Thankful For Small Mercies

Today is the last day of January, Hooray! I can't believe I've been working at Norton Conyers for four months already, however I've got a feeling that our run of good weather luck is about to end. Monday was thankfully dry but very damp and chilly and as we were attending to the sort of jobs that aren't as active and warming as some, we were soon perished. Pruning apple trees requires some thought and a lot of stopping and standing back to see where you've missed, I was so cold I was beginning to wish we were doing some digging! If I thought that was bad the afternoon brought a harder task, it was time to tackle the climbing roses, not the easiest job teetering six foot up a ladder trying to juggle hammer, nails, string, and secateurs whilst reaching above and to the side, knees knocking with height discomfort, thank goodness it's only done once a year!

"The unthankful heart discovers no mercies, but let the thankful heart sweep through the day, and as the magnet finds the iron, so it will find, in every hour, some heavenly blessings!" Henry Ward Beecher.

A Horse With No Name

I've spoken before about NC being enchanted, but even I had to do a double take when we arrived on Saturday, as standing by the entrance to the south walk was a white horse stood motionless in the earl morning sunshine. Alison and I couldn't resist a closer look so we went to stroke him on the nose out of curiosity, he wore no bridle and was very dirty but seemed calm and friendly, what we hadn't bargained for was him following us into the garden! In the end Derek popped him into the paddock where he appeared to be very comfortable, he almost looks like he's smiling on the photo. Then the jungle drums started to beat as all sorts of people came to see if they knew who he belonged to, all day they came and went but no one claimed him. Eventually it was concluded that he had been turned out and abandoned poor thing, how awful to be a horse that nobody wants, but unfortunately it is becoming more common as the recession bites. We gave him an apple and a bucket of water whilst pondering what would become of him, then Lady Halena got in touch with a niece who has some stables and it has been decided that he shall go there on Sunday, probably for keeps. I do hope everything works out for him as he is such a lovely friendly beast, I've nicknamed him Norton, so fingers crossed for a happy ending. By the way we did do some gardening but the horse story was much more interesting to blog about!
"A dog looks up to a man, a cat looks down on a man, but a patient horse looks man in the eye and sees him as an equal" Winston Churchill.

Waiting Game

I was sitting in the kitchen blogging yesterday morning, not having poked my nose outside yet it still being pitch black, the weather forecaster on the radio was painting a bleak picture so I didn't hurry with only the prospect of more housework looming. Surprisingly though by the time I was showered and dressed it was glorious and sunny, so ditching all thoughts of tidying the house Chum and I took our walk and I spent the next few hours in my own garden, when was the last time that happened? I cut back all the soggy and dead plant matter and even managed to dig over the new raised beds, I'm hoping that when the new compost bin goes in there will be plenty of well rotted stuff at the bottom of the old one to mulch everything with. I can't wait to see the back of the plastic darlek, you can't get in to the thing to turn it, I haven't touched it for three years so there's definitely black gold potential. Everything now looks tidy and any over-wintering insects have only been relocated to the heap, now it's time to play the waiting game, this year I must resist the temptation to  start sowing too early again!
"To forget how to dig the earth and to tend the soil is to forget ourselves" Mahatma Ghandi

A Sense Of Usefulness

The ground was wonderfully soft and friable yesterday, so it was the ideal time to turn the compost heap and mulch the raised vegetable beds with this best of soil conditioners. I was more than happy to shoulder the lions share of shovelling and felt a sense of achievement when the job was completed, Diana was thrilled as she admitted it would have taken her about four days to do it alone, still not bad for eighty! Next I dug over a bed that had become over-run with mint, at least it had shallow roots and was easy to pull up, but I bet I've missed some and the damn stuff will be back in the spring if we don't apply some glyphosate. Finally Diana was struggling to remove some very deep caper spurge roots so I flexed my muscles again and managed to dig them out, I felt that I'd been of some real use to her for once. The vegetable beds are now ready for planting up in the spring, I wish my own garden was in such good order, I haven't even started to cut it back yet and there are loads of plants to be divided and moved, just my luck that on my spare day off the weather is abysmal again, I guess I'll get caught up eventually!

