A few Ricinus communis 'Impala' have made rather skinny plants after not being potted on as fast and lavishly as they would probably have liked. At least, I think that's the problem. Maybe they will surprise me and keep growing on through the autumn to end up as large as the ones I've seen bedded out in London's parks. What there is of them is pretty, and the pink of their flowers and pinkish-grey of their leaves goes very well with the pink Cosmos flowers.
All the other pots contain tender perennials or sub-shrubs. I am pleased this year with Dicliptera suberecta, a grey leaved shrubby little thing that sends up vertical shoots with dark orange, tubular flowers. I was immensely taken with one I saw at a garden we visited in Worcestershire a few years back, but Dicliptera is not the easiest thing to get hold of. Then I found it on the list of a nursery in Lincolnshire I was using for hardy plants, and snaffled one up. It lived for its first year in the conservatory, and was not awfully happy, so this year I moved it to a bigger pot in case it needed more space to encourage it, and stood it outside for the summer so that it would get more light. Lo and behold, it sprang into growth and is looking much better and flowering much more. Some plants seem to need a minimum pot size to get them going, examples that come immediately to mind being Salvia confertiflora, Impatiens auricoma x bicaudata, and Begonia luxurians. Maybe I will tell you about them another day.
Saturday, 6 August 2016
haphazard housewife
I went up to the bees straight after breakfast and took the top super off the big colony. The clearer board had almost worked, and as I hoped it was still too early and too cool for them to have got lively, and I was able to depart without a forest of stings hanging from my gloves, as happened when I was putting the first clearer board on. I half ran back down the meadow with my wheelbarrow and was free of bees by the time I got back to the house, except for a few that were still hanging on in the super.
After that bucolic start to the day things took a more prosaic turn, as the cleaning caught up with me. I began by thinking I'd have time to do the cleaning and then extract the honey, which is what I always think. By my age you'd think that this Pollyannaish tendency to hopelessly overestimate how much it is possible to do in a day would have faded. By the time I'd cleaned the kitchen floor and vacuumed the drifts of cat fur and Mr Fluffy's dead leaves out of the study it was all still going so well, but I always forget how long it takes to vacuum the sitting room, chasing the dust and fluff round chair legs and coffee tables. The kittens had dragged one of the sitting room curtains off its rail, so that had to be fastened up again with new hooks, a horribly fiddly task wearing varifocals as I couldn't tilt my head to an angle where I could look through the right bit of my spectacles to see what I was doing.
Wiping the kitchen units always takes longer than I think it's going to, especially this time because they were still rather sticky from the last time I extracted honey. It took the whole of three Haydn string quartets and Tinariwen's Radio Tisdas Sessions, and I still hadn't got all the way round the room, and at the end of it I still hadn't cleaned the sticky bits off the Aga because I'd run out of enamel cleaner. The cats must like Haydn, or cleaning, or both, because they lay a sword's length apart in the middle of the room while I worked. We were like a Grayson Perry tapestry of the middle classes come to life, a middle aged woman wearing Birkenstock clogs wiping ineffectually at an Aga while listening to Malian desert rock on an iPod that's so old it must count as vintage and played through a docking station, plus four sleeping cats.
The serious kitten has developed a passion for the vacuum cleaner. Not when it is on, but when it is left lying about. I dumped it in the lower sitting room after vacuuming the kitchen to do the first lot of honey, because I knew I was going to want it again and was too idle to lug it upstairs to the spare bedroom, and the serious kitten took to sleeping curled up next to the corrugated flexible tube. Is it a feline super stimulus, the equivalent of the most gigantic tail? Its sinuous curve did mimic the bend of the serious kitten's curled spine quite uncannily. None of them like the noise of the vacuum cleaner, but none mind the sound of the bean to cup coffee machine, another sign that they are middle class cats, or maybe an indicator of how often we clean the house (not very often) compared to how frequently we drink coffee (daily).
The serious kitten is getting better at hunting. He has stopped bringing shrews in, which I'm pleased about since I have nothing against shrews. They are carnivores, eating insects, worms, slugs and suchlike and they do not harm plants, while they taste disgusting so the serious kitten can't eat them. His next prey was what appeared at first sight to be a baby duck, which was distressing, but we really couldn't see where he'd have got a duck from and decided it was probably a pigeon squab that had fallen out of the nest and was doomed anyway. Then yesterday he caught a mouse, and ate it like a proper cat. I am hoping he will progress to rabbits, but things are moving in the right direction. The other two don't show any interest in hunting at all. Mr Fluffy collects leaves and gets very excited when he sees a bee or a butterfly, or indeed Formula One cars on the TV. The energetic kitten does not even want to go outside unless he has someone with him, and is still at the stage of wanting to chew my computer cable.
After that bucolic start to the day things took a more prosaic turn, as the cleaning caught up with me. I began by thinking I'd have time to do the cleaning and then extract the honey, which is what I always think. By my age you'd think that this Pollyannaish tendency to hopelessly overestimate how much it is possible to do in a day would have faded. By the time I'd cleaned the kitchen floor and vacuumed the drifts of cat fur and Mr Fluffy's dead leaves out of the study it was all still going so well, but I always forget how long it takes to vacuum the sitting room, chasing the dust and fluff round chair legs and coffee tables. The kittens had dragged one of the sitting room curtains off its rail, so that had to be fastened up again with new hooks, a horribly fiddly task wearing varifocals as I couldn't tilt my head to an angle where I could look through the right bit of my spectacles to see what I was doing.
Wiping the kitchen units always takes longer than I think it's going to, especially this time because they were still rather sticky from the last time I extracted honey. It took the whole of three Haydn string quartets and Tinariwen's Radio Tisdas Sessions, and I still hadn't got all the way round the room, and at the end of it I still hadn't cleaned the sticky bits off the Aga because I'd run out of enamel cleaner. The cats must like Haydn, or cleaning, or both, because they lay a sword's length apart in the middle of the room while I worked. We were like a Grayson Perry tapestry of the middle classes come to life, a middle aged woman wearing Birkenstock clogs wiping ineffectually at an Aga while listening to Malian desert rock on an iPod that's so old it must count as vintage and played through a docking station, plus four sleeping cats.
The serious kitten has developed a passion for the vacuum cleaner. Not when it is on, but when it is left lying about. I dumped it in the lower sitting room after vacuuming the kitchen to do the first lot of honey, because I knew I was going to want it again and was too idle to lug it upstairs to the spare bedroom, and the serious kitten took to sleeping curled up next to the corrugated flexible tube. Is it a feline super stimulus, the equivalent of the most gigantic tail? Its sinuous curve did mimic the bend of the serious kitten's curled spine quite uncannily. None of them like the noise of the vacuum cleaner, but none mind the sound of the bean to cup coffee machine, another sign that they are middle class cats, or maybe an indicator of how often we clean the house (not very often) compared to how frequently we drink coffee (daily).
The serious kitten is getting better at hunting. He has stopped bringing shrews in, which I'm pleased about since I have nothing against shrews. They are carnivores, eating insects, worms, slugs and suchlike and they do not harm plants, while they taste disgusting so the serious kitten can't eat them. His next prey was what appeared at first sight to be a baby duck, which was distressing, but we really couldn't see where he'd have got a duck from and decided it was probably a pigeon squab that had fallen out of the nest and was doomed anyway. Then yesterday he caught a mouse, and ate it like a proper cat. I am hoping he will progress to rabbits, but things are moving in the right direction. The other two don't show any interest in hunting at all. Mr Fluffy collects leaves and gets very excited when he sees a bee or a butterfly, or indeed Formula One cars on the TV. The energetic kitten does not even want to go outside unless he has someone with him, and is still at the stage of wanting to chew my computer cable.
Friday, 5 August 2016
another talk
My plan to go and take the super off the lively bees straight after breakfast today, before we could all get hot and bothered, was scuppered yesterday morning when I looked in my diary and discovered I was due to do a woodland charity talk this morning in Braintree. I knew I had a couple coming up, but had vaguely thought the first of them was next week. Normally the organisers contact me a week beforehand, or at least a few days, to check that all is well and I am expecting to be there on the day.
The talk was due to be to a support group for people with caring responsibilities. I remembered it being fixed up, because the person from the caring charity gave the volunteer coordinator at the woodland charity a whole raft of possible dates across four different venues in Essex, and I offered to do two of them. An email to the caring charity enquiring if they were expecting me tomorrow, since I hadn't heard anything more about it, produced a further flurry of emails and I was left with the distinct impression that they had forgotten all about me. They would be happy to see me on Friday, she said, though her group organiser on the ground said I needn't do next week as well as it would be a lot of the same people.
I must admit to experiencing a sense of relief at finding I didn't have to do a second talk, like being given an unexpected day off. What with the honey and one thing and another this week has felt rather truncated and I seem to have got remarkably little done. There again, I always seem to get terribly little done in August, as hot weather reduces me to a crawl. Braintree is not a town I know awfully well, and I recalled that parts of the one way system were utterly baffling. I asked the caring charity for any directions I might need to help me navigate my way to the hall, but the local group organiser said that the only way she could think of telling me was via Sainsbury's. Coming out of Sainsbury's I should do a right, go across some funny little roundabouts and turn right into the street with the hall. Since I was coming from the A120 and did not know how to get to Sainsbury either that was not a great help.
After studying Google maps some more I decided the one way section I remembered did not start until after the road I needed to take. I only drove past the hall once without seeing it, and there were still two spaces left in the tiny parking area. The group was very nice and rather small. The blinds across the skylights would not close so you could barely see the slides. The local organiser admitted she had indeed forgotten all about me until contacted by her manager yesterday. The drive home was extraordinarily hot. I suppose it was all worth it. The people with caring responsibilities seemed to enjoy the talk, and psychological research shows that volunteering is good for our well-being. But really I could have done with the day to sort out the honey and the cleaning.
The talk was due to be to a support group for people with caring responsibilities. I remembered it being fixed up, because the person from the caring charity gave the volunteer coordinator at the woodland charity a whole raft of possible dates across four different venues in Essex, and I offered to do two of them. An email to the caring charity enquiring if they were expecting me tomorrow, since I hadn't heard anything more about it, produced a further flurry of emails and I was left with the distinct impression that they had forgotten all about me. They would be happy to see me on Friday, she said, though her group organiser on the ground said I needn't do next week as well as it would be a lot of the same people.
I must admit to experiencing a sense of relief at finding I didn't have to do a second talk, like being given an unexpected day off. What with the honey and one thing and another this week has felt rather truncated and I seem to have got remarkably little done. There again, I always seem to get terribly little done in August, as hot weather reduces me to a crawl. Braintree is not a town I know awfully well, and I recalled that parts of the one way system were utterly baffling. I asked the caring charity for any directions I might need to help me navigate my way to the hall, but the local group organiser said that the only way she could think of telling me was via Sainsbury's. Coming out of Sainsbury's I should do a right, go across some funny little roundabouts and turn right into the street with the hall. Since I was coming from the A120 and did not know how to get to Sainsbury either that was not a great help.
After studying Google maps some more I decided the one way section I remembered did not start until after the road I needed to take. I only drove past the hall once without seeing it, and there were still two spaces left in the tiny parking area. The group was very nice and rather small. The blinds across the skylights would not close so you could barely see the slides. The local organiser admitted she had indeed forgotten all about me until contacted by her manager yesterday. The drive home was extraordinarily hot. I suppose it was all worth it. The people with caring responsibilities seemed to enjoy the talk, and psychological research shows that volunteering is good for our well-being. But really I could have done with the day to sort out the honey and the cleaning.
Thursday, 4 August 2016
sharp cuts and dry feet
I christened the refurbished secateurs today, tidying up a pair of hedges of Lonicera nitida 'Baggesen's Gold' that had grown so whiskery with the June rain that they practically met down the middle of the small flight of steps they are supposed to flank. This shrubby honeysuckle makes a useful hedge in as far as it has small leaves, can be clipped to a neat finish, is long lived, quick growing and available in a jolly shade of yellowish green as well as conventional dark green. Its main drawback is that it is quick growing. To keep it tidy requires several cuts per year. and my little hedges are not tidy a lot of the time. It becomes deeply unhappy on poor sand, and will let you know it by growing thin and gappy with dieback at the tips of its twigs. Given a moister though not definitely not boggy spot it will make a dense, fat and healthy shrub.
