Little Boxes Made of Ticky Tacky

Dignity restored.

It's been a fortnight since the Beast from the East swept in during our Great Migration.

As with every move, something vital isn't in the box I thought it was, my favourite (insert household item) doesn't fit, & there's a list of niggling repairs to compile for the agent.

But with the snow gone, every afternoon, you'll find me in the garden.




1.  Potting shed.

Our previous houses've had multiple outbuildings - sheds, garages, sometimes even an apple store or outdoor flush toilet.  Our new place had this:

A bit of fencing propped on top of a slide.

But alas, this fine structure wasn't for us - the landlord hauled it away.  (The proper shed in the photo belongs to my neighbour.  Note the terraces for later.)

Levelling the base area.

Our potting shed'll go in the same place.  I chose plastic over a cement or stone base so we can take it with us when we move (hopefully to our forever home, this time). 

There's about 4" of loose, dry topsoil, then paving stones underneath.  Might've saved a quid or two if I'd poke around a bit first.  On the other hand, not sure how even the pavers are.  Once I realised they were there, I worked on smoothing the topsoil rather than digging them out.

A weed barrier goes under this grid, but for now, it's easier to put it in place & get it level, rather than measuring & remembering the math.


2.  Abscondment explained.

Besides abandoning their survivalist's shed, the amount of stuff left in the house suggests the previous tenants did a runner.  When levelling the shed space, I found critical evidence to explain this dead-of-night departure.

The murder weapon.

My family remains unimpressed.  One callous soul even reminded me of the bones I dug up in a previous garden, how they also set my mind to murder.  Turned out, I'd unearthed someone's dead dog. 

Imagination's like a muscle, you know.  Gotta exercise it.


3.  Fennel

We've never had a terraced garden before.  It'll probably become our veg patch, but for the moment, I keep staring at it like a love sick puppy, taking in the details.  Here's a little beauty growing in the masonry.  It smells of anise so I reckon it's fennel.

Growing in the cracks.

4.  Hollyhock

Under one of the trees at the top of the terrace, I found a hollyhock that looked as if someone had yanked it out of the ground & flung it there.  It was still alive, so I tossed it in a trug that had melted snow in the bottom to rehydrate the thing, then forgot about it.

The next day it was still alive, so I stuck it in a nearly empty bag of compost, splinted its broken stem with a Magnum stick & some packing tape, then propped it against the fence. We'll see how it goes.

Patient's recovering well.

5.  Rt Hon Lady BossyBoots

Your one appeared in our back garden unannounced.  A bit forward for a Brit, but not for an Appalachian, so no offense taken.  She asked what trees were in my potted forest.

BossyBoots

Before I can open my mouth, she spews a list of her own trees, & why's that fig back here - move it to the front garden, do you feed it there's your mistake, neverfeedafigit'llneverfruit, they love to suffer & that hollyhock's just a wild (dismissive flick of the hand), tiny (grimace) green flower, you won't like it, I have purple hollyhocks I'll give you, granny's bonnets, that's what you need, did you know your house was a cannabis factory?

I'd hoped for murder, but a grow house.  That'll do.

And she was IN my back garden, Mr Propagator, so she counts as one of my Six.


6.  Kickass Compost

Thus explained, the 10 bags of this stuff the last occupants left beside the back door.  Rumour has it the entire crawl space under the house is full of it.  I've not found access to the crawl space yet, but if I do, I'm going in.   

Contraband.

Apparently, it's an hydroponic mix.  I've been researching how to use it in the veg patch.  My initial searches included the word 'cannabis' which led me to blocked sites.  Might have to have a word with our resident hacker.

Until then, does anyone know whether this stuff needs cut to work in the garden or can it be used full test?

Cuttings still hanging in there.

It's been an interesting move.

Best of all, the garden feels good.  A few weeks ago in this very blog, I let loose on hating my garden .  I was only able to do that because we were leaving the damnable place.

Now this week . . . well, during one of my rests, I sat looking at the witch hazel, the last of its crinkly red flowers drying out for seed.  I thought, move that to 11:00 & it'll be perfect.

So I did.  And it was.  This garden feels good.

I'm not alone in this feeling.  If you want to read more gardeners in love with their patch, head over to The Propagator for his & other stories by the half dozen.

See you next week.

Beastly

Mulch underlay or recycling . . . 

Ah, the sound of packing tape ripped from cardboard.  The essential trawl of local take-away options.  Mlle DoodleFace doing zoomies with a gigantic poster tube in her mouth while Mizzy BunnyButt climbs a Seuss-ian stack of clothes.  Mr BigNose sighs from a safe place on the couch.

