Rabbit Antics

The ranunculus are with us again!

There is no better way to loosen stiff muscles and start the day well than an early morning rabbit chase! Shandy is slowly working her way through the latest garden litter and much as I hate  the thought of killing those fluffy babies I know it's either them or our plants. This bunny in question had taken shelter underneath the water butt and was well and truly cornered with Shandy on one side and Giles reaching in from the other, but baby Buggs wasn't giving up that easily and managed to slip past using shock tactics on Giles. We then played a merry game of chase in and out of the lonicera hedge and iris border until Buggs made a fatal error dashing out of cover literally straight into Shandy's jaws! So that's one less mouth for the garden to feed. Shandy proudly buried her prize and spent the rest of the afternoon laying on the spot and basking in the sunshine. Our only worry now is when will she decides to dig it up and eat it?
It could be rather fragrant by then and we shall have to avoid any vigorous hoeing in that area for a while!

"Love the animals: God has given them the rudiments of thought and joy untroubled"
Fyodor Dostoyevsky

It's my rabbit and I'll lie on it if I want to!

Dodging The Showers

I got my wish of a quiet day on Saturday after the chaos of Monday with all it's noises, but the weather was anything but calm. It was just us two Alisons all day left alone with the hoeing and weeding, but the showers kept us moving in and out of the orangery as they were too heavy to work through and hail can hurt! There's not much one can say about weeding so this will be a short post! But we did also find time to make up the flower arrangement of the week, a regular occurrence now using the best of the flowers in bloom that week.
"sweet April showers do bring May flowers"
Thomas Tusser

The Flower Show

Our college class met at the gates of Harrogate flower show promptly at 9.00am to buy our student tickets before proceedings began half an hour later. Although this should have left plenty of time for us to discuss our plans we were unprepared for the lady in charge of the chip and pin machine who appeared to have no knowledge of any sort of technology and took 15 mins per transaction! However we got there in the end and were all grateful for the student discount which meant we got in for £8.00 whilst everyone else paid £16.00 quite a saving. Having been given a work sheet to fill in we were supposed to hang around in a group to help each other but within five minutes I'd lost the others and also the will to do much work, so I just wandered around admiring the plants. Craven college's show gardens both won gold which was a great result and well deserved as you can see.

One of Craven college's gold winning gardens

I managed to locate all the items on my shopping list bar one, new working boots and trousers were quickly purchased, a roll of flexi tie and two new plant supports a bargain at £13.50 each, my first ever Hosta called 'Catherine' (I've only just grown to like them) but no Helichrysum bracteatum seeds which are nowhere to be found this year. After that I couldn't carry anything else so It was time to catch the shuttle bus home which Transdev the local transport company had the cheek to charge £4.00 for just to get back into Harrogate town centre, fortunately for me I found a ten pound note as I boarded so I came out luckier than usual! All in all I enjoyed myself, all the plant stalls were fabulous but I would caution restraint when buying from some of the outside traders as there is an awful lot of tat for sale so choose wisely!



"Luck affects everything, let your hook always be cast, in the stream where you least expect it there will be a fish"
Ovid

What a fabulous way to display Auriculars

Noisy Norton

Attention seeking, me?

For some reason everything was noisy at Norton Conyers yesterday. It started when Giles was called to the house for most of the morning, he shut the garden gates and left Shandy with us as she would only be a pest. She was reasonably content at first, happily accompanying us inside at break time being somewhat placated by having a yoghurt pot to lick out, but when Alyson and I returned to building plant supports in the main border she decided she'd had enough and wanted to know where her master was. This meant taking up sentry duty by the gate and barking very loudly for a long time until he returned. Our peace was further shattered by two kids riding a quad bike around the estate just beyond the walls, bunking off school no doubt! The sheep seemed especially mournful too, baaing repeatedly all morning. Couple that with the wind moaning, the tractor grass cutting, me wielding the petrol mower and Wortek using the strimmer and it would have been more peaceful on a city street! Please can we have some calm warm languid days next week?

"He who establishes his argument by noise and command shows that his reason is weak"
Michel De Montaigne

Spring Fever

Our spring posy

Saturday got off to a good start with lovely sunshine, prompting us to sow even more vegetable seeds. Dwarf bean Sonesta and kholrabi Azure Star joined the other salad stuff in the cold frames, rhubarb chard, sweede Virtue and parsnip Gladiator in the veg garden. A little twigwam building followed in the main border, and then because we were expecting guests for lunch, the Grahams and some conservators who advise on the house restoration, we picked a bunch of spring flowers for the table and even wiped over the teapot! The potatoes were planted after lunch, Desiree, Mozart and Setanta, before an hours hoeing finished our days work. There is a touch of spring fever about everything now with so many jobs to do, but we are well content now that life is returning to the borders in an explosion of growth.

Quite sculptural for a home made plant support

"April hath put a spirit of youth in everything"
William Shakespeare

Grafting Again

Skunk cabbage at Harlow Carr, interesting but not a beauty!