"The purpose of life is not to be happy, but to matter, to be productive. to be useful, to have it make some difference that you have lived at all" Leo Rosten.( and thereby you gain happiness I think!)

Tuesday Tedium

It was a distinctly dull and dreary Tuesday up at Harlow Carr, the rain beat relentlessly at the windows as we started with propagation and seed sowing techniques, spring and new plant life seemed a very long way off indeed. I wouldn't say the topic wasn't interesting just a bit humdrum and mostly common sense, but the RHS are sticklers for stating the obvious so we must learn to do the same. By lunch time we were all frozen as usual but luckily I'd brought in home made soup which hit the spot, sadly any hopes of a pleasant half hour browsing in the bookshop were dashed as it was shut. The afternoon deteriorated further as we started learning about lawns, that was indeed tedious and I'm wondering if I could risk not studying it too closely and just hope it doesn't come up in the exam? All in all a pig of a day with a dodgy car and cranky teenagers too-oh well the only way is up!
"Having decided to achieve a certain task, achieve it at all costs of tedium and distaste. The gain in self confidence of having accomplished a tiresome labour is immense" Arthur Helps
P.S Happy Burn's night to all our Scottish friends
"Gi'e me a spark o' natures fire that's a' the learning I desire" Robert Burns.

Tree Knowledge

In a change from the usual routine of getting stuck straight in on Monday morning, Giles, Alison, Nikki and I went for a walk in the woods. Giles has been called away for a few days on family business so he wanted to show us where to plant the remaining hornbeam saplings, and give us a list as long as his arm of other jobs to do whilst he is away! At this point it is interesting to note that all the new trees and shrubs I've mentioned lately are bought with money made from selling logs produced from dead and felled trees on the estate, so it's rather fitting that many of the saplings are planted back into the woods ensuring that there will be magnificent trees for future generations. It was another beautiful morning, almost spring like again with the snowdrops now smothering the woodland floor. As we wandered the conversation turned into a game of ' name that tree', a talent that I'm spectacularly lacking in, I find it difficult enough to do it when they are in leaf let alone in January, I think I will have to do some swatting up if I hope to impress him upon his return. There is no need to embellish upon the days activities any further, just imagine us girls with a wheelbarrow overflowing with trees, spades, stakes and deer guards and you'll get the picture, I'm beginning to be a dab hand at this tree planting lark! the one in today's lower picture is a walnut by the way.
"Real knowledge is to know the extent of ones ignorance" Confusius.

Bugs Is Back

We were a woman down on Saturday but the planting continued apace in sunny but blustery conditions at NC. Fagus slyvatica 'Heterophylla, the common beech, Prunus Ttaihaku' the great white cherry, Prunus 'Kursor' with pink blossom, Labernum x watereri 'Vossii', Cornus mas 'Jelico' and finally seventy canes of raspberry Tulameen, phew! The highlight of the day had to be Giles' encounter with the rabbit though, despite us all traipsing noisily through the garden since early morning we hadn't seen hide nor hare of it until it leaped up right in front of his nose and made a quick getaway straight through his legs to the sanctuary of the yew hedge. We must have walked past him fifty times, but sly old Brer kept his head down, of course we all fell about laughing at the expression on Giles' face, I'm getting rather fond of old Bugs but I feel he may be on borrowed time now. Some pictures today of the small beauties that really stand out at this time of the year when the earth is largely barren.
"The most wasted of all days is that in which we have not laughed"
Nicholas Chamfort

Friday Miscellany

Not a lot to remark upon today I'm afraid due to the inordinate amount of dratted housework I had to plough through yesterday, I decided to get it all done in one fell swoop in the hope that I could spend my remaining free hours doing something useful, no doubt they will be taken up with homework and research but I don't really mind, it's not as if I'm missing out on good gardening weather. So this post is basically a few photos taken last Sunday when Dave, Chumdog and I took a lovely crisp walk along Abbey Road in Knaresborough, we came across these stunning wood sculptures.
Hope to be more entertaining on Monday!
"Only Robinson Crusoe had everything done by Friday" Anon.

