Hand-me-downs

I'd asked for some gardening tools for my birthday, being so bereft in this department that, in desperating to start digging the path beds when we first moved in, I had borrowed a garden fork from my boss.

My priorities were some topiary shears for keeping the shrubs in the back garden shaped in half the time it took me to go around with a pair of secateurs, a shovel (I had also become tired of picking up armfuls of swept arisings to carry to the green waste bin) and, if the budget stretched, a pruning saw (to take my pruning efforts to the next level!).

In the end I received generous amounts of money from my family which will more than fund my gardening shopping list, but Mum took me into the garage and offered me a selection of hand-me-down tools where she'd acquired duplicates or upgraded versions over the years.  Oddly enough, I feel more pleasure at being given these old friends from our garden than I am with the thought of an Amazon delivery.  Don't they look grand?

In the garden today

The primroses keep flowering... and the slugs keep nibbling them, and everywhere bulbs are shooting up.  Yet I've just hung up the Christmas wreath on our door.  A's Mum grew up in Kenya where the flowers kept flowering all year round.  She doesn't think that this premature burst of growing will do the plants any harm, as the lack of seasons over there didn't curb the displays.  Hope there's something left for Spring.

Runcible

We took a trip out to one of my favourite local National Trust gardens on Saturday - Charlcote Park.  The gardens aren't particularly extensive or notable, unlike nearby Hidcote, being mostly deer park, but the croquet lawn there has two long herbaceous border strips and I'd been hoping to plunder them for some inspiration for my own, much smaller, front path borders.

Unfortunately the borders were looking pretty sparse apart from some lovely dancing grasses, however on another deeper border near the cafe there was a much more unusual planting scheme...

Round and about: November

A walk to the postbox is an excellent opportunity to check out other people's gardens in Autumn.  And what a display I found!  I could have photographed bright berries from another ten or so gardens, and had to restrain myself in the interests of balanced representation.  I particularly love the bronze creeper decorating the side of an old town house.  

Our own garden is sadly lacking in berries or creeper.  That said, in tribute to the extremely mild weather this Autumn has shown so far, a few of the younger raspberry canes have found the energy to produce a late crop of berries.   We took more than our fill of the main crop in August and so I left these latecomers unpicked as an offering to the birds, however they seem more interested in fighting each other for the small hard yellow cherries on our tree.  

Birthday bay!

An early birthday present from A's parents when we visited last weekend, a bay standard in a beautiful pot.  The bay is a family tradition, A's sister and sister-in-law have also been given bay  trees in the past.  We've planted up the pot just to the side of the porch and the tree looks and smells fantastic.  In its honour I have cpoied down just one of my favourite recipes using bay leaves - and a tradition of my own family: the basmati rice recipe from my dad Colin's curry recipe. You can find the accompanying curry recipe on the web too.  Enjoy!



Colin's curry - basmati rice accompaniment

Heat corn oil in large saucepan with tight-fitting lid.  Add cloves, crushed cardamom pods and cinnamon stick.  Add rice & turmeric and mix well by swishing the pan round.  Add boiling water and bay leaf and stir.  Cover and simmer gently for 12-15 minutes until all the water has been absorbed.  Use a form to remove the seeds and bay leaf and turn out into a warmed dish. Allow to stand in a warm place for 5 to 10 minutes and fluff up with a fork before serving.

An afternoon in the garden

Might have been the clocks going back today but life was not going to plan and so by 2.30 I had given up and wandered into the back garden.  Between trimming the shaped shrub by the steps and cutting the huge rose that was threatening to uproot at the next windy night it was suddenly five o clock and darkening.  An afternoon well spent.  I snapped some photos as I went but they didn't capture half of the loveliness of it.

Gift of gloves

Back from a weekend in Somerset with A's family and with a gift of four foxglove plants from the family garden.  When we moved to the house most of the plants in the path border had already flowered and gone over.  In amongst the azalea I found a single spike of something, full of tiny brown black seed, which I collected in a twist of brown paper and optimistically labelled "foxglove". 


I'm usually one for muted pastel colours in the garden but in a foxglove I can tolerate the blowsiest of fuschias. I love watching the bumble bees busy in and out of the tubular flowers and was looking forward to bulking up my solitary foxglove with some baby plants that would bloom over the Summer.  Casually mentioning my plans over the weekend I was more than a bit disappointed to learn that foxgloves are biennials and I wouldn't be seeing flowers for another year.   However, the disappointment didn't last for long because I left with four healthy foxglove plants which had self-seeded into a border the year before; these I planted into the shadiest end of my garden in a small drift with the hope that they will self-seed some more.

An evening's work

Yesterday evening was so lovely, warm and light that my quick potter in the garden quickly turned into a full on tackle with an overgrown flower bed.  The bed in question sits under our window and is filled with japanese anemones.  Back in July, when we moved in, I had my first encounter with these plants, green luscious ground cover from which shot up elegant nodding stems topped with fat siver and brown buds.  They were so beautiful that it was a disappointment when they flowered, a girly pink with yellow centres that were too pretty pretty and twee for my tastes.  But I grew to love the way they filled the space under the window and, in a garden that had gone over by July, they kept going and going and had earned my respect.

All things pass and, by last week, the anemones had exhausted themselves, falling over into the path in one big knot of stems and spent heads, and I was desperate to tackle them.  Five minutes and a few snips later the bed was cleared down to single small clump with a smaller chain of baby plants and a broken solar powered light that had been completely engulfed by the foliage.  Before I knew it I was digging up the bed, putting the larger clump to one side, and tackling the huge dandelions lurking behind before digging in manure and replanting. 

The finished results are in the photo.  I was so pleased that I kept popping my head out of the door to take another look.  This garden is such a huge task to take on, starting and finishing one small bed in an evening was a real pleasure.

Katia & Hugh

The tail end of hurricane Katia has arrived in Warwickshire resulting in a bumper windfall of hazelnuts.   On the way to put out the recycling in the morning I saw them scattered around and dashed back, grabbing my improvised watering can (plastic jug from Wilkinsons).  I collected a jug-and-a-half-full on my first scour (still in flip flops and jogging bottoms when the neighbours walked past the gate).  By lunch time another handful had fallen and every time we came into the garden more fresh hazelnuts strew the path.

As it happens, this weekend in the Guardian magazine Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall based his recipe column on hazelnuts so we have a selection of very tasty recipes to try out.  With so many hazelnuts to get through I’m thinking of making a few batches of the honeyed hazelnuts for family Christmas gifts, but the hazelnut meringues are all for us!  The recipes are here if you are lucky enough to have your own glut of nuts: http://bit.ly/pGQmCL

My conscience told me to leave some for the squirrels to nibble on but this Summer I have been waging a war on last year’s hazelnuts, having sprouted up and down the borders that frame the path.  Their roots head straight down into the ground; even the smallest take some uprooting.  In the end there were so many nuts around the path and beds that I left any beyond easy reach for the wildlife to enjoy –any saplings should remain safely tucked under the parent tree.