The secateurs were wonderful to use, as I knew they would be. New or newly reconditioned secateurs are one of life's transient pleasures, like new shoes or the distinctive smell of a new car. The utter newness is but a brief moment in the overall period of ownership of the secateurs, or the shoes, or the car, to be savoured.
Also new is the spray head and end connector on the hose in the back garden, meaning that I no longer have to hold the hose carefully in a certain way to avoid ending up with a fine jet of water soaking my trousers or running down inside my wellington boot. It was a minor niggle, but made watering the container plants in the back into more of a hassle than it should have been. If I cupped my fingers over the leak and tilted the old spray head the right way it was fine and I didn't get wet legs, but if I had to put the hose down to sort out a kink or snag I risked ending up with water all over my spectacles, or an unpleasantly damp leg that would take a couple of hours to dry unless the sun was very bright.
The new spray head was five pounds in B&Q. They sell spray attachments of escalating complexity for anything up to fifteen pounds, but I wanted the budget one, and checked the stock code on the packaging against the label on the shelf to make sure that that was what I'd picked up out of the jumble of late season stock. I've already got the five pound basic model on the hose in the front garden and it works perfectly well, so I cannot see any use for the additional features you get for the extra tenner. In fact, the fewer bits to go wrong the better. Supermarket spray heads will last from one year to the next, as long as you don't leave them attached to the hose and full of water outside in the frosts, but after a year or two they begin to dribble and leak (so do the metal professional ones used in plant nurseries. The owner of the plant centre used to comment on my habit of wearing wellingtons throughout the summer, saying that they must be very hot, but it was practically impossible to do two or three hours worth of daily watering without the hose leaking on your feet, and I absolutely loathed spending the day in wet shoes. When the hoses leaked badly enough the manager would eventually order new rubber seals for them, and the leaks would reduce for a time, but they always dripped).
For the autumn I might treat myself to a new pruning saw.
Wednesday, 3 August 2016
bringing in the harvest
I have been taking honey off the beehives, in a slightly protracted and messy way that makes me think how convenient it would be to have a dedicated bee-proof hygienic hut where I could extract honey and store all my equipment. A honey shed. I do not have such a thing. It would have to be bee-proof, because if a scout once got in when there was honey about it would return in short order with a crowd of foragers and I would have a big problem. Professional honey farmers have honey sheds, and can stack their full supers inside them until they are ready to extract. I have the spare bedroom and the kitchen, and the doors and windows of both are kept firmly shut when there's honey in the offing.
I checked a few days ago and there were hives with honey capped with wax and ready for harvest. It's tempting, once supers are full, to tell yourself that the honey is ripe and ready if it doesn't drip when you lift the frames out, and to take it before the bees can swarm and take it with them, but honey that's taken while still too watery will ferment in storage. I made myself wait this year until the frames were sealed with wax, a sure sign that the bees believed it would keep.
Obviously you only want to take boxes of honey into your honey shed or kitchen, and not boxes of honey plus bees, so you have to get the bees out somehow. Commercial bee farmers give a squirt of some food-use approved chemical that the bees don't like into the top of the hive, and the bees scurry down below. I put an excluder board under the boxes I want to take, a day or two before I plan to take them. The board has a couple of holes into which I slot bee escapes, plastic tunnels with v-shaped passages of lightly sprung metal strips, through which the bees can force their way out of the point of the v, while finding it difficult to get back in. They will work it out in time, which is why you don't want to leave the boards on for too long. If the excluders have worked perfectly the box may be entirely free of bees. If they have worked tolerably well there will be a few bees, which can be dislodged by giving the box a few sharp bangs on a solid stand that you have got ready in the apiary for such moments.
I put excluders under the top boxes on two hives, and was unable to do a third because I couldn't find any more boards, though I was sure I had another spare somewhere. I didn't like to keep the bees out of all of their supers at once because they need space to live, and things were looking quite crowded already. I couldn't add any extra supers temporarily to give them the space because I'd run out of boxes, but told myself that by this stage of the year the queen wasn't laying as fast and they'd cope. Two days ago I removed those boxes, stashing them in the spare room, and yesterday I spun the honey out of them. One frame disintegrated in handling, a lovely fat one with lots of honey in it. I managed to wedge it into the centrifuge to extract the honey regardless, but there were a lot of drips around the kitchen and a few on the way up to the spare bedroom.
At the point when I took those boxes off the hives I put one of the excluders back under the top two supers of a four super column, having checked that they too were ready to harvest. This was my biggest colony, and as is often the way they were the tetchiest. Bees that are incredibly productive and also gentle and sweet to handle do exist, but the more usual combination is that the colonies that get the most done have slightly shorter fuses to go with their Puritan work ethic, while the really placid ones you'd give to a child to handle are true hippies, smelling the flowers and making more bees without bothering to store a surplus of honey the beekeeper can take. I didn't like to shut the big colony out of more than two supers at once, and they were getting lively enough that I didn't care to investigate further down the stack anyway.
Today I took the two top supers off the big colony, gave them the two empty supers out of the spare bedroom, and got the excluder under one more full super having managed to check that the frames were sealed. By that stage I'd been stung several times on the knee through my beesuit and trousers, and decided the bottom super would have to wait for another day. So the state of play is now that I've got two full boxes in the spare room, and the prospect of taking another off tomorrow afternoon or more likely first thing on Friday morning when it's cooler, at which point I will have to work quickly to check whether the bottom super is ready and if so get the excluder under it. After today I will wear thicker trousers. Before I razz up the big colony I will investigate whether I can take more honey off the original colony I first started with.
In order to have enough empty supers to go back on the hives so that all the colonies have enough room I think I am looking at two further extraction sessions, meaning two lots of washing up and two sets of honey drips through the house. And today I had to drive over to the bee equipment supplier in East Bergholt because I was running out of buckets to store the honey. As I said, it is all rather disorganised. It's just as well that the Systems Administrator does not get upset about the mess. Home beekeepers who do not have honey sheds need understanding partners, or they are sunk.
I checked a few days ago and there were hives with honey capped with wax and ready for harvest. It's tempting, once supers are full, to tell yourself that the honey is ripe and ready if it doesn't drip when you lift the frames out, and to take it before the bees can swarm and take it with them, but honey that's taken while still too watery will ferment in storage. I made myself wait this year until the frames were sealed with wax, a sure sign that the bees believed it would keep.
Obviously you only want to take boxes of honey into your honey shed or kitchen, and not boxes of honey plus bees, so you have to get the bees out somehow. Commercial bee farmers give a squirt of some food-use approved chemical that the bees don't like into the top of the hive, and the bees scurry down below. I put an excluder board under the boxes I want to take, a day or two before I plan to take them. The board has a couple of holes into which I slot bee escapes, plastic tunnels with v-shaped passages of lightly sprung metal strips, through which the bees can force their way out of the point of the v, while finding it difficult to get back in. They will work it out in time, which is why you don't want to leave the boards on for too long. If the excluders have worked perfectly the box may be entirely free of bees. If they have worked tolerably well there will be a few bees, which can be dislodged by giving the box a few sharp bangs on a solid stand that you have got ready in the apiary for such moments.
I put excluders under the top boxes on two hives, and was unable to do a third because I couldn't find any more boards, though I was sure I had another spare somewhere. I didn't like to keep the bees out of all of their supers at once because they need space to live, and things were looking quite crowded already. I couldn't add any extra supers temporarily to give them the space because I'd run out of boxes, but told myself that by this stage of the year the queen wasn't laying as fast and they'd cope. Two days ago I removed those boxes, stashing them in the spare room, and yesterday I spun the honey out of them. One frame disintegrated in handling, a lovely fat one with lots of honey in it. I managed to wedge it into the centrifuge to extract the honey regardless, but there were a lot of drips around the kitchen and a few on the way up to the spare bedroom.
At the point when I took those boxes off the hives I put one of the excluders back under the top two supers of a four super column, having checked that they too were ready to harvest. This was my biggest colony, and as is often the way they were the tetchiest. Bees that are incredibly productive and also gentle and sweet to handle do exist, but the more usual combination is that the colonies that get the most done have slightly shorter fuses to go with their Puritan work ethic, while the really placid ones you'd give to a child to handle are true hippies, smelling the flowers and making more bees without bothering to store a surplus of honey the beekeeper can take. I didn't like to shut the big colony out of more than two supers at once, and they were getting lively enough that I didn't care to investigate further down the stack anyway.
Today I took the two top supers off the big colony, gave them the two empty supers out of the spare bedroom, and got the excluder under one more full super having managed to check that the frames were sealed. By that stage I'd been stung several times on the knee through my beesuit and trousers, and decided the bottom super would have to wait for another day. So the state of play is now that I've got two full boxes in the spare room, and the prospect of taking another off tomorrow afternoon or more likely first thing on Friday morning when it's cooler, at which point I will have to work quickly to check whether the bottom super is ready and if so get the excluder under it. After today I will wear thicker trousers. Before I razz up the big colony I will investigate whether I can take more honey off the original colony I first started with.
In order to have enough empty supers to go back on the hives so that all the colonies have enough room I think I am looking at two further extraction sessions, meaning two lots of washing up and two sets of honey drips through the house. And today I had to drive over to the bee equipment supplier in East Bergholt because I was running out of buckets to store the honey. As I said, it is all rather disorganised. It's just as well that the Systems Administrator does not get upset about the mess. Home beekeepers who do not have honey sheds need understanding partners, or they are sunk.
Tuesday, 2 August 2016
cutting tools and cuttings
Today my swivel handled Felco secateurs arrived back from being serviced. Felco's UK agents Burton McCall will for a fee take back your secateurs, replace any worn parts, and adjust and oil them so that they are as good as new. My number sevens were returned with a new and wonderfully sharp cutting blade, while the swivelling handle once again turned smoothly in my palm. At £19.95 it is not cheap, indeed, you could buy a pair of secateurs by another manufacturer for less than the cost of getting the Felcos reconditioned, but they are superb tools. As I ran my thumb experimentally down the edge of the new blade and felt the handle rotate when I closed my hand I felt the small thrill one gets from really well made things. With a large and now mature garden there is a lot of pruning and cutting back to do and good cutting tools make a huge difference. I recently managed to blister the middle finger of my right hand cutting the ivy hedge with a lighter weight, non swivelling pair of secateurs because the number sevens were blunt and needed servicing.
Good tools make most practical tasks so much easier to do, and the results are often so much better, whether gardening or cooking. Garden centres and catalogues are full of costly and often twee objects that fail to meet this basic definition of a good tool. Recycled reply paid envelopes are fine for saving home collected seed, no need to pay £2.99 for a packet of ten arty ones printed up as Home Saved Seed. It is easier to tie the top of a tripod of bamboo canes together with string than to push every cane laboriously through a hole in a moulded circle of green plastic. Sharp, well balanced, low effort cutting tools are simply marvellous. I felt the same about my new shears, and made a mental note at the time to buy new ones every other year rather than going along with their imperceptible but steady decline in performance until jolted into action when they stopped cutting at all (I would get the shears serviced, but nobody does them).
Tonight's garden club meeting was about taking cuttings. The organisers had mustered piles of propagating material, and were keen to break down people's perception that taking cuttings was difficult and encourage everybody to have a go. We were given a pot of damp compost each, and after the introductory remarks it was open season on the heaps of bits of plants. I'm already happy doing fuchsias and geraniums, but hadn't realised you could propagate Gaura from stem cuttings, and stored away a second hand Raymond Evison tip on getting clematis cuttings to work for future reference.
The clematis trick was fascinating, and I would never have thought of it and have not seen it mentioned in any book. The club chairman, who is a keen propagator and active in Plant Heritage as well as her village garden society, asked Raymond Evison, who is one of the greatest living clematis breeders and growers, for advice on clematis cuttings that rooted perfectly well but then failed to make any top growth, as she'd suffered from that problem. He told her that once the cuttings had formed a good root system that if they didn't start making stems and leaves as well then she should tip them out of their pots, shake the compost off the roots, bunch them up and chop the bottom half off. That, said Raymond Evison, would jolt the plants into starting to make top growth as well. I have no idea why they would have refused grow stems before, or why losing half their roots would prompt them to do so afterwards, but that was Raymond Evison's advice and she found that it worked. The actual cutting looked very easy. Clematis are made from internodal cuttings, meaning that the lower part of the cutting that you stick in the compost is simply a section of stem rather than ending at the bottom in a leaf joint. You leave a joint and pair of leaves sticking out of the compost, and can reduce the size of large composite leaves to cut down on water loss.
