Bert's Shed

After twelve years of hinting Dave finally took me to Derbyshire to visit Chatsworth house this weekend. The weather was perfect and the house and grounds did not disappoint. The scale of course is huge and everything is meant to be viewed at a distance but when you get a little closer you realise that nothing is perfect. Not that that bothers me, I like to see a little nature creeping in as it so often does at Norton Conyers, but it did make me realise just how good our garden actually is for its planting and setting, every bit as good as these larger houses!

 however despite all the grandeur, the place I really fell in love with is tucked around the back of the house and behind the kitchen garden. It is the most perfect place and I wish I had one just like it. Bert must have led a very contented life in such a cosy space, it makes me want to convince Giles to renovate the bothy at Norton and get the stove working again, winters would be a lot more fun if we did.

"Your sacred space is where you can find yourself again and again"
Joseph Campbell

Bert,s magical shed

Summer Nectar Hunt

We continue to swelter under the blue skies of what has become the best summer I can remember for a long while. It may not be much fun for us humans but our insect friends are having a field day and the garden abounds with a low hum that signals their joyous search for nectar. Much of our time is now spent on the sort of jobs an indolent afternoon demands, dead heading, a little gentle hoeing, and plenty of watering. Even Shandy has largely given up hunting rabbits by lunchtime, preferring instead to bake in the sun for a while before taking a bath in what is laughingly called the watercress trough, lucky thing, we have to wait until we get home for a cool shower!

"And a cloud of enraptured, sporting, buzzing little creatures of silk dust swept or hovered over the undulating picture"
Jean Paul Friedrich Richter

Hoglet Rescue

We had high drama in the garden yesterday when I found a baby hedgehog flaked out in the iris border. It was so still at first I thought the poor little thing was dead, but upon closer inspection I noticed he was still breathing. It was really hot out there at mid day and certainly no place for a nocturnal creature to be. So we gently popped him into a bucket and took him into the orangery where it was nice and cool, having found him more suitable accommodation in a crate with a saucer of water we left him alone to see if he would recover. Thankfully after about an hour he was moving around quite energetically and having drinks of water, so we took him into the woods and set him free in a shady area. I do hope he will be all right. I think these little beasts are most charming, but unfortunately they are dying out at about the same rate as tigers. So if you see one in distress the best thing you can do is give them water and let them rest. Dog or cat food is fine for them to eat, but never ever give them milk as it upsets their tummies.

more prickles!

"Hope is the expectation that something outside of ourselves, something or someone external, is going to come to our rescue and we will live happily ever after"
Dr Robert Anthony

Hay Ho

I can't believe it is that time of year again so quickly. The weather has been set fair for a number of days and so yesterday it was time to cut the meadow. Luckily for us the conditions were ideal, warm and sunny but with a cooling breeze to help us in our work of raking. Sometimes it is good just to set to with a task that you know is going to take all day, you don't have to think too much but can enjoy the rhythm of the work whilst watching what goes on around you. Alyson was kept busy on toad watch, rescuing the little chaps before the mower blades did their worst, whereas Nicky was a bit jittery avoiding all the mice that fled, she doesn't like them much as she once lived in a cottage where they were rather numerous!. It was a day of good honest toil.

"Make hay while the sun shines"          "Honour lies in honest toil"
Proverb                                               Grover Cleveland

Smellovision

Rosa 'Summer Wine'

Many is the time that I wished that I could evoke the perfume of Norton Conyers through my writing. At this time of year I think you smell the garden before you start to register the individual blossoms. It would almost be worth walking around with ones eyes shut just to see if the scents start to become more descriptive as you were deprived of sight. Not all things in the garden smell good, the jeyes fluid that Giles has sprayed around the new hornbeam hedge to stop the squirrels ring barking them seems a really strange odour to come across, but when you see the poor young sapling that is doomed to death because it no longer possesses bark you perhaps will forgive it. Another pong that is not quite so easy to overlook is one of Shandy's forgotten rabbits, but we remove those as quickly as we can if we can find them!
Returning to more pleasant aromas the roses are at their peak right now, the above being one of my favourites,with the advantage of good red hips for the winter, funny to think that I used to dislike roses in general, regarding their thorns and long periods of dullness as not worth the effort. How wrong I was! The longer I garden and the more I learn I see that each and every plant has some merit, and if that is a good fragrance then it will always be worth planting.

"My garden, with its silence and pulses of fragrance that come and go on the airy undulations, affects me like sweet music"
Alexander Smith