Diana and I tried our hand at grafting again on Wednesday, a skill I'm happy to keep on practising whenever the opportunity arises as so few people have any experience of it outside of the nursery trade. Mid April is a little late to be doing this but as the gardens are generally a month behind because of the poor weather and the root stocks hadn't leafed up yet, we decided to take a chance. I found that I remembered what to do despite it being over a year since I last had a go and that I found it easier than last time. Only time will tell if they will take  but I'm feeling hopeful.
See below for the apple bud sticks that I used this time;   Back at college on Thursday we were given a behind the scenes tour at Harlow Carr, the propagation houses and compost heaps all looking pretty much as you would expect at home but on a much larger scale with diggers to turn the heaps instead of spades. I was pleased to learn that no other fertilisers are used on the main borders and that it is just this simple recycling of materials that keeps the plants looking so fine.We would have been allowed to look in the glasshouses and poly tunnels as well but the wind was so strong and gusty we weren't able to because of health and safety reasons, scuppered by the weather yet again! Next weeks lesson is a field trip to Harrogate flower show so I'll post a few photos and a bit of a write up about it then.

Compost on a grand scale

         "One thing you can't recycle is wasted time" Anon                                                                                                                                                            

Grenadier

Norfolk Royal

Katie

Fortune

Santana

Lushness Returns

A beautiful spring day with balmy breezes encouraged us to work through the potato and cabbage patch first thing, leaving only the purple sprouting broccoli which has yet to have its moment of glory. We then moved on to the willow bordered vegetable garden and after a quick rotavation planted the broad beans, then sowed the spinach in the cold frames. The garden is filling up again now and in the space of a week has lost its monotone earth colours and turned verdant again, this prompted the first proper mowing of the season with me back on the tractor once more. I only stalled it twice which isn't bad for a rusty non driver and bodes well for the summer when I shall be regularly responsible for much of the grass cutting. Later it was warm and dry enough to hoe the yellow border, it will probably be a daily task for at least the next five months, groan!

"If I keep a green bough in my heart, the singing bird will come"
Chinese proverb

Garden Furnishings

The scilla have the most intense colour now

Yesterday became a day for myriad small jobs around the garden at Norton Conyers, a good chance to assess the general health of all the plants. Sadly some of them have turned up their toes since the last cold spell but we have plenty more to find homes for and the bad weather usually only takes the stragglers. We voiced concern over the plight of the dahlias resolutely showing no signs of life, we were taking cuttings from them at the end of April last year, so we decided to move them into the glasshouse where the extra warmth should boost their growth. Next it was time to return the garden benches to their spots and replace the sale plants that have overwintered , Giles will soon bring new stock to tempt our visitors. Beetroot and carrot seeds and lettuce seedlings were then settled into the cold frames which we covered with the heavy sliding glass panels. It's lovely to see the garden furnishings settling back into place, they really are the framework against which the plants can shine.

"Gardens are poems where you stroll with your hand in your pockets"
Pierre Albert-Birot

Optimistic Anticipation

Anemone coronaria De Caen

A cruel wind cursed our morning yesterday, made all the more difficult after such a lovely one on Saturday, but Spring or no a gardeners work carries on. We are the most optimistic of people, you non green fingered folk may see only bare earth but in our minds eye we see borders bursting with blooms, and any failure is just another opportunity to try something new! We worked upon the cut flower border first which after having a pretty disastrous season last year has been partly moved up to the wall by the big gates in between the strawberry and asparagus beds. It will be a riot of colour this summer, alliums, nerines and gladiolus being joined by Anemone coronaria De Caen with its brilliant jewel like shades contrasted by the dark bruise at the centre, and Sparaxis also known as the Harlequin flower. The latter being a new discovery for me, it's always nice to find something different so I await the results with curiosity and anticipation.

"Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence"
Helen Keller

Sparaxis

Has Spring Sprung?

The day was full of promise as I made my way to Norton, there had been another hard frost but the sky was a beautiful clear blue and the birds were announcing their conviction that it would be a lovely spring morning. The journey to work has been somewhat dull of late revealing nothing but snow drifts, yet all of a sudden things are stirring and the small creatures are the first to sense it, each field and rural garden seen from the bus was so stuffed with rabbits I could almost hear them munching. Planting came first on our list that morning, we gathered together every divided or heeled in specimen that had been awaiting an allocation of space and settled them in for the coming season, then Alyson and I built the this years sweet pea frame, it will not be long before their heady fragrance will be wafting through the garden once more. The main border filled up the rest of the afternoon as we finished digging through it removing as much bindweed root and other evil weeds as possible. That means that the last of the winter tasks has been accomplished so when spring arrives with all its might we are ready for it at last!

Hard to imagine that these borders will soon be stuffed with flowers.

"Spring makes its own statement, so loud and clear that the gardener seems to be only one of the instruments, not the composer"

Geoffry B Charlesworth