Lazy Blogger, Busy Gardener, Glorious May!

This post is an apology for not finding the time to blog properly and a thank you for all your kind comments that have, unforgivingly, gone unanswered recently. I love the month of May. We've been eating al fresco, without the annoyance of high summer wasps, driving with the top down, rediscovering summer shorts at the back of wardrobe, lazing under parasols with the Sunday papers and everything in the garden is, literally, rosy! The vegetable garden is on the verge of being magnificent, which I've photographed and will be posting soon (feeling particularly chuffed about managing single headedly this year) and we stand a good chance of being self sufficient by June. So, just a few photographs of the garden flowers to tide you over until I can give you my full and undivided attention, in the meantime, I hope you are enjoying your own variety of "that lusty month of May"

Double Dated and Still Stood Up (Just)

I had a special date in my diary for 19th May 2009, Chelsea Flower Show Member’s Day, which sadly fell though due to a misunderstanding and delayed action (by me, I hasten to add), so to partly recommence for the loss, I booked my sister for a day, as fellow photographer at Kew Gardens (thinking, deviously, it would be empty of visitors as they would have all been quicker off the draw for the RHS Chelsea tickets!) but again, the visit has been postponed (by me, I hasten to add, again). I cried off, as I’ve been restless and sleepless for many nights and just couldn’t face the storms predicted along with the endless and exhausting high winds we have been having here for two weeks, which have seen me rushing around trying to protect all my newly planted seedlings in manic mode. A strong wind on a sunny day is my idea of glorious weather usually, but these winds are so damaging and relentless, they have had the better of me and even the rough and tumble bully-boy black bamboo is struggling to right itself. It must have been a worry trying to put a show garden together while battling this whirling turmoil, my hat flies off to them;-) At least I can participate in the virtual Chelsea, albeit with a certain amount of grimace, due to some, well most, of the BBC presenters and too much time spent on the show gardens and not enough down-to-earth plantsmanship in the pavilions. If you would like to take a tour around the grounds and find a world of everything gardening, lose an hour or two here. Five episodes available as I blog and another four days coverage to come and that's enough for the keenest gardener, hardly leaving enough time to actually get out there and do it!

Gardening Un-coordinated (A love Letter)

I was so surprised and delighted, when, after all the years of self-sufficiency-dreaming on my behalf, Nick took to gardening when the opportunity presented itself. He had his own style, of course, totally juxtaposed to mine, which, as always, is to be expected. Nevertheless, he embraced it as a new and pleasurable pastime, which could be enjoyed outside, basking in his beloved sun-stoke-inducing weather and rewarded with an ice cooled gin and tonic as the sun hit the yardarm. Weeding was out, (well, how convenient!) nature was all. And, of course, there was the idea of maybe being able to grow a drink or two!

He also re-found a childhood mania for digging holes. Not just any little ten or twelve inch planting holes, but serious here-comes-Australia holes! (Yesterday, a house painter came to size up our windows for a quote and asked me how we grew bamboo as thick and tall as we do. I had to describe the hole Nick dug for the root ball. I don’t think he believed me!) Anyway, what ever turned him on was OK by me, as long as we could do it side by side. (With constant know-it-all comments from both parties.) When he suffered his back injury he was amused to find himself telling the physiotherapist that amongst his ‘hobbies’ was gardening. It took him by surprise, which was more than a little ironic, as that’s what brought him there in the first place.
Well, the truth is, despite the endless banter of ‘my way is the only way’ that we both indulge in, I miss him along side me. In fact, I’ll go as far as saying gardening is a duel process for me; it’s the interplay that keeps me interested and feisty. To get to the nub of the blog and problem, suddenly I’m on my tod and I hate it. Yesterday, I spent four hours slogging at the allotment planting beans, erecting poles and ploughing through general maintenance, which would have seemed like half an hour in his company.
Here is a quick roundup of the varieties of bean and tomato I’m growing this year, with an apology that I’m not blogging as much as I would like due to fact that I’m flying solo so far this growing season. Hope he’s on the mend soon and comes out the other side still retaining his enthusiasm for the task in hand, albeit in our separate camps! Love you, miss you!

