Christmas Envy

I must admit to feelings of deep envy upon seeing the beautiful Christmas decorations in the Bramall Learning Centre today. The trees especially caught my eye, all decorated with the bounty of Harlow Carr, I'm speechless at the idea of crowning one of them with an allium seed head, it just looks so right. It's not that I couldn't attempt something similar myself but that the perfect images I see in my mind never seem to come to fruition in reality. I guess I'll just have to admire and wonder at other peoples handicraft imagination and content myself with the thought that these arty folk may not be green fingered enough to grow the plants themselves, but I can!

"You see things and you say why? But I dream things that never were, and I say why not?"
George Bernard Shaw

A Complete Wash Out

I know it's probably a little early to sum up 2012 but I think I can quite safely say that it's been a complete wash out. By the end of my second month of self employment I'm positive that I wont have the tax man hounding me for my hard earned riches! There has been no work this week, I would have needed to be an amphibian to turn up at Norton on Tuesday and the garden at Spofforth is flooded once again. On the plus side I'm so ready for Christmas it wouldn't matter if it occurred tomorrow! With all this spare time on my hands I think I shall try and get creative with some decorations in the garden, more on that if the results warrant it!

"Never permit a dichotomy to rule your life, a dichotomy in which you hate what you do so you can have pleasure in your spare time. Look for a situation in which your work will give you as much happiness as your spare time"

A Real Pea Souper

There was a distinctly eerie feeling about Norton Conyers when I alighted from the bus yesterday morning, the fog was caressing the surrounding landscape as tightly as a swaddling cloth. I am always there first at the moment as Alyson is away in Australia for a month, but I quite like that, I get to see the place first and absorb the solitude before Shandy shatters the peace with her excited rabbit hunting bark. The days chores consisted of cutting down the autumn raspberry canes, more leaf clearing (as I feared), and then clearing and digging over the apple tree border. The fog didn't lift all day making for cold working conditions, thank goodness I had my hat with ears on, it makes me look ridiculous but doesn't half keep me warm! The forecast for Monday is pretty dire again so Nikki and I have already decided to give work a miss if it turns out to be correct, we are well ahead of ourselves in the garden now so can afford to bypass the worst of the winter weather. Of course that may change if we get snow for more than a couple of weeks, but for the present we can let the garden slumber without disturbing its tranquillity.

"I lived in solitude in the country and noticed how the monotony of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind" Albert Einstein

A subtle palette

Harlow Carr is slowly changing into its Christmas wardrobe, like a mousy maiden who transforms herself with a few well chosen shades into a head turner. Not for her the brash and trashy jarring colours of the office party, but an intoxicating sophistication which makes you realise the underlying beauty has been there all along. Our lesson today was about pruning techniques, starting with a master-class on cordon apple trees taken by the charming Francisco, a good looking gardener can enhance the bleakest of Yorkshire days! A stroll around the winter walk emphasised the different stooling and pollarding methods beautifully whilst showcasing the colours which are shown off to best advantage by the muted light of November. The garden staff are hard at work adding festive touches in just the right places, never overstating the Christmas theme they enhance the trees and make the garden revel in this underrated season. Now is the best time to visit as you will have the place mostly to yourself, the less resilient Harrogate gardeners can only nurse their hot cups of coffee behind the steamy windows of Bettys!

"Of winters lifeless world each tree,
Now seems a perfect part,
Yet each one holds summers secret,
Down deep within its heart"
Charles G Stater

A Labour Of Leaves

The autumn tasks are definitely getting tougher, we think back with longing to the quieter days of summer when the mowing and hoeing was almost soporific. Not so Mondays work load of mulching the round border with compost, of course it started to rain half way through making each barrow load heavier as the morning progressed. We had a change come the afternoon as the rain steadily persisted, it is the time of year for collecting leaves. This can be a pleasant if monotonous chore especially if the sun is shinning and each leaf is crunchy and light as air, however yesterdays leaves were sodden and heavy, making the petrol blower work twice as hard, not to mention us girls! Still we know how much good it will do our compost heap over the winter and it's all for free as long as we have the energy to go on collecting. However it will be slightly disconcerting when we arrive back on Saturday and view the lawns we so painstakingly cleared yesterday, because I know it will look as if we had never been there, a Sisyphean task indeed!

"Never say there is nothing beautiful in the world any more. There is always something to make you wonder in the shape of a tree, the trembling of a leaf" Albert Schweitzer

The New Coat #2

Despite a gloomy damp start when we arrived at work the morning was soon brightened by the sight of Shandy sporting her new coat. This is #2 in the coat stakes as she lost the posh waterproof one in the woods within the first week. Giles' wife Carol considered all options before deciding to have a go at making one herself, hence the rather smart knitted number Shandy was modelling today. Whether Shandy was aware of the stir her apparel was causing I can't be sure, but within five minutes of being in the garden we noticed it was gone! The three of us hunted high and low throughout the day but to no avail, despite it being a cheery bright red it remains missing, and Shandy seems to wearing a rather smug expression!

"Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes" Henry David Thoreau

More Haste Less Speed

Things got off to a promising start this morning, our new RHS tutor introduced herself and told us about her varied horticultural career so far, but more importantly she asked each of us in turn about our own experiences and expectations for the course. Then instead of spending the the morning shuffling paperwork whilst she settled in, which was what I expected, we immediately began a lively lesson on seed preparation and sowing, including a practical session where we gathered Cotoneaster franchetii and Echinacea purpurea 'Magnus' from the garden and sowed them using the correct technique. This is definitely more like it, lets hope things continue in the same vein.  Feeling well chuffed with my pots of sown seed precariously dangling from one arm and a bag stuffed with text books and notes plus handbag in the other, I noticed the bus approaching my stop, waving energetically I ran to try and catch it, for once the driver obligingly waited for me. Once on board and having caught my breath I peeped into my bag to check on the pots, disaster! All jumbled up in a mess at the bottom with no hope of salvation, blast!