Thorn In My Side

It's been a thorny old week here on Privet and Confidential, some times things just work out that way. Not that it was Diana's intention to start winter pruning it's just that despite the temperature having risen by about ten degrees the ground was still rock solid and you'd have needed a pick axe to turn the compost heap. We wandered down to the orchard to look at the plants and shrubs that edge the boundaries and tidy them up as necessary, that's when I saw them, no ordinary brambles these but cultivated blackberries Rubus fructicosus 'Russian Giant' with thorns of an appropriate gargantuan size. We wrestled with the wretched things all morning until the old stems had been cut out. I was mightily glad I'd decided to wear my wax jacket that morning as nothing gets through that, but my jeans weren't much protection as I noticed in the bath later on, I'm beginning to look like a pin cushion!

"Life is thickly sown with thorns, and I know of no other remedy than to pass quickly through them. The longer we dwell on our misfortunes the greater is their power to to harm us" Voltaire

Horticultural Highs And Lows

Tuesday was a most unremarkable day, just about everything having returned to its normal pattern. Back at Harlow Carr the gardens looked spectacular under their drapery of severe frost, I would much rather have wandered through them than sit through another lesson on fertilisers, more chemistry than horticulture. Still things perked up a bit in the afternoon as we discussed alpines, and with a superb example of an alpine house on site, we took a mini field trip to gaze upon the plants that five minutes earlier had just been names in a text book. The art is all very admiral I'm sure, but to be honest all the tweaking and preening involved is so very Victorian, all very well if you are retired but too time consuming for your average jobbing gardener and don't get me started on auricular theatres! We are moving on again next week to propagation, now there's something more practical to get our teeth into but sadly also lawns, or should that be yawns?
"A lawn is nature under totalitarian rule" Michael pollan

" The least of the work of learning is done in the classroom" Thomas Merton

Goosegogs

I never did like gooseberries that much and after yesterday I like them even less, the vicious thorny little *****! My only culinary memory is of school dinner gooseberry pie but Nikki and Alison assure me that the pain is worth it and that these venerable bushes produce the best fruit ever, so maybe I shall have to give them another go come summer. Despite having thorn proof gloves on the evil points still found their way through the odd vulnerable spot and in particular my wrists have suffered, now I know why some gardeners wear gauntlets. The thing with pruning the awful beasties is that you've got to thin out the crown to have a hope of being able to pick the fruit later on, so you have to fight your way in, it makes sense that you find babies under gooseberry bushes as no harm would come to anything protected by those weapons! No hope of any planting as the frost gets deeper and deeper but each and every weed has been turned into a thing of beauty.

"Teachers who inspire know that teaching is like cultivating a garden, and those who would have nothing to do with thorns must never attempt to gather flowers" Anon.
Rest in peace Muffy guinea pig-last of the smalls.

The Joy Of Planting

The hardest frost of the winter so far met my eyes at 6am on Saturday so I knew it would be an achingly cold start and an achingly beautiful day at NC. There's not a lot you can do when the ground is like concrete so we turned our attention to some tree maintenance in Crow Wood, although ivy is wonderful for wildlife if it takes hold of a tree it increases its bulk making it more likely to fall victim to high winds, so we removed what we could, it certainly helped us to warm up. By the time we had finished the sun had melted some of the frost sufficiently for us to plant some new specimens around the garden, four plums, Coe's golden drop, president, opal and monsieur hatif, two apricots, hongoarse and tomcot and two apples, howgate wonder and Bleinheim orange. Then thankfully it was time for lunch. I eat like a horse when I'm gardening! Back to the planting afterwards with thirteen whitecurrants white grape, twenty redcurrants rotet, and finally to finish the day forty three Carpinus betulus ,hornbeam to form a new hedge! Quiet a busy day but a real pleasure to be planting again instead of ripping up dead things and tidying up, soon we will be flat out when spring pokes its nose into the garden.