Beans
Fagioli Rampicanti (Yard Long Beans)
Fagioli Nani (Cannellino Bush Beans)
Borlotto Rosso (Dwarf Beans)
Borlotto Centofiamme (Climber: the Mystery Bean see previous post)
Triofo Violtto (Climbing Purple French Bean)
My own breed of runner beans (a show stopper)


Tomatoes
Orange Queen
Green Zebra
Russian Prune Noir
Noire De Crimee
Des Andes
Anna Russian
Purple Calabash
Ananas
Ox Heart
Costoluto Fiorentino

Politicking, and this time it’s personal!

There are rumblings at foot in the village (I’m coming out here, Northwood). The local ruling party, the Conservatives (fingers in throat) are posting “Save Our Small Shops”. Well absolutely, well worthy and most commendable in theory, however, just so impractical in nature. That is unless you are one of the number that need the five or six hairdressers/beauty saloons, or are required to buy/sell a house, four, or the equal number of greeting card shops that are available of the 30 or so shops in the village. What makes me so cross (and here comes the rant) is that not one sells useful commodities like: fish, meat, fresh vegetables, local eggs, a halfway decent loaf or on a personal level, art supplies. We have four coffee shops, well, I can brew my own for one tenth of the cost (using fairtrade beans) and although I too like hangin’ with friends, I find home a more congenial space rather than their multi-national and sadly predicable interiors, where nobody knows the variety or lineage of their coffee.
Just a few good shops survive: a watch repairers, a shoe shop (well, I am addicted), a gent’s outfitters (wonderful, but far too expensive for this household), a haberdashers (oh, hallowed one), a book shop (struggling with on-line sales, guilty), a kitchen design shop (quite beautiful, but how often do you need to spend a fortune refiguring your kitchen? I give it a year) and two wonderful charity shops (both supplied and regularly supported in sales by yours truly). The supermarket is now the heart of the village and has done for the local food suppliers, so sad. Here I blame the archfiend and arch-capitalist of past and present Tories, M.T. (I can’t bring myself to name the she-devil), a strange thing for a daughter of a grocer to do.
Blood pressure now subsiding, from your host, frizzy of hair, natural in beauty, clothes always two years out-of-date but yet weirdly funky, growing her own and always elegant at foot, surviver of commuter hell, Fay

Using Your Marbles

Out of the 20 or so allotments in our association, three of our members are Italian.
Last year, I begged some beans from Francesca as I had admired the vigour and productivity of the unknown (to me) climbing dried bean she’d grown last autumn. Returning home with my generous haul, I immediately went on-line to discovery what exact my bounty was. I had some difficulty finding the variety even with the World Wide Web at by fingertips. A type of climbing marble bean was the only clue, so I checked my favourite Italian seed suppliers. The closest I could find was the glorious borlotti bean, but as I had grown those for years as bush beans I had no idea they came in climbing form, anyway these where slightly different. Although a little smaller than other borlotti beans when freshly dried, the beans swell vastly when soaked and cooked, resulting in a much larger, almost butter bean sized seed. They are the most buttery, earthy and delicious beans I’ve ever tasted.
In the photograph, as well as the mystery beans (left), there are some bush borlotti beans I saved for planting this Spring. The difference is small on first glance, I grant you, but when studied more closely there are some variations in colour, particularly around the ‘eye’ which is bright orange in the mystery bean. I think what clinches the climber as a borlotti-type is the occasional, strange, wine-coloured bean in each group, maybe a throw-back to the same genetic parent and speculatively, I think they could be something like Borlotti Bean Lingua di Fuoco or the Fire Tongue Bean, well we’ll see. I’ve just sown the puzzle marble beans, in the conservatory for now, as being so enigmatic and exotic I’m not sure they will take our night time temperatures just yet.
Curzio, another Italian down on the allotment grows solely grapes for his much admired wine, so he and Nick have a ready made conversation based on weather conditions, yield, soil (sorry, terroir!) and general grape-talk. Nick won’t be chin wagging or doing much of anything else at the allotment for a while as he has injured his back digging my half of the plot. So, he can’t bend and I can’t lift (arthritic wrists); we make a pretty pair when trying to empty the dishwasher, I can tell you!

Clematis Montana ' Pink Perfection' rambling across the garden shed.

Herb and Walnut Sauce

Follower Red Clover asked, "I wouldn't mind you expounding on a couple of those recipes" when commenting on "Herbs to Sustain You". So, in haste, here is one by Antonio Carluccio that combines simplicity and freshness, resulting in authentic italian taste in super fast time.
One previsor, you must use fresh herbs and chop the walnuts by hand so that the sauce has a fairly coarse texture.