"Nature is a labyrinth in which the very haste you move with will make you lose your way"
Francis Bacon

Liquidambar living up to its autumnal promise

A Mucky Old Day

I think I was the dirtiest I've ever been when I finished work yesterday. It was a good thing I wasn't travelling home on the bus as I don't think they would have let me on. We had been dividing perennials in the round border when the rain started but we wished to finish the job, complete with a mulch of compost, before we ran for cover. Soon our boots were so built up with mud it felt like we were walking on stilts, and my new waterproofs were slick with mud and rain, of course that is their purpose in life so I didn't care, I was nice and dry inside. The rain didn't last into the afternoon thank goodness and as the soil in the walled garden is beautifully well drained we could continue with cutting back after lunch. If that is the worst weather we can expect this autumn we shall have had an easy time of it, but I suspect that more challenging stuff is to come.......

"To dig one's earth with one's own spade, does life get any better?" Beverly Nichols

"Speak to the earth and it shall teach thee" The Bible

The List

November the first was a longed for day in this household and I suspect I wasn't the only gardener anticipating it. For the rest of you folks it was a day like any other, but for us of the green fingered persuasion it meant the release of the RHS seed list. This is a brilliant scheme whereby all the RHS gardens collect their most promising seeds and make them available to us members. The choice is large and mostly unusual, you can't pick up many of these babies from an average nursery, the only problem is that out of 475 possibles you can only choose twenty packets, what a dilemma! So for the last week or so I've been scrutinising my selected categories, annuals, perennials, shrubs and trees, and trying to decide what I shall grow. Bearing in mind the size of my garden (small), my soil type (OK but a bit on the heavy side), and my growing facilities (non existent). I wont bore you with the details as most of these plants are new to me, but I have decided to attempt to grow some Metasequoia glyptostroboides, that's the Dawn Redwood, bonkers I know given the size they grow to but I just can't resist the challenge. If I succeed Giles says he will give one a home down by the lake at Norton Conyers, that pleases me enormously to think that long after I'm gone a magnificent tree may stand in a special place all because of a slightly eccentric plants woman!

It also strikes me that to be remembered and improve the lives of others long after ones death must be the highest honour one can aspire to, so I dedicate today's blog to the lost generations of the worlds conflicts. Lest we forget.

Metasequoia glyptostroboides, a fast growing deciduous conifer with fibrous reddish bark. Soft green leaves turn yellow, pink and red in autumn. Grows to over 30m (100ft)

Notes On November

I like November, it is one of my favourite months. For a start off the colours are so wonderful, better by far than anything we can create with fireworks, although I will admit that the smell of woodsmoke and cordite on a misty evening is one of the most atmospheric and memorable moments of the year. I love the way the leaves crunch underfoot, and that without the covering on the trees nature seems so much more accessible, the rotund little garden birds energetically falling on anything we care to put out, especially this year when fruits and berries are in short supply. The hedgehogs are shuffling around my garden again looking for nooks and crannies in which to hibernate, I knew they were there when Chum failed to be tempted back inside with cries of "biscuit" from the backdoor! I also like the fact that there are plenty of jobs to be getting on with outside, most of them active enough to keep you warm on chilly mornings, but not so pressing that an extra hour under the duvet will make a difference, nature is in no hurry now and she will forgive us gardeners for taking our leisure as the old year slips away. That is where I shall be tomorrow morning, college has been cancelled whilst they organise our new tutor, an unexpected lie in, bliss!

"How silently they tumble down,
And come to rest upon the ground,
To lay a carpet rich and rare,
Beneath the trees without a care,
Content to sleep, their work well done,
Colours gleaming in the sun"
Elsie N Brady

"I'm not coming out until Chum's back inside!"

Not A Good Day

Monday didn't start off badly, just the usual routine, up at six pack lunch to make and then off out into a bright frosty morning. The walled garden looked beautiful with its covering of ice, like sugar frosting painted on by a master confectioner. When the ground is frozen like that there's no digging to be done so Nikki and I settled down to pruning the summer raspberry canes, cutting out the old dying wood and tying in the new growth that will fruit next year. Whether it was a combination of the bright sunshine and the cold that brought on a migraine I cannot say, but by midday it had turned into a real humdinger. Giles kindly drove me into Ripon to catch the bus home to bed, unfortunately in my hurry to escape the blinding sunshine and my headache I hadn't zipped up my rucksack properly and later on I discovered that my brand new waterproof jacket was missing. I waited for the boy to return from school and sent him out to look for it but to no avail, making today a painful and expensive experience, oh well we all have them don't we.

"Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you sow" Robert Louis Stevenson

A Family Feast

As you may have noticed I've been AWOL this week, taking a breather with Dave and the kids at the coast, so it was with a certain amount of reluctance that I heaved myself into the frosty morning air yesterday. A week off made me feel chilly and stiff to start with but I soon picked up the rhythm again joining the girls in cutting back the round border, each of us trying to remember what needed our attention, what it was called and indeed what it looked like when in flower, not an easy job when all around you has turned to brown mush! Luckily for me it was to be an easy day again as we were celebrating Giles' birthday at lunchtime, Lord and Lady Graham presiding over a feast of hot and comforting pumpkin soup made from our own produce of course, followed by a beautiful iced chocolate cake. They do make us feel like we all belong to a large and rather eccentric family!

"Small cheer and great welcome makes a merry feast"
William Shakespeare