"If you think in terms of a year, plant a seed, if in terms of ten years, plant a tree, if in terms of one hundred years, teach the people. Confucius.

The Book Worm

I didn't get up to much yesterday, an hour of studying alpine plants for college, walking Chum of course and then quite a bit of snoozing on the sofa, well I do get up very early all week and have to catch up sometime! The most notable five minutes was spent ordering yet another book from Amazon, they are such incredible value compared to regular shops, much as I love our high street stores no one in their right mind wants to pay full price. I've ordered Sarah Raven's new book on wildflowers, a plush and mighty tome that should retail at £50.00 but I've paid £29.00 a real bargain, and the photography will be stunning. It will be of great help to me as a gardener as almost all of our cultivated plants were bred from native species and there is a section on them in the exam. We are also expected to remember the Latin names for common weeds, know thy enemy! Speaking of such I snapped this daisy Bellis perennis yesterday cheekily flowering in January, that's why weeds are king, they've adapted to make the most of any available growing time.

"Books are the quietest and most constant of friends, they are the most accessible and wisest of counsellors and the most patient of teachers" Charles W Eliot.

Moment Of Truth

It was with a certain amount of trepidation that Diana and I approached the greenhouse yesterday morning, it was finally time to see if the cherry budding had been successful. Way back on the 24th August last year we had attached two new buds to each of eight root stocks, binding them tightly against the hosts phloem tissue in the hope that they would fuse together, now it was time to peel away the wrappings and reveal all. The first four buds had failed so there were long faces all round but after we uncovered them all we think four have taken on one rootstock each and the last has possibly both, of course only time will tell and now we must wait to see if new shoots emerge. Next we checked the stool bed which we had earthed up to produce new roots, this had gone well as the picture proves, each stem being cut off low down with a good portion of growth and them potted up, giving us seven new dwarfing apple root stocks which when grown on for a couple of years can in their turn become hosts to named varieties. It is a privilege to have this knowledge passed on to me and fascinating to experience each stage, the next being grafting which will start in about a month.
"Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success" Dale Carnegie.

All In The Worst Possible Taste

We had a change of venue for our first day back at college, not the freezing cold classroom in the Bramall centre but the plush surroundings of Eunice's house with a blazing log fire to keep us warm. Harlow Carr was shut for essential electrical maintenance so Eunice had kindly put us up rather than missing the lesson, we certainly weren't complaining as along with the fire came tea, coffee, home made cakes and cheese and biscuits! So comfortably ensconced we rattled through a rather tedious morning of plant nutrition before starting bedding plants in the afternoon. This was much more fun as our brief was to design a public carpet bedding scheme in the worst possible taste, it being almost impossible to come up with something subtle. Here is our attempt in honour of the Olympics, we might even try selling it to Harrogate borough council!
The other picture is a tiny part of Eunice's huge garden, hush my green eyed monster!
"Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art".

Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Enchanted Garden

The weather at NC on Monday was astonishingly clement again, so much so that I'm beginning to wonder if the garden is enchanted. Since I started work there back in October we've only had one really unpleasant day and yesterday was certainly not it. There was something about the quality of the light that made me wish I was an artist, I just hope I've been able to capture something of the feeling on my little camera. Even five hours of shovelling and mulching compost was not enough to dampen our spirits and I think you'll agree it makes the borders look very smart. The last couple of hours were spent digging up and re-spacing a box hedge as Giles has extended the herb bed and we had to eek out the plants to cover the extra space, it looks a bit gappy at the moment but I'm sure when they start growing again the spaces will soon fill in. I learn the weather is turning cold again by the end of this week so we've done very well to have finished with the cutting back, we all wait with baited breath to see if work can continue a pace despite the newness of the year.
"The only words that ever satisfied me as describing nature are the terms used in fairy books, charm, spell,enchantment. They express the arbitrariness  of the fact and its mystery" G K Chesterton.