For four

1 oz walnuts
Good bunches of parsley and chives
Smaller bunches of 2 only of the following fresh herbs: tarragon (careful here, it's very strong), dill, basil, mint. I recommend the latter two, but experiment.
1 clove of garlic
4 tablespoons olive oil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Freshly grated Parmesan cheese
Egg Pasta

Using a sharp knife, finely chop the herbs and walnuts
Crush the garlic in salt
Mix the herbs, walnuts, garlic olive oil, salt and pepper
Add half if the mix to the cooked pasta, turn out onto a serving dish, pouring the remaining sauce on top and serve with the cheese. Fini!

Makes a great lunch with a few dressed salad leaves and a glass of something red and italian. Buon appetito!

Top : Chives about to flower and finish for the year.
Below : Mints in pots to avoid a take over.

Herbs to Sustain You

Warm, sunny days have me busy in the garden, despite an unfairly timed bout of wrist arthritis. The blossom is glorious, although worryingly quiet from an absence of bees, the wisteria running along the back of the house about to unfurl. The first crops of vegetables are planted and growing. The lawn is cut, the fruit trees feed, just the ever present and never finished chore of weeding remains of which I do less each year through either turning a blind eye to certain areas or mulching. (Good for wildlife is my mantra!)

I hate supermarket shopping. I will avoid it at any cost and the cost to my family is they must eat herbs, lots of herbs. The strategy works like this, buy dry grocery basics like beans, flour, rice, pasta, nuts and vegetables, if they are not available in the garden, like potatoes, onions, roots etc with a long shelf-life. (I think the reason I started to grow my own vegetables was to avoid going to the supermarket, that may sound lazy, but I reckon for every hour I would have to shop, I work five or six in the garden/allotment, which illustrates just how much I loath the supermarket run.) For lunch I make soup daily, this is usually one or more from each group above and a bunch of herbs, for example:
Potato and Sorrel Soup
Carrot, Arborio Rice and Chervil Soup
Mint and Split Pea Soup
Celery, Par-Cel and Lovage Soup.

It’s the same story for the evening meal.
Pasta with Parsley, Walnuts and Wild Garlic
Gnocchi with Lemon, Pine Nut and Rocket Pesto
Onion and Rosemary Pizza
Italian Bean Salad with Thyme and Winter Savory
Sage or Borage Fritters
To mention a few, there are just some many herby goodies.

All served with our trusty salad leaves that have taken us through the winter without resorting to the plastic bags of the mixed salad of indistinguishable flavours on the supermarket shelves. For drinks, I make cordials when the opportunity presents itself. Elderflower, autumn raspberry and apple juices and teabags made from herbs, mint and fennel, lemon balm and lemon verbena. I like to grow lots of different flavoured mints, amongst the favourites are black peppermint, ginger mint, berries and cream mint (wow, I know, find it at Jekka Seeds), lime mint, and apple mint but I am continually finding new and exciting varieties that make wonderful hot and cold drinks.

Of course, it’s not quite that simple, a good bouillon or stock is needed for the soup base, Parmesan for the pasta and gnocchi and sugar to make cordials, but you get the gist, and we do eat meat, eggs, citrus fruit, olive oil and many other good things that I can’t walk out into the garden to gather. But at this time of year I like to challenge myself against an empty fridge and eat from nature’s bountiful larder.
So here are a few snaps from the garden pantry plus a general glimpse at what’s flowering now.



Nettles collected at the allotment make a great soup (with leek and Arborio rice) when the tips are picked young.


Sorrel, in a yet to be weeded part of the potagerie.


An embarrassment of chervil, large bunch to all callers!


Making mint tea and the bags I buy, expensive but great for homemade bouquet garnis as well as herb teas.


Pear tree in blossom and a close up of apple blossom.


Viola sororia 'Freckles'.


Clematis armandii now fading.


Wisteria photographed last year about a week from now.
Finally, Geoff Hamilton (1936-1996), known to us here in the UK from his gardening programs, loved by many and irritating some, had a gentle humour that I think is shown by this lovely quote "Seedsmen reckon that their stock in trade is not seeds at all ... it's optimism".

