OH YES!
Many pathways in heaven are herbaciously bordered. Not all, but a big darn lot, 700 or more
This little beauty is in Buscot Park, along with water gardens, kitchen gardens, walled gardens, Italian gardens…. …all immaculately designed from the perspective of a person wandering through them. I managed to spend the best part of a day drinking the visual beauty
I can’t decide whether I first rescued this courgette from:
I slipped a seed into the sod last April. This chunky hunk has been brewing ever since
Now, don’t you think it’s a very pleasing size, shape, and colour? It’s also quite firm and smells very like ‘vegetable’, not at all like ‘book’
Ratatouille here we come!
Most mornings I walk through my garden at 7am. There are fresh droppings on the pathway.
Not the ‘splat’ of squishy birdpoop dropped from above. Too large for mouse droppings. Not the firmer logs of rat or hedgehog poop. A pub discussion concluded that my garden has been invaded by an escaped tortoise. Hmmmm….
I wonder who and what my visitor is?
3 mins from garden to tummy
My first crop was crunchy-yummy!
Wendys – be prepared
Facebook advertising says so
With each Facebook personalised advertisement pushing me to update my relationships, jobs, looks – a little bit of my self-esteem slips away.
Actually it doesn’t. For some reason I’ve developed an immunity. I’m an exceptional person. It seems like many women do loose a little bit of confidence, a little bit of heart. Advertising standards could do so much more to protect the mental health of the public, saving oodles of money
Today Facebook recommends that I get a rich (or poor) dad, presumably either by:
The other adverts suggest that before I can successfully bag myself an effective male entrepreneur I’ll need to lose 7 pounds in 10 days, head-off any rogue menopause symptoms and get my nails painted with miniature masterpieces representing different garden views from famous stately homes of Britain. You can just see Cliveden’s terrace garden on the last adverts’ forefinger
While on my annual national Holiday manoeuvres in National Trust properties I managed to snap this undercover, long-distance, sniper photo-shot on Cliveden’s terrace garden. Here we see an entrepreneur with child springing a suprise ambush on an unsuspecting slightly plump, sweaty, female with unpainted nails
Be careful out there
The Wendy House housewaring anniversary is always accompanied by much excitement and clucking around in chicken like chaos. This year has not been an exception. Even the local wildlife wants to get involved.
Something, or someone, has improvised a cat-door in the garden gate to prepare for the frenzied comings and goings. There will be bouncers at the gate, providing instructions on how to bounce safely, a first-aid cat will be offering first-class purring and warm poltices. A log fire will be available on demand for any freak cold-snaps and extra kettle-boiling duties incase the lashings of tea fail to keep up with guests enthusiasm, god forbid!
There’s a high risk of a break in my blogging resulting from over-excitement due to the fun and games, parking chaos in a permit-only zone and excessive bounce-related falling-over
Words of wisdom from an almost stranger*. A product designer gave me this little gem while discussing options for an upcoming Wendy House garden party:
Don’t be fooled into taking the shell off of your racing snails to make them more streamlined, all it does is make them more sluggish.
I am now planning to require that all the racing snails come with their own shells in place
From the orangerie, she looked around the garden “it reminds me of Derek Jarman’s garden‘. She described pebbles, driftwood, wilderness holding-up brave plants. A pleasing story, as if she could see potential in my newly planted garden. As if she had a vision that flowed with my own anticipation
Later, I placed felled tree-stumps in the borders and a few big pebbles between the about-to-overgrow plants
This christmas she gave me a book, so I can see Derek’s garden for myself. As with his films and life, it continues to inspire
Inspiration is one of the best presents ever
It’s time for plant rescue.
Plant rescue is just before the perenials begin to die for the winter. The local garden centres sell the dying plants at half price.
All year round I rescue plants from mumzies garden, she just volunteers to pull them up then pots them for me to take home. Honeysuckle, virginia creeper, oriental grasses, small alpines, her garden is gradually reproducing in mine.
lady at stable door: I live in that house there, we’ve just had a wasp nest treated and those left alive are a bit cranky, probably best to keep the cats in and the doors and windows shut
wendy: there’s a lot of them about this year
Paul Bendell, MBPR, from Berkshire pest control took one look at the nest and in classic call-out service person style he shook his head slowly, sucked air through his teeth and said
The wasp nest in the Viburnum Tinus. A quick poll of my facebook contacts produced the unanimous decision to DESTROY, DELETE, DEVASTATE the nest. My friends don’t care for wasps.
The nest is quite quiet at the moment I can only ever see one or two wasps working on building the structure and one or two wasps coming and going, pressumably feeding the lava inside. It’s my first wasp nest, so with no real comparator it looks quite big to me, about 10 inched tall and 7 inches wide. Branches of the viburnum go through the nest. I suspect that destroyinh the nest will involve destroying part of the plant.