Yes, it's done.  My worldly possessions, the critturs & family've been shifted to our new locale.

I desperately want to explore the garden.

Alas . . . moving coincided with the Beast from the East.  The new garden hides its secrets under snow, so your first tour will be to see how the travelling plant show survived.







1.  First order of business, feed the birds.

Dinner's ready!

In addition to the feeder, we've sprinkled raisins outside the dog area, & piked some fine apple halves.  Our water dish still hides in some unknown box.  Prayers've been offered for its resurrection.


2.  The Little House

On the day, the movers gave me untold grief about what they referred to as my Little House.  Any advice I offered on how to manhandle it  - something I'd done myself, I might add - they immediately disregarded.  Only an idiot would own such a stupid thing, & they certainly weren't listening to an idiot.

Ill treated composter.

It didn't surprise me to see how unceremoniously they dumped it in the new garden.


3.  A new dearly departed.

Not a pet this time.  For all the movers' dyspepsia with me, initial inspection of the potted forest reveals only one fatality - an Asian pear (in this photo, the horizontal stem).  The tall vertical sticks are bamboo cane to ward off bulb-eating fox.  The short stub of a twig near the label (about the same height as the daffs in the pot), that's what's left of the trunk.

Formerly known as an Asian pear.

This particular tree failed to thrive last year.  On calling the nursery for advice, it was determined that the tree, not myself, was at fault.  A free replacement arrived at my door in November.

Prior to the move, I'd thought the original still had life in it, but seeing how easily it snapped, perhaps a bit optimistic.


4.  Frozen Fatsia

On moving day, our last plant load happened close to midnight.  My thoughts were on duvets rather than dahlias, so it wasn't until the next morning I saw the spider fatsia.

This poor fella needs a fainting couch.

I've wrapped the pot in fleece & cover the plant itself at night.  Hopefully it'll perk up when the weather changes.


5.  Optimistic future.

For all the drawbacks to snow, it does give the garden a surreal, exotic feel.  The ordinary looks familiarly unfamiliar, maybe like we do in fancy dress.

Snow-improved lavender. 

The day before the move, I lifted a failing lavender & stuck it in a pot, rather than leave it behind to some unknown fate.  With the bare stems coated it snow, it suddenly looks like it has its whole future ahead of it.  Which I suppose is what even dying things have.  What else would be ahead except the future?


6.  Lovely in death (or dormancy).

And just look at dear creeping Jenny, herself tucked in for winter, worthy of a Victorian death portrait under her bonnet of snow.

Sleeping Jenny waiting to creep again.

So there it is, a week of delaying gratification.

Apple delights.

Next Saturday, the landlord comes to discuss the garden.  There's rumours of weed barrier & pea gravel, so I'll use the week to fortify my alternate plan.

Until then, there's a community of wonderful gardeners featured at The Propagator whose own Six on Saturday haven't a speck of snow on them.  Run over & find out why.

See you next week!

Six Reasons to Six on Saturday

Let there be bulbs & buds.

There've been a few Sixers lamenting that they've nothing but buds, bulbs & more buds to post in their SoS blogs.



Personally, I can't get enough bud & bulb photos.  But then, I also enjoy folks' holiday snaps, so my opinion is suspect.






Last week, CFS had me on house arrest with orders there'd be no writing.  Not a bad sentence, since it was lashing outside.  Plenty of time to contemplate the boon that is our SoS community.

We all have different skill levels, obsessions, time & energy, so SoS works differently for each of us.  The fact we keep coming back - & in some cases, only to read, not to blog - means it does work.

And that's my offering for this week.  A half dozen reasons why I SoS.


1.  It's global.

Globe trotting in slippers & pjs.

Regardless the weather or my health, I visit gardens from 4 continents - FOUR - every week.  That means seeing in their natural environment, trees & plants that could never grow in my climate.  Learning far away methods for growing things that will survive in my garden.  Being reminded of places I used to live.  Seeing that the joys & woes of gardening are fairly universal.





2.  Getting out of the rut.

We once lived in a village where most of my neighbours grew the same flowers - valerians, roses, dahlias, the occasional maverick pansy.

Poor little rejects.

I'm a little slow off the mark, so for my first village fair there, I donated a couple of trays of gazanias to the plant table.  At the end of the day, not a single gazania had been sold.

Conversely, after 3 months of SoS-ing, I've 11 pages of plants I'd like to grow.