Gardening: Early Influences (Genetic Cuttings and Seedlings)

Back from Paris and now is the time to plunge myself into gardening. A time for growth and while musing upon the seeds to be sown and the cuttings to be taken, with new growth in mind, my thoughts turn to the ones that have gone before. So here is a little historic look at all my genetic helpers.
As a child I was initiated into gardening from an early age. I had a great grandfather who worked in the Black Country (in the British West Midlands) as a mining engineer, which afforded him a free load of coal every week allowing him to run vast private glasshouses, where he indulged his passion for exotic plants. Never growing more than one species at a time, he would (with much frustration from family and fellow gardeners) raise the most glorious orchids one year, only to be tipped onto the compost heap in favour of every known variety of hoya the following year (the great-great-grand-plant of which I still have growing in my conservatory despite the rabbit’s attentions!) Talking of my conservatory, another fossil of my past lurks there. My grandmother’s cactus, cleistocactus strausii, handed down from mother to daughter and now a nine foot relic of at least 60 years to my knowledge.
Perhaps I could also mention another link in family history to gardening, although this one is a little more tenuous. My ancestor, the journeyman shoemaker poet, James Woodhouse (1735-1820) acquired patronage from William Shenstone though his famous garden in Halesowen. After inheriting his estate, Shenstone embarked on elaborate schemes of landscape gardening, which earned him a leading role in the tradition of English garden design and the cult of the “natural” landscape. Woodhouse wrote a poem pleading that he might still be allowed to walk in the garden. Shenstone was so impressed by the poem that he became his benefactor and had my ancestor’s work published, leading to a literary career in London. (Trivia: Shenstone became the first person to record the use of floccinaucinihilipilification, recognized as the longest word in the English language and ironical meaning worthless!)
Back in my childhood, at bedtime, I had garden poems instead of stories. Poems such as Amy Lowell’s Patterns, The Flowers by Robert Louis Stevenson (very influential for a Woodland Fay) Beloved by Elizabeth Barrett Browning and so many more. As for picture books, well just one springs to mind as my favourite and it’s still in front of me, battered and missing most of it’s dust jacket, ‘The Story of Plants and their Uses to Man’, by John Hutchinson (1884-1972) and Ronald Melville (1903-1985) both active in the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. This book, to my knowledge only published once in 1948, has never failed in all the years it has accompanied me through my life, to interest and amaze and has been a catalyst in my desire to grow things both in childhood and to this day.
As for toys, one Christmas, to my endless joy, I received a toy garden. Made like lead soldiers, there were pots and trellises, beds and troughs to be planted with endless lead plants and flowers and then arranged with pergolas and paved walkways in any given permutation, a miniature garden of delight. In the intervening years I sometimes feel as if I have dreamt this toy up, as I have never seen another since, and oh, how I wish I could time travel and return to save it so that I could play once more! Instead, now I’m home from my adventures in Paris, I’ll go outside and wrestle with the real weeds that have been stealthily sprouting from every clod and which were strangely absent from my lovely low maintenance toy garden!

Paris Time

With the trip to Paris nearly upon us, I have been looking through the photographs from my last trip. There are snaps of my friend's apartment where we will stay, an "I-want-to-take-it-home" marble basin at the Sunday market we always visit, an early morning espresso while writing cards, a stained glass window from my favorite museum, the amazing Musée National du Moyen Âge and a visual reminder of the goodies to come from the patiserie. And while my dyslexia is rampant, (I have good days and bad weeks!) I'll let the pictures do the talking.

Lime Kiln

Met up with old friends on Sunday, who have now relocated to the Cayman Islands. When they lived at Lime Kiln it was always a date in the diary to visit in Late Spring or Early Summer as the grounds were famous as a rose garden dating to the early 20th Century although the house itself was medieval. Here are a few of the millions of photographs I took over the years.

Late Spring in the Walled Garden.
Kids chillin' on the lawn.
Nick practicing under the thatched folly.

I will look out some of the June pictures for all you rose lovers!

Saint-Émilion with Pastels

Another workout with my new pastels. I'm trying to explore what's possible in this medium both in stylistic and practical terms. Saint-Émilion is another preferred stop on our journeys through France, not only for the charm of the village, but of course, for it's fabulous product, it's wine. Saint-Émilion's history goes back to prehistoric times and is a World Heritage site. It has fascinating churches and old, ruinous buildings stretching along steep and narrow streets. Since Roman times there were vineyards on it's slopes. The photograph, from which I have taken this image, was taken near a lovely bistro/cave called L'Envers du Décor, where you can take your meal and your glass of Grand Cru Classé Château Soutard wine in the troglodyte garden, a small outside space at the back of the cafe overshadowed and enclosed by the 8th Century carved hermitage. The poster was a gift from the proprietor, I admired the design and loved the "English spoken with a French accent" finish.