Friends varied in their favoured tactics of destruction. Suggestions included:
wendy: I was gardening every evening this week
julie: me too, I’ve planted potatoes and herbs, last night I spent 2 hours gardening, it feels so good afterwards.
wendy: Oh (signifying impressedness) um, I just really pull out weeds and think about doing other stuff
julie: I pull out weeds too
wendy: mainly I stand with my mug of tea looking at my borders thinking things like ‘that Phlox looks good even though it’s pink, maybe I should plant some more’
julie: Yeah, I do that in the morning before I come to work too
wendy: me too
julie: you are not alone
Phlox, Bluebells and white armeria
It’s beautiful
This weekend my gimlet helped me get dozens of flush screws in the woodshed
What was once a flat pack is now a full 3 dimenisonal experience with an asphalt roof. No avatar necessary, just a black and decker power drill, tape measure, tacks, hammer and the essential gimet
Recovering from an intensive weekend de-savaging the wendy house garden:
Savage garden sang I want you
Christmas bought a Magnolia Stellata. It is 1ft tall. If left unpruned it will grow 5ft in 10 years and mature to a hieght of about 10ft
It is a SHRUB*!
The Wendy House garden has attracted many shrubs since last autumn when the low maintenance patio was broken into by a range of muddy borders.
The Wendy House garden has become one large SHRUBBERY. This gardening direction will please the knights
King Arthur meets the knights who say Ni
Wandering around the stunningly topiaried gardens of a stately seat in Kent. There some some significant, and in significant, discoveries:
The local cat herd has well choreographed dance routines. The balletic movements involve sudden, synchronised, dashes and leaps that are contrasted with subtle coordinated pre-dash tail-fluffing demonstrations.
The garden stage provides props for leaping over, dashing around, hiding under, elegantly perching upon and a liberal dose of insects to piroette with.
Here we find Matrix lurking in the Nigella, where she prepares to launch straight into a dash, bypassing her weakest move, the pre-dash tail fluffing.
get orf moi land,
or in regionally more accurate terms ‘OI! git orrrf my lahnd with the optional extra ‘OAR isle shoooooot yew” is often creatively used by Bristolians to deal with all sorts of naughty intrusiveness.
someone hogging the twiglets? ‘OI! git orrrf my lahnd…’
Seattle symphony stealing your artwork? ‘OI git orrrf my lahnd OAR else….”
Seattle symphony orchestra is (allegedly) stamping on your emotions: ‘OI git orrrf my lahnd OAR isle shoooooot yew”
A birdy around the Wendy House garden has a reasonable variation on this call, here she goes, sat in the neighbours Rowan tree:
(18 seconds of chirpy & wobbly camerawork warning)
An action packed weekend in the Wendy House garden:
On a sunny April weekend post-youngster Brits launch into the highly risky business of sculpting their garden. This weekend I fell victim to the under-publicised gardening health hazards. Not a muscle problem from lifting, digging and carrying, or falling over a garden ornament, but a little arm-blush reaction to a local ant.
Ouch!
Kids, beware the garden, its a jungle out there
My new pruning shears may not be electrically powered tools but in my hot little holiday hands they can power through a Viburnum Tinus at dusk before the sun fully sets.
Invite me to all your pruning parties…
clip clip clippy!
During a week littered with uncharacteristically fabulous sunshine I’ve been wrecklessly wandering out without a coat or a vest.
Wandering nowhere in particular. Directionless in the garden.
Planting bulbs and border-blooming plants for the summer, digging-up weeds, drinking gallons of well brewed tea and generally admiring the arrival of spring blooms from bulbs and bushes planted last Autumn.
It’s leave from normal work. It’s in my garden.
Its not technically gardening leave.
How silly is that?
Hittavainen, the Karelian god of hares has turned up in the Wendy House garden.
According to the BBC Hares crop up in Mythology all over the place and are associated with the Moon, the celestial skies and the Sun, with fertility, the dawn, cunning and bravery.
This one is associated with pebbles purloined from beaches all over the world.
After consulting with the experts (mum, friend, their books, the internet) I thought that the nobly, noble, small tree in my garden was a ‘Sambucus nigra’ more commonly known as an Elderberry and before that as aeld.
Like many trees the Mythical history of the Elderberry proposes, or describes its traditional uses. The name may come from the Anglo-Saxon term ellaern or aeld which means “fire” or “to kindle a fire“. It was associated with female-centric goddess systems then over time gradually perverted to represent ‘mischievious faeries’ by both the celts of Ireland and England. Traditionally the Elder is placed by the back door of a home, where mine grows, to keep evil spirits from influencing or entering the home and used to pin the thatch to a roof. The runic association is with Feh, the first rune, indicating where one sequence ends and another begins, the cusp of transition, renewal.
British Christians gave the Elder a more sinister press, claiming that Judas committed suicide by hanging himself from this tree. He must have been short or the tree leaning over a decent drop. Along with many other trees it is claimed Jesus was crucified on an cross made of Elder.
Then a garden specialist happened to wander by saying that’s a Viburnum tinus…
Garden designer guest: it’s not many people that can look straight into their garden when sitting on their toilet
I will have to put something in the line of view to make it a tad more pleasurable than just patio and fence. As I’m sure you can imagine, I’ve been contemplating the garden rather a lot recently…
According to the principles of Feng Shui, I should change the layout of the bathroom, keep this door closed, change the colour scheme from blue and white to red and red then add a few candles or my career will flow into the sewers. Alas, I’m way too busy building my career and going on holiday to bother with arranging and paying for builders to rebuild my bathroom in a Feng Shui approvable layout and colour scheme. Pleasing plants in line of view will have to suffice.