Even in the case of the geranium cuttings I learned something new. I must have taken dozens of geranium cuttings through the years. They are easy to root, and I felt quite blase about it. But I have only ever used the tips, often when pruning straggly plants back, and it had simply not occurred to me that you can also use intermediate sections of stem. It turns out that you can, and I am now the hopeful owner of an as yet unrooted cutting of an old zonal variety 'Gustav Emich' as used outside Buckingham Palace, with a tall habit and flowers that match the guardsmens' tunics. I only took a very small piece because there were quite a few people queuing up for cuttings and only two stems to divide out between us. I see on the internet that it is not actually out of commerce as I could buy a young plant from Allwoods, so if my small bit does not take then I could still have one if I wanted to. But it would be fun if it grew.
Good tools make most practical tasks so much easier to do, and the results are often so much better, whether gardening or cooking. Garden centres and catalogues are full of costly and often twee objects that fail to meet this basic definition of a good tool. Recycled reply paid envelopes are fine for saving home collected seed, no need to pay £2.99 for a packet of ten arty ones printed up as Home Saved Seed. It is easier to tie the top of a tripod of bamboo canes together with string than to push every cane laboriously through a hole in a moulded circle of green plastic. Sharp, well balanced, low effort cutting tools are simply marvellous. I felt the same about my new shears, and made a mental note at the time to buy new ones every other year rather than going along with their imperceptible but steady decline in performance until jolted into action when they stopped cutting at all (I would get the shears serviced, but nobody does them).
Tonight's garden club meeting was about taking cuttings. The organisers had mustered piles of propagating material, and were keen to break down people's perception that taking cuttings was difficult and encourage everybody to have a go. We were given a pot of damp compost each, and after the introductory remarks it was open season on the heaps of bits of plants. I'm already happy doing fuchsias and geraniums, but hadn't realised you could propagate Gaura from stem cuttings, and stored away a second hand Raymond Evison tip on getting clematis cuttings to work for future reference.
The clematis trick was fascinating, and I would never have thought of it and have not seen it mentioned in any book. The club chairman, who is a keen propagator and active in Plant Heritage as well as her village garden society, asked Raymond Evison, who is one of the greatest living clematis breeders and growers, for advice on clematis cuttings that rooted perfectly well but then failed to make any top growth, as she'd suffered from that problem. He told her that once the cuttings had formed a good root system that if they didn't start making stems and leaves as well then she should tip them out of their pots, shake the compost off the roots, bunch them up and chop the bottom half off. That, said Raymond Evison, would jolt the plants into starting to make top growth as well. I have no idea why they would have refused grow stems before, or why losing half their roots would prompt them to do so afterwards, but that was Raymond Evison's advice and she found that it worked. The actual cutting looked very easy. Clematis are made from internodal cuttings, meaning that the lower part of the cutting that you stick in the compost is simply a section of stem rather than ending at the bottom in a leaf joint. You leave a joint and pair of leaves sticking out of the compost, and can reduce the size of large composite leaves to cut down on water loss.
Even in the case of the geranium cuttings I learned something new. I must have taken dozens of geranium cuttings through the years. They are easy to root, and I felt quite blase about it. But I have only ever used the tips, often when pruning straggly plants back, and it had simply not occurred to me that you can also use intermediate sections of stem. It turns out that you can, and I am now the hopeful owner of an as yet unrooted cutting of an old zonal variety 'Gustav Emich' as used outside Buckingham Palace, with a tall habit and flowers that match the guardsmens' tunics. I only took a very small piece because there were quite a few people queuing up for cuttings and only two stems to divide out between us. I see on the internet that it is not actually out of commerce as I could buy a young plant from Allwoods, so if my small bit does not take then I could still have one if I wanted to. But it would be fun if it grew.
Monday, 1 August 2016
gravel gardening
I have been planting more things into the gravel in the middle of the turning circle. Planting in gravel is a slightly tedious business. You scrape the loose gravel from the place where you want to plant. Then you peer closely at the exposed earth trying to decide whether you think there are bulbs down there, if you have bulbs naturalised in your gravel, which I have. If you decide to go ahead and start digging bits of gravel will start rolling down into the hole. You stop digging and scrape a larger area clear. As you keep digging you realise you have not got enough space to put the excavated earth down on more bare earth and not gravel. This is just to make a hole big enough to take a nine centimetre pot.
You do all this while kneeling in a very tiny space in between the other things that are already growing in the gravel, trying not to break any of them with your feet which are sticking out behind you, or kneel on any of the other things you have just planted, which now look absolutely tiny and lost in the sea of gravel. Eventually you are ready to plant your thing, dibbling any accidentally exposed small bulbs back into the hole beside it. You fill in the hole with soil which seems to be mostly gravel, scrape more gravel around the crown of the plant, and give it a dusting of fish, blood and bone. I use miccorrhizae in the bottom of each planting hole to give the new plants a helping hand as they attempt to establish themselves in a growing medium that takes the concept of free drainage to a whole new level. Generally speaking I give them a good watering, but as we are forecast to get a deluge of rain over the next twenty-four hours I skipped that bit today.
While in amongst the plants I also pull out the latest emerging shoots of creeping sorrel with as much root as I can extract. Sometimes a section of root pulls up beautifully and I get six or eight inches of it, but often the foliage breaks away and I don't get any root at all. I never get them all. The roots that run along just below the surface, if not virtually on the face of the earth under the gravel, give a false impression. There will be further layers of creeping roots an inch, two, three, and four inches under the surface, weaving across each other and through the roots of other plants, and the occasional fat root diving down vertically. By now I have given up any idea of eliminating the creeping sorrel: I merely seek to weaken it, and pick out most of the tufts so that it doesn't show too badly.
One of today's new inhabitants of the gravel was Argemone grandiflora, the prickly poppy. I raised the plants from seed, and do not recommend trying to raise it in pots as I did. It is a drought lover from southern US and Mexico with grey leaves and poppy like white single flowers, and is indeed a member of the poppy family. It is supposed to grow two or three feet high, but mine have made sad little spindly specimens that are now flowering at the six inch mark. There was a high attrition rate before even getting to that point, as quite a few of the seedlings damped off. Opinions vary as to whether it is a true annual or a short lived perennial, but the plants certainly don't look as though they will be long for this world, either way. With any luck they will seed themselves into the gravel, and with the benefit of hindsight I should simply have thrown the seed around the area where I wanted them and hoped they would germinate and grow in situ.
My other sowing intended for the turning circle has made more hopeful looking plants. I've admired Dianthus carthusianorum at Chelsea for several years on the trot, and this year finally got organised to buy and sow a packet of seed, which could well mark its high point at Chelsea as I'm not sure it was used in as many show gardens in 2016 as in the previous few years. It is a kind of pink, throwing up tall stems with small, vivid pinky-red flowers on top from low cushions of foliage. It is supposed to like sharp drainage, sun and its own space, a plant to dot around in gravel rather than ask it to compete in the hurly burly of a crammed border. That, at any rate, is how they were used at Chelsea and seemed to be the consensus of sensible opinion on the internet. I like the idea of little dots of bright pink floating above the gravel, and with any luck they will self seed. They are supposed to like alkaline conditions, and our garden is on the acid side of neutral, so we'll see.
Of course, you could spread your gravel over a membrane and not bother will any of the above, but that would be awfully dull. And I have yet to see any scheme with gravel atop any kind of landscape fabric where bits of the fabric didn't pop up and show. Planting holes cut into Mypex are the worst offenders, every plant surrounded by protruding wisps of black fibre, and you can forget self seeding.
You do all this while kneeling in a very tiny space in between the other things that are already growing in the gravel, trying not to break any of them with your feet which are sticking out behind you, or kneel on any of the other things you have just planted, which now look absolutely tiny and lost in the sea of gravel. Eventually you are ready to plant your thing, dibbling any accidentally exposed small bulbs back into the hole beside it. You fill in the hole with soil which seems to be mostly gravel, scrape more gravel around the crown of the plant, and give it a dusting of fish, blood and bone. I use miccorrhizae in the bottom of each planting hole to give the new plants a helping hand as they attempt to establish themselves in a growing medium that takes the concept of free drainage to a whole new level. Generally speaking I give them a good watering, but as we are forecast to get a deluge of rain over the next twenty-four hours I skipped that bit today.
While in amongst the plants I also pull out the latest emerging shoots of creeping sorrel with as much root as I can extract. Sometimes a section of root pulls up beautifully and I get six or eight inches of it, but often the foliage breaks away and I don't get any root at all. I never get them all. The roots that run along just below the surface, if not virtually on the face of the earth under the gravel, give a false impression. There will be further layers of creeping roots an inch, two, three, and four inches under the surface, weaving across each other and through the roots of other plants, and the occasional fat root diving down vertically. By now I have given up any idea of eliminating the creeping sorrel: I merely seek to weaken it, and pick out most of the tufts so that it doesn't show too badly.
One of today's new inhabitants of the gravel was Argemone grandiflora, the prickly poppy. I raised the plants from seed, and do not recommend trying to raise it in pots as I did. It is a drought lover from southern US and Mexico with grey leaves and poppy like white single flowers, and is indeed a member of the poppy family. It is supposed to grow two or three feet high, but mine have made sad little spindly specimens that are now flowering at the six inch mark. There was a high attrition rate before even getting to that point, as quite a few of the seedlings damped off. Opinions vary as to whether it is a true annual or a short lived perennial, but the plants certainly don't look as though they will be long for this world, either way. With any luck they will seed themselves into the gravel, and with the benefit of hindsight I should simply have thrown the seed around the area where I wanted them and hoped they would germinate and grow in situ.
My other sowing intended for the turning circle has made more hopeful looking plants. I've admired Dianthus carthusianorum at Chelsea for several years on the trot, and this year finally got organised to buy and sow a packet of seed, which could well mark its high point at Chelsea as I'm not sure it was used in as many show gardens in 2016 as in the previous few years. It is a kind of pink, throwing up tall stems with small, vivid pinky-red flowers on top from low cushions of foliage. It is supposed to like sharp drainage, sun and its own space, a plant to dot around in gravel rather than ask it to compete in the hurly burly of a crammed border. That, at any rate, is how they were used at Chelsea and seemed to be the consensus of sensible opinion on the internet. I like the idea of little dots of bright pink floating above the gravel, and with any luck they will self seed. They are supposed to like alkaline conditions, and our garden is on the acid side of neutral, so we'll see.
Of course, you could spread your gravel over a membrane and not bother will any of the above, but that would be awfully dull. And I have yet to see any scheme with gravel atop any kind of landscape fabric where bits of the fabric didn't pop up and show. Planting holes cut into Mypex are the worst offenders, every plant surrounded by protruding wisps of black fibre, and you can forget self seeding.
Sunday, 31 July 2016
social history postponed
This afternoon we went to visit the Thorrington Tide Mill. It is one of half a dozen mills in Essex owned or leased by Essex County Council that are in working order and open monthly to the public during the summer. Thorrington's day for opening is the last Sunday in the month, and I was pleased that I had remembered it opened the day before it did, and not the day afterwards.
Opening hours are from two until five, and once the Systems Administrator had finished watching the Grand Prix we drove down to Thorrington. We went there, but we did not see the mill. A chain still hung across the patch of grass that must constitute the small car park advertised on the website (available only on mill open days) and a notice said that due to unforeseen circumstances the mill was not open. There was nothing to do except turn around and go home again. We were not the only disappointed would-be visitors, as another car that had turned into the car park just ahead of us did the same thing.
I was disappointed. Also rather cross, having made the effort to go and interrupted the rhythm of my gardening day, and used up some of the kittens' daily allowance of biscuits prematurely to bribe them back into the house so that we could go out. There was nothing on the website to say that the mill wouldn't be opening this month, and what sort of unforeseen circumstances were they anyway? Presumably whoever was supposed to be opening the mill up and keeping an eye on visitors for the afternoon was ill. Really the mill should be on Twitter, and so should I, and then we could have been warned. Sorry peeps, no mill visits today.
Looking on the bright side we hadn't walked there. Comparing notes afterwards each of us had separately considered suggesting making the mill visit the central point of a walk, and decided against it because it was still quite hot and we both had things to be getting on with at home. It's a couple of miles to the mill, not long in the car but we'd have been pretty peeved if we'd walked there only to discover that it was shut. And we hadn't taken anybody else with us or arranged to meet them there. That would have made us feel fairly stupid, and guilty for wasting their time.