While there's no way all those ideas will make it into my garden, that many options stoke the creativity - which in itself, is benefit enough.






3.  Coaxed off the turnip truck.

Long way from home.

I emigrated about 2 decades ago, but've not completely switched gears to this climate, its diseases, pests, plants & wildlife.

Growing carrots, spuds & maters in containers just seems wrong.

But SoS as a virtual garden club has my back.  I want fresh cherry tomatoes?  Revel in my containers.





4.  Seasonal reminders.

Tools of the trade.

Following along from that, my seasonal rhythms are still in Appalachia - all my February gardening chores there started & ended with snow.

While SoS gently nudges me into GMT, even natives of hardiness zones 7 - 9 can appreciate the call to prune, plant, or harvest in the appropriate season.





5.  Erudition.

My gardening ethos is decidedly up-the-holler => plants are beautiful, useful, spiritual.  In my previous life, I could rattle off the medicinal qualities of a plant, its various common names, plus any & all folklore attached to them.  Just try mentioning a recipe in your Six, & I'm all over it.

Not sure how you pronounce that one.

Having said that, I've resisted calling out plants in the dead language, even though I'm old enough to remember Mass being said in Latin.

Not so, our other intrepid SoS-ers.

As a result (& without study on my part), I now recognise the Latin names for grasses, poppies, honeysuckle & witch hazel.




So if anyone knows of something more efficient than the Google method of learning Latin names (i.e. an actual book), please do let me know.


6.  Respite for my poor, non-gardening family members.

I swear I'm listening.

Me: (looking at my Twitter feed) Wow, that's some hellebore.

Son:  I take it that's a flower.

Me:  (turns laptop for him to see)

Son:  Oh.  That's . . . pretty.

Rinse.  Repeat.

Respite from hearing garden talk.

Except when I'm talking about Six on Saturday.

So that's my no-bud, no-bulb contribution for this week.  I'd love to know why you Six on Saturday.

Do take yourself over to The Propagator who has his own Six, plus hosts scads of other SoSers in his comment section.  Go on, don't you forget now.

Thanks for stopping by!

Pickled shallot recipe.

New Year, New Growth

Wildlife water bowl.

It's been another wet week.  All this rain gave me plenty of opportunity to see posts about what's growing in other gardens.  Between showers, I compared notes to my own space.

While the freesia are still asleep & the clematis has no noticeable new growth, there are a few things happening out there.




1.  I admit, I've been worried about my witch hazel.  When it dropped its leaves early last year, I told myself the move had changed its signals.  Then all these great photos of yellow & orange & red squigglies appeared in my Twitter feed, convincing me my tree had died.

But hello!

Witch hazel tutu blooms.

2.  The leucojum has had its first blossom.

Leucojum not yet fully open.

3.  I've been keeping an eye on the sweet peas, self seeded & . . .

Self seeded sweet pea next to the toadflax.

. . . 2017 survivor.

Old man pea.

4.  The greatest joy of week, proof positive the daffs have survived Brer Fox.  (You can read about our Neighbour From Hell saga here & here.)

The Brer Fox repellant worked!

5.  The kerria surprised me with a blossom in the middle of its many wands.  The smudged yellowgreen bits below the horizontal stem are leaf knobs getting ready to open.  This is the kerria overshadowed by the elder tree, which I've been pruning back, so hopefully there'll be more vertical & less horizontal this year.

Oh kerria, you yellow face delights us.

6.  Mlle DoodleFace pointed out a new hole under the fence, this one too small for Brer Fox.  I keep filling it in & it keeps getting opened again, sometimes by Mlle DoodleFace herself.

The new rat-sized hole.

Mizzy BunnyButt (who tends all things rodent) sent a memo about some big heavy stone to be lodged in there quite soon.  (As you can see in this photo, there were no blossoms on the witch hazel earlier this week, so WOW, eh?)

Mizzy BB inspects.

All these new things in our new year.

So once again, thanks for stopping to see my Six on Saturday.  Please be sure to visit The Propagator for his SoS plus links to many other garden peeks.

Tuckered Mlle DoodleFace.

Totally Trees

Mizzy BunnyButt in the apple tree (summer photo).

I've kept a post featuring my trees on the back burner until there was nothing else going on in the garden.  This week alone there's been good weather, then rain, some frost, winds from Storm Caroline, all making their mark, not to mention another delivery of bulbs some fool ordered.

Time to take the bit in my teeth.  Trees it is.




