Harvest Festival

Whilst the rest of the country was being pounded by strong winds and torrential rain, we fared much better at Norton Conyers. It was a dismal start to the day I'll grant you, but after a couple of hours cutting back the salvias in the shelter of the peach house, the rain dried up and we were blessed with watery sunshine. We then had fun preparing some vegetable boxes for the big house where the Grahams are expecting guests tomorrow. They like to share the produce from the garden and as we are rather proud of what we have achieved this year we wanted to make them look as nice as possible. So after a bit of scrubbing and arranging this is what we came up with, all that was missing was a rousing chorus of 'We plough the fields and scatter'!

"We thank Thee then O Father, for all things bright and good,
The seed time and the harvest, our life, our health and food"
Matthias Claudius

Everything In Reverse

The beautiful vitis coignetiae showing its autumn colours

The clocks go back tonight, and our work in the garden today reflected the swing back towards darker days. Now instead of planting, sowing and planning begins the task of cutting back, protecting and tidying. We started with the Salvias, as many are not reliably hardy those we wished to keep for next year had to be potted on and stored somewhere frost free for the winter. It seemed strange digging up plants that were still in full bloom because of the mild weather, but we are on a tight schedule and if we don't get a move on the winter conditions could catch us out and we could fall quickly behind. One plant in particular was looking splendid, Salvia confertiflora is very late flowering and doesn't often perform well if our weather turns harsh early on, but this year has suited it well and it is positively glowing.

We are warned that Monday could be a bit on the wild side with a storm forecast by the papers and weather reporters, whether that will come true remains to be seen, but as I've lost two working days already this month I suspect we will be making the best of it at Norton as ever!

"Then come the wild weather, come sleet or come snow, we will stand by each other however it blow"
Simon Dach

Apples Again And A Few Pears Too

Just lately I've begun to feel rather overwhelmed by fruit, in particular apples. Every day at Norton Conyers has been dominated by them this month and with such a bumper crop we have been harvesting non stop. Saturday saw us make another batch of cider and juice, fun the first time but after a few hours of pounding the flesh to pulp it gets a bit tedious. Today we had to pick a crop for the apple lady who makes jams and jellies, we filled seventy crates, that's a lot of bending and stooping as many were windfalls. We did have a bit of fun with the sheep in the paddock who took quite a shine to us when they thought we were shaking the tree for their benefit, I've never known them to be so bold, they were even attempting to pinch them from the crates.

Just about then the heavens decided to open, making our task even less pleasurable, and by the time all the crates were loaded into the van we were all thoroughly soaked. Then we moved onto the pears, luckily there were much less of them. The pear is a rather strange fruit in my opinion, particularly around harvest time when it refuses to ripen so you go away and leave it for a few days only to find it has gone over whilst your back was turned! That thankfully is the end of the fruit harvest for this year.

"Truth is a fruit which should not be plucked until it is ripe"
Voltaire

Scrumpy!

The crop of apples at Norton Conyers has been bountiful indeed so we decided it might be fun to try and make some cider. Whilst the girls were mowing this morning I picked up hundreds of windfalls to clear the way for the lawn mower but also to select the best ones for juicing. It just so happens that there are many Polish varieties in the garden that aren't that great for eating, they have a rather woolly texture but the taste is fine, so we decided to use those. Meanwhile Giles was hard at work building a press out of odds and sods gleaned around the estate. When all was in readiness we began to pulp by bashing the fruit, of course bits were flying everywhere into our hair and eyes but it was seriously good fun!

We then began the pressing, layering the pulp in cotton sheeting and piling the bundles up about five high before applying the pressure. We were amazed how much juice came out, we managed to fill a five gallon barrel, that's an awful lot of cider if it turns out to be vile! Fingers crossed we end up with something drinkable despite the rather Heath Robinson equipment and the less than five star cleanliness rating. I have high hopes as the juice actually tasted rather good.



"Every moment of your life is infinitely creative and the universe is endlessly bountiful"
Mahatma Gandhi

Look we've nearly got cider!

Peony Palaver

Today was the day we moved the peony border, a bothersome task given that we had to dig up each variety, carefully divide it, go through it with a fine toothed comb extracting bind weed root, Circaea lutetiana enchanters nightshade and any other nasties we could find. We then soaked each tuber and dug out any weeds left inside, a rather gruesome job as the tortuous shapes rather reminded me of old bones. The last stage was a thorough blast with the jet wash before re-planting could begin. Still we managed to finish in good time and we now wait to see if we have eradicated the weed problem that plagues the old border. It will be a while before the new site will grow to be as full and beautiful when in flower, but when it does we will weed kill the old plants and put that area to grass for a few years, and when it too is clean we will probably repeat the whole process!
Meanwhile as many parts of the garden display are beginning to fade one or two plants are just coming into their own, notably Aster 'Violet Queen', looking stunning against the autumn foliage of  Gillenia trifoliata and the cheery orange lanterns of Physalis alkekengi which we have hung in the peach house to dry.

"The autumn wood the aster knows,
The empty nest, the wind that grieves,
The sunlight breaking thro' the shade,
The squirrel chattering overhead,
The timid rabbits lighter tread among the rustling leaves"
Dora Read Goodale

A Secret Corner

As this year begins to ebb away our thoughts turn to cutting back and mulching in the garden at Norton Conyers. This week we have cut back and weeded the iris border, a bit hard on the knees but worth the effort as it now looks very tidy, we do this to cut the wind resistance of the fans down in case the tubers get torn from the ground. The rest of our time we spent weeding the red currants and gooseberry bushes preparing for when we put the mulch down, there is no point in placing a weed suppressing layer over entrenched thugs like bind weed! This is all very well but it doesn't make for very interesting reading, so I'll tell you about my visit to Harlow Carr yesterday. I thought I knew the place pretty well having studied there for two years but on Friday I discovered a secret corner. I was making my way through the woodland happily indulging my passion for fungi, rummaging around under conifers and getting my new jacket well and truly caked in green muck when I came across a little path previously unexplored. It is way up behind the old bath house, beyond the bird hide and along the course of the stream that runs down the valley, and there I found a charming little shelter set amongst some lovely trees. I got the impression that nobody goes there much which seemed to make it my little place, see if you can find it too when next you visit.

"The man who can keep a secret may be wise, but he is not half as wise as the man with no secrets to keep"
Edgar Watson Howe