We can always go next month, if we remember, and if we don't have anything else on. Or in September, though we provisionally have that Sunday pencilled in to go and see the splendid water powered Gunton Park Sawmill in Norfolk, which also only opens once a month and finishes for the year in September. It appeared on TV in a series about the impact of the railways on Victorian England, and we agreed it looked amazing and were even more amazed to discover afterwards that it was in East Anglia and doable as a day trip. But by then we'll just have got back from holiday and may feel we've done enough driving about and looking at things for the time being.
Opening hours are from two until five, and once the Systems Administrator had finished watching the Grand Prix we drove down to Thorrington. We went there, but we did not see the mill. A chain still hung across the patch of grass that must constitute the small car park advertised on the website (available only on mill open days) and a notice said that due to unforeseen circumstances the mill was not open. There was nothing to do except turn around and go home again. We were not the only disappointed would-be visitors, as another car that had turned into the car park just ahead of us did the same thing.
I was disappointed. Also rather cross, having made the effort to go and interrupted the rhythm of my gardening day, and used up some of the kittens' daily allowance of biscuits prematurely to bribe them back into the house so that we could go out. There was nothing on the website to say that the mill wouldn't be opening this month, and what sort of unforeseen circumstances were they anyway? Presumably whoever was supposed to be opening the mill up and keeping an eye on visitors for the afternoon was ill. Really the mill should be on Twitter, and so should I, and then we could have been warned. Sorry peeps, no mill visits today.
Looking on the bright side we hadn't walked there. Comparing notes afterwards each of us had separately considered suggesting making the mill visit the central point of a walk, and decided against it because it was still quite hot and we both had things to be getting on with at home. It's a couple of miles to the mill, not long in the car but we'd have been pretty peeved if we'd walked there only to discover that it was shut. And we hadn't taken anybody else with us or arranged to meet them there. That would have made us feel fairly stupid, and guilty for wasting their time.
We can always go next month, if we remember, and if we don't have anything else on. Or in September, though we provisionally have that Sunday pencilled in to go and see the splendid water powered Gunton Park Sawmill in Norfolk, which also only opens once a month and finishes for the year in September. It appeared on TV in a series about the impact of the railways on Victorian England, and we agreed it looked amazing and were even more amazed to discover afterwards that it was in East Anglia and doable as a day trip. But by then we'll just have got back from holiday and may feel we've done enough driving about and looking at things for the time being.
Saturday, 30 July 2016
a day in the gravel garden
I have been watering the gravel planting in the turning circle. I don't often do that. The plants are chosen to be happy on sand and reasonably drought tolerant. But the garden is beginning to get quite severely dry, and as I looked at the browning cushions of thrift and rapidly dying foliage of the Asphodeline and Eryngium, I thought they were really beginning to suffer. And the whole area looked very dreary to be the first thing to greet visitors as they approached the front door.
I'd been weeding and tidying the turning circle intermittently anyway, because it was a handy thing to do while keeping an eye on the kittens as they made their first forays out of doors and needed doing. The spent flower stems of the low growing Euphorbia myrsinites had passed from the attractive post flowering pink stage to an unappealing pale brown, while the fat, whiskery seed pods of Nigella damascena had turned from architectural green whiskery spheres to simply tatty, where they had not been grazed off by the rabbits to stumps. Leathery dead leaves had blown in from the eleagnus hedge, and the whole area was a candidate for debrowning, quite apart from the weeds.
The routine with the hose is to set it down so that the spray head plays over a patch of gravel, weed and tidy nearby for a few minutes, then move the hose to the next patch of gravel, and so on. The neighbours have got one of those back-and-forth spray things. I had one once, but they end up giving patchy cover because tall plants mask the ones behind them, and it's difficult to cover right up to all the edges without wasting water on adjacent areas that may not need it. My method works well as long as you keep moving the hose. Each area gets a real soaking, but that's fine. One deep soak over the course of the summer is better than several light sprinklings.
I've been planting out more evening primrose grown from seed, a nice form with narrow leaves and flowers in a soft shade of apricot. I think looking at my planting list that it is the variety 'Apricot Delight', but can't be bothered to go outside at this moment to check the label. I used some a couple of years ago outside the blue summerhouse, and they appear to be perennial, unlike the yellow form I collected on Dunwich beach, which dies after flowering. Those seed themselves very generously, and would like to spread around the garden. Indeed, a few have put themselves in the end of the long border nearest the blue shed, but since that end of the border is supposed to be yellow and I like the play of the same plant across the front garden I shall leave them to it.
The creeping sorrel is incredibly persistent. I used to be jealous and puzzled that Beth Chatto's gravel garden didn't seem to suffer from it, until spotting a tiny bit and realising that the difference was that I did not have a supply of keen Dutch and German horticultural students to weed it out for me.
I'd been weeding and tidying the turning circle intermittently anyway, because it was a handy thing to do while keeping an eye on the kittens as they made their first forays out of doors and needed doing. The spent flower stems of the low growing Euphorbia myrsinites had passed from the attractive post flowering pink stage to an unappealing pale brown, while the fat, whiskery seed pods of Nigella damascena had turned from architectural green whiskery spheres to simply tatty, where they had not been grazed off by the rabbits to stumps. Leathery dead leaves had blown in from the eleagnus hedge, and the whole area was a candidate for debrowning, quite apart from the weeds.
The routine with the hose is to set it down so that the spray head plays over a patch of gravel, weed and tidy nearby for a few minutes, then move the hose to the next patch of gravel, and so on. The neighbours have got one of those back-and-forth spray things. I had one once, but they end up giving patchy cover because tall plants mask the ones behind them, and it's difficult to cover right up to all the edges without wasting water on adjacent areas that may not need it. My method works well as long as you keep moving the hose. Each area gets a real soaking, but that's fine. One deep soak over the course of the summer is better than several light sprinklings.
I've been planting out more evening primrose grown from seed, a nice form with narrow leaves and flowers in a soft shade of apricot. I think looking at my planting list that it is the variety 'Apricot Delight', but can't be bothered to go outside at this moment to check the label. I used some a couple of years ago outside the blue summerhouse, and they appear to be perennial, unlike the yellow form I collected on Dunwich beach, which dies after flowering. Those seed themselves very generously, and would like to spread around the garden. Indeed, a few have put themselves in the end of the long border nearest the blue shed, but since that end of the border is supposed to be yellow and I like the play of the same plant across the front garden I shall leave them to it.
The creeping sorrel is incredibly persistent. I used to be jealous and puzzled that Beth Chatto's gravel garden didn't seem to suffer from it, until spotting a tiny bit and realising that the difference was that I did not have a supply of keen Dutch and German horticultural students to weed it out for me.
Friday, 29 July 2016
some larger members of the carrot family
I deadheaded the hogweed that grows in one of the borders in the back garden today. I felt slightly regretful as I did, because the large, flat flower heads have a fine, architectural silhouette as they turn to seed, and add height without casting much shade. The average height of common hogweed according to Wikipedia is between 50 and 120 centimetres, with a maximum of two metres. Mine must have enjoyed life in a flower bed that was dosed last winter with spent mushroom compost and blood, fish and bone, since it shot up towards not far off the two metre mark. But the architectural heads don't hold on to their seeds for long before scattering them generously, and the large, flat brown seeds germinate readily, each turning into a little parsnip rooted miniature hogweed that requires winkling out with the point of a trowel. I spent a great hunk of time last winter teasing tiny hogweeds out of the beds in the back garden, and don't want it to become an annual ritual.
On my visit to Corpusty Mill I saw giant hogweed in the flesh, with the garden owner present to vouch that that was indeed what it was. He had two stands of it, and was slightly defensive when we asked if it was really giant hogweed, stressing that the seeds could not escape into the wider countryside from the places in his garden where he had it, and yes, he did let it set some seed in order to keep it going in the garden. That might be a wise precaution if you want to grow it, since fewer outlets sell it now than formerly. The plant centre stocked it the first couple of years I worked there, but dropped it at much the same time as they stopped selling the species of Rhus with particularly noxious sap.
The sap of giant hogweed can produce very nasty blisters indeed by the particularly unpleasant mechanism of making the skin sensitive to light, so that even after the victim's initial injuries have healed they have to protect the affected area from further sun exposure. They are likely to be scarred, and in the worst case blinded if the sap gets in their eyes. It is really not a nice plant. And yet it is very handsome, quite apart from the illicit thrill of harbouring something so dangerous. I wouldn't grow it myself, not least because I wouldn't enjoy the feeling that I was taking my sight in my hands each year when I deadheaded it, and while I could tell human visitors not to touch it I would worry about the cats.
Now I've seen the common and giant hogweeds in full flower I wouldn't confuse the two. Giant hogweed is not just taller, it is more giant in all its parts. The leaves are bigger and shinier and more divided than those of poor old cow mumble. The flower heads are enormous and multi branched, each individual umbel a gigantic saucer with saucer upon saucer heaped up to make the whole. The stem is a brighter green. I have witnessed well grown examples of the common hogweed produce the odd nervous squeak from people worried they might have the giant one on their hands, but really the two are quite different.
Tomorrow I might cut down the angelica stems in the rose bed. Strange that when giant hogweed is so toxic, and even common hogweed sap is to be avoided, angelica stems can be candied and put on cakes (even if they have gone completely out of fashion). The angelica seed heads are big orbs atop stems fully six feet tall, and again they are fine architectural features, but weeding out angelica seedlings is about as tedious as dealing with baby hogweeds. And I must definitely hoik the flowered parsley stems out of the dahlia bed before they can leave me with a thousand million little parsley plants all over the gravel outside the blue shed.
On my visit to Corpusty Mill I saw giant hogweed in the flesh, with the garden owner present to vouch that that was indeed what it was. He had two stands of it, and was slightly defensive when we asked if it was really giant hogweed, stressing that the seeds could not escape into the wider countryside from the places in his garden where he had it, and yes, he did let it set some seed in order to keep it going in the garden. That might be a wise precaution if you want to grow it, since fewer outlets sell it now than formerly. The plant centre stocked it the first couple of years I worked there, but dropped it at much the same time as they stopped selling the species of Rhus with particularly noxious sap.
The sap of giant hogweed can produce very nasty blisters indeed by the particularly unpleasant mechanism of making the skin sensitive to light, so that even after the victim's initial injuries have healed they have to protect the affected area from further sun exposure. They are likely to be scarred, and in the worst case blinded if the sap gets in their eyes. It is really not a nice plant. And yet it is very handsome, quite apart from the illicit thrill of harbouring something so dangerous. I wouldn't grow it myself, not least because I wouldn't enjoy the feeling that I was taking my sight in my hands each year when I deadheaded it, and while I could tell human visitors not to touch it I would worry about the cats.
Now I've seen the common and giant hogweeds in full flower I wouldn't confuse the two. Giant hogweed is not just taller, it is more giant in all its parts. The leaves are bigger and shinier and more divided than those of poor old cow mumble. The flower heads are enormous and multi branched, each individual umbel a gigantic saucer with saucer upon saucer heaped up to make the whole. The stem is a brighter green. I have witnessed well grown examples of the common hogweed produce the odd nervous squeak from people worried they might have the giant one on their hands, but really the two are quite different.
Tomorrow I might cut down the angelica stems in the rose bed. Strange that when giant hogweed is so toxic, and even common hogweed sap is to be avoided, angelica stems can be candied and put on cakes (even if they have gone completely out of fashion). The angelica seed heads are big orbs atop stems fully six feet tall, and again they are fine architectural features, but weeding out angelica seedlings is about as tedious as dealing with baby hogweeds. And I must definitely hoik the flowered parsley stems out of the dahlia bed before they can leave me with a thousand million little parsley plants all over the gravel outside the blue shed.
Thursday, 28 July 2016
hydrangeas
When I was running through what is flowering in the back garden at the moment, I forgot to mention the hydrangeas. I do not think it was a case of the Freudian process of repression as a factor in forgetting: it was late and I was tired. I am extremely fond of hydrangeas, and if I had a larger and damper garden I should grow more of them.
They are stalwarts of the large garden for late summer colour. Go to many of the great British gardens that were originally designed for peak impact in the spring or early summer, and you will see banks of hydrangeas being planted out as their owners and managers realise that July and August are important holiday and tourist months, and that by then not only are the naturalised daffodils a distant memory, but the rambling roses planted up the trees are over. Hydrangeas are classic season extenders. They sit happily in a woodland garden, and are far less demanding of time and maintenance than a herbaceous border.