Winter Beauties

What a relief to return to the rhythm of the garden on Saturday, despite dreading the 6am rise I was still eager to resume normal life and interested to see if three weeks off would take its toll (I was fine). We were exceptionally lucky with the weather which was calm and sunny, the garden birds were singing their hearts out as if it was spring and it certainly felt so as we cleared the southern border. All the herbaceous cutting back has now been completed but there is still some more mulching to do, some hedge laying where the old shed stood and maybe some attention must be paid to the fruit bushes. When these small tasks have been attended to perhaps it will be time to think about some planting and propagating? But I expect I'm jumping the gun in my enthusiasm as I've a feeling we haven't seen the real winter yet, so I shall have to be patient a while longer. Despite it being the cruelest month there are still winter beauties to be found at NC so I'll leave you with a couple of pics- A gorgeous purple Hellebore x hybridus and Chimonanthus fragrans which might not look like much but smells heavenly.
"All human wisdom is summed up in two words-wait and hope" Alexander Dumas.

A Long Road Ahead

How lovely it is to see the sun again this morning, it makes all the difference to my mood, or maybe it's just because the children are going back to school on Monday! There were plenty of signs of the recent winds on our walk today as you can see , the first interesting pictures I've taken for ages. Hopefully as I'm back at NC tomorrow there will be many more to come. I read with interest in the gardening column of Saturdays Telegraph that it takes at least eight years to become a proper gardener and then you can only expect a low wage that certainly doesn't reflect the amount of learning and experience gained , oh well I knew I wasn't in it for the money, only seven and a half years left to go!

"When the road ahead seems too long, look back to see how far you've come. For even if the hill before you is steep, the view gives you hope to finish the journey" Daniella Kessler

Tedious Thursday

Some days just aren't worth getting out of bed for are they? Yesterday was a classic example, weather awful, more wind and rain, if it carries on like this I simply wont have a lawn left. Walk with Chum hideous, mud wind and rain, photo opportunities nil. The teenager was having a duvet day, enough said. The boy was given some lunch money and told to find somewhere less miserable to play. Ventured out just once in the afternoon as both children wanted their Christmas money out of the building society to squander, building society shut for unknown reason. Next stop Harlow Carr to drop off overdue dvds at their library, library shut even though the return date stated 3rd January. AAARRRGGGHHH! Retired to duvet in the lounge to await the return of spring.
"Rain and wind and wind and rain. Will the summer come again? Rain on houses , on the street, wetting all the peoples feet, though they run with might and main. Rain and wind and wind and rain"
Katherine Mansfield

Winter Wednesday

Sorry the blogging has been a bit erratic of late but I find it difficult to summon up the energy when the children are under my feet. Yesterday saw the culmination of the festive season with a family meal out over in St Helens, that of course took up the whole day so no time for deep thought or gardening there. Today I should have been back at Spofforth but the weather has been so awful Diana and I decided to postpone, it's not a good idea to prune apple trees in high wind, someone might lose an eye! I will keep looking for good photo opportunities this week but even that is unlikely when taking Chumdog for a walk needs all my concentration just to stay on my feet what with gales and mud. Normal blogging activity will resume on Monday promise.
P.S Happy birthday Mum xxx
"The pessimist complains about the wind, the optimist expects it to change , the realist adjusts the sails"
William Arthur Ward

An Upward Turn

With the passing of the old year I can feel an improvement in my mood, we are no longer on the slippery slope into winter darkness but are slowly inching toward light and spring. Just as I am one of the first to put up the Christmas decorations I am also the first to take them down which I did yesterday, it is always a cathartic feeling to strip the front room bare of all unnecessary clutter and get back to the business of growth and self improvement which comes with January. The two Christmas trees must now take their chances outside, they have come through their ordeal well and I must now hope they manage to acclimatise quickly before any really cold weather arrives. Elsewhere in the garden small signs of hope are beginning to emerge with every new bulb tip and the new seasons seed catalogues have started to plop onto the doormat with their promise of easily achievable horticultural glory, January is definitely the time for planning and dreaming.
"Oh wind, if winter comes can spring be far behind?" Percy Bysshe Shelley