1.  There's a notion in garden design (borrowed from Japanese gardening techniques, I believe) to use something beyond the garden boundaries as a focal point for the design inside the borders.  This birch would be that focal point, were I gifted in garden design.  In every season, at every time of day - & night, thanks to the street light - the eye goes to it first.  I'd love a garden large enough for a small copse of birch trees.

Birch from the abandoned garden next door.

2.  My acer's been featured before, when its leaves were at the apex of colour.  With most of them on the ground now, they've still got shades & tones.

The colour of winter via the acer.

What I didn't show before is its heroic determination to live.  Someone long ago planted it at the base of a brushed yew tree, but a self-seeded elder got between them.  Here you can see the acer growing horizontally to survive the squatter.  The yew is behind the both of them, out of this shot.

Old woman acer bending under the elder.

And a close up of the trunks, with the acer being the smooth, more grey colour & the elder a rough brown.  Ivy grows up the yew just visible at the back. 

The elder was beautiful in bloom & the acer is thriving so what to do, what to do . . .

Acer & elder grappling.

3.  Several years ago, a woman wrote an article about her addiction to growing monkey puzzles from seed.  I'd long wanted a monkey puzzle, so sent off for my own seeds.  For all my efforts, only 2 germinated, with only one of those surviving more than a few months.  Here is that sad little guy who, up 'til this summer, looked healthy.

Now it's brown on all its extremities.  I fear this year'll see the last of him.  Damn.  Anyone have suggestions?

Look at that sweet monkey puzzle face.

4.  I suspect our apple tree was planted about the same time as the yew.  Then or sometime later, the apple was given a wisteria for company.  The garden sat in neglect for possibly 10 years previous to our occupancy, which left the wisteria to go stark raving mad.  Shoots from the trunk made a latticework over the ground, going in one direction across the patio, into the garage.  In the other direction, it climbed the yew.

Yes, there's an apple tree in that wisteria.

It'll take a few years' pruning to pull it back to civility.  Despite it covering the apple's canopy, we had a great apple crop.  And it did look beautiful in bloom.

Apple & wisteria earlier this year.

5.  There's a trio of fruit trees planted near the acer, although 'planted' might really mean 'heeled in a single hole & left to their own devices'.  These are 2 apple & an ornamental cherry.  We got only 1 apple, but the cherry did okay producing fruit.

Trio of fruit trees.

If this is technique rather than neglect, I'd love to hear about it.

Close up the the trio trunks.

6.  In addition to those bulbs I don't remember ordering, this week brought a new 20th century Asian pear to replace one bought in the spring that didn't thrive.  The nursery were great on the phone, both with advice on ordering the first one, then when explaining why it only produced one sad little leaf.

This guy's been planted since the photo, so come on next year!

Doodle thinks this is her new stick.

So there you have it.  That's my Six.  But before you go . . .

Love them trees.

As always, please head over to the inciter of this meme, The Propagator where you'll find not only his Six, but links to many, many other Six on Saturday blogs.

See you next week!

Falling in Love Again

When it comes to the garden, I've given my heart away too many times to contemplate monogamy.  This week, I look at what's currently active in the garden that also, somewhere along the way, captured my heart.

Earlier in the summer, goldenrod w/queen of the prairie.

1.  Goldenrod is that boy who's friends with your brother, the kid you grow up tripping over & treat like family, but never fancy.  Before I emigrated, goldenrod covered acres of field along my drive to work, putting on its yellow headdress at the height of summer.  A coupla months later, frost would outline every stem & seed head in breath-stopping beauty.

A few years after arriving here in the UK, the sudden sight of that unmistakable yellow gave me a different feeling.  Not acres, but 4 lonely plants in a neighbour's garden.  I'd never seen goldenrod in captivity before.  As it would happen, the very next place I lived had a huge flowerbed taken over by the stuff.  When I left there, this time I took some with me.

My late father called it wild mustard, the familiar name learned from his herbalist mother & said it in his gentle southern accent.  I never met my grandmother, a woman born in the 19th century, but she gives a 4 generational provenance between the mustard family & my own.  Goldenrod & me, we're two old friends reunited in this new & strange place.

Goldenrod as it looks now, w/o a hint of frost yet.

2.  One of my many UK homes had a flagstone area outside the back door.  Some stones had been removed at the far end to allow space for what, to me, was an extraordinarily exotic plant.  Because of its pink blooms, I called it the Gigantic Mauve Thing.  Makes no sense, but that's me in a nutshell.

After learning its Latin name, I called it Roger.  As is my habit, I lifted a few Roger rhyzomes each time I moved.  Then at my last place, taking a little bit of Roger would ruin the balance of his flowerbed, so I left him behind.