Outside the conservatory is 'Ayesha' Mk II. The real thing is a flat headed pink hortensia type, with unusually fleshy petals. It enjoyed the wet June, and has made a great deal of growth, so much so that it is starting to crowd in on the tree peony next to it, and may need some careful editing soon. In the hierarchy of garden occupants, Paeonia rockii rates well above mophead hydrangeas. Sorry, Ayesha. Next to it is Ayesha Mk I, which was sold to me as 'Ayesha' although as soon as it bloomed it became clear that it was no such thing. The petals are pink but not at all fleshy, and fundamentally undistinguished. I once tried to dig it out, broke my fork on it, and gave up. It is harmless, and now looks quite pretty with a couple of self sown wild ferns growing up through its feet. I would have no hesitation in razing it to the ground if it started growing into anything else.
Next to the nameless pink is a paniculata type hydrangea with pointed domed heads of flowers. The variety is 'Vanille Fraise': the freshly opened flowers are currently a dead shade of white, but will turn pink in due course. It is rather crammed in against a dark leaved Podocarpus, which is growing like billy ho following the wet spell, and rose 'Sally Holmes', which is looking distinctly sorry for itself (herself). The hydrangea would probably like to have more space, and may yet make a growth spurt and start fighting back against the conifer. Shrubs in this garden that don't die in the couple of years after planting often speed up later on, once they have got their roots right down.
In the sloping bed along the southern boundary of the back garden are an oak leaved hydrangea and another paniculata. Hydrangea quercifolia is a lovely thing, with tall, pointed domes of flowers that are (from memory) individually larger and more widely spaced than the paniculatas. I think of them as being opulent but less dense, without being precisely sure how they achieve that effect without looking at one. The large, oak shaped leaves colour well in the autumn and remain on the bush for a long time. This is my second plant. The first suddenly died but I was never sure why. Winter cold, perhaps? The replacement is still quite small. Hydrangea paniculata 'Limelight' nearby is another form whose flowers start off white before changing colour, in its case to a pale lime green.
Hydrangea paniculata flowers on the current year's wood so in March you can prune it fairly hard to a lowish framework. After several anxious weeks in which nothing seems to happen at all it will suddenly produce a lot of strong straight shoots which will start flowering around the last week of July. You could not prune it, of course, in which case it would make a larger shrub with more but individually smaller panicles of flowers. With pruning mine makes it to about five or six feet in a season, which is plenty. As Christopher Lloyd pointed out, most shrubs only flower on their outsides so if you let them get too large they occupy a great deal of space to no good purpose. Do not try this pruning regime on mopheads if you want flowers in the same year. If you need to reduce the size of a mophead the best way is to take out some of the oldest and longest stems at the base annually, renewing the plant over several years.
At the bottom of the sloping bed lives Hydrangea arborescens 'Annabelle', a shrub of mildly suckering habit whose lax stems are scarcely up to the job of supporting the vase domes of white flowers. 'Annabelle' was very trendy a few years ago, which I suppose means that in due course she will go out of fashion, if she hasn't already. Like the paniculatas she can be pruned quite hard in the spring, and one of these years I may buy mine a smart rusted iron plant support to stop her flopping at what should be her moment of glory.
Around the corner in the ditch bed is a variety of Hydrangea aspera. They have huge felty grey leaves, and make imposing shrubs if happy and gaunt, sad ones if not. Mine was looking great a few years ago, then just as I was preening myself that it was so much better than the one in the Beth Chatto gardens it went abruptly off the boil. They hate dry summers, and while they like some shade they don't like too much, as far as I can work out. Watch out for encroaching trees, as corners that seemed just pleasantly shady can become oppressively dark after a couple of seasons without your really noticing. My plant is the variety 'Mauvette' which flowers in a pleasantly subfusc shade of purple. Pruning at the moment is limited to trimming out the dead wood.
Nearby is a lacecap whose identity I'm not sure about off the top of my head. I had more hydrangeas along the ditch in the early years, but some died of winter cold or summer drought, others were shaded out as the trees grew, and a couple drowned after a very wet winter when the water table rose under them and turned their bed to mud soup. I know I still have 'King George', a mophead which flowers in a rather beetrooty shade of red and which has made prodigious growth in the past fifteen years since being liberated from a pot. You can grow hydrangeas in containers, but they need plenty of water and feeding and are probably truly happier in the ground. Most shrubs are. H. macrophylla 'Selina' still battles along in a pot since I fell for her cherry red lacecap flowers at the plant centre. I'd like to get her into the ground but really have no more space. She is looking happier this year since I moved her into a bigger pot, and have been remembering to feed her.
There are lots more I'd grow if only I had space. There are some fabulous bright blue forms, while 'Zorro' in addition to electric blue flowers has black stems. I'd love one of those, as I would the wonderfully named 'Merveille Sanguine' with its plum red flowers and bronze coloured young leaves. But there is no more room until something dies or is evicted.
They are stalwarts of the large garden for late summer colour. Go to many of the great British gardens that were originally designed for peak impact in the spring or early summer, and you will see banks of hydrangeas being planted out as their owners and managers realise that July and August are important holiday and tourist months, and that by then not only are the naturalised daffodils a distant memory, but the rambling roses planted up the trees are over. Hydrangeas are classic season extenders. They sit happily in a woodland garden, and are far less demanding of time and maintenance than a herbaceous border.
Outside the conservatory is 'Ayesha' Mk II. The real thing is a flat headed pink hortensia type, with unusually fleshy petals. It enjoyed the wet June, and has made a great deal of growth, so much so that it is starting to crowd in on the tree peony next to it, and may need some careful editing soon. In the hierarchy of garden occupants, Paeonia rockii rates well above mophead hydrangeas. Sorry, Ayesha. Next to it is Ayesha Mk I, which was sold to me as 'Ayesha' although as soon as it bloomed it became clear that it was no such thing. The petals are pink but not at all fleshy, and fundamentally undistinguished. I once tried to dig it out, broke my fork on it, and gave up. It is harmless, and now looks quite pretty with a couple of self sown wild ferns growing up through its feet. I would have no hesitation in razing it to the ground if it started growing into anything else.
Next to the nameless pink is a paniculata type hydrangea with pointed domed heads of flowers. The variety is 'Vanille Fraise': the freshly opened flowers are currently a dead shade of white, but will turn pink in due course. It is rather crammed in against a dark leaved Podocarpus, which is growing like billy ho following the wet spell, and rose 'Sally Holmes', which is looking distinctly sorry for itself (herself). The hydrangea would probably like to have more space, and may yet make a growth spurt and start fighting back against the conifer. Shrubs in this garden that don't die in the couple of years after planting often speed up later on, once they have got their roots right down.
In the sloping bed along the southern boundary of the back garden are an oak leaved hydrangea and another paniculata. Hydrangea quercifolia is a lovely thing, with tall, pointed domes of flowers that are (from memory) individually larger and more widely spaced than the paniculatas. I think of them as being opulent but less dense, without being precisely sure how they achieve that effect without looking at one. The large, oak shaped leaves colour well in the autumn and remain on the bush for a long time. This is my second plant. The first suddenly died but I was never sure why. Winter cold, perhaps? The replacement is still quite small. Hydrangea paniculata 'Limelight' nearby is another form whose flowers start off white before changing colour, in its case to a pale lime green.
Hydrangea paniculata flowers on the current year's wood so in March you can prune it fairly hard to a lowish framework. After several anxious weeks in which nothing seems to happen at all it will suddenly produce a lot of strong straight shoots which will start flowering around the last week of July. You could not prune it, of course, in which case it would make a larger shrub with more but individually smaller panicles of flowers. With pruning mine makes it to about five or six feet in a season, which is plenty. As Christopher Lloyd pointed out, most shrubs only flower on their outsides so if you let them get too large they occupy a great deal of space to no good purpose. Do not try this pruning regime on mopheads if you want flowers in the same year. If you need to reduce the size of a mophead the best way is to take out some of the oldest and longest stems at the base annually, renewing the plant over several years.
At the bottom of the sloping bed lives Hydrangea arborescens 'Annabelle', a shrub of mildly suckering habit whose lax stems are scarcely up to the job of supporting the vase domes of white flowers. 'Annabelle' was very trendy a few years ago, which I suppose means that in due course she will go out of fashion, if she hasn't already. Like the paniculatas she can be pruned quite hard in the spring, and one of these years I may buy mine a smart rusted iron plant support to stop her flopping at what should be her moment of glory.
Around the corner in the ditch bed is a variety of Hydrangea aspera. They have huge felty grey leaves, and make imposing shrubs if happy and gaunt, sad ones if not. Mine was looking great a few years ago, then just as I was preening myself that it was so much better than the one in the Beth Chatto gardens it went abruptly off the boil. They hate dry summers, and while they like some shade they don't like too much, as far as I can work out. Watch out for encroaching trees, as corners that seemed just pleasantly shady can become oppressively dark after a couple of seasons without your really noticing. My plant is the variety 'Mauvette' which flowers in a pleasantly subfusc shade of purple. Pruning at the moment is limited to trimming out the dead wood.
Nearby is a lacecap whose identity I'm not sure about off the top of my head. I had more hydrangeas along the ditch in the early years, but some died of winter cold or summer drought, others were shaded out as the trees grew, and a couple drowned after a very wet winter when the water table rose under them and turned their bed to mud soup. I know I still have 'King George', a mophead which flowers in a rather beetrooty shade of red and which has made prodigious growth in the past fifteen years since being liberated from a pot. You can grow hydrangeas in containers, but they need plenty of water and feeding and are probably truly happier in the ground. Most shrubs are. H. macrophylla 'Selina' still battles along in a pot since I fell for her cherry red lacecap flowers at the plant centre. I'd like to get her into the ground but really have no more space. She is looking happier this year since I moved her into a bigger pot, and have been remembering to feed her.
There are lots more I'd grow if only I had space. There are some fabulous bright blue forms, while 'Zorro' in addition to electric blue flowers has black stems. I'd love one of those, as I would the wonderfully named 'Merveille Sanguine' with its plum red flowers and bronze coloured young leaves. But there is no more room until something dies or is evicted.
Wednesday, 27 July 2016
high summer garden
I called at the Clacton garden centre after going to the dump, to stock up on gardening gloves and string, and they had given up on summer bedding. Where there had been a row of Dutch trollies with packs of petunias and arctotis there was just an empty space, and one trolley with a few vegetable plants on it. They must have taken the view that the bedding plant sale stage of the summer is well and truly over, and binned anything they hadn't sold.
The garden is starting to assume that late summer air of weariness. The wet June kept it going remarkably well, but after the hot spell it has started to flop. I must have another session removing old foxglove stalks and the iris stems I missed last time, plus a few flower stalks of aquilegia and poppy that are still hanging about, but no amount of tidying could clear away the feeling of heaviness.
The ground is getting too dry to weed in places. The Systems Administrator scratched around in the railway garden yesterday, but pronounced the soil too hard. I generously offered the use of the hose for a couple of hours to soften it, but the SA has not taken me up on that suggestion. Even though it's not as hot as it was last week, it's still dreadfully muggy to be crawling about in the gravel. I managed a brief stint weeding the turning circle until a rain shower too sharp to ignore drove me indoors, though at least that means we'll get supper at a reasonable hour tonight. I am still planting seed raised evening primrose into the gravel, since they've got to come out of their pots before winter comes and I can't do everything in October, but it's going to be tricky remembering where they are to water them.
Meanwhile I am looking at the July and August chapters of books that go through the garden month by month, plus Marina Christopher's book on late summer flowers, searching for ideas on how to rejig the rose beds so that they are not such black holes of boredom by late July. Things that will grow in evil yellow clay that can sit wet in winter but dries to concrete in summer, in an corner of the country where average annual rainfall is sub 500 mm. Next to an active rabbit colony which is set to remain active until such a point as the energetic kitten's emerging hunting skills and the Systems Administrator's sniping from the bedroom window manage to finish them off. Easy peasy. I am sure there are lots of lovely things that will grow beautifully. Joking apart, planning is part of the fun in gardening.