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Spring Has Sprung

My birthday is on the first day of Spring. I was serenaded each teenage birthday, causing typical youthful embarrassment, by my Dad singing Harry Secombe’s ‘If I ruled the world, ev'ry day would be the first day of spring, ...’ in his sweetheart tenor voice, oh, how I miss it now. Nick and Dan once made me a fabulous birthday card, the surface made of Astroturf with carefully wrought springs bobbing up and down with paper birds, inside this verse,
Spring has sprung
The grass has ris
I wonder were those birdies is
Some say the birds are on the wing
but that’s absurd
the wing is on the bird.
There is something so glorious about receiving a card, hand crafted, just for you… and clever to boot!
This weekend I feel Spring is nearly here, it gladdens the heart. There are snowdrops under the apple trees and my neighbour’s orchard is festooned with crocuses. I read long ago, that one is most happy and content at the same time of year when one was born. Maybe that’s why Nick wants to grow grapes for the harvest time, his birthday, and I’m transported by a simple vase of daffodils?

Nunc est bibendum - Now we must drink. (Horace)

The room that sealed the deal when we were reconnoitring our present house to buy, was the butler’s pantry. Just a small room off the dining room, designed to catch the cool northerly breeze though vents in the wall, a cold room or larder. Nick, however, realised at once, he could use it as his ‘cave’. The alcoholic equivalent of the garden shed.
It immediately became a shrine to Ricard, Pastis 51, Gauloises, Gitanes and his best vintage, laying down wines. He can trace this addiction for all things French and Bar, to his first days on tour in France on the road in the 1960’s, when the advertising was hand painted on the sides of houses. (Most have now disappeared, see a couple of survivors we snapped along the Loire, below.) There was a need in him to drink the drink of the French movies of Jean-Pierre Melville and smoke the smoke of ‘À bout de soufflé’;-)
In trying to re-live a lost age of La Belle France we scoured the flea markets and bricolage, to find the advertising ashtrays, glasses and water carafes to set the scene. Then there are the bottles of aperitifs bought, seduced by their old world labels. Of course, one needed the appropriate glass for each and every drink. All French bar memorabilia found it’s way to Nick’s ‘cave’.
With the Euro rapidly becoming equal to the Pound, trips, 'en vacance' in the camper van, buying ‘produit de région’ is fast becoming a bygone age in itself.

Inherited Memory of the Basque Country?

The first time I visited the Basque, I both astounded and irritated my husband and son, in equal measure, by my oft-repeated mantra “I know this place”. As we journeyed about highways and byways of the Basque country the landscape seemed just shockingly familiar to me, a strong feeling of déjà vu or more correctly déjâ vécu (roughly translated as ‘having already lived through’) or could it have been inherited memory? Whether I believe in ancestral memories or not, and after this experience I am leaning towards belief, the consequence of this feeling was to make me believe I had returned to a long forgotten home.
The Basques say when God created Adam, he got his bones from a Basque cemetery, certainly the question of their heritage and genetics is still being researched, but all agree they are amongst the oldest Europeans with a language with no demonstrable genealogical relationship with any other living language. Basques have a close attachment to their homes and the family house names have transmuted in to Basque surnames, much the same as my own family who took the name ‘woodhouse’ or ‘wodehouse’ from the ancestral home in Wombourne, Staffordshire in the 13th century.
I love the Basque country and long to return for another psychic fix.

Old Town Pamplona

I took a photograph of Nick beside a beautiful advertisement we found down an alley in the old town of Pamplona. This week, looking for a subject to test out some new pastels, a medium I’ve not used before, I decided to try to reproduce it. The advertisement, produced in the 40’s or 50’s, was a reverse glass painting, a great survivor, undamaged by vandals, bulls or runners!
Realistic reverse paintings are challenging to create, as one must, for example, in painting a face, put the pupil of an eye on the glass before the iris, etc, exactly the opposite of normal painting. If this is neglected the artist will not be able to correct the error as he or she will not get in between the glass and the paint already applied. Anyway, above is the result, I hope I have done the original painter justice.