Once settled here, I enticed Roger's more handsome brother, Bronze Peacock, into my garden & planted him by the water feature.  Perhaps knowing my heart belonged to his brother, he frittered & frazzled & threatened to die, so I plucked him from the bog & stuck him in with the tomato plants.  No bloom this summer, but knowing I've left all thoughts of his brother behind, perhaps next year Peacock'll do better.

Rodgersia reminds me of nights on the flagstone patio, waiting for the tawny owl to cry, of mornings watching the pheasants feed, of a time when I thought Good was bigger & stronger & more likely to happen than was Evil.

Rodgersia Bronze Peacock - when it's healthy, it is bronze.

3.  One of my moves took me to a smaller garden than before, overshadowed by my neighbour's love of trees (& dislike of pruning).  I confiscated the one small sunny area of lawn & put in a circular rose garden with lavender around the edges.  Starved for room, I plugged the spaces between lavender & roses with the creeping thyme I'd brought from my last place.

By the next summer, the thyme filled the empty gaps in the bed.  I'd sit on the lawn & pull the few struggling weeds from it, brushing up against the lavender as I worked.  Those three scents mingled, the creeping thyme & lavender with an afterthought of rose, it made me drunk with pleasure.  I'd often lay down in the grass next to my rose bed & breathe breathe breathe them all in.

Smell is as important as colour in my garden.  The trio of rose, lavender & creeping thyme is one I repeat over & over in every place I've lived since.  When I weed each of those subsequent beds, I remember that POW of the first time I fell in love with that smell.

Red lavender as it looks now, & white creeping thyme underneath.

4.  I used to live near Gertrude Bell's family home, Rounton Grange.  The house is long gone, but the area of the kitchen garden has been taken over by Dark Star Plants, a nursery that specialises in plants with dark foliage.

On one of my visits there, the seller said that they were prohibited from propagating a certain plant for 30 years so that the folk who developed it could make money first.  In my memory, that plant was this little black mondo.  We bought three of them.

Some time later, a friend came over to get plant ideas from my garden.  Based on what she said her design would be, I thought little black mondo would be a good choice.  While leading her over to check it out, I told her about how it wouldn't propagate so unfortunately, I couldn't give her any plants.  Yet there mondo grew with 5 babies sprouting out all around it.  That's the first time a plant ever called me a liar.  At least, to my face.  And yes, my friend got some of the babies.

On that day, little black mondo exposed the frailty of my memory, but also the delightful fictions it writes.  When I see mondo, I think of my friend, a remarkable adventurer.  I think about Gerturde Bell, who wouldn't've had the patience for me, but whom I admire nevertheless.  And I think of how rules & regulations can't stop life from being itself.

Ophiopogon planiscapus 'Niger' - Black mondo.

5.  Everyone should have one outlaw romance.  Mine actually grows in the empty lot next door.

From what I can see through the upstairs window (not that I'm snooping), the lot used to be an Edwardian garden, now gone to the foxes.  In addition to roses & fruit trees, it has several climbers scrambling the wall between the properties, attempting murder by strangulation of my potted shrubs & trees.  All summer, I waged merciless war against those climbers until the leaves turned colour & the Virginia creeper turned my head.

Its beautiful crimson calms me.  I have reckless thoughts of taking cuttings, of growing my own dashing creeper.  Then my potted shrubs & trees stage an intervention, after which I make some focaccia, open a bottle of wine & revisit a box set of Last Tango in Halifax.

My outlaw romance.

6.  Once, while foraging for dead plants to use as Halloween decorations, I found a hunchbacked shrub growing under some mature trees at the edge of a field.  Its seedpods looked like earrings made from dried blood drops, perfect for our Halloween party.

When none of my gardening friends could identify it, I assumed birds had facilitated its escape from a nearby Edwardian greenhouse ruin.  I tried growing the seeds, but no joy.  It took years to identify it as Himalayan honeysuckle.

That long ago Halloween party celebrated a short film collaboration by several of my women friends.  The various Himalayan honeysuckle incarnations since that first discovery, they've all connected me with the excitement of group creation, the shared experience of women, humanity's bloodchain spark in all of us.

Seedpods from Himalayan honeysuckle.

That brings us to the end of my garden's #SixonSaturday.  Be sure to drop by the instigator of this hashtag, for his Six.  In the comments to his blog, you'll find links to other gardeners' collections of Sixes.

There but for the Grace of God . . . street view of the Creep.