I would not like to leave you with the impression that there is nothing flowering by now. Au contraire, various things are looking very good. The Romneya coulteri has never been so splendid, several of the clematis have responded really well to the wet June and last winter's feeding, Verbena bonariensis is at full clatter and I have some more young plants in pots ready to slip into gaps, magenta flowered Geranium 'Ann Folkard' has outgrown the rabbits to make huge pillows, mingled with pink and white everlasting sweet pea, the pots are looking good with fuchsias and cosmos and dahlias. If I had only finished the edges and the de-browning and trimmed the whiskery hedges it would be up to open gardens standard in terms of overall amount of floral interest. It's just that I can see bits that could be better.
The garden is starting to assume that late summer air of weariness. The wet June kept it going remarkably well, but after the hot spell it has started to flop. I must have another session removing old foxglove stalks and the iris stems I missed last time, plus a few flower stalks of aquilegia and poppy that are still hanging about, but no amount of tidying could clear away the feeling of heaviness.
The ground is getting too dry to weed in places. The Systems Administrator scratched around in the railway garden yesterday, but pronounced the soil too hard. I generously offered the use of the hose for a couple of hours to soften it, but the SA has not taken me up on that suggestion. Even though it's not as hot as it was last week, it's still dreadfully muggy to be crawling about in the gravel. I managed a brief stint weeding the turning circle until a rain shower too sharp to ignore drove me indoors, though at least that means we'll get supper at a reasonable hour tonight. I am still planting seed raised evening primrose into the gravel, since they've got to come out of their pots before winter comes and I can't do everything in October, but it's going to be tricky remembering where they are to water them.
Meanwhile I am looking at the July and August chapters of books that go through the garden month by month, plus Marina Christopher's book on late summer flowers, searching for ideas on how to rejig the rose beds so that they are not such black holes of boredom by late July. Things that will grow in evil yellow clay that can sit wet in winter but dries to concrete in summer, in an corner of the country where average annual rainfall is sub 500 mm. Next to an active rabbit colony which is set to remain active until such a point as the energetic kitten's emerging hunting skills and the Systems Administrator's sniping from the bedroom window manage to finish them off. Easy peasy. I am sure there are lots of lovely things that will grow beautifully. Joking apart, planning is part of the fun in gardening.
I would not like to leave you with the impression that there is nothing flowering by now. Au contraire, various things are looking very good. The Romneya coulteri has never been so splendid, several of the clematis have responded really well to the wet June and last winter's feeding, Verbena bonariensis is at full clatter and I have some more young plants in pots ready to slip into gaps, magenta flowered Geranium 'Ann Folkard' has outgrown the rabbits to make huge pillows, mingled with pink and white everlasting sweet pea, the pots are looking good with fuchsias and cosmos and dahlias. If I had only finished the edges and the de-browning and trimmed the whiskery hedges it would be up to open gardens standard in terms of overall amount of floral interest. It's just that I can see bits that could be better.
Tuesday, 26 July 2016
music and kittens
The music identification app on my phone is quite creepily good. It needed three goes to identify a Saint-Saens piano concerto, and I began to think maybe it wouldn't work on classical music, but it got there, right recording and everything, and I was talking the first time I tried. Last night it got Dvorak's cello concerto straight off, and this evening as I was cooking I tested it on The Purcell Quartet and Corelli, and it was there within a couple of seconds. That's seriously obscure. I'm getting curious about what it can do now. Fred Wedlock? Tinariwen? We shall see.
We watched the kittens as they ate their last couple of pouches for the day, and realised that the serious kitten had eaten the whole of one pouch, while the energetic kitten and Mr Fluffy shared the other between them, and were then too bashful to muscle in on the serious kitten's plate. Time for three plates. We tried that at the beginning, being aware of the theory that cats like their own space and their own food rations, but gave up because they never stuck to a plate each, instead piling into whichever helping they saw first, even if it meant that all three of them were sharing.
This evening I ushered the energetic kitten and then Mr Fluffy into the kitchen for an extra pouch, where they unfortunately interrupted Our Ginger who was attempting to eat a little late night supper in peace, and scoffed the remains of his supper as well. Our Ginger was very forbearing about being robbed of his food, and by the time I'd put second and third helpings down to try and placate everybody I'd lost track of how much they'd all had and Mr Fluffy and his brother were looking as round as barrels, but extremely pleased with themselves. If there is a nasty mess in the litter tray in the morning I'll know I overcompensated.
We went through a dodgy few days after starting to let them into the garden when they thought that the extra thick gravel that had built up outside the front door was meant as their new litter tray. I can see why they might have formed that impression, but it was not very nice for the postman. After a couple of days of poop scooping decisive action was required to break the habit. The Systems Administrator scraped up the thick gravel and dumped it elsewhere on the drive, then dosed the ground with a thick solution of mint flavoured shower gel. Either I bought it, or the SA bought it because there was nothing else available, but the SA does not awfully like mint scented showers. It turns out the kittens do not like artificial mint either, and have stopped crapping right outside the front door. That's good, and we didn't even have to buy a special feline repellent at the garden centre.
We watched the kittens as they ate their last couple of pouches for the day, and realised that the serious kitten had eaten the whole of one pouch, while the energetic kitten and Mr Fluffy shared the other between them, and were then too bashful to muscle in on the serious kitten's plate. Time for three plates. We tried that at the beginning, being aware of the theory that cats like their own space and their own food rations, but gave up because they never stuck to a plate each, instead piling into whichever helping they saw first, even if it meant that all three of them were sharing.
This evening I ushered the energetic kitten and then Mr Fluffy into the kitchen for an extra pouch, where they unfortunately interrupted Our Ginger who was attempting to eat a little late night supper in peace, and scoffed the remains of his supper as well. Our Ginger was very forbearing about being robbed of his food, and by the time I'd put second and third helpings down to try and placate everybody I'd lost track of how much they'd all had and Mr Fluffy and his brother were looking as round as barrels, but extremely pleased with themselves. If there is a nasty mess in the litter tray in the morning I'll know I overcompensated.
We went through a dodgy few days after starting to let them into the garden when they thought that the extra thick gravel that had built up outside the front door was meant as their new litter tray. I can see why they might have formed that impression, but it was not very nice for the postman. After a couple of days of poop scooping decisive action was required to break the habit. The Systems Administrator scraped up the thick gravel and dumped it elsewhere on the drive, then dosed the ground with a thick solution of mint flavoured shower gel. Either I bought it, or the SA bought it because there was nothing else available, but the SA does not awfully like mint scented showers. It turns out the kittens do not like artificial mint either, and have stopped crapping right outside the front door. That's good, and we didn't even have to buy a special feline repellent at the garden centre.
Monday, 25 July 2016
outward bound
It's interesting watching the kittens leapfrog each other in their development as they progress towards being adult cats. When we first opened the front door and let them go out into the garden, the serious kitten was the most cautious about the whole outdoors project. For the first couple of days he sat in the hall, staring out through the open door over the gravel and (from a kitten's eye view) endless expanse of plants with a sombre air. Then he decided to come out, and now he is the most independent about exploring.
It is a nuisance that his favourite place to explore is the circuit around the oil tank at the end of the wood. The edge of the wood is bandit territory: we've lost more chickens to foxes there than anywhere else, and I wish to goodness he would go and play in the middle of the back garden where he'd be relatively safe. He will not be told, of course. I bribe him away from the oil tank with a few biscuits, but he eats the biscuits politely and is back up by the tank.
He had a growth spurt about a month ago, and started to look like a small cat while the other two were still definitely kittens. By the time they all went off to the vet for the terrible chop he was the largest by a considerable margin, overtaking the energetic kitten who was significantly heavier than the other two when we got them. The energetic kitten, meanwhile, has suffered a crisis of confidence. Today he was reluctant to go outside, and after the other two had gone off and left him indoors he kept rushing up to first one of us and then the other, looking for affection.
Mr Fluffy explores blithely along the eleagnus hedge. He was climbing it yesterday afternoon but fell out, to judge from the crash while we were drinking tea on the terrace. He leaps at butterflies, and collects leaves which he brings back into the house. The only kitten to have captured any actual prey so far as we know is the serious kitten, who caught a vole last week. He took it into the house, and since I am keen for them to act as rodent controllers as well as pets I didn't like to discourage him by shouting at him to take it out. I hope Mr Fluffy does not become a bird specialist. He seems to lack the concentration to wait by holes in the ground for things to come out, but is very quick on his feet and seemingly obsessed by flying things. He likes watching the bats as they hunt past the windows after nightfall.
Our Ginger had had enough of them by this evening, and stomped off in a hissy fit to the herb bed, but when he turned round and saw that none of his small acolytes had followed him he stomped back and settled on the doorstep, surrounded by adoring kittens. The Systems Administrator has caught him a couple of times leading them around the back garden. He wouldn't admit it, but I think he secretly likes them.
It is a nuisance that his favourite place to explore is the circuit around the oil tank at the end of the wood. The edge of the wood is bandit territory: we've lost more chickens to foxes there than anywhere else, and I wish to goodness he would go and play in the middle of the back garden where he'd be relatively safe. He will not be told, of course. I bribe him away from the oil tank with a few biscuits, but he eats the biscuits politely and is back up by the tank.
He had a growth spurt about a month ago, and started to look like a small cat while the other two were still definitely kittens. By the time they all went off to the vet for the terrible chop he was the largest by a considerable margin, overtaking the energetic kitten who was significantly heavier than the other two when we got them. The energetic kitten, meanwhile, has suffered a crisis of confidence. Today he was reluctant to go outside, and after the other two had gone off and left him indoors he kept rushing up to first one of us and then the other, looking for affection.
Mr Fluffy explores blithely along the eleagnus hedge. He was climbing it yesterday afternoon but fell out, to judge from the crash while we were drinking tea on the terrace. He leaps at butterflies, and collects leaves which he brings back into the house. The only kitten to have captured any actual prey so far as we know is the serious kitten, who caught a vole last week. He took it into the house, and since I am keen for them to act as rodent controllers as well as pets I didn't like to discourage him by shouting at him to take it out. I hope Mr Fluffy does not become a bird specialist. He seems to lack the concentration to wait by holes in the ground for things to come out, but is very quick on his feet and seemingly obsessed by flying things. He likes watching the bats as they hunt past the windows after nightfall.
Our Ginger had had enough of them by this evening, and stomped off in a hissy fit to the herb bed, but when he turned round and saw that none of his small acolytes had followed him he stomped back and settled on the doorstep, surrounded by adoring kittens. The Systems Administrator has caught him a couple of times leading them around the back garden. He wouldn't admit it, but I think he secretly likes them.
Sunday, 24 July 2016
rose, thou art old and too fat
The lawn edges have assumed a Forth Bridge quality, before the switched to epoxy coating put an end to the endless repainting. I hadn't got all the way round when it was time to start again at the beginning. Obviously I should have put cutting the lawn edges further up my list of things to do, only it is not as entertaining as fussing around with flowers, or as conspicuously urgent as potting things on from their tiny pots before they are ruined by drought and starvation. Fortunately we do not open to the public and the Systems Administrator has no strong view on lawn edges.
I pondered the question of the roses as I worked my way around the edge of the rose bed below the veranda. Edging provides good thinking time in a garden. You look at each part of the bed in turn, and the whole view unfolds from a gradually shifting angle. As I clipped, slowly and methodically while keeping an eye out for approaching kittens or any toads that might be sheltering under the whiskery edges, I saw how the overgrown, massed effect of the roses was exacerbated by the eager young rose stems shooting up all around them. These were not suckers of the root stock, but the actual old roses. Several of them, having been quite demure in their early years, now run not quite like the devil, but pretty vigorously. I chopped the unwanted shoots down to ground level last winter, but they have sprung back.
I noticed too how the Viburnum x juddii I'd tucked into the rose bed to provide some spring interest was being overwhelmed by roses, and how well the pink flowered herbaceous Clematis 'Aljonushka' was doing up its narrow rusted iron column, new this year. Last year it burrowed off into the undergrowth and I virtually didn't see it. I reflected on what space was available for adding plants to flower at this time of year, and had to admit that there wasn't very much, except to try and grow even more clematis. Cutting the edges took longer than it would have otherwise because great lumps of rose had fallen out over the lawn, and I was having to cut up to a yard's width of grass in from the edge in the places where the SA hadn't been able to get in with the lawnmower.
The black spot was terrible. Whole branches had defoliated, and the repeat flowering on the modern shrub and David Austin varieties that ought to be capable of producing successive flushes wasn't anything like as good as it should have been. My conviction grew that I needed to reduce the roses a lot, take out the thick old stems at ground level, shorten the others, and generally try and get some light and air back into the bed. The Systems Administrator appeared to check that I was keeping tabs on the time, since I was going out to lunch, and listened while I held forth on the rose problem. Maybe you should prune them hard, said the SA when I paused for breath. The SA believes in pruning roses hard since the SA's father went on a Wisley pruning course and practised what he had learned on his return home, scandalising the neighbours. The roses responded magnificently.
That's it. The roses are getting a big, rejuvenating chop this winter, and if any of them die then it will make room for something else. Once I'd decided about the roses, my eye fell on the Baptisia australis which is presenting a wall of greenery over four feet high for the second year running, with about three flowers on it in total. Maybe I should dig out the Baptisia and use the large space it is currently occupying to grow something else. I quite like Baptisia when it is doing what it's supposed to. It has blue flowers like a cross between a lupin and an outsized sweet pea. But mine has virtually stopped bothering to produce any flowers at all, and has not been persuaded by this spring's application of fish, blood and bone. I think that maybe after fifteen years I'm getting fed up with it.
I pondered the question of the roses as I worked my way around the edge of the rose bed below the veranda. Edging provides good thinking time in a garden. You look at each part of the bed in turn, and the whole view unfolds from a gradually shifting angle. As I clipped, slowly and methodically while keeping an eye out for approaching kittens or any toads that might be sheltering under the whiskery edges, I saw how the overgrown, massed effect of the roses was exacerbated by the eager young rose stems shooting up all around them. These were not suckers of the root stock, but the actual old roses. Several of them, having been quite demure in their early years, now run not quite like the devil, but pretty vigorously. I chopped the unwanted shoots down to ground level last winter, but they have sprung back.
I noticed too how the Viburnum x juddii I'd tucked into the rose bed to provide some spring interest was being overwhelmed by roses, and how well the pink flowered herbaceous Clematis 'Aljonushka' was doing up its narrow rusted iron column, new this year. Last year it burrowed off into the undergrowth and I virtually didn't see it. I reflected on what space was available for adding plants to flower at this time of year, and had to admit that there wasn't very much, except to try and grow even more clematis. Cutting the edges took longer than it would have otherwise because great lumps of rose had fallen out over the lawn, and I was having to cut up to a yard's width of grass in from the edge in the places where the SA hadn't been able to get in with the lawnmower.
The black spot was terrible. Whole branches had defoliated, and the repeat flowering on the modern shrub and David Austin varieties that ought to be capable of producing successive flushes wasn't anything like as good as it should have been. My conviction grew that I needed to reduce the roses a lot, take out the thick old stems at ground level, shorten the others, and generally try and get some light and air back into the bed. The Systems Administrator appeared to check that I was keeping tabs on the time, since I was going out to lunch, and listened while I held forth on the rose problem. Maybe you should prune them hard, said the SA when I paused for breath. The SA believes in pruning roses hard since the SA's father went on a Wisley pruning course and practised what he had learned on his return home, scandalising the neighbours. The roses responded magnificently.
That's it. The roses are getting a big, rejuvenating chop this winter, and if any of them die then it will make room for something else. Once I'd decided about the roses, my eye fell on the Baptisia australis which is presenting a wall of greenery over four feet high for the second year running, with about three flowers on it in total. Maybe I should dig out the Baptisia and use the large space it is currently occupying to grow something else. I quite like Baptisia when it is doing what it's supposed to. It has blue flowers like a cross between a lupin and an outsized sweet pea. But mine has virtually stopped bothering to produce any flowers at all, and has not been persuaded by this spring's application of fish, blood and bone. I think that maybe after fifteen years I'm getting fed up with it.
Saturday, 23 July 2016
a day in the greenhouse
I have finally finished tidying up in the greenhouse. Everything that needed potting on has been potted, and those past potting have been thrown away, along with those pots of seeds that failed to germinate. I know that in theory they might yet come up, but in practice after the recent mini heatwave they are almost certainly well and truly cooked. I am afraid I may have junked a small pot containing three young seed raised Amaryllis bulbs, but that's tough. I need a better system for bulbs, maybe a dedicated seed tray to stand the pots in so that I don't assume from the lack of top growth that there's nothing in them.
The heat has done for some of my cuttings. Three slips of Plectranthus collapsed completely. I only took them recently, and exhuming the remains revealed that they had already rooted before dying of heatstroke. Fortunately I kept the mother plant, a lop sided freebie from the Chatto gardens, who were giving customers a free plant if they spent a minimum amount. It was a free plant of their choice, and not initially labelled until the person before us in the queue asked at the till what it was. That was a not unreasonable question, since it turned out not to be hardy, so any customers who planted it out in their gardens without knowing what it was will be disappointed after next winter.
Two pots of cuttings of Dianthus 'Doris' also shrivelled to a dull green, and didn't look as though they would be making roots now. Annoyingly, I had junked the source plant after taking the cuttings because it was so tatty and I was thinking about reusing the pot. I told myself that a replacement 'Doris' would not be very difficult to find and that one plant wouldn't be very expensive, then was pleased to discover a previously rooted 'Doris' cutting among the tray of pinks on the greenhouse floor being overrun by a tomato plant. I can take more cuttings off that in due course. The moral is to hang on to the parent after taking cuttings until you are quite sure that they are rooting.
I took some more Plectranthus cuttings and stood them out in the cold frame where it might be cooler, but on the whole it seemed a waste of time and cutting material to do more while the hot spell lasts. Instead I marshalled together the pots of things I wanted to propagate and stood them near the greenhouse door until the hot spell should come to an end.
The tray of little plants of what should be the white flowered form of Begonia evansiana had scorched during the hottest days, but were already making new leaves. I picked the dead and damaged ones off, and stood the tray down beside the tomatoes where they would get more shade. Begonia evansiana is one of the easiest things to propagate, making new bulbils in the axils of its leaves. All you have to do is remember to collect them and pot them up. And avoid watering them too much in the winter, or they will rot. They spread themselves quite happily into other plants' pots in the conservatory, which is how I came to still have the white flowered type, having killed the original parent by over watering.
I tied the tomato plants into their system of canes. I don't understand tomato growing. I even bought a book about it, and was still unclear how many side shoots I was supposed to remove. Last year's tomato plants grew wildly everywhere, and after I had rather given up on them suddenly ripened a lot of fruit, some of which I didn't fancy because it had been lying on the greenhouse floor, and some of which split due to erratic watering. I resolved to try harder, and am quite surprised at how organised this year's tomatoes look in comparison. A couple of trusses are almost ripe, and none have split yet.
The heat has done for some of my cuttings. Three slips of Plectranthus collapsed completely. I only took them recently, and exhuming the remains revealed that they had already rooted before dying of heatstroke. Fortunately I kept the mother plant, a lop sided freebie from the Chatto gardens, who were giving customers a free plant if they spent a minimum amount. It was a free plant of their choice, and not initially labelled until the person before us in the queue asked at the till what it was. That was a not unreasonable question, since it turned out not to be hardy, so any customers who planted it out in their gardens without knowing what it was will be disappointed after next winter.
Two pots of cuttings of Dianthus 'Doris' also shrivelled to a dull green, and didn't look as though they would be making roots now. Annoyingly, I had junked the source plant after taking the cuttings because it was so tatty and I was thinking about reusing the pot. I told myself that a replacement 'Doris' would not be very difficult to find and that one plant wouldn't be very expensive, then was pleased to discover a previously rooted 'Doris' cutting among the tray of pinks on the greenhouse floor being overrun by a tomato plant. I can take more cuttings off that in due course. The moral is to hang on to the parent after taking cuttings until you are quite sure that they are rooting.
I took some more Plectranthus cuttings and stood them out in the cold frame where it might be cooler, but on the whole it seemed a waste of time and cutting material to do more while the hot spell lasts. Instead I marshalled together the pots of things I wanted to propagate and stood them near the greenhouse door until the hot spell should come to an end.
The tray of little plants of what should be the white flowered form of Begonia evansiana had scorched during the hottest days, but were already making new leaves. I picked the dead and damaged ones off, and stood the tray down beside the tomatoes where they would get more shade. Begonia evansiana is one of the easiest things to propagate, making new bulbils in the axils of its leaves. All you have to do is remember to collect them and pot them up. And avoid watering them too much in the winter, or they will rot. They spread themselves quite happily into other plants' pots in the conservatory, which is how I came to still have the white flowered type, having killed the original parent by over watering.
I tied the tomato plants into their system of canes. I don't understand tomato growing. I even bought a book about it, and was still unclear how many side shoots I was supposed to remove. Last year's tomato plants grew wildly everywhere, and after I had rather given up on them suddenly ripened a lot of fruit, some of which I didn't fancy because it had been lying on the greenhouse floor, and some of which split due to erratic watering. I resolved to try harder, and am quite surprised at how organised this year's tomatoes look in comparison. A couple of trusses are almost ripe, and none have split yet.
Friday, 22 July 2016
the mayflower project
I went to Harwich this afternoon to visit the Mayflower Project. This is a scheme to build a full size replica of the Pilgrim Fathers' ship and sail it across the Atlantic in 2020 to coincide with the four hundredth anniversary of the original voyage, following which it will be moored in Harwich as a tourist attraction. That's the plan, anyway. Nobody knows exactly what the original Mayflower looked like, but they have agreed a set of plans for a vessel that will look pretty authentically seventeenth century above the waterline, while having modern concessions like an engine in case of emergencies and for use in harbours, and navigation lights. At a hundred and forty foot long it would be a bit bigger than a Thames barge.
At the moment there is not an awful lot of ship to see on the ground. They have laid the keel, and erected the bottom section of the stern post and one set of ribs. It is slightly difficult to imagine that there will be a finished and certified ocean going vessel in less than four years' time. But the manager who showed us around was incredibly enthusiastic and energetic, and it could happen.
The project is based in the former rail marshalling yard. They have got the roof back on the old railway shed, which did have trees growing through it. This now houses a workshop and an upper floor giving them a loft for making full sized patterns. They have already managed to put quite a few local youngsters through level one to three NVQs in engineering and carpentry related subjects, including some hard to teach ones who weren't succeeding at school and the odd young offender. The previously derelict station building nearby has been renovated and used as training rooms, and there is a grand plan to turn the rest of the former marshalling yard into a car park so that they can accommodate more than a dozen tourist cars. There is a modest visitor centre at the front housed in a cabin recycled from the Harwich Festival of the Sea a couple of years ago, and a much smarter purpose built visitor centre about to open behind the shed overlooking the yard where the keel is laid, so visitors will be able to look at the work going on even if they can't poke around the yard. There is an enormous pile of oak trunks from the Tregothnan Estate, brought up from Cornwall one by one when there was cheap space available in an empty returning lorry. There is celebrity endorsement in the form of Richard Branson and Stephen Fry.
The manager has a vision of all Harwich's small museums and attractions coming together under one tourist banner, with the railway branded The Mayflower Line. Abellio Greater Anglia are on board for the idea, if they retain the franchise. Local teenagers have been painting brightly coloured panels illustrating Harwich's maritime and railway history, to decorate the line by the station. The dream is that the replica Mayflower will be the first in a line of wooden ships, bringing wooden boat building back to Harwich and offering engineering apprenticeships in the town. Next up is a Viking longboat, if everything works out.
I hope it does. I like Harwich. I fear the sound of Felixstowe docks across the harbour working 24-7 would be oppressive if one lived there, but on a sunny afternoon it is a nice place to visit. The old town has become smarter in recent years, and the waterfront has a jaunty air on a bright summer's afternoon, with the Halfpenny Pier and a former light vessel moored alongside. The Pier Hotel where we had tea after the Mayflower visit has just been refurbished, and featured recently in The Independent as their Cool Place of the Day. It has a spoof of the shipping forecast running in the loo which is almost worth the visit by itself, but the cream teas are good as well. The Systems Administrator and I have been saying we should go to Harwich sometime to pay a return visit to the Redoubt and tour round the little museums and rather good second hand bookshop. If we do I must drag the SA along to the Mayflower project.
Addendum I checked my Wittr app while I was there to check that my piece of battenberg cake had moved and was not stuck in the middle of the lettuce farm, and saw that I was now apparently bobbing around in the middle of the harbour. The app guide did say that it fuzzed your location.
At the moment there is not an awful lot of ship to see on the ground. They have laid the keel, and erected the bottom section of the stern post and one set of ribs. It is slightly difficult to imagine that there will be a finished and certified ocean going vessel in less than four years' time. But the manager who showed us around was incredibly enthusiastic and energetic, and it could happen.
The project is based in the former rail marshalling yard. They have got the roof back on the old railway shed, which did have trees growing through it. This now houses a workshop and an upper floor giving them a loft for making full sized patterns. They have already managed to put quite a few local youngsters through level one to three NVQs in engineering and carpentry related subjects, including some hard to teach ones who weren't succeeding at school and the odd young offender. The previously derelict station building nearby has been renovated and used as training rooms, and there is a grand plan to turn the rest of the former marshalling yard into a car park so that they can accommodate more than a dozen tourist cars. There is a modest visitor centre at the front housed in a cabin recycled from the Harwich Festival of the Sea a couple of years ago, and a much smarter purpose built visitor centre about to open behind the shed overlooking the yard where the keel is laid, so visitors will be able to look at the work going on even if they can't poke around the yard. There is an enormous pile of oak trunks from the Tregothnan Estate, brought up from Cornwall one by one when there was cheap space available in an empty returning lorry. There is celebrity endorsement in the form of Richard Branson and Stephen Fry.
The manager has a vision of all Harwich's small museums and attractions coming together under one tourist banner, with the railway branded The Mayflower Line. Abellio Greater Anglia are on board for the idea, if they retain the franchise. Local teenagers have been painting brightly coloured panels illustrating Harwich's maritime and railway history, to decorate the line by the station. The dream is that the replica Mayflower will be the first in a line of wooden ships, bringing wooden boat building back to Harwich and offering engineering apprenticeships in the town. Next up is a Viking longboat, if everything works out.
I hope it does. I like Harwich. I fear the sound of Felixstowe docks across the harbour working 24-7 would be oppressive if one lived there, but on a sunny afternoon it is a nice place to visit. The old town has become smarter in recent years, and the waterfront has a jaunty air on a bright summer's afternoon, with the Halfpenny Pier and a former light vessel moored alongside. The Pier Hotel where we had tea after the Mayflower visit has just been refurbished, and featured recently in The Independent as their Cool Place of the Day. It has a spoof of the shipping forecast running in the loo which is almost worth the visit by itself, but the cream teas are good as well. The Systems Administrator and I have been saying we should go to Harwich sometime to pay a return visit to the Redoubt and tour round the little museums and rather good second hand bookshop. If we do I must drag the SA along to the Mayflower project.
Addendum I checked my Wittr app while I was there to check that my piece of battenberg cake had moved and was not stuck in the middle of the lettuce farm, and saw that I was now apparently bobbing around in the middle of the harbour. The app guide did say that it fuzzed your location.
Thursday, 21 July 2016
time for an upgrade
Google killed my phone. Apparently it is a known bug affecting early Android models. All sorts of Google services that I don't use, understand or want kept trying to update themselves, draining the battery in the process. The phone, left fully charged when I went to bed, would be completely flat by morning. Even when I had switched it off before going to bed. The analysis of battery use showed eighty-five per cent going on Google services. It began to eat all my data allowance as well, until the other day for the first time ever I got a text warning me that with several days to go to the end of the month I had used eighty per cent of my monthly package.
Mobile phone battery life has been a thorny subject since the mobile was invented, but I don't use my phone to stream YouTube clips, play online games, update social media or listen to music. I exchange the odd text, keep tabs on my emails if I'm out for the day, very occasionally ring somebody if I'm meeting them, and receive incoming calls so infrequently that the last time I had one I couldn't remember what kind of swipe I had to make on the touch screen to pick the call up. I would like to be able to use the internet on the go, to answer odd questions like What is a mesa landscape, which I wondered as I walked around the Georgia O'Keeffe exhibition, but the old phone did not want to tell me in any reasonable timescale.
The Systems Administrator initially advised me to turn off my location unless I needed it, saying that GPS was a notorious drain on the battery. I did, while suspecting that this was not the root of the problem since I used to be able to have the GPS on. Then the SA actually looked at the phone, consulted Google, and pronounced that unwanted Google functions were the issue. Unfortunately the phone was so old by mobile standards (which is to say at least three years) that the online guides to disabling unwanted Google features didn't even cover my model. The SA, taking an educated best guess, managed to uninstal or disable the unwanted battery eaters. The fix lasted all of ten days before they reinstalled and reactivated themselves, and once again the battery was drained dry overnight as if visited by some mobile phone feeding vampire.
A phone whose battery will not last the day, even assuming you had time to charge it fully before going out after it had completely discharged itself overnight, is no use at all. After the requisite period of huffing and puffing about systems developers (probably young people) who couldn't leave well alone but were overloading and pestering middle aged people's phones to death, I resigned myself to getting a new phone. The Systems Administrator kindly spent some time wading through reviews in order to be able to tell me which phone I wanted. I have no interest in telephones. I want it to work. End of. The SA informed me that what I wanted was a Samsung Galaxy J5, and the only decision I had to make was whether I wanted it in a black or gold case.
The young woman in the shop was extremely nice and efficient and did not make me feel as though I had asked to have a paper bag on my head as she changed over the SIM card, synchronised the contacts, and changed my monthly payment to a new (lower) figure for twice as much data as I had before. The Systems Administrator has with any luck managed to set the new phone so that it will not automatically synch its contacts with my laptop like the last one did without being asked to (I do not need the email addresses of every club booking secretary and mail order plant supplier I have ever had dealings with plus the entire music society committee on my mobile telephone, thank you Google. Just the phone numbers of those friends who have my mobile number will be quite sufficient). I spent a happy half afternoon playing with the phone, at the end of which I had checked I knew how to answer incoming calls, had deleted approximately a hundred unwanted contacts, and was equipped with antivirus plus apps for The Guardian, National Rail Enquiries, Sudoku Daily, the AA, the Art Fund, and Wittertainment. My location is marked by a piece of battenberg cake.
Mobile phone battery life has been a thorny subject since the mobile was invented, but I don't use my phone to stream YouTube clips, play online games, update social media or listen to music. I exchange the odd text, keep tabs on my emails if I'm out for the day, very occasionally ring somebody if I'm meeting them, and receive incoming calls so infrequently that the last time I had one I couldn't remember what kind of swipe I had to make on the touch screen to pick the call up. I would like to be able to use the internet on the go, to answer odd questions like What is a mesa landscape, which I wondered as I walked around the Georgia O'Keeffe exhibition, but the old phone did not want to tell me in any reasonable timescale.
The Systems Administrator initially advised me to turn off my location unless I needed it, saying that GPS was a notorious drain on the battery. I did, while suspecting that this was not the root of the problem since I used to be able to have the GPS on. Then the SA actually looked at the phone, consulted Google, and pronounced that unwanted Google functions were the issue. Unfortunately the phone was so old by mobile standards (which is to say at least three years) that the online guides to disabling unwanted Google features didn't even cover my model. The SA, taking an educated best guess, managed to uninstal or disable the unwanted battery eaters. The fix lasted all of ten days before they reinstalled and reactivated themselves, and once again the battery was drained dry overnight as if visited by some mobile phone feeding vampire.
A phone whose battery will not last the day, even assuming you had time to charge it fully before going out after it had completely discharged itself overnight, is no use at all. After the requisite period of huffing and puffing about systems developers (probably young people) who couldn't leave well alone but were overloading and pestering middle aged people's phones to death, I resigned myself to getting a new phone. The Systems Administrator kindly spent some time wading through reviews in order to be able to tell me which phone I wanted. I have no interest in telephones. I want it to work. End of. The SA informed me that what I wanted was a Samsung Galaxy J5, and the only decision I had to make was whether I wanted it in a black or gold case.
The young woman in the shop was extremely nice and efficient and did not make me feel as though I had asked to have a paper bag on my head as she changed over the SIM card, synchronised the contacts, and changed my monthly payment to a new (lower) figure for twice as much data as I had before. The Systems Administrator has with any luck managed to set the new phone so that it will not automatically synch its contacts with my laptop like the last one did without being asked to (I do not need the email addresses of every club booking secretary and mail order plant supplier I have ever had dealings with plus the entire music society committee on my mobile telephone, thank you Google. Just the phone numbers of those friends who have my mobile number will be quite sufficient). I spent a happy half afternoon playing with the phone, at the end of which I had checked I knew how to answer incoming calls, had deleted approximately a hundred unwanted contacts, and was equipped with antivirus plus apps for The Guardian, National Rail Enquiries, Sudoku Daily, the AA, the Art Fund, and Wittertainment. My location is marked by a piece of battenberg cake.
Wednesday, 20 July 2016
a visit to the west end
I went to a West End musical this afternoon. I hadn't been to a musical since Phantom and Les Miserables sometime in the 1980s, but a friend was keen to see Kinky Boots and asked me to go with her. I love the film and had introduced her to it, and she, though initially confused about why I was so warmly recommending a story about a failing shoe factory and transvestism, loved it as well and began recommending it to other people. Thus word of mouth proceeds. It is a wonderful film and I am shocked to think that it is now over a decade since it came out.
I wasn't at all sure that anybody could match Chiwetel Ejiofor, who is a truly magnetic screen presence. I couldn't see how you would convert the story into a musical, and I wasn't sure I liked musicals. But still. The worst thing that could happen was that I would not greatly enjoy Kinky Boots The Musical, in which case I would know not to go to any more musicals for another twenty years while garnering some brownie points for accompanying my friend, who very much wanted to go and needed somebody to go with. Better still, I might enjoy it, and best of all I might enjoy it very much indeed.
It was great. It was done with a great deal of panache, the song and dance routines worked with the dialogue, the set design was fluid and clever, and the music was pretty good with quite an eighties vibe. I see now that music and lyrics were written by Cyndi Lauper, which explains it. I enjoyed Kinky Boots greatly, as did my friend. And we had a nice lunch in one of the chain restaurants in Covent Garden first.
Only Network Rail were intent on spoiling our day out. I'd pushed for a matinee when we booked, because the trek back from the Strand to north east Essex starting at gone ten at night is so depressing. It suited my friend because then she didn't have to leave her dog alone all evening. When we got back to Liverpool Street things did not initially look too ominous, no swelling crowds on the concourse. But the 18.10 to Norwich was cancelled, while the departure of the 17.58 Ipswich train kept slipping later minute by minute without a platform being announced. We spotted a stopping train bound for Clacton and leaped on to it. The 18.12 left on time, but took two hours to get back to Colchester. The story on the local news just now didn't tell the half of it: the problem was not just stretched overhead wires and hot rails but a broken rail at Colchester that had entirely knocked out one of the tracks through the station. And I saw just now in the local paper that to compound everybody's misery, at 20.30 a tree fell on the line near Diss.
I wasn't at all sure that anybody could match Chiwetel Ejiofor, who is a truly magnetic screen presence. I couldn't see how you would convert the story into a musical, and I wasn't sure I liked musicals. But still. The worst thing that could happen was that I would not greatly enjoy Kinky Boots The Musical, in which case I would know not to go to any more musicals for another twenty years while garnering some brownie points for accompanying my friend, who very much wanted to go and needed somebody to go with. Better still, I might enjoy it, and best of all I might enjoy it very much indeed.
It was great. It was done with a great deal of panache, the song and dance routines worked with the dialogue, the set design was fluid and clever, and the music was pretty good with quite an eighties vibe. I see now that music and lyrics were written by Cyndi Lauper, which explains it. I enjoyed Kinky Boots greatly, as did my friend. And we had a nice lunch in one of the chain restaurants in Covent Garden first.
Only Network Rail were intent on spoiling our day out. I'd pushed for a matinee when we booked, because the trek back from the Strand to north east Essex starting at gone ten at night is so depressing. It suited my friend because then she didn't have to leave her dog alone all evening. When we got back to Liverpool Street things did not initially look too ominous, no swelling crowds on the concourse. But the 18.10 to Norwich was cancelled, while the departure of the 17.58 Ipswich train kept slipping later minute by minute without a platform being announced. We spotted a stopping train bound for Clacton and leaped on to it. The 18.12 left on time, but took two hours to get back to Colchester. The story on the local news just now didn't tell the half of it: the problem was not just stretched overhead wires and hot rails but a broken rail at Colchester that had entirely knocked out one of the tracks through the station. And I saw just now in the local paper that to compound everybody's misery, at 20.30 a tree fell on the line near Diss.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)